Tag Archives: wicked wednesday

After going to see Oscar’s friend—and lover—Sally was happy to get a call from her own friend. She was not in tears, but she was really overwhelmed by her conversation with Eliza and needed a friend.

“Sal? You are not okay, what is going on?” Mia asked her.

“Everything M, everything.”

“Did Oscar find out?”

“No.”

Sally paused in the lobby of Oscar’s building. No, he had not found out what had made her flee. She would have to tell him eventually, but now was not the time, she thought staring at her perfectly manicured fingernails. Looking around to place herself into a nook where no one would notice her, Sally made eye contact with the doorman who always eyed her. Nodding at him, she walked outside and twisted her hair.

“Sal, stop twisting your hair!”

Mia had known Sally since before she knew Oscar, and she knew that Sally was in love with him no matter how she had tried to hide it. She knew she was still in love with him and that was why she had come to New York for him. Nothing had been an accident this time. All of this was intentional. Maybe Eliza was sour because she had resurrected her thing with him, and when Sally came back Oscar was with her.

Sally had wanted him and there was no denying that now she needed him, and she was not going to let Eliza stand in her way. But she knew that Oscar really did care what Eliza thought.

“You are thinking so hard I can hear you in California!” Mia burst into laughter.

“Stop predicting everything I do Mia!” Sally burst into her own laughter. Their friendship was practically clairvoyant—they were that in tune with each other. “I have to go Mia…”

“Oscar…”

Sally nodded which she was sure that Mia could sense, and hung up. Oscar walked toward her with extended arms like wings.

His embrace felt warm and calmed her.

“I missed you,” he said, and held her close.

Sally almost cried because she did not want to lose that sensation ever. She did not want to not be in his arms again. Eliza probably would not say anything about her visit because it did not make her look very good either, but that did not mean she was not a smear on their relationship.

Sally hugged Oscar tighter, and sucked on his lower lip desperately. He pulled her in more, and she almost felt like they could withstand anything.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

friendship via wicked wednesday

I have been writing this series for a long time as a lot of you know. A lot of characters come and go…Severine is one of those. I wanted to include her in a new story this week, but I was so struck by this old post. She may be coming back…or not…but I wanted to share this retro post about her…

I did not want her to not be mentioned at all…

Severine felt happy as soon as she was in Paris. She actually loved that people did not think Montparnasse was hip anymore. All the tourist guides that she ended up inevitably reading, said Montparnasse was dead and that it only had a hideous tower.
Montparnasse was her home, she loved it. She walked with her carry-on down the slick streets, basking in the happiness of being home. She turned back toward Port Royal station.
Looking back, she should have known that there was something with Rafe. R, as she called him affectionately with a lovely and very French roll of her ‘r’.’ Eleanora wanted to know his actual name, but what woman did not love having their very own Mr. Big?
Rafe was big from the time she met him. And everything that happened ever since was even bigger. When he called her the last time from New York, and said that he loved her, she felt finally. Because if he did not love her, then what exactly had she been doing all this time with him?
He said he wanted to see her soon, and she was flying into New York for the Day of the Dead. So she joined him for a Day of the Dead party. When he saw her, her face was in complete Calaveras makeup, with extra black shadow to make her look thin as the bones painted on her. He touched her waist, pulled her close to him. They canoodled, and she filled with warmth.
He buried his face in her hair, and whispered.
“You’re so beautiful, so very beautiful.”
She looked up at him.
“Even with a death mask?”
He grinned, looking down at her looking the Grim Reaper himself, and wolfish. Rafe meant wolf after all, and he was her wolf. She had read a novel once translated into French called Le Loup et la Colombe by a popular American romance author. It was a very passionate and sexual romance…she wanted Rafe to be her loup, and to be his colombe forever.
They circled each other the entire night, she never said a word to him about him saying that he loved her. She knew he would not, but after she went on and on about his declaration with Eleanora, she wanted the romantic element to be romantic, to be drummed up.
And it was, even at a party that celebrated death. Because after all human beings created death. If they created life, they also created death inadvertently.
They ended up later, much later making love in the house where the party was being held, where there were ofrendas all over the house and things inviting dead in such a loving matter, making love. Making love in a room where in the mirror, she could see Rafe taking her in his arms. Kissing her and entering her in Calaveras makeup, so it looked like death was taking her like on the cover of an old pulp fiction novel.
She had a flight the next day, and she was happy to have some time to look at Rafe without a mask of death in the morning. Even though their rendezvous was dying slowly.
Asleep, and still, he was more than beautiful. His breath was even, as he slept untroubled sleep. She cherished this because it was rare that she spent time alone with him, his scent warm. When he woke up, his wolfish grin threatened to eat her alive and she wanted to be devoured.
It was not perfect, it was never going to be perfect between them, she thought hours later when he was kissing her like the way that soldier kissed that nurse in iconic style in Times Square after the war. That was the thing. She was inaccessible to him, in a different way than he was inaccessible to her. But there was something there and looking back on it, she would rather have a part of him than nothing at all.
And with that thought, she sat down at her favorite cafe, with her carry-on and her favorite waiter bought her a grande cafe because he knew that was what she wanted. She smiled at him, and he pushed a chocolate into her hand like he always did. He was so kind to her after her long journeys, and she appreciated that as she sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette.
Paris was the most beautiful place to reflect and dream.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

picture taken in paris, while the author was “looking back.”

“Can you please put the knife down?” Sally questioned softly, as she studied Eliza. It really was only then that Eliza realized that she was holding the knife menacingly.

“I-I had someone come into my apartment and they tried to…” Eliza began to explain.

“I know, I feel like I know everything about you because Oscar is always telling me something new about you.” Sally sighed.

Eliza shrugged, as she realized that she had drawn blood in her palm with the blade of the knife she still held in a non-threatening manner now.

“I came here to ask you,” Sally held her hands together as if in prayer. “Does he tell you so much about me?”

Laughing, Eliza tucked her hair behind her ear.

“No, because you have barely told him anything to tell me about you.”

Sally smiled ruefully.

“I am asking you not to interfere with our relationship. Your relationship with him was marred by a lot, and I love him and I want a chance—“

“To what? What do you want a chance to do? Elaborate!”

Sally sashayed before her, and Eliza watched her with incredulity.

“—to love him.” Sally finished.

Eliza was silent, to love him. She had loved Oscar, and she was not sure if that was the reason that she did not want to let go…or if she truly just could not believe that Sally would really love him.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

elaborate via wicked wednesday

Eliza had just wanted to be home alone that afternoon. Rafe left after a really lovely night, and she needed the morning to recuperate. She was deliciously sore and content.

When there was a knock on their apartment door, she was startled. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen because after the last time someone came to their apartment with the desire to KILL she was more anxious.

She saw a woman through the peephole that she knew was Oscar’s Sally, because he had shown her pictures of the very beautiful, curvaceous woman that was standing outside of her apartment.

Eliza did not open the door.

Yes,” she said, her anxiety high.

Why was this bitch at her door?

Oscar and Eliza had had a semi-revival of their relationship and then Sally arrived. Eliza knew that she and Oscar would always be friends, that was not an issue. But the smoky way that Sally re-entered his life with barely an explanation to what had gone on before did not sit well with her, and she would be damned if Sally would ruin him.

Hadn’t she herself ruined enough of him? Oscar had picked her up, but she knew that she was more than he had ever asked for. He had been for her too…

“Eliza? You do not know me, I am—“

“I know who you are, can I help you?”

“Can I come in?”

Despite her better judgement, Eliza opened the door but did not let go of her knife.

Sally discreetly surveyed her. despite what her husband told her Eliza just before he left, Eliza was not dressed for company. Her kimono was floral and lovely, but not quite right for company she did not know.

She discreetly surveyed Sally, and did not let go of her knife. She was not going to be blindsided again.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

smoke via wikipedia

Eliza felt like her own doppelgänger. In the mirror she saw herself sitting beside Oscar, but her hand was in Rafe’s as he kissed it. In the mirror was who she would have been if she was with Oscar, but her hand was in her husband’s as it should be.

Rafe nodded at Oscar.

“I thought you might need me,” Rafe said, taking off his jacket. He picked up the container with noodles and started to prepare a plate for himself, when Eliza softly took it from his hands and made him a plate. She could see that she had pleased him, like in the Sharon Olds’ poem.

He was primitive with her later in bed, and she knew it was a combination of their desire and him wanting to be possessive. She was his, she always would be. How many times had she tried to leave him, only to end up married to him?

She remembered who she was the night that she met Oscar. She was an overwhelmed fiancee—not to say that what she had had with Oscar had not been real.It had been.

But being overwhelmed as a bride did not mean she did not love Rafe anymore. Together or apart, they always had a connection like water turned to blood. She could not imagine life without him—she did not want to imagine life without him. Feeling the heat of his gaze on her, she looked at him in the dark. He did not say anything—he did not have to. The woman on this side of the mirror was his, and there was nothing that needed to be said to solidify that anymore.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

Charlotte pressed her hand to her head, Harry was lying beside her and his scent…she was like a bloodhound. She would chase him down like a bitch in heat.

Because she was.

She saw the shell he was after Sabrina left the night before, but he clung to her in the midst of it all. Charlotte did not mind being his second because she wanted him so much it hurt, it literally hurt. When she was away from him she often cried–she ached for him so much it brought tears to her eyes.

When he left her the first time before he came back to her now, she was stronger but this time he could not leave her. She could not allow him to leave her again, because she did not know if she would be able to put herself back together again. On the outside she knew she looked so pulled together, but it was all smoke and mirrors.

She was a vapor, but it was his scent aphrodisiacal in its natural form that slipped through the air and into her. Biting her lip, she ran her hand along his skin, its warmth like fire she was not afraid to play with. He stirred slightly, but she did not want to wake him up. She loved the moments before he was awake when she could study him…for the moments when she was not with him so she could remember a random blemish or hair to savor.

That night before Sabrina came, they had been having a particularly randy evening. When they left the bar where they had been the entire evening drinking like they were fucking, he pulled her to the cement staircase they had climbed up and pushed her to the graffiti smeared wall letting her lipstick smear across his mouth and throat. She had just applied another coat mindlessly—like she did not know. Like she was not trying to mark him as hers.

It was dark and Charlotte’s leg lifted like she was a dancer in the dark. She saw their shadows large as they fucked, and she clung to him because she was in a precarious position and because she wanted him so much.

She did not want to let go of him, she was not sure he was good for her mental health…but she could not let go.

More Wicked Wednesday here, and more Friday Flash here. If you want to read more about Charlotte you can find her as part of my Masturbation Monday series here.

Eliza wanted to stamp her feet like she was having a temper tantrum, and she had never even done that when she was a child.

But what Victoria had told her about her mother and father made her irrationally angry. She was filled with rage, and she had nowhere to place it. She had not said a thing to Victoria about what she felt because she was too shellshocked to.

And she could not say anything to her mother because what was she going to say? She did not want to know what she knew about her mother and father, but she knew and the past was the past.

But she had hid so much of herself from her mother and Rafe’s family for what?! What happened between two people was private, but when children were involved…Jeanne, now a stillborn sister. It was too much.

She wrapped her arms about herself and paced the apartment. Would she tell Jeanne? Would she tell Rafe?

Right then, she looked at her desktop. Oscar’s name was on the screen, she knew he was in China. Memories of Shanghai came back to her. He was there with Sally…Eliza had particular feelings about Sally, but it was not her business to tell her friend what she felt about the woman he loved.

She currently had her own issues that she did not know how to deal with.

Still enraged, she curled up in a ball on her mattress.

“Eliza?”

She heard Victoria’s voice through the door, and she bawled like a baby but it was not a tantrum.

More Wicked Wednesday here.

tantrum via wicked wednesday

After leaving therapy, Eliza went to a very elaborate restaurant as was Victoria’s style. Victoria was a long-time friend of her parents, and a mentor to her when she was starting out in her career. It was Victoria who told her to always go for the highest goal and then higher.

But when she arrived there, Eliza was saw vulnerability about this very influential woman in her life.

“Is everything okay?” Eliza asked after she settled down, as she sipped her wine.

“Everything is fine,” Victoria said, but disbelief filled Eliza.

Eliza nodded anyway. They began talking, and things seemed okay until Eliza mentioned Jeanne. Victoria looked up at her with tear-filled eyes.

“Please tell me what is the matter Victoria.”

Taking a deep breath and putting her hands on her chest as a single tear fell down her face, Victoria sighed.

“This is hard for me to tell you Eliza. I have always thought of you like my own daughter.”

“Well if I did not have my mother, you would have been like a mother to me.”

Victoria reached over, and put her hand on top of Eliza’s.

“I love you, as if you were my own daughter…” Victoria closed her eyes, and the dam of tears in her eyes collapsed, and fell upon her cheeks. “I lost my own daughter, I was pregnant but I could not carry my little girl to term. I only had you left then, so I gave you everything I would have given her even though you were not my blood. But you are everything I imagined my own daughter would have been, and when you tell me about your life I feel so happy. I am glad you have a sister now you love…”

“I do love Jeanne,” Eliza admitted.

“This is hard as I said Eliza, but the daughter I lost was your sister as well.”

Eliza’s eyes widened.

“Your father and mother, and me and my husband at the time…we swapped. You father did not have an “affair,” we all knew. I loved your father, more than my own husband and my husband knew it—why he could not stay. I got pregnant and assured everyone it was my husband’s but it was not.” Victoria took both of Eliza’s hands in hers. “You could have had another sister.”

A smile broke out on Victoria’s face finally filled with tears as it was, but Eliza’s expression was frozen.

More Wicked Wednesday here:

charity via wikipedia