Author's note: These are the beginning chapters to my novelette, Send. Chapter 1 will give you and introduction to the characters, and Chapter 2 will give you, well, something more. ;) Enjoy!
Chapter 1
The words spewed out of me and onto my keyboard in a flood of anger and hurt. I punctuated every tap with a heavy click on each letter. Interesting how an email can shout almost as loud as a live voice. Better yet, the floor is all yours with no interruptions, no retorts to be heard. I was pouring out my broken heart in one messy rant, and I didn't want to hear what he had to say about it. He was going to suffer through the parade of my wrecked emotions the same as I.
Bottled up in my cubicle in my own world of mixed memories, I faded back to the first time I saw him and how his skin glowed a deep shade of reddish brown in the sunlight. We were at the beach. I was with my close girlfriend, Sonya and he was joined by two other guys. Sonya and I were all giggly watching them play touch football in the sand; a fine display of male testosterone in all its glory. Taller than the rest, he definitely stood out and his body could not have been more perfectly sculpted for my taste in men. I was always a sucker for rock hard biceps and broad shoulders. Not surprisingly, he carried himself like he knew just how sexy he was. I couldn't help but to lick my lips hungrily as he came to acknowledge my stare. "Hello," he said and though our conversation was strained, it was clear that our physical attraction would not be ignored. That day marked the beginning of my flawed relationship with Jared and my email was going to be the end of it.
I railed on him in all caps, about his lying, cheating ass; still reeling from catching him in the act with some random chick. The previous night I hatched a plan to surprise him at work. Surely, he deserved a luxurious meal at our favorite steak house for all the long hours he had been putting in lately. Delighted with myself, I trotted up to his office. The place was deserted. Hadn't he told me that he wanted to stay late to make the deadline for the community center bid? Jared was an architect; a partner in a small firm that worked mainly on city contracts. Only the maintenance guy remained to let me know that everyone had been gone for at least a half an hour. Suspicion, rank and present, had me tearing back down the stairs to see if his car was still in the parking lot. It was not so easily found at the back of the building. But there with the windows down, was Jared with his dick in the mouth of a brunette. How could I have been so dumb? Crying through the night, it was only in the morning that I was able to focus my emotions into a coherent response.
I began to type in his email address, and as usual the auto complete did the rest. I pressed the send button and leaned back in my chair, staring blankly out of my small window into the courtyard that separated all six buildings in the IGB corporate complex. Not much copywriting was getting done that day; I was bound and determined to sulk the entire morning.
Ten minutes passed and my inbox alerted me of a new message. It was a reply re: FUCK YOU. Surprised that Jared had actually wanted to respond to my manifesto on our shitty relationship, I hesitated a bit before opening it.
It read, "I think you sent this to me by accident. So sorry about your break up, I know how it feels to be betrayed. Hang in there."
I panicked. "Holy shit! Who the fuck did I send this to?" A closer look at the address revealed that the damn auto complete had selected James Pappas, not Jared Williams.
James, or Jimmy as I know him, is an assistant vice president of Marketing where I work. I knew him as a goof ball mostly, who always made working on boring pharmaceutical brochures slightly more bearable. We frequently forward each other the funny YouTube videos we find on online.
I was beyond embarrassed, but considering that I often need to work closely with him, I had to try to make the whole thing less awkward. What I really wanted to do was dissolve into my chair.
I replied, "I'm sorry you had to read that, but thanks for the moral support. Send me a video to cheer me up, okay?" I hoped he would.
Jimmy was really only an acquaintance. Sure we were friendly, but I didn't know him very well, nor did he really know me. Ours was a familiar, but strictly working relationship. I pegged him to be about 12 years older than me. He was a slender guy with deep serious eyes and the shiniest dark curly hair mixed with a few silvery strands; so very Greek looking with his olive skin and strong jaw.
And, then there was his subtle dry humor, which thrived on irony. I often couldn't tell whether he was joking or not, until he tempered a rather prickly remark with a quick wink. He seemed to enjoy our meetings and though I had spied him taking some extra long glances at my ass, I had never entertained him as a love interest. Not that I didn't find him attractive and I was pretty sure he wasn't married. He was just not my usual type and certainly not who I was expected to go out with. Somehow you just don't expect to see a younger African American woman with an older white man, or maybe that was just my own hang up.
Fifteen minutes later I was cracking up over a Jack Ass type stunt video, special delivered by Jimmy to put a smile on my face. I thanked him in yet another reply and found some energy to get back to work. The hours passed, and it seemed stupid to resend my nasty email. At the end of the day, I simply typed two words "It's over", and sent both the message and Jared on their way.
Driving home that evening I kept the windows down and enjoyed the breeze. I couldn't wait a minute more to call Sonya and tell her that I had finally broken it off with Jared. She laughed her butt off when I told her about the email mishap. It really was pretty funny. Poor Jimmy; seeing my address and expecting some plucky video clip. How shocking instead to open my seething letter, which reeked of every four letter word know to man.
By 11:00 my anger had subsided, and I was left with that achy hole in the pit of your stomach that tells you something is gone. Since we didn't live together , there were no bags to be packed. Only a few odds and ends to throw in a box still lingered around my apartment. The TV wasn't much company, but I aimlessly flipped through the channels for something to take my mind of things anyway. And even though Jared hadn't always slept over, a real emptiness was felt in my bed that night. I was officially single again, and alone.