Smoke and Mirrors (13 page)

It had been raining since last Monday. And there was nothing more Audrey wanted than for the rain to finally stop. Since the day she’d flown into Paris, the only thing she’d been able to do was wander around inside the city’s buildings.

The past few years had been tough. She’d fallen in love when she was young, really young. She met Bailey when they were both freshmen in high school, and they instantly became best friends. Both of them had just moved, and having that in common sort of made them the odd kids out at school.

Bailey was a dork. He had thick-rimmed glasses, braces, and pimples. Poor kid, going through puberty was hard enough, but going through it all with shit like that, well, anyone would feel for him.

Audrey was a skinny little thing, and so quiet. She barely said “boo”, and the other girls at school were really quite observant in addition to being incredibly insensitive and nasty bitches.

We all know how high school is, especially when boobs and hips start forming, and the hormones kick in. You’re either a cool kid or you’re not. And when you’re not, you try your best to blend into the furniture and pray each day goes by with minimal torment.

But both Audrey and Bailey were smart, acing tests, and on all the teams that weren’t popular with the cool kids. They not only looked like dorks, but were in all the dorky activities, too.

So high school was hard, but together they managed to find some peace and some days weren’t all that bad. They found their little niche along the way with some other unpopular kids and went through high school pretty much unscathed. Not completely carefree, but less harassed than some of the other bullied kids.

By their junior year in high school, Audrey and Bailey had an unshakable connection. They were so close that they did virtually everything together, spent every spare moment in each other’s company.

First it was studying together. Then, as they got older, their closeness grew. In the beginning, the chemistry was pretty one-sided. Bailey had become infatuated with Audrey but as time went on, her feelings developed for him and soon they were completely inseparable, and in love.

In her senior year, Audrey grew into her boobs, her face, and her body. She lost her braces, got contacts, and became quite attractive. The popular boys started noticing her. Through it all, her affection for Bailey never waned, not once.

Bailey still remained dorky, but less than he had been as a freshman. His skin cleared and he lost his braces too. Unfortunately, the thick-rimmed glasses remained.

At the end of high school, Bailey did something he always knew he would do at some point in his short life.

He bought Audrey a tiny diamond ring that he’d saved for since he began working as a dishwasher, and got down on one knee.

Audrey adored him, and said “yes” in less time than it took for the human heart to beat.

The kids’ parents were not impressed, and didn’t offer their blessings. The two beautiful souls had already decided to wait until they had finished college before they married.

Well, that was the plan.

And it worked…until they went to Vegas to celebrate Audrey’s twenty-second birthday, and ended up married.

They were perfect together; their union was meant to be. There was nothing that could tear them apart. Not a situation, not a person, nothing.

But something happened over the next eight years, something neither of them could have foreseen.

And that was…life.

Life started taking its toll against them.

Audrey graduated and became a primary school teacher; Bailey became an architect.

Although they adored each other, life got in the way. Soon they began to drift apart.

Work became stressful. Living together was just…well, routine.

Their marriage became stale. They forgot how to be in love with each other. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; they simply both neglected their relationship.

While eating spaghetti on spaghetti night, Audrey broke down and cried. She wasn’t happy. And she knew that Bailey wasn’t happy either.

“What do we do, Bailey?” she asked, as tears streamed down her reddened cheeks.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

Bailey left their home, and took up temporary residence in a nearby apartment, and they began to see a marriage counselor, a professional who could help them rediscover the spark in their relationship, the zing that had disappeared through years of complacency.

Unfortunately, after eleven months of trying to rekindle their personal connection, they both admitted they’d failed.

Today, four years after their separation and divorce, Audrey was planning on going to the Eiffel Tower. She’d worked hard, and had saved every dime in order to afford this vacation of a lifetime. Although she was alone, she was determined to travel to the one place that had captured her interest a few years earlier, after her divorce.

Audrey, now in her late thirties, was doing something solely for herself.

And Paris was where she decided to go.

Audrey looked out the window of her mid-range hotel room and saw the rain sheeting down the glass pane. The Eiffel Tower would have to wait.

But she was sick of being inside. She wanted to go out and discover the city of love. She wanted to feel the cobblestones beneath her shoes, experience eating a real French croissant as she sat on the patio of a little café and sipped her black coffee. She wanted the fresh fall air to kiss her on the lips as the warmth of her scarf tightly hugged the column of her throat.

There was something about being in the world’s most romantic city that sent a tingle of hope and excitement right through her core.

She hadn’t given up on love, though she certainly wasn’t in search of it. She had only been intimate with two other men after Bailey, and neither of them had stayed around for long.

Though life had gotten in the way of their relationship, she still held a deep love for Bailey. And there’d be times where she’d find herself longing to hear from him, just to know he was okay.

But they’d decided when their marriage ended, it would be best if they each went their separate way, and so neither knew how the other was doing.

A common friend would sometimes mention something about Bailey in passing, but she’d block it out and not listen. She wanted to know, but the wound was still raw and she couldn’t handle it.

Friends wondered why their relationship had ended if she still loved him so much. Sometimes, she’d tell them, life just gets in the way and some people are better off apart than together.

Damn it, she was determined to experience Paris before she had to return home, regardless of the weather. Audrey took in a huge breath and decided to brave the rain. Wrapping herself in her scarf and coat and taking her oversized umbrella with her, she walked out of the hotel and started toward the city center.

As she walked outside, she conceded the weather was shit, but she didn’t care.

She walked for a while, the rain hammering down her umbrella, and her spirit. She tried to stay happy, tried to be positive, but the gray clouds and the cold rain continued to fall, putting her into a sour mood.

Screw it. I should just pack my bags and go home,
she thought to herself. After walking through the city for an hour or so, drenched to the bone and her mood deteriorating rapidly, she decided at least she’d have her damn French croissant and coffee.

She passed a cute little café, and its ambience seemed to call her. There was just something about it that told her this was the place to have her French treat.

She opened the door and the aroma of the freshly brewed coffee hit her so forcefully that she stood in the door and took a deep breath in. Mixed with the coffee was that exquisite smell of freshly baked pastries that made her mouth water.

She went to the counter and ordered, clumsily with her limited French vocabulary, then found a seat by the front window.

Audrey sat and watched the sidewalk outside, thinking about her life.

She was lonely, there was no doubt in her mind. But her thoughts always went to the one man she loved. She hoped he was keeping well, and that he’d settled down with someone he cherished and loved from the bottom of his heart.
Who am I kidding?
She hoped he missed her as much as she missed him, but she was doubtful.

Her coffee and pastry arrived, and she began to eat, savoring every morsel, appreciating the rich buttery flavor of the croissant and the delicious taste of the full-bodied coffee.

“Audrey?” came a voice she hadn’t heard in years, one that sent her pulse racing, and butterflies fluttering in her belly.

She looked up to see him – Bailey.

He looked, quite simply, handsome.

He’d lost the glasses since their divorce, and he was wearing a suit and tie, looking more perfect than he had in all the time she knew him.

“Bailey,” she whispered. She was shocked to see him so close to her.

Audrey stood to her feet, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. A sweet, platonic touch.

“What are you doing here?” Bailey asked, perplexed by her presence.

“Vacation. But what are you doing here?” she asked, her heart rate spiking as she struggled to keep her eyes on his face.

“I’m working. I got a job here last year, so I moved.” Silence cloaked them for only a moment before Bailey smiled at Audrey. “May I join you?” he asked, looking at the empty chair facing hers.

“Of course,” she said, gently smiling.

Bailey sat and the two of them talked. Actually, they talked for so long the café eventually kicked them out. Bailey didn’t go back to work that afternoon. Instead he spent it with Audrey.

The hours they spent together felt more like moments. Time was ticking by and the two spent every precious second just catching up and talking freely and happily.

They discovered neither had remarried, and neither was in a relationship.

The other thing they revealed by the end of the night, was they both still had love for each other in their hearts. Not only did they love each other, they were also still
in
love with each other.

By eleven, Bailey walked Audrey back to her hotel, where he kissed her on the rainy sidewalk with all the passion he’d been harboring.

The moment their lips touched, they both knew they couldn’t stay apart any longer. They should never have made the harsh decision to divorce, because their hearts still belonged to each other.

The days of Audrey’s vacation passed quickly, and Bailey took time off work to be with her.

Every moment was spent together, whether they were visiting attractions, for the weather had become beautiful, or entwined together in bed. Their hours together were nothing less than perfection.

Both their hearts grew in love, and neither wanted this to end.

Audrey had to leave in three days to go back home, but Bailey didn’t want to let her go.

“Marry me,” he said in a desperate effort to keep her close to him.

She smiled and gently ran a soft hand down his cheek, wishing it possible. “I need to go home,” she said and leaned her forehead against his. “I can’t stay here.”

For the remaining three days, they didn’t leave her hotel room, calling on room service whenever their bodies needed sustenance.

When the day finally came, Bailey drove Audrey to the airport. A solemn heaviness filled the car. He didn’t want her to leave, and she didn’t want to go. But she had obligations back home, and she had to go. It was just the way life is.

They kissed, and hugged and held onto each other tightly, neither ready for this to end.

When Audrey got on the plane to leave, both had fat tears streaking down their cheeks.

She cried because she wasn’t ready to leave him.

And he cried because he knew this would be the last time he would ever see her.

For Bailey was dying. He had a form of incurable cancer that was going to claim his life, and he had no more than a year or two left to live.

He’d refused to tell her, because he didn’t want her to stay out of pity. He wanted her to stay because she wanted to be with him more than anything else in the world.

But what neither of the two soul mates knew yet was in the many days they had been intimate, that by a miracle from a blessed hand, his treatments had not made him sterile, and she was carrying his child.

Sometimes life happens.

My wife died.

Probably not in the way you may be thinking. She didn’t die because she had cancer, or some other fucked-up disease like that.

She didn’t even die ‘cause of a car accident. Nothing simple like that.

She died ‘cause of me.

I sent her to an early grave. I was the one that put that bullet in her skull. Not literally, but I might as well have.

I was dumb back then, a real fuckin’ screw-up.

I met Nadine when I was still in school and fell for her hard and fast. She was on the shy side, and wore glasses. Her hair was frizzy and she had God-awful pimples all over her face. The other kids laughed at her and teased her because she wasn’t like them.

But the day I saw her sitting up on the hill behind the high school, crying openly as she held a dead dog, I knew. I knew her soul was beautiful.