Paper Kisses
Authors: Beth D. Carter
Evernight
Publishing
Copyright©
2014 Beth D. Carter
ISBN: 978-1-77130-811-3
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor:
JC
Chute
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this
copyrighted work is illegal.
No part of
this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are
fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
I wrote the first version of this story almost twenty years ago, and
back then it was called “The Love Dance”.
This book is dedicated to the spirit of never giving up.
Many thanks to everyone at
Evernight
and a special shout out to
Vette
,
Amy & Julie.
PAPER KISSES
Beth D. Carter
Copyright
© 2014
Prologue
The odious noise of a passing bus
echoed through the half-empty apartment.
No pictures adorned the walls, and no furniture existed except a dinette
table, upon which miscellaneous crap was piled high. Various boxes sat stacked
in the corner.
It was dark except for
the tiny kitchen light illuminating the rooms.
Alannah sat on the floor with her
back propped up against the wall, a half-empty bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon beside
her.
The dry, bitter wine served as a
perfect complement to the atmosphere that engulfed her.
She didn’t drink with reckless abandon.
Rather, her eyes carefully examined every nook and corner as she took precise
sip after sip.
A sweeper sat in the
center of the floor, next to the table, surrounded by bits of trash and dirt
covering the matted beige carpet.
The
movers had tracked streaks as they hauled out Bryce’s stuff, and she just
didn’t feel up to trying to clean the ugly-ass carpet any more.
That had been a battle she’d been waging for
seven years now, and another white flag she’d tossed into the ring.
The scoreboard was definitely
stacked against her.
Her red-rimmed
brown eyes held no more tears––at least, not the kind that could fall.
For a week straight she had cried herself to
sleep every night and now she was just plain worn out.
Instead she sat in the semi-darkness and
tried to piece together in her mind what was left of her life.
While she hadn’t been overwhelmingly happy
with her marriage, she had at least been content.
Wanting it to survive, she had
worked hard at masking minor issues that seemed worthless and petty.
So what if she had worked just as hard as he
did every day, plus cooked the dinner and cleaned up, washed his clothes, done
the grocery shopping and stayed on top of the bills?
It was what a wife was supposed to do,
right?
He came home tired and stressed
out from his computer day job, so who was she to nag at him to relax with
her?
She had her own entertainments, and
her own involvements, so their life together ran smoothly.
And if she wanted to go to the movies, or go
out to eat, then she simply went.
Alannah had thought they were so in
tune with each other, but now, in hindsight, a marriage together yet apart
didn’t seem to thrive very well at all.
Still, Bryce’s words when he had decided to end their union had broken
her heart.
“I watched an episode of
The Tudors
,” he started late one night,
coming in from his little computer room to where she sat in the living room
watching television.
“Have you seen it?”
“No,” she said.
“Is it good?
Should I Netflix it?”
He had crossed his arms over his
chest and leaned against the door jam, just looking at her.
“It was…sexy.”
“Oh,” she replied.
“Sexy is good.”
“I watched and then started to
think about you, and how you never look like those girls on that show anymore,”
he had stated, as if he were talking about the local traffic or the
weather.
“You used to be sexy, skinny,
and now you just sit on the couch all the time.
I miss that girl you used to be.
I miss the sex we used to have.
I
don’t find you attractive anymore, Alannah.
It’s like…frigidity now when I hold you.”
Alannah’s mouth had fallen open,
and a buzzing sound had entered her brain, as if a thousand tiny flies now
competed for attention.
“W-What did you
just say?”
He sighed then, and ran a hand
through his tawny locks.
“I’m sorry, Alannah.
It’s just gotten so boring.
I don’t think I want to be married to you
anymore.”
The buzzing turned into a roaring
crescendo that had obliterated every other sound, light and thought
pattern.
Alannah just sat there,
staring, her mouth gaping open like she was a fish, lightheaded from the lack
of oxygen.
And then Bryce had straightened
from the door and turned to go back into his little computer room, shutting the
door with a soft click.
That had been two weeks ago.
Two weeks of begging, pleading, muttering
self-sacrificing promises in the hopes of changing his mind.
Where had her sweet, levelheaded husband
gone?
He had started packing the next
day.
Two days after that he told her he’d
met someone and was moving in with her.
Two weeks later
now,
and here she sat in a
darkened, nearly empty apartment with a bottle of shitty wine almost gone.
She felt just as empty inside, and
just as broken.
Chapter One
Six months later
Her flight landed ten minutes ahead
of schedule, so Alannah didn’t rush out toward baggage claim since she had a
few minutes to spare.
She’d never been
in the St. Louis airport, despite having grown up in Missouri.
Years ago she’d driven away, not flown, so
the experience was new.
She grabbed her suitcase on the
turnstile and headed over to the car rental company.
Luckily, only one person was in front of her,
so she didn’t have to wait long.
“Next, please,” the clerk called
out and Alannah wheeled her overly large suitcase up to the counter.
“Hello,” she said.
“I have a reservation.”
“Your name?”
“Alannah Burns…I mean, Atwood.
Now.
It’s Alannah Atwood.”
She grimaced and avoided looking at the clerk
by grabbing her new driver’s license and credit card.
“Yes, Ms. Atwood,” the clerk said,
looking at her computer screen.
“How
long will you
be needing
the car?”
“A week.”
“All right,” the clerk said,
smiling at her.
“Midsize
sedan, correct?”
Alannah held out her cards and the
clerk checked them.
“Fine,” she replied.
But as the clerk started typing up
the invoice, Alannah’s stare focused outside where she saw a sports car moving
past the airport pick-up area.
“Wait,” she said.
“Sorry.
Do you have a sportier model available?”
“Let me check,” the clerk murmured.
“Yes.
We do have several upgrades at a slightly
higher cost per day.
We have a Chevrolet
Camaro, a Mazda RX-8, and let’s see, an Audi R8––”
“Perfect,” Alannah said,
interrupting her.
“Let’s go with that
one.”
“Very good,” the clerk said.
Alannah smiled to
herself
, feeling pleased.
“In red, please.”
****
Oh,
yeah.
The Audi roared down the highway
like it was flying on air. Alannah glanced down at the speedometer and grinned
when she saw she was nearing ninety.
For
one brief moment she felt wild and free, like the girl she used to be, and it
was glorious.
This was why she’d come
back home, to find out where she went wrong, and so far, it was fantastic
getting in touch with her inner teenager again.
Then again, it was also nice having the wisdom of sane, sensible years
so she gently applied the brakes, bringing the car down to a nice cruising
speed of seventy.
She flipped through the radio and
grimaced when country song after country song came on.
She’d forgotten about the choice of music
this far into nowhere land, although to be fair, she’d been a down-home country
girl in her youth.
Twelve years in Los
Angeles, however, had changed her tastes somewhat and luckily, she stumbled
across the one rock station in the tri-county area.
Alannah turned up the volume and settled into
the leather seat comfortably.