ELLIOT

I was home, sitting on my deck, overlooking the cove, and slowly turning the stem of my wine glass between my fingertips. The burgundy liquid swirled inside the glass as I spun it. It was hypnotic as was everything else surrounding me. The waves roared as they crashed into the shore. It was fierce and powerful, yet peaceful and calming. One could not stop the waves. They rolled into the shore however nature decided, not man. Like life, we had so little control, even when we tried to convince ourselves that we did.

All three doors were wide open. The breeze was perfect and the sun smiled at me. In front of me, a computer screen glowed with words. Last week turned my life upside down and back again several times over and I was still trying to catch my breath.

Emily was here.

I talked to her.

I touched her.

I made love to her, over and over and over again, never getting my fill.

I spent hours making love to the woman who held my heart hostage for the last seven years. Actually eight, if you counted the year we were together. She kept it when I left. She never returned it to me. I realized now, she was holding it and waiting.

I tried to get over her. I spent time with women all over the world. A few hours, a few days, even a few weeks, but I couldn’t find my heart in any one of them. I spent many a night raging over this with a bottle of Jack, screaming and sobbing. I picked up women and tried to fuck her image out of my mind. I was a demanding, cold lover. I thought I was the one in control, taking what I wanted. Who was I kidding? I never made love to those women—I fucked them. I didn’t give a damn about them. They were a vessel, a means to forget the one woman I wanted and walked away from. No matter how many different faces were in front of me or underneath me, in my haze I dreamed they were Emily. None of them ever came close. She had ruined me.

I quit women four years ago, all of them. I buried myself in my writing. I wrote constantly, sometimes for days at a time. Coming up only to eat and shower when I couldn’t stand the smell of myself, and the hunger pains in my stomach grew unbearable.

Every book I wrote hit the bestseller list. And every book had some part of Emily in it. She was the hero, the villain, the temptress, and the murderer. She was the destruction of nations and the savior of souls. Emily was a part of everything I wrote because she was gone.

I had everything I could ever dream of, except the one woman I couldn’t forget.

And now, she was here. My Emily was more beautiful and stronger than I ever imagined. There were moments I couldn’t breathe when she was next to me. The passion that ignited between the two of us. It was as if two broken pieces had finally come together creating an explosion. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Reaching for the wine glass I set on the table only a moment ago, I took a sip, savoring … remembering.

It was great before, but now? I got hard just thinking about her and what transpired earlier. We came together again with such force. It was an explosion. I couldn’t have held myself back from her if I wanted to, and neither could she … that was the beauty of it.

The Emily of years ago was shyer, more inhibited. She held back as if she were afraid to let herself go. Yes, she was angry and wild, untamed. She was younger, inexperienced, she never realized the power she could have sexually.

My Emily had grown up. Now she demanded and she took as much as she gave. She was confident and free, asking me and telling me what she wanted, begging me to satisfy her. Friday night was pure uninhibited lust mixed with desire and love. When she left to go home, I felt lost even though she was only a few blocks away.

Last night … it was magical, sensual. We made love for hours. Here on my deck, out on the beach, in the ocean, hidden by darkness. And finally, once again in my bed. I awoke this morning before dawn and she was still here, curled up next to me, her hair fanning the pillows around her. I couldn’t help myself. I softly woke her up, stroking her, touching her, making her wet and wanting before her eyes were open. She moaned and reached out to me and we made love again.

And again.

We had dinner with Andrea Saturday night. She was an amazing woman. I listened as she spoke passionately about her work, her need to help the women and children that came into the shelter to escape the abuse and pain. The never-ending need for more help, more education.

Emily had told me a little about Andrea’s past, enough to understand the reasoning behind her passion for her work. I was astonished at how well she was doing and humbled that she didn’t play the part of the victim. She was using her pain, her experience, as she called it, to help others. The fact she almost died at the hands of her former boyfriend made me burn with rage.

A surge of anger hit me at the thought of someone beating a woman like that, of hitting a woman at all. I barely knew Andrea and I wanted to find the asshole and give him a taste of it, beat him senseless.

I wanted to learn more about the crisis of abuse, work it into a story somehow and try to increase more awareness. Lessen the shame and the silence these women felt they needed to hide behind. I wanted to help make a difference.

Listening to Emily and Andrea, I could see the bond in the friendship they’d created. I was excited to meet Maggie, too. I wanted to be a part of this life Emily had made.

When Emily left in the morning to go pack, I walked into town, picking up coffee and rolls, and scurried over to the beach house, surprising them. I wanted every minute I could have with her before she left.

Andrea smirked when she answered the door. She could read me. I was hopeless. I was sad, excited, depressed, and desperate at the same time. Emily was leaving in a few hours, driving home to her life in Phoenix. To her friends, her house, her dog. I spent the most amazing week of my life and the reason was driving east and away from me.

I know, get it together, man, it’s not the other side of the world. I took another sip of wine and stared out at the water. My eyes filled when her jeep pulled away, the two of them waving goodbye, as if a part of me was vanishing again. She promised to call when she got home.

I missed her already.

I didn’t think I could wait weeks to see her while we figured out a plan.

I didn’t want to push or to chase her and I didn’t want to scare her off. But dammit! I wanted her in my life. For as long as I lived, I wanted to be with my Emily. I was tired of waiting.

In this life, we only got so many chances. You needed to jump at the ones that kept knocking at your heart. Forget the what ifs and the maybes. When your gut feeling was so strong and the thoughts refused to go away, you needed to grab that chance. It was there for a reason.

God was handing you a gift. You could either grab hold of it and enjoy it, or you could let it go to waste. I’d learned the hard way and regretted it. I wasn’t doing that this time. There was a reason Emily was walking on the beach that night. It was my chance, my gift. I screwed up and walked away the last time she was in front of me and I wasn’t doing that again. Whatever it took … I was taking this chance.

With that, I stood up and finished my wine. Stepping back inside for a pen and notepad, I began making my plans.

It felt like an eternity when Emily finally called me from Phoenix. I could sense a faint hesitation in her voice, making me wish I could reach through the phone somehow and wrap my arms around her, reassure her. She was like me in many ways, she thought way too much and overanalyzed everything she felt. Second-guessing her decisions.

The conversation was peppered with moments of silence, as though we couldn’t find the right words to say to one another, awkward silences.

I reassured her how I felt about her, how important she really was to me and that I wanted to be a part of her life. We could make this work somehow.

We talked until I could hear the exhaustion edging into her voice.

“Think of the beach, Emily. Dream of me. Dream of the life we are going to share. It’s finally our time. Fate has brought us back together, given us another chance. No one is taking that away again,” I told her. “And dream of me because I love you.”