Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Cabin Cousins: Part 6
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Cabin Cousins: Part 6
Cabin Cousins: Part 6
Saying Goodbye; for now.
Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connections.
Chapter Twenty.
On the drive home, I felt good, like really good. I felt
like things were actually going to start changing for the better. Reveling in
this feeling, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. I stopped my car in a
random parking lot and pulled out my phone.
One of the guys that I used to work with, Carl, liked to go
to this little bar in Superior to hang out with friends and have a few drinks.
There was a whole group of guys from work that would go regularly, but Carl was
the only one who never stopped asking. For one reason or another, I never took
him up on it, and I haven't seen any of them since I stopped being able to go
to work.
He answered after a few rings.
"Hi, it's Charles, from work."
"Charles? Hey buddy! How are you doing?"
He sounded happy to hear from me.
"Oh, I've been hanging in there. How's the store since
I left?" At the time of the accident, I was the yard manager
at the same store I had worked at since I moved to Duluth. It didn't pay a lot
of money, but it was enough to get by, and I liked the job. I still felt bad
about how I left. As the years went on and my depression spiraled downwards, it
had become too hard to mask. My job performance was terrible, and people began
to ask questions I didn't want to face the answers to. One day I scheduled
myself to take all my vacation days, and then with that in the system, I put in
my two weeks' notice. I never went back.
"They made me assistant store manager if you'll believe
that," Carl said. "Still a lot of the same faces around here. All the
young kids come and go. You know how it is."
"Yeah." I chuckled. In a store like that, you
could count on about half of the employees to be lifers. They'd never leave.
The other half seemed to be a completely different mix of people every couple
of months.
"So, what's up?" Carl asked.
I could hear the store's advertising jingle blaring over the
loudspeakers in the background.
"Do you and the guys still go to that bar in
Superior?" There it was. I said it. Now if he says yes, I'll have to ask if
I can go, and then I'll have to go.
"Yeah! But it's usually just me and Matt. Brian got
married, and his wife has him on a short leash. Joe goes to AA. The other guys,
just kinda stopped going for one reason or another. Tonight is the night we
usually go."
"Mind if I come with?" I asked.
"Of course, man! We're going to leave here at about
six."
"Cool, I'll see you there."
"Looking forward to it. It'll be good to see you again."
And now the awkwardness of ending a phone call. I've heard
that it's a Midwestern thing, but everyone seems to do it better than I do.
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."
I went home, set out some clean clothes, and got in the
shower. Sometimes I forget how good it feels to be clean. But then, I knew
exactly why it was often too hard to motivate myself to get into the shower.
The shower brought memories of Melissa and the possibility of pain. I stood
still, letting the near-scalding water cascade over me. The fruity scent of the
same brand of body wash Melissa had during our first shower together was
strong, and I remembered.
I closed my eyes and started my breathing exercise with a
deep slow inhale. Melissa's hands scrubbed my lower back and slid down
to squeeze my ass. Breathe out, the pain and hurt waft away like steam
in the shower. My fingers follow the lines of her muscles and up her
inner thigh, she looks at me with serene contentment. Breathe
in. She turns, arches her back, and sighs as I enter her from behind. Breathe
out, the pain is gone, and there is only joy. She moans as my soapy
hands cup her firm tits, holding her tight against me as we make love. Breathe
in. I gasp and hold my breath as we both climax. Breathe out.
I catch my breath and look down, my hand was still grasping
my quickly softening manhood, and the oozing result of my orgasm was slowly
washed into the drain. I finished cleaning up, turned the water off, and
stepped out of the shower.
I looked at myself in the mirror as I toweled dry. It had
been quite a while since I had exercised, or gone to the gym, but I still had a
good amount of muscle on me. Granted, a bit more flab than I liked, especially
on my belly, but overall I still liked the way I looked. Melissa liked the way
I looked too. I patted my belly, and there was a slight jiggle. I really should
work out again, I thought. When was the last time I went for a run? I couldn't
remember.
My eyes strayed from my body to my face. I was still
slightly pink from the hot water. I studied the slight age lines beginning to
appear around my eyes and noticed that I seemed to have a larger forehead than
I used to. When did I start losing my hair?
I put my hands on the edge of the sink and leaned close to
the mirror. It's a strange thing, looking yourself in the eyes. Despite how
good I felt at the moment, all I could see was the pain deep inside. I knew it
hadn't always been there, and obviously, I knew when it started. What bothered
me was, I couldn't remember what it was like to not have this pain. I could
remember every little detail about Melissa, her face, her body, the
conversations we had, the things we did together, everything. But if I focus on
just me... I can remember being a skinny awkward teenager falling in love and
beginning a perfect life, then this, an aging man being crushed by the weight
of a tragedy. Every memory between, of what it was to be me, was just gone.
Lost to the gray. At the same time, I knew that this person staring back at me
in the mirror wasn't me. Once, I was happy. Once I was me, whoever
that was. Would I ever get me back, or did I just have to come
to grips with the fact that I was now a completely different person?
In heavy contemplation, I got dressed. I put on a faded Iron
Maiden concert tee, a token from the time Melissa and I had driven to Sioux
Falls, South Dakota to see them perform, and some blue jeans that seemed
tighter around the waist than I remembered.
I checked my bank balance and determined that If I was going
to have drinks at the bar with Carl, I had better eat at home beforehand. I had
a cup of ramen noodles, and cut slices off of a brick of cheddar cheese, as I
wasted time watching random crap on YouTube.
Finally, it was five thirty and time to go. Well really, I
didn't need to hurry, as it was only a five-minute drive across the bridge to
Superior, but there was no way I was going to be late.
I parked behind the bar and didn't see any vehicles I recognized.
I listened to the radio for a little while, then at ten to six, I got out of
the car. The hard part is done. I'm here.
I walked in and scanned the place for Carl. I know he had
said he was leaving work at six, but I didn't want to miss him by mistake if he
was early for some reason. Not seeing him or anyone else I knew, I took a seat
at the end of the bar. The place wasn't very busy at all, with maybe a dozen
people spread out throughout the whole place. A red-haired waitress came and
took my order for a Grainbelt beer, and I watched her go to the cooler to get
the bottle. She was cute, if a little thick around the middle, and when she
handed me the beer, she flashed me the smile of experienced waitresses
everywhere. The kind of smile that says, "I'll be sweet, and yes, maybe
even flirt with you a little, but this is my job and you better not take it as
more than a professional courtesy". I respected that. Good bartenders were
hard to come by, and this one seemed proficient so far.
I sipped my beer, and surreptitiously watched the other
patrons. There was the same general mix of people you see in bars like this on
a Tuesday evening. A few older couples, quietly enjoying dinner and a glass of
wine, a fifty-year-old high school prom queen and her steroid-pumped boyfriend,
slamming cheap beer, faces wind burned from riding a Harley all day, a table of
college frat boy types laughing too loudly at offensive jokes, you know the
kind of place.
I faced the bar again, and in the mirror, I could see that
one person was sitting alone at the table right behind me. She was facing away
from me and seemed engrossed in something on her phone. She was wearing a
maroon sweatshirt and had bushy dark brown hair that immediately reminded me of
a young Hermione Granger.
I watched her in the mirror, not being a creep, just out of
curiosity and that I had nothing else to do while I waited for Carl. She never
turned or sat up straight, just stayed on her phone, occasionally typing
furiously.
After a while, I looked at the time on my phone. It was
twenty after six, Carl should have been here already. I ordered another beer
from Cassie, the bartender, and gave him ten more minutes.
I called Carl, and it took four or five rings for him to
pick up.
"Hey dude," Carl said right away. "I am so
sorry. I have a big issue I've got to manage here."
I could hear people talking loudly in the background and the
beep of a forklift.
"Hey," I said. "What's up?"
"One of the kids knocked over a shelving unit in the
garden center, and they all collapsed like dominoes. It's a big fucking
mess." There was a scuffing noise as he held his phone aside and yelled at
someone. "Don't bother saving that stuff, it's all junk now. Scan it, then
throw it in the dumpster!" His voice became clear again. "I don't
remember being this stupid when I was that age, do you?"
"No, not really. So, are you going to be late
or..." I asked, starting to feel a little dumb for getting my hopes up for
a fun evening with old friends.
"Sorry, man, this is going to be an all-nighter."
"Oh, okay," I said, feeling like I just got
punched in the gut.
"Take a rain check for next week? The first round is on
me."
"Yeah, that's okay. Next week it is." I couldn't
believe it. I got myself so excited to do normal people things with normal
people, and this happened. I don't know why I bothered.
"Alright man, gotta go." Before Carl ended the
call, I could hear him start to yell. "Careful! If you knock that over
too, I'm gonna"
As I stared at my phone, not knowing what I should think or
do, I heard a voice to my right. It was the woman with the brown hair.
"You get stood up too?"
I glanced at her. She was standing at the bar a few spots
down from me, waving her empty glass at the bartender.
"Huh? Yeah."
"Sorry for eavesdropping. So what was her excuse?"
In the corner of my eye, I could see the waitress return
with a full glass. The girl took a drink right away. It was something creamy,
Bailey's maybe.
"Problems at work." I didn't mention that the
'her' was a 'him'. As secure enough in my sexuality as I was, straight guys
just didn't say things that could give a woman mixed signals.
"Typical." She took another long pull off her
drink. "This is the third date in a row that has left me sitting. I take
the time to get ready and then sit here waiting. I've got homework I could be
doing." She sighed. "I don't know why I bothered."
"Right." Her last words had struck a chord with my
thoughts, and I turned to face her.
Our eyes met, and the world stopped. We stared at each
other, each of us with furrowing brows. My heart began to race, and I felt like
I just got a shot of adrenaline.
Slowly, she set down her drink, and I set down my phone, but
our eyes remained locked.
Eventually, she whispered. "I know you..."
My throat was dry, and I struggled to get enough air to
respond. "I don't think we've met..."
She was pretty, and younger than I had expected. There was
something strikingly familiar about her, but I knew I had never met this person
before, and probably hadn't ever seen her. Her maroon sweatshirt had the big yellow
UMD (University of Minnesota, Duluth) logo on it. There was something in her
eyes, her icy blue eyes, that told me that I knew this person.
"Who are you?" She whispered. The confusion on her
face gave way to a look of fear.
"Charles," I said woodenly, trying to make some
sense of what was happening.
This wasn't like the times you see someone in a crowd that
looks like someone you know. I knew this person, have always known this person,
and yet, nothing about her was familiar.
"What is going on?" She asked, glancing at the
bartender who was eyeing both of us in turn with raised eyebrows. "You're
real? You're really real?" Her look of fear gave way to panic. "I've
got to get out of here. This can't be happening."
She slowly backed away from me, then turned and fled towards
the door. I scrambled to put some cash on the bar for my beer, then followed
after her. When I got outside, she was standing near a car with her head in her
hands.
She looked up at my approach. "Don't come any
closer." She warned me.
"What's going on?" I asked. "How do you know
me? How do I know you?"
"You know who I am?" She asked, hand on her car
door, ready to flee.
"When I saw you, I felt like I've known you my entire
life, but I've never seen you before." I shook my head, more confused than
ever in my forty-two years.
"Well, I know you, Charles Larson."
"How do you know my last name?" I asked, taken
aback. I was pretty sure I hadn't said it at all earlier.
"If you're really you, then I know everything about
you." Her fear was transforming into anger, and she was almost shouting
now.
"How?"
"Because I dream about you every night! My first
memories are dreams about you! I close my eyes, and I see your face! I see your
life! Every day, every night!" She was holding her head again and had
started pacing side to side next to her car. "Oh my God. All these years,
all the therapy, all the drugs to get you out of my head, and I find you
sitting in a dive bar. This can't be real."
My car was parked next to hers, and she watched me wearily
as I slowly walked over and sat on the hood.
"If you're really Charles Larson, tell me about
yourself." She was looking at me like she was seeing a ghost.
"I grew up in Minnetonka..." I was confused to the
point of being numb, so I just started talking. I told her about my family,
where I went to school, everything up to just before I fell in love with
Melissa.
Her face was pale, but she had stopped pacing and was just
staring at me. "What was her name?"
I looked at her sharply, surprised by the question.
"Your second cousin, the one you married."
Shocked, I replied. "Melissa."
She took a tentative step towards me. "The two of you
lived in a tiny apartment off of Grand Ave." She stepped closer. "You
lived there together for fifteen years until..." She was right next to me
now, and she picked up my right hand, turning it over to see the backside. She
traced a finger down the scar that ran lengthwise behind my index finger.
"Someone at your work dropped a piece of metal gutter, and the end sliced
your hand open. It bled and bled, and you had to go get it stitched up."
"How do you know these things?" I asked with
something I could only describe as awe.
"Because I saw it happen. I was there, in my
dreams."
"I feel that we are connected somehow, but, I don't
even know who you are."
She shifted her hands and grasped mine in a handshake. She
looked at me with a shy smile. "I'm Kate Winters, and I've been waiting to
meet you my whole life."
Chapter Twenty-one.
"You're older than I thought you would be."
Kate was eyeing me from across the table. We had gone back
into the bar and had taken a booth near the back. The frat boys were gone, and
there was no one else nearby.
"How old do you think I should be?" I asked, head
still spinning.
"When I was growing up, every dream was different. The
time wasn't the same, the days weren't one-for-one. You were getting older
faster than I was. For the last couple of years though, I've had the same
dream. It's the same scene every night." She looked at me with empathy,
expecting that I wasn't going to like what she was saying. "You were
thirty-three, and it was nine years ago."
A wave of non-specific dread washed over me. "What
scene, What dream are you having over and over?"
I already knew what she was going to say, and I didn't want
to hear it.
Kate closed her eyes. "We are in your truck, we had
just been at the movie theater. You were telling me how you never liked Matt
Damon, but in this movie, he was pretty good. Then,”
"Stop," I said, probably a little too forcibly.
"I'm sorry." Her eyes were glistening with tears.
We sat in silence for a long time, each wrestling with our
thoughts.
Finally, I asked. "You said I was speaking to you?"
She sniffed and nodded. "When the two of you were
apart, it was kind of a third-person view, like watching a movie. But whenever
you were with her, I saw you through her eyes. I felt what she felt, I thought
what she thought. I think,” She looked at me apprehensively. "When the
dreams started, it was the summer she figured out that she loved you. I was
five and didn't really understand what I was seeing. I started using bigger
words, and acting like I was thirteen because you two were thirteen."
My thoughts swirled like a hurricane around that night nine
years ago. There was the crash, and my truck crumpled up like a beer can. I was
dazed, and there was glass in my eyes. I struggled to reach Melissa. The door
had crumpled in and crushed her into the seat, into the tight space between
what had been the dashboard and the back of the cab. Her eyes opened as I
touched her cheek. She tried to speak, but no noise came out. Her mouth kept
moving until suddenly she went still. Her heart stopped, and the spark of life
left her eyes. My love, my life, was gone.
Tears were streaming down my face, but somehow I had the
composure to speak. "If you thought what she thought, did she blame
me?" One thing that I had thought I had come to a resolution on, was the
thought that the accident was my fault, that; had I not been looking at her at
that moment, I might have been able to avoid the other car.
Kate was crying too. "Of course not. You know what she
was trying to say?" She reached across the table and held my hands tight
in hers. "She was saying "I love you" over and over. She knew
she was dying, and her only thought was that you would be alone."
Still holding Kate's hands, I buried my face into my arm and
cried hard, shuddering with every sob.
I don't know how long I cried. At some point, I heard the
waitress come by, and Kate whispered "We're okay."
I felt Kate start running a hand through my hair, massaging
my head. Exactly how Melissa used to. It felt good, but it also felt wrong. It
wasn't Melissa's hand, It was Kate's. She was some random college girl I had
never met, and I was plenty old enough to be her father. At the same time
though, some part of me, deep down, was screaming that this was Melissa.
I raised my head from my arm and looked at Kate. I felt no
apprehension or shame in meeting her eyes, eyes that were so much like
Melissa's. I studied them intently. They weren't just similar, they were
identical. The patterns of blue were the same, and there was even that tiny
green speck in the iris of her right eye. No one but me had ever noticed it. As
insane as it sounds, I swear that I could feel Melissa's soul staring back at
me through Kate's eyes.
"So, what now?" I asked.
"Maybe we should go somewhere more private and figure
this out," Kate replied, her eyes moving to the people walking into the
bar.
"I still live in the same place." I couldn't
beli
View all episodes
By [email protected]
4
88 ratings
Cabin Cousins: Part 6
Saying Goodbye; for now.
Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connections.
Chapter Twenty.
On the drive home, I felt good, like really good. I felt
like things were actually going to start changing for the better. Reveling in
this feeling, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. I stopped my car in a
random parking lot and pulled out my phone.
One of the guys that I used to work with, Carl, liked to go
to this little bar in Superior to hang out with friends and have a few drinks.
There was a whole group of guys from work that would go regularly, but Carl was
the only one who never stopped asking. For one reason or another, I never took
him up on it, and I haven't seen any of them since I stopped being able to go
to work.
He answered after a few rings.
"Hi, it's Charles, from work."
"Charles? Hey buddy! How are you doing?"
He sounded happy to hear from me.
"Oh, I've been hanging in there. How's the store since
I left?" At the time of the accident, I was the yard manager
at the same store I had worked at since I moved to Duluth. It didn't pay a lot
of money, but it was enough to get by, and I liked the job. I still felt bad
about how I left. As the years went on and my depression spiraled downwards, it
had become too hard to mask. My job performance was terrible, and people began
to ask questions I didn't want to face the answers to. One day I scheduled
myself to take all my vacation days, and then with that in the system, I put in
my two weeks' notice. I never went back.
"They made me assistant store manager if you'll believe
that," Carl said. "Still a lot of the same faces around here. All the
young kids come and go. You know how it is."
"Yeah." I chuckled. In a store like that, you
could count on about half of the employees to be lifers. They'd never leave.
The other half seemed to be a completely different mix of people every couple
of months.
"So, what's up?" Carl asked.
I could hear the store's advertising jingle blaring over the
loudspeakers in the background.
"Do you and the guys still go to that bar in
Superior?" There it was. I said it. Now if he says yes, I'll have to ask if
I can go, and then I'll have to go.
"Yeah! But it's usually just me and Matt. Brian got
married, and his wife has him on a short leash. Joe goes to AA. The other guys,
just kinda stopped going for one reason or another. Tonight is the night we
usually go."
"Mind if I come with?" I asked.
"Of course, man! We're going to leave here at about
six."
"Cool, I'll see you there."
"Looking forward to it. It'll be good to see you again."
And now the awkwardness of ending a phone call. I've heard
that it's a Midwestern thing, but everyone seems to do it better than I do.
"Okay, bye."
"Bye."
I went home, set out some clean clothes, and got in the
shower. Sometimes I forget how good it feels to be clean. But then, I knew
exactly why it was often too hard to motivate myself to get into the shower.
The shower brought memories of Melissa and the possibility of pain. I stood
still, letting the near-scalding water cascade over me. The fruity scent of the
same brand of body wash Melissa had during our first shower together was
strong, and I remembered.
I closed my eyes and started my breathing exercise with a
deep slow inhale. Melissa's hands scrubbed my lower back and slid down
to squeeze my ass. Breathe out, the pain and hurt waft away like steam
in the shower. My fingers follow the lines of her muscles and up her
inner thigh, she looks at me with serene contentment. Breathe
in. She turns, arches her back, and sighs as I enter her from behind. Breathe
out, the pain is gone, and there is only joy. She moans as my soapy
hands cup her firm tits, holding her tight against me as we make love. Breathe
in. I gasp and hold my breath as we both climax. Breathe out.
I catch my breath and look down, my hand was still grasping
my quickly softening manhood, and the oozing result of my orgasm was slowly
washed into the drain. I finished cleaning up, turned the water off, and
stepped out of the shower.
I looked at myself in the mirror as I toweled dry. It had
been quite a while since I had exercised, or gone to the gym, but I still had a
good amount of muscle on me. Granted, a bit more flab than I liked, especially
on my belly, but overall I still liked the way I looked. Melissa liked the way
I looked too. I patted my belly, and there was a slight jiggle. I really should
work out again, I thought. When was the last time I went for a run? I couldn't
remember.
My eyes strayed from my body to my face. I was still
slightly pink from the hot water. I studied the slight age lines beginning to
appear around my eyes and noticed that I seemed to have a larger forehead than
I used to. When did I start losing my hair?
I put my hands on the edge of the sink and leaned close to
the mirror. It's a strange thing, looking yourself in the eyes. Despite how
good I felt at the moment, all I could see was the pain deep inside. I knew it
hadn't always been there, and obviously, I knew when it started. What bothered
me was, I couldn't remember what it was like to not have this pain. I could
remember every little detail about Melissa, her face, her body, the
conversations we had, the things we did together, everything. But if I focus on
just me... I can remember being a skinny awkward teenager falling in love and
beginning a perfect life, then this, an aging man being crushed by the weight
of a tragedy. Every memory between, of what it was to be me, was just gone.
Lost to the gray. At the same time, I knew that this person staring back at me
in the mirror wasn't me. Once, I was happy. Once I was me, whoever
that was. Would I ever get me back, or did I just have to come
to grips with the fact that I was now a completely different person?
In heavy contemplation, I got dressed. I put on a faded Iron
Maiden concert tee, a token from the time Melissa and I had driven to Sioux
Falls, South Dakota to see them perform, and some blue jeans that seemed
tighter around the waist than I remembered.
I checked my bank balance and determined that If I was going
to have drinks at the bar with Carl, I had better eat at home beforehand. I had
a cup of ramen noodles, and cut slices off of a brick of cheddar cheese, as I
wasted time watching random crap on YouTube.
Finally, it was five thirty and time to go. Well really, I
didn't need to hurry, as it was only a five-minute drive across the bridge to
Superior, but there was no way I was going to be late.
I parked behind the bar and didn't see any vehicles I recognized.
I listened to the radio for a little while, then at ten to six, I got out of
the car. The hard part is done. I'm here.
I walked in and scanned the place for Carl. I know he had
said he was leaving work at six, but I didn't want to miss him by mistake if he
was early for some reason. Not seeing him or anyone else I knew, I took a seat
at the end of the bar. The place wasn't very busy at all, with maybe a dozen
people spread out throughout the whole place. A red-haired waitress came and
took my order for a Grainbelt beer, and I watched her go to the cooler to get
the bottle. She was cute, if a little thick around the middle, and when she
handed me the beer, she flashed me the smile of experienced waitresses
everywhere. The kind of smile that says, "I'll be sweet, and yes, maybe
even flirt with you a little, but this is my job and you better not take it as
more than a professional courtesy". I respected that. Good bartenders were
hard to come by, and this one seemed proficient so far.
I sipped my beer, and surreptitiously watched the other
patrons. There was the same general mix of people you see in bars like this on
a Tuesday evening. A few older couples, quietly enjoying dinner and a glass of
wine, a fifty-year-old high school prom queen and her steroid-pumped boyfriend,
slamming cheap beer, faces wind burned from riding a Harley all day, a table of
college frat boy types laughing too loudly at offensive jokes, you know the
kind of place.
I faced the bar again, and in the mirror, I could see that
one person was sitting alone at the table right behind me. She was facing away
from me and seemed engrossed in something on her phone. She was wearing a
maroon sweatshirt and had bushy dark brown hair that immediately reminded me of
a young Hermione Granger.
I watched her in the mirror, not being a creep, just out of
curiosity and that I had nothing else to do while I waited for Carl. She never
turned or sat up straight, just stayed on her phone, occasionally typing
furiously.
After a while, I looked at the time on my phone. It was
twenty after six, Carl should have been here already. I ordered another beer
from Cassie, the bartender, and gave him ten more minutes.
I called Carl, and it took four or five rings for him to
pick up.
"Hey dude," Carl said right away. "I am so
sorry. I have a big issue I've got to manage here."
I could hear people talking loudly in the background and the
beep of a forklift.
"Hey," I said. "What's up?"
"One of the kids knocked over a shelving unit in the
garden center, and they all collapsed like dominoes. It's a big fucking
mess." There was a scuffing noise as he held his phone aside and yelled at
someone. "Don't bother saving that stuff, it's all junk now. Scan it, then
throw it in the dumpster!" His voice became clear again. "I don't
remember being this stupid when I was that age, do you?"
"No, not really. So, are you going to be late
or..." I asked, starting to feel a little dumb for getting my hopes up for
a fun evening with old friends.
"Sorry, man, this is going to be an all-nighter."
"Oh, okay," I said, feeling like I just got
punched in the gut.
"Take a rain check for next week? The first round is on
me."
"Yeah, that's okay. Next week it is." I couldn't
believe it. I got myself so excited to do normal people things with normal
people, and this happened. I don't know why I bothered.
"Alright man, gotta go." Before Carl ended the
call, I could hear him start to yell. "Careful! If you knock that over
too, I'm gonna"
As I stared at my phone, not knowing what I should think or
do, I heard a voice to my right. It was the woman with the brown hair.
"You get stood up too?"
I glanced at her. She was standing at the bar a few spots
down from me, waving her empty glass at the bartender.
"Huh? Yeah."
"Sorry for eavesdropping. So what was her excuse?"
In the corner of my eye, I could see the waitress return
with a full glass. The girl took a drink right away. It was something creamy,
Bailey's maybe.
"Problems at work." I didn't mention that the
'her' was a 'him'. As secure enough in my sexuality as I was, straight guys
just didn't say things that could give a woman mixed signals.
"Typical." She took another long pull off her
drink. "This is the third date in a row that has left me sitting. I take
the time to get ready and then sit here waiting. I've got homework I could be
doing." She sighed. "I don't know why I bothered."
"Right." Her last words had struck a chord with my
thoughts, and I turned to face her.
Our eyes met, and the world stopped. We stared at each
other, each of us with furrowing brows. My heart began to race, and I felt like
I just got a shot of adrenaline.
Slowly, she set down her drink, and I set down my phone, but
our eyes remained locked.
Eventually, she whispered. "I know you..."
My throat was dry, and I struggled to get enough air to
respond. "I don't think we've met..."
She was pretty, and younger than I had expected. There was
something strikingly familiar about her, but I knew I had never met this person
before, and probably hadn't ever seen her. Her maroon sweatshirt had the big yellow
UMD (University of Minnesota, Duluth) logo on it. There was something in her
eyes, her icy blue eyes, that told me that I knew this person.
"Who are you?" She whispered. The confusion on her
face gave way to a look of fear.
"Charles," I said woodenly, trying to make some
sense of what was happening.
This wasn't like the times you see someone in a crowd that
looks like someone you know. I knew this person, have always known this person,
and yet, nothing about her was familiar.
"What is going on?" She asked, glancing at the
bartender who was eyeing both of us in turn with raised eyebrows. "You're
real? You're really real?" Her look of fear gave way to panic. "I've
got to get out of here. This can't be happening."
She slowly backed away from me, then turned and fled towards
the door. I scrambled to put some cash on the bar for my beer, then followed
after her. When I got outside, she was standing near a car with her head in her
hands.
She looked up at my approach. "Don't come any
closer." She warned me.
"What's going on?" I asked. "How do you know
me? How do I know you?"
"You know who I am?" She asked, hand on her car
door, ready to flee.
"When I saw you, I felt like I've known you my entire
life, but I've never seen you before." I shook my head, more confused than
ever in my forty-two years.
"Well, I know you, Charles Larson."
"How do you know my last name?" I asked, taken
aback. I was pretty sure I hadn't said it at all earlier.
"If you're really you, then I know everything about
you." Her fear was transforming into anger, and she was almost shouting
now.
"How?"
"Because I dream about you every night! My first
memories are dreams about you! I close my eyes, and I see your face! I see your
life! Every day, every night!" She was holding her head again and had
started pacing side to side next to her car. "Oh my God. All these years,
all the therapy, all the drugs to get you out of my head, and I find you
sitting in a dive bar. This can't be real."
My car was parked next to hers, and she watched me wearily
as I slowly walked over and sat on the hood.
"If you're really Charles Larson, tell me about
yourself." She was looking at me like she was seeing a ghost.
"I grew up in Minnetonka..." I was confused to the
point of being numb, so I just started talking. I told her about my family,
where I went to school, everything up to just before I fell in love with
Melissa.
Her face was pale, but she had stopped pacing and was just
staring at me. "What was her name?"
I looked at her sharply, surprised by the question.
"Your second cousin, the one you married."
Shocked, I replied. "Melissa."
She took a tentative step towards me. "The two of you
lived in a tiny apartment off of Grand Ave." She stepped closer. "You
lived there together for fifteen years until..." She was right next to me
now, and she picked up my right hand, turning it over to see the backside. She
traced a finger down the scar that ran lengthwise behind my index finger.
"Someone at your work dropped a piece of metal gutter, and the end sliced
your hand open. It bled and bled, and you had to go get it stitched up."
"How do you know these things?" I asked with
something I could only describe as awe.
"Because I saw it happen. I was there, in my
dreams."
"I feel that we are connected somehow, but, I don't
even know who you are."
She shifted her hands and grasped mine in a handshake. She
looked at me with a shy smile. "I'm Kate Winters, and I've been waiting to
meet you my whole life."
Chapter Twenty-one.
"You're older than I thought you would be."
Kate was eyeing me from across the table. We had gone back
into the bar and had taken a booth near the back. The frat boys were gone, and
there was no one else nearby.
"How old do you think I should be?" I asked, head
still spinning.
"When I was growing up, every dream was different. The
time wasn't the same, the days weren't one-for-one. You were getting older
faster than I was. For the last couple of years though, I've had the same
dream. It's the same scene every night." She looked at me with empathy,
expecting that I wasn't going to like what she was saying. "You were
thirty-three, and it was nine years ago."
A wave of non-specific dread washed over me. "What
scene, What dream are you having over and over?"
I already knew what she was going to say, and I didn't want
to hear it.
Kate closed her eyes. "We are in your truck, we had
just been at the movie theater. You were telling me how you never liked Matt
Damon, but in this movie, he was pretty good. Then,”
"Stop," I said, probably a little too forcibly.
"I'm sorry." Her eyes were glistening with tears.
We sat in silence for a long time, each wrestling with our
thoughts.
Finally, I asked. "You said I was speaking to you?"
She sniffed and nodded. "When the two of you were
apart, it was kind of a third-person view, like watching a movie. But whenever
you were with her, I saw you through her eyes. I felt what she felt, I thought
what she thought. I think,” She looked at me apprehensively. "When the
dreams started, it was the summer she figured out that she loved you. I was
five and didn't really understand what I was seeing. I started using bigger
words, and acting like I was thirteen because you two were thirteen."
My thoughts swirled like a hurricane around that night nine
years ago. There was the crash, and my truck crumpled up like a beer can. I was
dazed, and there was glass in my eyes. I struggled to reach Melissa. The door
had crumpled in and crushed her into the seat, into the tight space between
what had been the dashboard and the back of the cab. Her eyes opened as I
touched her cheek. She tried to speak, but no noise came out. Her mouth kept
moving until suddenly she went still. Her heart stopped, and the spark of life
left her eyes. My love, my life, was gone.
Tears were streaming down my face, but somehow I had the
composure to speak. "If you thought what she thought, did she blame
me?" One thing that I had thought I had come to a resolution on, was the
thought that the accident was my fault, that; had I not been looking at her at
that moment, I might have been able to avoid the other car.
Kate was crying too. "Of course not. You know what she
was trying to say?" She reached across the table and held my hands tight
in hers. "She was saying "I love you" over and over. She knew
she was dying, and her only thought was that you would be alone."
Still holding Kate's hands, I buried my face into my arm and
cried hard, shuddering with every sob.
I don't know how long I cried. At some point, I heard the
waitress come by, and Kate whispered "We're okay."
I felt Kate start running a hand through my hair, massaging
my head. Exactly how Melissa used to. It felt good, but it also felt wrong. It
wasn't Melissa's hand, It was Kate's. She was some random college girl I had
never met, and I was plenty old enough to be her father. At the same time
though, some part of me, deep down, was screaming that this was Melissa.
I raised my head from my arm and looked at Kate. I felt no
apprehension or shame in meeting her eyes, eyes that were so much like
Melissa's. I studied them intently. They weren't just similar, they were
identical. The patterns of blue were the same, and there was even that tiny
green speck in the iris of her right eye. No one but me had ever noticed it. As
insane as it sounds, I swear that I could feel Melissa's soul staring back at
me through Kate's eyes.
"So, what now?" I asked.
"Maybe we should go somewhere more private and figure
this out," Kate replied, her eyes moving to the people walking into the
bar.
"I still live in the same place." I couldn't
beli
More shows like Steamy Stories
View all
Strictly Anonymous Confessions
1,536 Listeners