AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, folks, I know it's been a while. Will admit to a certain amount of writer's block. But now I'm back, and I hope you all will enjoy this latest extravaganza!
Everyone thought that Dawn and I would be together forever.
We were childhood sweethearts, having known each other since grade school. Our first semi-official date was our 8
th
-grade prom, and things just escalated from there. We dated exclusively all the way through high school and college, and after awhile it just became an accepted fact that we were going to get married.
I knew there was a risk, as she had survived a bout with leukemia as a teenager, but she seemed to be fine as we prepared for the wedding two years after our college graduations. We were both successful enough in our careers that we had bought a condo together. Our wedding and honeymoon were both perfect. Life was just bliss for three years.
Then she got sick again.
She had been in remission for eight years, but the cancer -- now an aggressive form of lymphoma -- came back with a vengeance. I sat with her through her chemotherapy sessions, watched her battle bravely, but I knew, as I'm sure she did too, that with the prognosis we'd been given, we were merely postponing the inevitable. I was watching my wife, my lover, my best friend, waste away before my eyes.
On what should have been our fourth wedding anniversary, I buried her.
I suppose as a defense mechanism, I threw myself into my work. I was a comptroller for a large construction company, and I spent my days with my nose buried in my ledgers. I was often the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. I never went out, only called friends and family to let them know I was still alive, ate as little as I needed for sustenance, and mostly hung around playing my bass in the apartment that should have been full of Dawn and the children we had dreamed of having. I never took vacation time, as I didn't want to have to sit and think about the hand I had been dealt.
So when my sister called and told me that she was gifting me a Caribbean cruise, I was somewhat less than thrilled. A week and a half at sea going to some islands I had absolutely no interest in seeing -- not to mention the enforced isolation and socialization aboard ship -- didn't really rank too high on the scale of things I wanted to be doing. But since my sister was paying the bill, and had also given me a $2000 shipboard credit for drinks and shore excursions, I figured that the least I could do to thank her for her largesse was to get outrageously drunk every night.
I had boarded, had the obligatory bon-voyage glass of champagne, lightly sampled the buffet and settled into my cabin, when I decided to head over to the piano bar and begin inflicting what I expected to be irreparable damage on my liver. In my state of mind, I didn't really care. I had just received an Absolut screwdriver when I felt a presence next to me.
A husky female voice softly asked, "Is anyone sitting here?"
I didn't even look up. "You are now, I guess."
"Cruising for the first time?"
"No, I've done this before." Dawn and I had taken a Bahamas cruise for our honeymoon.
"I didn't see you at the singles-only welcome dinner. Believe me, I'd have remembered you if I had."
"I wasn't really into that scene."
"So you vanted to be left a-loooon?" she said in a goofy Greta Garbo imitation. "Do you vant to be left a-loooon
NOW
?"
Persistent, I'll give her that
, I thought to myself.
But getting a bit annoying, too. How can I get rid of her without being rude?
"Just interested -- why did you sit next to me, of everyone here at the bar?"
"Because you, of everyone here, looked most like you could use a friend."
I then looked up to see who I'd unintentionally engaged. What I saw was huge, inviting brown eyes, a beautiful round face, plump, moist lips, all framed by clouds of frizzy black hair that almost reached down to her waist. She was wearing a dark maroon top that was held up by the thinnest of spaghetti straps, and a tiny white skirt that, every time she shifted in her seat, looked like it was in danger of exposing her. Her long, toned legs ended in a pair of heels. "Fuck-me pumps", I would often call them.
She licked her lips. "Good, I finally got you to look at me. I'm Ashley." She held out her hand.
"Mike." I took her hand and shook it. "So, why did you think I needed a friend?"
"In my job, I have to be able to read people. I saw you when I came in here, and there was this haunted look in your eyes that told me that you're running away from something. Would you like to tell me, Mike, what it is you're running away from?"
"Life, I guess. Let's just say that things haven't gone as I'd hoped they would."
She snorted. "You're a good-looking, still-young guy with his whole life ahead of him. You're way too young to be giving up on things. I'll bet that the best of your life is still to come."
"That's easy for you to say. You haven't lived my life."
She held up her glass -- she was drinking a margarita -- clinked it against mine and toasted "Here's to feeling sorry for ourselves". But she said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I wasn't insulted by it.
