Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
________________________________
The sunlight poured through the blinds of the bedroom, leaving rings of white on a beige carpet. Bouncing off of pale caramel walls, stretching across a tangled down comforter, slicing over the webs of mangled clothing in the middle of the floor, early morning came and went in shades of yellow and orange. He lay on his back, her on her side, arms slung around him like the tentacles of an octopus. His hair fell in wisps across his forehead, her curls tangled in his hands. His skin smelled of Dove soap and dryer sheets, hers of lemon drops and fresh cut grass. They smiled in their sleep, laughed in their moments of awakening, grinned in their intimacy. As the ceiling fan hummed a lullaby, the sun drifted overhead, cerulean skies gently opening a new day.
The morning before had rained. Some could say it poured, even. Buckets of rain dropping onto the heads and lives of people just going about their daily lives, stabbing the sheer validity of friendships and questioning what was still right and good with the universe. She sat behind the desk at reception, doing the mundane, moments of work interrupted by telephone rings and thoughts of him. Did he? Didn’t he? Did she?? She knew he wasn’t coming home, the job was obviously his. He’d move there with a petite, confident brunette, they’d live together in a swanky New York apartment, with a friendly doorman and a balcony and they’d go to shows and hang out in Central Park. They were going to have a life together, they would get married, and have babies, and they’d go to private schools because he always hated the public schools in Scranton, and he just knew his kids would flourish in the City. He’d buy her flowers once a week, probably wildflowers because roses were so overrated, and they’d vacation on the Cape and they’d honeymoon in Europe. They would have the life she had only dreamed of. And damn it, as the tears drew to her eyes, she blinked them away because he deserved it. He deserved that life, that wife, those kids, that job. He deserved more than what she could give him. Because after years of his bending over the top of her desk to whisper in her ear, after months of walking behind a dark haired woman with his hand on the small of her back, after a day at the beach where she finally stood in front of him and spoke her mind, for once and for all, there wasn’t anything left to say. But there was absolutely everything that still needed to be said.
As she sat in a dark blue chair in the conference room, cameras directed at her, the eyes of the cameraman soft and understanding, she knew that it was over. The note wasn’t really to get him to remember them when he was famous. It was to get him to move on to his new life, be it with her, or without her. It was a testament of who she had become. Fancy new whatever, the new clothes and hair were only a front of the person she had become once she left her first love. The pounding in her heart and the ringing in her ears only reminded her of the person she left behind. The woman who was too scared to buy a set of pastels for fear that he’d look at her cross-eyed, the woman who made spaghetti every Wednesday and vacuumed the stairs every Sunday morning before football games drenched the living room with screaming men and spilt booze and a justifiable desire to just change. When she left, she left behind more than a bed and a dresser of clothing, and a man she had been with for 10 years. She left behind the stability of a constant paycheck that allowed her a tiny plot of land, a man who didn’t understand her but loved her just the same, and she left behind the person she never realized she had become.
When he opened the door, the look of shock on her face was evident. He was there for her, with a smile in his eyes, a question in his tone, a playful desire in his grin. His voice stroked her skin, nuzzled her lips, kissed her with promises of love and happiness. “Are you free for dinner,” became a mantra to her soul, a song to her heart. The twinkling of his presence did something to her that no other man could have ever done – maybe something she never could have allowed another man to do. His coming back was a myriad of second chances, coming back to her in a creamy plume of color, allowing her to keep imagining. A swanky New York apartment with her, kids in private schools with her, honeymooning in Europe and trips to the Cape with her. It was every desire and dream she had ever had, every hope she’d made on a birthday cake, every penny dropped into a wishing well, every aspiration she’d had for herself. She found it there in his eyes, in his smile, in his stance. She was fancy and new, she was a strong woman underneath it all. In a black and white life, she dreamed in Technicolor. Of him. Of their potential life together.
They lay together now in her bed in her fancy new apartment, as one in her sheets, breathing synchronized. Their lives were tangled in each another, and they adored that. Cherished that. Like a gust of fresh air in the stagnant heat, they saved one another the only way they knew how, but had never had the opportunity to try. She would awake later that day to find his sock on top of her TV, his shoes on top of one another in front of the door where he toed them off, hurrying to the bedroom in a frenzy of gasped breaths and anxious moans, his shirt somewhere in the hallway, the buttons of the bottom three torn from their places. Her sundress was in a heap at the bottom of the bed, her bra and panties somewhere between the kitchen and the bathroom.
Together. It was a word they both dreamed of, but never believed could happen. When he awoke to find her porcelain body in his arms, he could have died then and would have known he went out the happiest he had ever been. He’d known the tragic belief that she would never be his, and the hurt in her eyes when he came back with another woman mirrored what he felt the day the wedding date was set aboard a cheesy cruise on a lake. But now…. Now was different.
Now he knew the pleasure of her company on a real date, the softness of her smile, the crinkle of her eyes when she grinned at him over bites of strawberry cheesecake and sips of a good Chablis. He knew the feeling of kissing her in the front seat of a car, of how his heart ached with excitement as she dribbled a basketball in front of his place where she picked him up, and how they had sat in the dark in the park after dinner, wet, cut grass clinging to the back of their legs, his left arm encircling her waist, watching the fireworks go off for some Scranton High senior prank. He now knew how it felt to push open her door with her lips on his, kicking it shut with a little more force than was necessary, his hands cupping her face, her hands roaming over his chest and back. He knew what it was like to be stripped of everything, mind, body and soul, in more ways than one, in love with her. He now knew the exquisite feel of her around him, moving, moaning, kissing the bridge of his nose and the trio of freckles on his shoulder as she arched into him in a fit of desire. She loved how he looked as he released his inhibitions, how his eyes darkened when she whispered, “I love you” in his ear, pressing into her with a delicious satisfaction.
With one another, they were invincible. They were every cliché of love conquers all. They made their co-workers roll their eyes with their giggles and their families sighed relief. It was everything they had ever imagined. Fancy and new was wonderful, but their old, comfortable dynamic made it even more.
Story Notes:
This is my first fanfic, so be gentle!
Chapter End Notes:
It turns out I like to write in long, overwhelming sentences. My bad.
stjoespirit04 is the author of 25 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 5 members. Members who liked Fancy New Whatever also liked 1830 other stories.
