This story has three parts, and I hope you all enjoy it. The last part is just about finished, so I hope to release the 2nd and 3rd parts within a couple weeks. I'm releasing this into EC even though it does contain, at a minimum, one loving wife. It's just that I'd sooner die than release anything else into that cesspool again. Also, note that as with most things, I do take liberties with the English language. I've gotten some comments in the past about it, and I didn't feel like it needed to be said, but mayhaps I was wrong. I'm a line stepper, and as you read my stories you may happen across words that aren't in a dictionary. Let's just have a simple understanding that I realize they don't truly exist, every last one of them I've ever used, and instead of letting it ruin a story for you, realize it's intended, and that I used it because I want us to have something in common, together, if even for just these few moments. I don't know if it's a trust thing, where when readers get a few thousand words in, and feel betrayed by it, but you can trust me, and it's for us. Now, sit back, relax, and prepared to be disappointed by my inept writing, instead of my grammar...
Becca looked okay, and maybe that's being generous. Chin-length dirty-blonde hair, straightened flat, big blue eyes, thin and athletic build, slim and in good shape, really good shape. But there was just something a bit offsetting about her. By that I mean the way she carried herself, eternally awkward, if you will. She had finished a show only a few minutes prior, and was speeding out of the side exit of a little restaurant, and onto the handicap ramp that led down to a gravel parking lot where she'd parked a few hours earlier.
Nick was headed into that same restaurant, via the same entrance, a place so out of town and so far from where they'd grown up, that she was the last person he thought he'd randomly bump into. But he did, quite literally. She was coming out right when he was to the door, and with her head down lost in thought, she ran smack into him.
The collision stopped her cold, and she nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and looked up, and her heart froze when she saw it was him. Eyes huge, breath taken, mouth opened, and yet nothing would come out. It had been their first time seeing each other in years, and she suddenly felt like it might be her last ever as her chest painfully tightened.
Nick wasn't sure how things really were between them, but the stunned look on her face gave him an inkling that something was there, and for better or worse, it wasn't dormant. He steadied her after their bump, and realizing it was her, gave Becca a slow and deliberate once over, and kindly said, "You look good, I like your hair like that," She didn't look good, but her hair did look better, couldn't be worse. She looked alright, and that's all anyone would say about her looks; but there was just something about her that you couldn't put a finger on that made you kind of want to, particularly after you knew her. I think to put it plainly, her eccentric ways were what would make you curious. For him, it was both that and their past.
She smiled and looked away, "I quit drinking and smoking, about two years ago, just these now, mostly when we have a gig," she said, raising a pack of cigarettes up and talking quickly, in a rapid sort of run-on.
True to her nature, Nick found it a strange place to go right off... "Still never started."
She smiled, "I always liked that about you. Did I tell you I got married? Same name."
Again, weird, "But not the same-" he said, remembering how fondly they'd got along during those days. His eyes glazed over with a glassy pale-white sheen mid-conversation, as the movie of those fourteen months or so played at hyper-speed on the backs of his eye-lids for his brain to view again as if they were silver-screens. It viewed like a porno, everywhere, all the time, and his brain enjoyed the show with imaginary popcorn and fictitious chocolate covered almonds. And in a few seconds, he could feel it all again, his first. Well, his second love, but his first first.
"No, not the same." It wasn't conceit on Nick's part, nor a slight to her husband on her part, rather an obvious truth. This Nick was dark, like he lived at the beach, without the leathery handbag skin to go with it, dark brown hair, almost buzzed, well-trimmed beard which was ground down almost to stubble, dark brown eyes, none of it was what Becca would pick as her ideal, but together, absolutely.
"How long did it take you, to get over me?" Nick asked bluntly, starting in quick on her, but with an entirely different set of questions in mind. He wanted her to know this was not going to be a simple passing.
"I don't know." She did know, seeing him, stalking him mostly online, she knew.
"You know it wasn't you, it was the shit you were doing. It was never you."
"I know, I mean, I didn't know, then, but I know." There was still a lot of pain there, and that fact had kept him away for years, not for himself, but for her.
She had a thin, green thrift-store sundress on, low cut purely for the style of it, as her cleavage was just depressing when compared to other girls. Nick liked her breasts though, or he did at least, when she was seventeen and eighteen. During an awkward silence, she lit a cigarette and nervously fidgeted with it.
"Do you still think about me, you know, or I guess... us?" he had unintentionally gotten closer to her when he asked her that. She took his question in stride.
"You were my first love, and my first... and you were sooo out of my league. Who wouldn't?" she said, using her cigarette as a conversation prop.
"You were my first, too. I'm glad it was you, I needed someone like you," he paused, seeing how unsettled she seemed, he decided to cannonball into the ice, "You don't have to be nervous, we've already done what we're both thinking about," he said, nudging her playfully.
She smiled and she took another drag before answering, "You've gotten a lot more forward since we were together."
"And you've gotten a lot more evasive. You don't have to hide anything from me. Why are your ears and cheeks so red?" And when he asked, he ran his hand along her hair and his thumb along her ear as if he was examining it for real.
"Really!? I mean, I'm pretty sure my first just, like, told me he's thinking about... me, and-"
"Hey, all I meant was that you were thinking about us like that, I can tell, always could."
"Is that right?" she said, all but asking him how. She wore her entire life on her sleeve, it's why she had so many close friends and genuine people in her life, she was truthful to a fault. Still, her words were precisely to play along more so than hear what she already knew.
But Nick didn't divulge, "It is, Becca, you're easy to read."
Hearing him say her name made her knees weak and her body respond. He looked better than he did when they were together, which was just sickening, and soooo much better than in his pictures. "Every girl that sees you wants you, all my friends, my sisters, that girl in the blue blouse over there by the door, she's checked you out three times already, she keeps looking over here, pretending she's on her phone. I'm easy to read because you see... that, every time a girl sees you, I bet. They'd especially want-to if they knew what I knooooowww," she said, musically scaling the end of her statement while playfully darting an eyebrow up, and her eyes down.
"Stop it, I'm not talking about the girl in blue, just you. You know, I've been good since then, I can still count my number on one hand," and suddenly it was he that felt awkward.
"You always were such a good guy, except when you-"
"Look, I never apologized for the way things ended, and I've wanted to-"
"No, it was better that way, easier." The way she said it, the way the energy sapped from her face as she did, he could tell she had thought about it, extensively.
Nick got even closer, and grabbed her free hand, "No, I know I had asked you to stop, but I should'a broken it off instead. Kissing her was the easy way out. And I didn't plan it, it just happened and I didn't push her away fast enough. I never really told you about it, it was just a second, and I ended it, but..."
"It was pretty shitty," Becca said, digging her nails into the back of his hand half-heartedly, "but it's better than facing the fact that I chose all that shit over a great guy like you. More than great, the best." She almost lost herself again, in his eyes, worse, she could just barely smell him and it drove her crazy, "I couldn't have held onto you anyway, through college," she said, looking him over.
He hated the way she would put herself down. He loathed it entirely, but didn't fault her for it. He honestly could have had anyone he pursued, and knowing that, being told that his entire life, it had led him to pursue those that others had missed out on. To him, Becca was pure and unapologetic positive energy, you just wanted to be around her, and that hadn't changed. Between that and the way she responded to him in general, he found her completely intoxicating, still.
"I haven't done it since, I knew that wasn't who I wanted to be, to hurt girls like that; like I knew I had hurt you. I've wanted to do this for years, just run into you and tell you how much it all meant to me, how much you meant to me, and that I'm sor-"
