Edward and I had a very unusual beginning as far as love affairs go. He was a journalist for a large, well respected newspaper; I was a crafter of words in a different way. He dealt in facts, I dealt in opinions. He wanted to cut to the chase, dig down into the meat of an issue; I wanted to skate around the edge in an ever shrinking circle until I reached the central issue. He lived in the real world; I tried to avoid it. We seemed like two disparate souls without any way of connecting. But connect we did, and though I don't know what, if anything, our future holds, it has been a ride I won't ever forget.
About a year ago, on the publication of my first book, I was sent around the country on a signing tour. It sounded exciting when I first heard that I was going, but increasingly, it became exhausting. I never knew what city I was in when I woke up in the morning, and I was always surrounded by people, by felt completely alone. The people were nice, and flattering as they asked me to sign their books, behaving as though I had committed some incredible bit of wisdom to paper; however, I knew that not one of them had a clue what my life was like, or who I was on the inside.
New York was like a dream, when I finally got there; for a small town girl, a huge, culturally diverse metropolis like the Big Apple was overwhelming. My senses were assailed by the ceaseless sounds of traffic and people, the dichotomous image of the rich and the homeless, passing each other in the streets, the smells of hot dogs and diesel fuel, and the taste of the city's grit on my tongue. It was miraculous.
Signing books in New York was unlike the rest of the cities I had been to. The people were alternately gushing with praise or completely disconnected, handing me my book with a bored sigh and telling me their name. It was the most exhausting night of my tour yet, and I was feeling anxious and depressed.
As I wrapped up the signing, and retreated to the back room of the store with my agent, I relished the escape. When the store manager let me out the back to have a cigarette, something I had picked up again on my tour, I felt an enormous weight lifted from me. I thought about the veterans that came to me, thanking me for my words; telling me it was good to know that someone understood what they were going through. I had really written the book for them, but it seemed that most of them would never read the words of hope I had so diligently slaved over, and struggled to imprint on hearts as well as the page. I was quickly becoming disheartened by the whole affair.
That was the moment Kila came into my life. My agent poked her head out the back door of the building, where I was savoring a vague moment of solitude amid the cacophony of horns, truck brakes, people hailing cabs, children crying, and people asking me to sign their books. She looked one way, then the other; finally spotting me as I tried to merge with the wall behind me in the shadow of the building.
"Can you stand to do one more?" she asked, the annoying cheer in her voice grating on my last nerve.
"Why? The signing ended twenty minutes ago," I replied, with much less animosity than I was feeling.
"There are two reporters here; It would be a good idea," she responded sharply, but in a lowered voice that told me they were nearby.
"Sure," I said, "but then I'm going to go get a drink. I need it."
The woman who emerged into the dimly lit alley behind the store was tall and slender, like me, only she had a graceful build as opposed to my athletic one. She had short blond hair, with dark roots, which stuck out from her head in a careless way which instantly inspired my envy. My own long curls caused me no end of frustration each day as I tried to tame them into some semblance of appropriate behavior. Beautiful, in a tough way, her eyes said that she'd seen it all, and she was a survivor.
She put her hand out, and said at once, in a husky voice which seemed to caress me a little too intimately, "Kila Mackenzie, I read your book, and I loved it."
She went on to reveal that she had covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a brief time as a photographer for my favorite newspaper, and found my book to be honest and raw. She said that, as she read my words, she could tell that I, too, had experienced the Post Traumatic Stress that many of her colleagues and our troops were coming home with. "You weren't just a repeating a line of bullshit like a lot of others do."
This struck me, violently. I had tried so hard to express the feelings and experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, without revealing too much of myself, and this woman was calling me out on it. I was shaken by her blunt candor, and said so. One of the things I said in my book was "no one has time for your bullshit," and I meant it.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to put you in the uncomfortable position of telling me to fuck off by asking you how you ended up with PTSD, I just wanted you to know how important your book is." she smiled. "I'd like to introduce my friend and coworker, Edward Warren. Eddie, this is the author I've been telling you about, Samantha Barrett; Samantha, my best friend Eddie." I looked into a pair of blue eyes that burned with an intensity I'd never seen before, and took a hand that was hard and warm in the evening chill. "It is very nice to meet you," I said in a stunted, awkward sort of way.
"You too," he replied with a voice that revealed precisely how uninterested he was in the whole exchange. He had a good four inches on me, and was fit and rugged. The dark hair was a striking contrast to his eyes, and he attracted me like a magnet in a visceral way.
"Are you sad that the book tour is over?" Kila asked me? "or relieved."
"A little bit of both, to be honest," I answered. "I get a little claustrophobic around a lot of people, so it has been a bit tough. I prefer meeting people like this."
"What? In a dark alley?" She joked.
"Yeah, I've always found alleys to be great places to meet people." I tartly replied.
"Well, if you would be interested, we'd love to take you for that drink you said you needed."
My agent, nodded her head vigorously from the doorway. I think she was desperate to get me some more publicity, and befriending a couple of reporters from an internationally read paper couldn't hurt.
"Sure, that would be great," I said to them, "but I really don't know this part of the city at all."
"No problem, where are you staying, we'll go somewhere near there." Kila replied.
It was at that moment that I realized, I had no idea where I was staying, and looked at my agent, who supplied the answer.
"I know the perfect place." Kila announced., her friend looking less and less thrilled at the prospect of spending another moment in my company.
"Kila, I'm sure-- Edward?" he nodded, "Edward has better things to do than to spend an evening with us." Although I was intrigued, and would have liked to do nothing better than spend an evening with him.
"No, trust me, he doesn't." She answered with a snide look in his direction, which he answered with a smirk.
"Well, let me get my things together and we'll go." I stated, with a lot more enthusiasm than I felt, but a dawning sense of something stirring in my abdomen. Fear? Nerves? Attraction?
