1/18/12

Bereft
By Linda M. Crate


Holly had always been a romantic at heart. Especially after seeing her best friend Layla was engaged to her high school sweetheart. It just seemed that love was some great enchantment, it certainly was the most wonderful feeling in the world. One she wouldn’t have traded for anything.

She had fallen in love with her own fiancé Damian when in college. He always seemed to know the right thing to say, and he was much more intuitive than most men she knew. Not to mention he had a wonderful sense of humor — that was the thing that lead him straight to her heart, that and he wasn’t too hard on the eyes. That didn’t hurt, either.

Yesterday night had started off perfectly fine. He had taken her to her favorite restaurant. Shortly after they started ordering dinner, however, she noticed some woman taking pictures of her and Damian. A woman she had never seen before. When she asked him about it, he just insisted that she were some jealous ex and not to worry about it. She tried not to, but she found it unsettling that this woman was on a date with some other man just so that she could take pictures of her ex boyfriend. It just seemed a bit odd to her.

“Don’t worry, baby, it’s fine.”

She nodded, but she was disconcerted. This didn’t add up. “Is there any particular reason she’s here at our favorite restaurant? You didn’t take her here before, did you?”

“Only once, I promise, I didn’t realize she was such a creep. I assure you of that,” he sighed, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t know she’d follow us here.” He massaged his temples. “But don’t let her bother you,” he smiled. “She’s ancient history.”

She had tried to let it go, but it needled and wheedled at the orifices of her mind until she couldn’t stand the nettling anymore. She found the woman that had been taking pictures of them the night before at a local coffee shop.

Maybe she ought to have let it go, but she couldn’t let that woman just get away with trying to intimidate her for the rest of her life. She walked over to the woman. “Hey!” she cried.

The other woman turned and looked her over. “You have a lot of nerve coming up to me, girl. Mhmm.”

“Excuse you? You’re the one that’s Damian’s ex.”

“Who the hell is Damian?”

“You know my fiancé. The guy you were taking pictures of last night,” she scoffed. She flecked strands of auburn hair from her green eyes.

The black woman burst out laughing. “He told you his name was Damian? Sweetheart, his name is Albert Darwinian. Look him up in the phone book.”

Holly felt a twinge of annoyance, surely this woman was wrong! Still, curiosity had gotten the better of her. She showed up on Albert’s front lawn, saw the chocolate lab frolicking about out back with the kids, and the beautiful blonde that had to be his wife. She stood waiting for Albert to get home — except it wasn’t Albert, it was Damian.

That night she had confronted him — along with his wife. His wife made the ultimatum that he choose one of them. Of course, he chose his wife. He tried to apologize to Holly, he and Jessica had children he explained, but she pulled away.

“Don’t touch me!” she spat.

“My sentiments exactly,” the wife sneered, grabbing Albert’s arm. “Come on, darling.”

She stood on the edge of the embankment, looking into the spooling of moon silver in the lake. It didn’t quite seem fair that the universe had decided to take him from her to hand him, instead, to some bimbo that didn’t deserve him; anyway.

Her friends told her that she deserved better, perhaps, they were right, but she didn’t want anyone but him. Her heart ached and pined away — like a nymph that couldn’t find love she was caught between the rocks of erosion and the fierceness of the sea. Either held the power to destroy her.

Not for the first time that night she started crying again.

She used to think that love was something that was the stuff of fairy tales come alive. It was a magic that lilted on the painted tissue paper wings of butterflies that flitted from flower to lovely flower in succession, it was something that blossomed like flowers that never wilted. Yet she found that sometimes love was nothing more than a cold hearted man that pulled the strings to your heart apart simply because he could.

Love could be as cruel as she was kind.

It left her cold and bereft like the sun left the moon.


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Linda Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry has recently been featured in Magic Cat Press, Black-Listed Magazine, Bigger Stones, and Vintage Poetry. One of her short stories has been featured in Carnage Conservatory and she has an upcoming short story for publication in Dark Gothic Reconstructed Magazine in April 2012.