short story chapter 2: It doesn't matter what is logical anymore

I'm laying bare across Jack's rickety iron bed watching him write by candle light. He's always been inspired after we make love. Nothing has changed and everything has changed.

The first time I ever spent the night with Jack Berry was after the premiere performance of Boy Meets Girl at New York's Cort Theater. I slipped in unnoticed, or so I thought, with my Dobbs hat pulled far down over my face. Showing up alone to the theater as a young woman from University wasn't the kind of attention I wanted to attract. Especially considering my father's friends and colleagues would most likely be in their usual box seats.

I glanced around the top deck of the theater and tousled my hat hair when I spotted him staring from five seats over. Embarrassed, I looked down at my hands and slipped off my satin gloves. I didn't look up until the lights dimmed and the curtain rose.

By intermission, Jack had slid down three seats with only one in between us and he said, "I've seen you before."

"You have?" I asked knowing full well when and where. The NYU library was a spot we both frequented as freshman trying to execute our best efforts for academic success.

Jack had already made a name for himself. A freshman he may have been, but his writing already had the professors talking. They titled him the next Walter Winchell for his candidly foul wit.

"You know I have." Jack lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose and it made me laugh.

"The theater is where you go when you're not at the library, Mr. Berry?"

"Ah and I was just about to introduce myself, Miss Thomas."

"You have quite the reputation already at University, Mr. Berry, but how do you know my name?"

Jack smiled with his eyes and said, "After the second time you walked into my quiet corner, causing me to lose all concentration, I had to find out who you were."

He offered to walk me to my dorm, but halfway there, he offered up his for a friendly drink and a rare presentation of amateur poetry. His words consumed me and the bourbon washed away all of my sensibility. I let him kiss me and tuck me in at 3AM...drunk.

I remember waking up and finding him asleep at his desk- paper notes everywhere. I carefully removed his glasses from his boyish face; he had a delicately defined boyish face. I wanted to kiss him but stopped for fear I'd wake him. So, I left.

****

"Did you know I was engaged before I showed up at your door?" I ask with cautious curiosity.

"Of course I did."

The way his face falls breaks my heart. What am I to do? If I dig any deeper, it will cause an uproar of emotions we both wouldn't dare to give up. 

'I love you.'

'I hate you.'

'Why did you ever come?'

'Why didn't you come for me?'

'Why did you say yes to him?'

'Because you never asked me!'

'Run away with me!'

'I can't.'

'Then leave!'

I know us- the Jack and Emily fight sequence. This time might end differently than before, because this time, there's too much to risk. If I don't marry Stanley, my father may never forgive me. My mother would be very disappointed, but she would eventually forgive me. She couldn't help but love her only child more than life itself.

Jack gets up from his desk, still naked, and takes my face in his hands. They move from my face to my neck...to my breasts and the small of my back...to my thighs. He devours me like this might very well be our last time together. I want to let go and let him take me, but reality comes flooding in and I panic.

"Jack," I say as I stop him, "I can't do this." The tears come more quickly than I thought they would. I don't want to leave but I know I cannot stay.

"You're choosing him," Jack says like he assumed this would be the outcome. Our love story ends in a final tragic scene.

"If it were up to me, you know I-"

"IT IS UP TO YOU!" Jack yells and I'm dressed and out the door before we can hurt each other any more.

The last lonely train is waiting to take me home. This time, it isn't warm. My tears feel like they turn to ice with every drop.

Of course, I made the right decision. For the both of us. I just needed to see Jack one last time to truly know for sure. Marrying Stanley makes the most sense for the path my family has laid out for me. It would be dishonorable not to follow it. After all, my father's way has always been the only way.

But I can't stop myself from thinking about Jack and how I walked out on him. I start to sob uncontrollably, because it doesn't matter what is logical anymore. My heart wants love. And my love is with Jack. 

short story chapter 1: the way a man in love should.

I don't know what I am running to just yet, or what exactly I am running from, really. I just need to catch this train. The city knows me. The city understands my need to escape.

Back in New Haven, Connecticut I am engaged to a man I barely know. We are ten days away from holy matrimony and I am terrified. Contrary to popular belief, I am not smitten at the thought of spending the rest of my life with Doctor Stanley Pryor and the overwhelming security that comes with it. All of my friends coo over me whenever I am forced to give up any details about the wedding. I simply smile and appease them. My mother has planned the entire event, thankfully. I might be the star in this charade, but that's all I'm good for. To sit back and stay pretty until my cue to walk down the aisle of St. Patrick's Cathedral. F. Scott Fitzgerald married Zelda Sayre there about twenty years ago or so. The thought is romantic enough for the arrangement to please me at times.

The train car shields the cold February wind from my ruby cheeks and I sigh with relief. Not from the cold, but from the platform- the place I could still be found before the rumble of the train wheels against the track ease forward. I made it. I am safe for now.

I glance down at my trembling hands. I forgot the matching gloves to my red scarf I am wearing. A gift from Stanley for my birthday last month.

I think about the first time I met Stanley. I was twelve and he was fourteen. Our parents had become fast close friends when his family first moved to New Haven from the Upper East Side. Doctor Stanley Pryor Sr. aided in my father's recovery after he collapsed unexpectedly one afternoon. The stress and exhaustion from his never ending trial was enough for any defense attorney to break.

Since that fateful spring afternoon, our parents had been planning our future together. Two powerful families merging into one. The classic tale of two young betrothed souls seemed promising in my youth, but every time I saw Stanley Jr., he barely spoke to me. I would catch him staring and I would smile, but there was no warmth in return. No expression of any kind but of curiosity, maybe. 

I always wondered if Stanley loved another. Had he met someone at Columbia? Courted her until graduation when his father insisted-no- expected him to write my father?

I remember the day just seven months before. My father called for me into his office- a place I was never allowed to enter unless called upon. He wore a rare smile and told me to sit down across from his desk...letter in hand. I loved my father's smile. I would do anything to keep that smile plastered on his handsome face.

I was to be courted by Stanley after his visit to our house the following week. It was not asked of me, it simply...was to be.

Stanley was nice enough. He was pleasant enough. Had attractive features that I hoped would become more profound as we got to know each other, but my feelings never grew to love. Only to contentment until the inevitable day that he asked my father for permission to marry me. The light in my father's eyes alone was enough for my consent. I thought, surely, my feelings would eventually grow to love. The wedding planning would make my heart race and cause the fluttering feeling deep within me. The feeling I've only had one other time.

I step off the train and my tight limbs loosen with the intake of city air. New York, how I have missed you.

I only know of one place to go. One place I will regain that familiar feeling again.

A letter with his street address is all I have in my possession. A letter I was able to hide from my parents, miraculously. Since the engagement, their firm grip has loosened on me enough to slip a few things past them.

I walk up the crooked staircase one floor and find his door. Apartment 2C.

I can hear my heart thumping uncontrollably as I think back to the last time I laid eyes on him. It was two days before graduation. We spent four unbelievable yet unethical years together at New York University. I can hear his soothing rasp of a voice as he explains his most recent exposition. The love we both shared for literature and narrative poetry that made me hang on his every word. I can feel his hands caress my bare back and the taste of cheap bourbon on his lips. The softness of the sheets we spent hours in at a time.

I hold my breath and knock the familiar tap that always lets him know I'm at his door. At first, nothing. Then, sudden quick footsteps coming closer and the swift twist of the door knob. The door opens in defiance and there he is- Jack Berry.

"Emily," he says in a startled whisper. 

Jack is just how I left him- hair in a fixed mess and the same dirty lens glasses and old trousers he's had since I met him almost five years ago. He is still long and thin and...beautiful in my eyes.

"Jack," I answer and just stare at him until he takes my left hand in his. He eyes the ring I had hoped would take him longer to see, but all I can say is, "I have missed you." 

That is all it takes for him to pull me into his arms and kiss my lips with a longing desire. He stops only to push back the dark brown waves from my face and look into my eyes the way a man in love should.

"My prayers have been answered," is all he says before our lips meet again and we tumble deeper into his apartment.

This is the feeling I've been waiting for. This is true, heart-wrenching, unexplainable love.