I became invisible. I never knew how much light Emily shed on our family until that radiance was extinguished. I was careful not to upset my parents, and they tried very hard to shield me from the hurt and pain they were feeling and could not help but show. It was a standoff with no winners.
I finished my degree in California, at Sonoma State, in communications and started exploring my options for future television work, which had been my long-term goal. I learned how to look and act professionally and took on an acting coach. A small low-budget indie film even cast me, giving me screen credits only. I modeled some, but when I was encouraged to go to near-starvation levels to get my weight down, and I refused. Plus-sized jobs started booking me, even though I was normal weight. My self-esteem plummeted and at my lowest, had an affair with my drama teacher in college. That lasted until his marriage broke up over his affair with another student.
I vowed that would never happen again to me. It was not a part of my life I felt very proud of. Lesson learned.
But it whetted my appetite for older men.
Em would have married Marco Gambini if she hadn’t been killed in that car accident that took her life with three of her sorority sisters’. My mother and I had hoped the accident would curtail my father’s drinking, because the drunk who hit them walked away with just a broken nose. He got some jail time, but not enough to satisfy our revenge and anger.
And that brought the other heartache into my life. Marco Gambini, my older sister’s fiancé, was my imaginary lover, my girl-crush, the man I compared every other man to when I dated. I guess he could even be considered a father figure since my father became a mere ghost, albeit a ghost who played golf every day and liked to sit and watch my mother play Bunko and Pinochle. After the funeral, I never saw Marco again, until two days ago when I walked into the Bachelor Towers, took up a seat, and became my sister for one whole night. It was a gift to myself, something I think Em would have approved of if I’d had the ability to ask her. I needed to know I could play for keeps with a man like that.
I walked away knowing that it didn’t work that way. He wasn’t a man like that. He was the only man in the universe for me. My teenage radar had been spot on. He was a keeper.
Now I had a problem.
So when Marco didn’t call, I knew I had to go back to the beach retreat I’d purchased with my own savings, the little one-bedroom place painted bright yellow with turquoise trim, nestled in the bluffs overlooking the white sugar-sand beach of the Florida gulf coast.
Some might judge me, and they should be careful. I’ve never been the girl to resurrect my dead sister’s life to make it my own. That’s not me. I needed to revive my own life, not Em’s. Sort of my right of passage.
Call it my empathetic nature, but I knew I could help heal his wounds, temporarily. For one night. For one night, I could pretend that the confluence of events between us had never happened. That we had no history. I wasn’t looking for a future. I was looking to bury the past once and for all.
Everything about him was familiar. His scent, the way he smiled, kissed. The way his fingers explored. The little grunts and deep grumbles in his chest, even his whispers and sighs as I rose for him, bloomed for him, showed him my insides—that place I’d never shown anyone else. Oh, I wasn’t a virgin, by any means. But I was new to love, to what Em had in her life. I had begged for just one taste of him, and now I would be tainted forever.
Did it bother me he never called me back?
I didn’t expect it. I suspected he wouldn’t.
Would I try to chase him, duplicate that night of passion again?
I told myself that, no, that wasn’t the agreement I’d made with my better angels. With Em. With him, even though he was completely unaware of it.
Did I expect he’d recognize Em in my eyes?
I wasn’t sure, but I’d hoped not. They were my eyes needing his examination and determined lovemaking. It was my body he pleasured, that I gave to him. It was for and about me. And I would be forever grateful, even as the remembrance of that night would leave me breathless, haunted, and wet for weeks. Possibly months or even years. I might never find that intensity again. But there was one ground rule I would never break.
I would never chase him. I found him. One time. Now it would be up to him and only him, to go beyond that. As my female parts recovered from the long night of lovemaking, the ache inside remained.
Only way to deal with it was to call it delicious, rare, and tuck it away in my wine cellar of experiences where it would remain a vintage release consumed sparingly.
After all, a good wine was meant to be enjoyed, not stored forever. That’s exactly what I did.
The Tampa International Airport was a dose of reality that came on me like a firehose. Retirees flocked in groups as tour operators collected them all with brightly colored guide signs held high above their heads. Families were reunited. Young couples arrived to join the throngs at the Gulf Coast beaches. Businessmen in suits sweated under the heat, unaccustomed to the humidity. Children ran around everywhere, and pets were released from their crates.
I passed long lines of passengers waiting to escape from the Florida sun or begin their trip home after a vacation. It was a bustling society of everyone coming from and heading to different places, and for a moment in time, all residing within the confines of the terminals spilling out into the hot parking garages or hotel passenger vans.
I retrieved my one bag, then found my car in long term parking, and headed for the refuge of the coast.
My shoulders relaxed the closer I got to the water’s edge. Just before I arrived at Beach Trail Road and the driveway leading up to my little beach bungalow, my phone rang.
“Judie. I’m back, almost at the house. How has everything been?”
My best friend reminded me so much of my big sister Emily, it was uncanny. She had been the one who found Marco’s headlines and placed those news printouts on my desk in my cubby.
“You know, sunny with a chance of rain. They hired and fired a new intern…”
“Already? That’s got to be a record.”
“I think so. Apparently, her dress attire was not appropriate. It got her the job, but it’s what got her fired.”
“Oh, I get it now. Clarence.”
Clarence Thompson was our evening anchor personality, complete with hair plugs and makeup, even when he wasn’t on the air. He was getting long in the tooth, with habits that weren’t aging well with the female population at TMBC. It was only a matter of time before he’d be forced out by a sexual harassment lawsuit. But this train wreck of a man just couldn’t keep his hands and his mouth under control.
“Fucking Clarence. The cat that ate the canary.”
“The one and only. So, Shannon, mission accomplished? Did you meet him?”
I hadn’t told her everything I was planning, and now I was glad I hadn’t.
“Yup. He’s still as handsome as I remember. A real gentleman, too,” I lied.
I could still hear the words he growled over me, “I love fucking you.” My badge of honor. I nearly came in my car seat just recalling how he commanded my body while I was powerless to refuse him anything. In my mind I told him to fuck me harder, take me from behind, from the side, upside down if he wanted to. I could still feel his grip on my hips almost to the point of bruising, clutching me tight as he skillfully drilled me a new meaning of the word fuck.