Last Dance with Mary Jane E-Book

John Goode

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 91

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Peter was devastated when he lost his love, Shayne, in a car crash. Though he knows nothing will bring Shayne back, Peter takes solace in listening to Shayne's voice mail, just to hear his voice one last time. He's not prepared when one night, Shayne answers the phone. A Bittersweet Dreams title: It's an unfortunate truth: love doesn't always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.

Leseprobe

This is for Shayne, who dressed out next to me in gymall through junior high and made me gay.

I blame it all on him.

Life is not fair. No one gets out alive.

—Peter David

Last Dance with Mary Jane

FATEIS a bitch.

I don’t use that word a lot because it’s demeaning to women and is generally used when men are threatened by strong women. That’s not the case in point. I said Fate is a bitch, and that’s exactly what I meant. She’s a cruel and petty woman who enjoys nothing more than making people’s lives miserable. I could name half a million reasons why I believe this, but unless you’re that woman in Missouri who won the lottery twice, you know firsthand how nasty an entity she can be.

It’s important to point out that I’m talking about Fate and not God. If God has a plan for all of us, Fate is simply the lackey executing the plan. I’m pretty sure, if there is a grand plan, the details are left to her.

And it’s the details that fuck you.

Fate makes people late to work by screwing with traffic lights. She makes sure you meet the person of your dreams right after they start dating your best friend. She makes sure you lose your job just as rent is due.

She also causes cars to crash.

“DOYOUbelieve that?” my therapist asked me after a rather pregnant pause. “Do you believe that Fate caused Shayne’s car to crash?”

Dr. Morta was an old-school shrink. She believed patients should lie back on a couch and talk about their parents and crap while she scribbled on a pad of paper. Her face was ancient, with a road map of lines I was sure led to the Holy Grail, but she still moved with a grace I hadn’t seen in women half her age. Though tiny, she possessed an authority that would have been impressive in people twice her size. People said she was the best grief counselor in the area. I had asked her what made her so great, but all she would ever answer was, “I’m good with endings.” I assure you, if she wasn’t one of the best therapists money could buy, I wouldn’t have bothered with the whole couch-and-scribble scenario. However, the fact was, I was crazy, and I couldn’t keep living with the misery in my heart.

“I don’t know anymore,” I said with a sigh. I was lying, and she knew it.

Even though I couldn’t see her, the soft rustle of pages and creak of a chair informed me she had closed the notebook and leaned toward me.

“Peter.” Her voice was sad and empathetic, a skill learned after years of nodding and telling people it was going to be okay. “I know you’re still carrying a lot of anger about Shayne’s death, but you do know God doesn’t cause cars to crash, right?”

I sat up and turned to look at her. “I didn’t say God, did I? I said Fate’s a bitch, and she does make cars crash. Fate makes all sorts of things happen, and unlike God, no one goes to church on Sundays to thank her for fucking up their life.” My face was no doubt red from anger, and I tried to get a grip on my emotions before I started crying again. “Shayne made that trip dozens of times without even a flat tire, and all of a sudden he just dies?” My voice got louder, and the sane part of my mind distantly realized I was losing it. “Whose fucking fault is it, then? Who do I blame for his death, Doc?”

Her expression didn’t change one iota as I screamed at her, but I had to believe that inside she was shaking her head sympathetically. “Tell me who I blame and I’ll do it!” I vaulted off the couch, realizing only after I’d done so that my hands were balled into fists. “Tell me who I see about that, and I’ll stop wasting your time!”

I loomed over her, but she was immune to my rage, as if I were a small child throwing a tantrum. There were hundreds of people who would have taken a few hesitant steps back from seeing me this mad up close, but this woman, who was at best five feet tall, looked up at me with an expression that just screamed, “Are you done yet?”

I wasn’t going to get her to fight back, so I sighed and let the anger drain out of me as I fell back onto the couch.

“You’re not wasting my time,” she answered after a while. “You’re grieving the loss of your lover, and what you’re feeling is perfectly normal.”

“Husband,” I said quietly. “Why is it straight people have husbands and wives, but gay people are always lovers?” I asked rhetorically. “It’s offensive. We were together for over fifteen years. He deserves to be called my husband.”

“Did you ever call him your husband?” she asked, opening her notepad again. “When he was alive, did you refer to him as your husband?”

I had no idea where her question came from, and there was no way I was going to answer it. “Are we almost done here?” I asked, looking at my watch.

“Your session is for an hour, Peter, but you can leave whenever you want,” she replied with a cool detachment that was as annoying as anything I could think of. I don’t know why I wanted to see her lose her cool, just once. It was childish. Nonetheless, I wanted to keep poking her until she snapped and yelled at me. “Do you want to leave?” she asked in a tone of such calm acceptance, it made me want to anger her all the more.

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” I threw back at her. “You get paid anyway, right?”

She blinked twice. If I learned later that Dr. Morta was a Vulcan from Star Trek, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. “Yes, Peter, but money isn’t what you’re concerned about, is it?”

I reminded myself never to play chess against her.

“The whole answering-a-question-with-a-question thing…,” I said, standing and grabbing my jacket. “You do know it gets old, right?”

I saw the smallest twitch of her mouth. She asked, “Why do you think it bothers you so much?”

I actually growled before spinning around and storming out the door. Three minutes later, pacing back and forth as the elevator ground toward the lobby, I swore to myself that I’d spent my last hour flopped on Dr. Morta’s couch, going nowhere. I pushed past a couple of people and practically sprinted out of the elevator toward my car. I was so fucking angry, I couldn’t stand it. My entire car vibrated when I slammed my door shut. I pressed my head against the steering wheel, resisting the urge to scream.

I knew what I needed, but I fought it. The urge was getting worse and worse. I felt like a drug addict, jonesing for the only fix that would get me through the next minutes, hours.

I fumbled in my coat pockets. The interior of the car began to compress around me as panic set in. Where the—? Had I left it at home? Where? Where? Imagine being trapped inside a car that was about to be crushed at a junkyard, and you’d get the general idea. I could feel some gum, loose change, the thing I didn’t want to think about, some folded-up pieces of paper, and then the touch of something smooth and plastic. With the same motion a fly fisherman uses to snatch fish out of the water, I yanked my hand from my pocket and came up with an iPhone.

The wrong iPhone. What? Where? I never mixed up the pockets I put my phones in!

Tossing it onto the passenger seat, I dug into my other pocket. The feeling of panic intensified. I felt nothing but the lining of my jacket for several terror-inducing seconds. Had I brought it? It was a silly question. Of course I’d brought it. I couldn’t leave the house without it anymore. A grown-ass man, closer to forty than thirty, making sure he had his lucky charm because only that would help fight the panic attack I was having.

I felt like a bad magician trying to free himself from a straightjacket when my fingertips brushed its edge. Humiliated by the crushing relief I felt when I realized my charm was there, I plunged my hand deeper into my pocket as if my life depended on it.

I came up with another iPhone. I pushed the home button and breathed a sigh of relief when the screen lit up. I stared at the image of the two of us, faces smooshed together. It looked like one of those pictures you’d take in a photo booth where both people are mugging it up for the camera, except by the angle of the image it was obviously taken by the camera in Shayne’s hand. A message, stating there were twenty-four missed calls and the battery had half a charge left, plastered itself across our faces.

I reached over, grabbed my phone off the seat next to me, and redialed. His phone vibrated in my hand. The image switched to one of me sleeping, and the name Spider-Man appeared across the top.

On the fourth buzz, Shayne’s voice mail picked up. I held what was left of my breath, the way I always did.

“You’d think I’d have a good excuse for not answering my phone, but honestly, if you know who you’re calling, we both know I most likely lost it. So if it’s important, call Peter. He always knows where I’m at. If it isn’t important… then why are you calling me?”

What happened next was the same thing that had happened the other twenty-four times I’d called that number since—that day. By Shayne’s third word, I felt the car begin to expand as air returned to my lungs. I realized I was clutching the phone so hard it left marks on my fingers. I closed my eyes as the tears started to fall. Hot rage and frustration slowly dimmed to the morosely grim depression that had become my life.

I have no idea how long I sat there sobbing before the phone said, “I’m sorry, but your time is up,” and hung up on me.

That’s what my life had become since he’d died.