Kelly in Need
Kelly and I have been friends for a long time, since our high school years. After we both graduated, we drifted apart, emailing each other only occasionally. To my surprise, she called me last night.
"Robbie, I don't know who else to turn to. Are you doing anything? Can you hang out tonight?"
The urgency in her voice was palpable. I hadn't talked to her in a year, but I still remembered her sweet, raspy voice. Only a few times before had I heard her like this.
"Kelly, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
My heart swelled. "Nothing" was as far from the truth as possible.
"Robbie..."
"Yeah, I'll be there. Just, tell me where you are -"
"I'm coming, I'll be there in a few minutes," she said and hung up.
I waited outside, watching occasional lights bound across the night sky. Glorium City is a town with a Catholic minority and Protestant fanatics, set in the middle of nowhere, Midwest US. We pride ourselves in being a fairly developed urban and suburban area, with a lively downtown and Christian nightlife. The hypocritical narrow-mindedness bleeds through, though, when you see the way some of us treat outsiders settle in the downtown apartments or in one of the rolling hill communities here. Kelly, for all her outrageous looks and unfettered curves, for all her charming ease of conversation and genuine interest in just about anyone she meets, has borne the brunt of not a few racist slurs since her arrival here from Agvalona.
She embraced me tightly when she came, her idling car's headlights illuminating her radiant brunette hair.
"I missed you," she said. She smelled like a sultry garden.
"I missed me, too," I said.
"I know, you hunk of love." She chuckled, put her hands on my neck and leaned back to look at me. Her smile threw me aloft, her eyes pinned me down.
"What's going on?" I asked.
She looked away and was quiet. I decided to let the silence sit, and roamed my eyes over her. Perfect mahogany skin, as always. Ruined eyeliner. Gleaming dark lips, Kelly biting them as she decided what to tell me and what to leave alone. Fingers tracing the dip between her collarbones, above her blouse, top three holes unbuttoned. And yes, a glimpse of those full-bloomed breasts. Hers was a body a man could lose himself in for eternity.
"Come," she said, gesturing to her car and groping in her purse for her keys. "Where to?" I asked as I opened the passenger door.
Her eyes darted up, and she said with sly smile, "I'm giving you a surprise."
"Well, someone sounds chipper."
The car ride was quiet, interspersed with light conversation about college life. Mostly we just listened to the radio on our way to Le Vue. Point Le Vue is a secret of sorts in the outskirts of Glorium. Ensconced in the forested mountains nearby and reachable only through a narrow winding road, only the truly adventurous really come out here. I like it. Kelly and I discovered this spot with other friends once when the first of us got his license, and it quickly became Kelly and my place, where we could talk and commiserate, complain, work out our teenage angst. We were always strictly friends, though, both of us terrified of breaking that tenuous bond we'd forged in the little grove. I'd brought a few other girls here, too, to work out another kind of angst, but I never told Kelly. She really wanted Le Vue to be our spot, and I wasn't about to pop her dream.
"Lovely memories," she said when we arrived and opened our our first beer of the night.
The city shimmered yellow, orange, white before us.
"Feels like before, doesn't it?" I said after a long chug. Then, "What?"
She glanced at me. "I don't know how to..."
I held one of her hands and with the other gave her the bottle and stroked her hair.
Tears collected in her eyes. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
"What? There's nothing-"
"Yes there is!"
