The Lost Years
Murphy - Four Years Later
It wasn’t only the back door handle failing me this morning. Penny called off without notice, so I had to deal with all the deliveries alone. And I couldn’t get the door open. The screws on the stainless steel had loosened steadily over the last month. I’d added it to my to-do list on top of a hundred other things. I kicked at the scuffed and stripped bottom of thedoor.
Trying to get the door to cooperate while juggling a crate of glass only added to the pall already building over mymorning.
“Need a hand with that?” a tentative female voiceasked.
I didn’t look back. I only hoped she hadn’t seen me arguing with the door. “Yeah, could you just turn the handle and give it ashove?”
She stepped closer, and her scent attacked me first. Then her eyes, and the contours under her cheekbones, and the hollow at her throat above her black t-shirt.
Everywhere my eyes landed threw another punch to the sternum. The crate wobbled in my hands, and she dove for one side, catching the edge before the whole thing crashed in myshock.
“Thanks,” I managed, jerking the sun-faded plastic in my arms again. She shrugged, reached around me, and pushed the door open withease.
I entered the bar, and she followed. I’d been waiting for this day. I’d been waiting five years for this day. Anger burned through me, my hands, my arms, chest, feet, all tingling with white-hot rage. I rounded on my target, already knowing this was not about to be one of my finermoments.
“What the hell? You show up here like it hasn’t been five years since we last saw eachother?”
She ducked her head, and pink colored her cheeks. Since when did she back down from a fight with me? I stepped closer, but not too close. Her perfume still seared through my sinuses. My brain already fought the memories it broughtforth.
A piece of the puzzle didn’t quite fit, and my anger was trying to force it into place, if only to give me some peace after half a decade of disappointment. The light from the open door caught the side of her face, and my knees morphed to jelly. A small pack of scars with two thin lines cut through her hairline above hertemple.
My brain told me it was a bullet hole, but my heart refused to believe Mara wasn’tbulletproof.
“Mara,” I whispered, gentling my tone. The anger flushed out of me as fast as it arrived, taking with it the foundations of the walls I’d built to keep anyone from hurting meagain.
Her gaze snapped to mine, and I caught a glimpse of her usual fight, but at this point, she’d already have begun verbally flaying meopen.
“You’re Murphy?” shesaid.
Every syllable ripped me open from the inside out. My chest seized, and my guts went liquid. It wasn’t a statement. Oh God, she’d asked me a question. In the back of my mind, I knew it was true, and yet, everything in me began to protest at the thought, the very idea, she didn’t knowme.
“Mara,” I began, my voice cracking on her name. I tried again, soft and slow. “Please tell me you know who Iam.”
Maybe I’d misheard. Maybe the stress of the morning played tricks on my hearing. Maybe she’d decided to come back and vindictively mess with me. I’d never wanted to be so misused in mylife.
She rocked a second on the heels of her black boots, again avoiding eye contact, and then she pulled a bundle of paper from her jacket and slapped in on the bar besideme.
Mara doesn’t know me. Mara doesn’t know me. Mara doesn’t knowme.
A chill raced through me. I retreated from her now questioninggaze.
Onestep.
Twosteps.
Until my back hit the edge of the bar top counter. I reached out for something to grab onto, anything to stop my hands from shaking, my mind from raking through every moment I ever stole withher.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t dothis.
Forcing myself to look at her felt like inching a pen knife toward my iris. My muscles locked up, and I slid down the lip of the bar, to the rail, then to thefloor.
There were still peanut shells under the edge of the frame. I’d have to tell Penny to clean better on nights sheclosed.
I couldn't breathe. The panic was already there, and I rocked and rocked androcked.
