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."
