Butterfly Weeds Read online

  Butterfly Weeds

  Laura Miller

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright ©2012 by Laura Miller.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in a database or retrieval system.

  To the Dealer of dreams

  For fairytales

  We have but one dance

  to a lifetime of songs.

  Table of Contents

  Butterfly Weeds

  Hauntings

  Second Glance

  Falling

  Masked Hero

  Snow Globe

  Battling

  Chasing Fires

  Remember

  College

  Shifting Paths

  Resolutions

  An Invitation

  Secret Crush

  A Blink of an Eye

  A Visit

  A Promise

  A Letter

  Fame

  Rachel’s Novel

  Birthday Wishes

  Fireflies

  A Question

  Wedding Plans

  Even

  Goodbyes

  A Date

  Evening Stroll

  Lyrics

  Butterfly

  Seasoned Promise

  The Song

  Confessions

  Collisions

  Home

  Love Letter

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Hauntings

  The evening was a Southern stereotype – warmer than comfortable, more humid than not, but then again, what more could I expect from a Charleston summer? I was learning very quickly that this was the only way they came – hot and sticky. Thank God for the breeze that made its way over the waves in the harbor and to our faces, though. Without it, I just know I would look like a soggy newspaper with all of its ink running down its thick, cemented pages. Minus the natural fan, my make-up and sunscreen, along with my cheery expression, would have taken off for the imaginary finish line at my painted toes hours ago.

  With that thought, I caught a strand of my long hair that was being tossed in the salty breeze and secured it behind my ear as I took a step onto the city’s shell sidewalk and waited for my company to join me.

  “Now, where would you like to go, Miss Lang?” I heard his beautiful voice echo from behind me then.

  It was as if his words had come from heaven. Miss Lang. Yep, that was my name. I tried unsuccessfully to replicate in my head the exact way he had said it. His voice had this thick, Charleston accent, where every word had more syllables than ever intended, yet each word seemed as if it had been carefully chosen and presented in a way that only a man born and raised in the heart of the South could – distinguished and from a different time. I smiled up at him, and he flashed a coffee-stain-free grin back at me. I was quite aware of just how rare his pearly whites were. This whole place ran on coffee beans and their fumes, though I hadn’t figured out why. You’ve got the beach to your right, palm trees to your left. Do you really need a better pick-me-up? And on top of that, I had found out fairly early on that businesses here operated on a 32-hour work week. No one in this town worked on Fridays. No one. Here, Fridays were dedicated to the two Bs – Beach and Boats.

  “Well, Miss Lang, where’s our next stop?” he asked again, extending his bended elbow toward me.

  Without so much as a thought, I slipped my arm into his.

  Even when he was trying to act impatient, his smile was still gorgeous – almost debonair-like – to match his jet-black hair, sun-tanned skin and soft, brown eyes.

  I put my roving thoughts on hold and turned my head toward the sky to instead marvel at my pleasant predicament. At the same time, I felt a smile unexpectedly escape my glossy lips, and I didn’t even try to hide it.

  The sites of downtown – the pier, the market, Marion Square – began cascading through my mind like an old-time slide show. There were too many places to choose from, though any place would do – as long as I had my company. And maybe life wasn’t that complicated after all because wrapped up in my arm was Anthony Ravenel – first-year lawyer, quiet but deliberate. His office was a door down from mine at the firm, which seems now to be a pretty serendipitous coincidence – considering he had become such a close friend and that with his family’s old money, he really never had to work a day in his life. But then, I guess much like all of us at 112 Broad St., unfortunately, law was his passion.

  “How about…,” I began, and then let my words trail off as I continued to ponder my great dilemma, our next grand adventure.

  I could feel strands of my dirty blond hair being tossed in the soft breeze again, gently tickling the part of my sun-tanned back where my sundress began. I wasn’t a true Charlestonian, so Fridays still involved me locked away in a small office with no windows to the world, but there was always Saturday – just enough time to get that Vitamin D that I used as an excuse to get a free tan.

  My marveling continued then as I noticed that Anthony had been watching me intently, as if each word that poured off of my lips held some precious, untold secret. I can’t remember the last time I had this much undivided attention. Even my clients didn’t pay attention to me this well. I made a mental note to choose my words carefully and to not mistake his psychiatrist-like listening skills for a therapy session. This was my co-worker after all. Though, I was starting to guess that on the flip side of the coin, it was a whole, different story. I was quickly getting the feeling that he wasn’t seeing me as just a co-worker tonight. No, it definitely seemed like something a little more. And now that we’re on the subject, he sure didn’t look like the same guy that shared a wall with me 50 hours of the week either. Tonight, somehow, he was the perfect kind of seductive and dangerous – the kind that could strike up a sweet conversation with you outside the hard walls of the courtroom but then murder you with dagger eyes and knife-sharp words during his opening arguments inside. And then, he was still different somehow. I hadn’t figured out if it was that his future was more thought-out than anyone I had ever met or if it was somehow that his heart always seemed to know exactly what it wanted that made him inherently different from most guys. Then again, he was also straight and to the point – no drama, no jaded past. He was, no doubt, someone a girl like me could appreciate.

  “How about we go…,” I began again, recovering from my spiraling thoughts once more, but this time, a sound stopped me short.

  Almost instantly, I halted and dug my sandal’s heel into a soft space between the pieces of uneven sidewalk beneath us to keep my weight from tumbling forward. I could feel that Anthony halted too, bracing me as if to catch my fall. At the same time, I felt the corners of my mouth fall out of a smile as my eyes darted feverishly to the direction of a familiar, yet long-forgotten memory.

  The adrenaline that rushed in waves through my body started at my heart and then sprinted to my fingers and knees, causing little, tingling sensations. And on the inside, I panicked.

  The hum, which cut like a knife into my togetherness, was coming from an unfamiliar, dark-colored sedan resting at a stop light on the street directly in front of us. I noticed the melody first, but as I stood there, blocking out everything – the trotting hooves of carriage rides, muted conversations – I could faintly make out lyrics too.

  “Julia, are you okay?” the beautiful man beside me echoed, sounding slightly concerned.

  My heart was beating violently against the walls of my chest now. My breaths were quickening. My legs were struggling to hold my weight. The tiny heel of my sandal had, by now, become a part of the ground beneath me, and I was just merely an extension of this small piece of earth. And somehow, in what had only amounted to a matter of moments, my world had grown so small – and nothing mattered more than hearing that melody in the near distance. And yet, somehow, I managed to find a word. Well, almost a word.

  “Hmm?” I asked half-heartedly. Even I could tell I was clearly distracted and disinterested in my company’s, for now, unimportant question.

  “Are you alright?” he asked again cautiously.

  I tried to recollect myself even as my senses were being drawn into the Siren’s sedan-like lair.

  “I’m sorry,” I answered him in a soft, unusually preoccupied voice. The voice even surprised me. “I just… that song,” I stuttered. My eyes were planted straight ahead.

  He moved closer, and suddenly, I felt his fingers interlocking mine. I was aware enough to notice that they were larger than mine, a little rougher than mine, but I was too lost in something other than us to respond outwardly to his brave gesture, though I don’t think he had ever touched me like that before. In fact, who was I kidding? Of course he had never touched me like that before. Co-workers don’t hold hands.

  “I hear the music. What about it?” he asked. He sounded puzzled, though his detective work remained patient and slightly curious.

  “I know it,” I whispered now as I struggled to still hear the lyrics from my past and the man’s heavenly voice beside me all at the same time. I wasn’t sure which one I’d rather be hearing at the moment. The beautiful man’s voice was safe and predictable. The lyrics, on the other hand, were from a time when every
thing was perfect, but anything but predictable.

  Anthony drew his face closer to mine without saying a word. I could smell the sweet hues of his cologne as his strong chest pressed against my shoulder. I was just beginning to realize how warm and strong his hand felt – maybe it was because there was such a sharp contrast between his and mine. My hand was growing colder and clammier with each pressing second. The whole moment was all so new, so foreign – my co-worker holding my hand, that sound – both of those events simultaneously. I mean, I would usually feel butterflies in a time like this – a first for us – the first move. Yet now, I just wanted him not to be near me, not to feel my ice-cold hands, my slimy scales for skin. And oddly enough, now, I just wanted him to stay quiet and still because regardless of how I wanted to feel or how I thought I should feel about him or his hand-holding or his cologne or his chest’s close proximity to my body, it took a backseat to an unfamiliar, dark sedan and its not-so-unfamiliar echo in the distance.

  “Is this one a favorite – the song?” he whispered, still trying to reel me in, I’m sure, and rightly so.

  He remained patiently interested in what had so violently stolen me away from him. My eyes, however, continued to pierce my distraction as if I could physically see what the lyrics that poured from it meant.

  “No, it’s not a favorite,” I lied. My half-truth was soft – almost in auto-pilot, the kind that was distant and low. It was still too early to let him in. And it wasn’t completely a lie. The truth was that I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to feel about it. Like him, I was hearing the song’s entire version for the first time.

  Having said my peace, I returned my full attention back to the sound as if I had no control over its pull.

  Anthony paused then, but I still said nothing. I had barely noticed that I wasn’t blinking. I guess I thought I might miss some of the lyrics or something if my eyelids lingered over my intense, green irises too long. My glossy lips too were wrapped up in my body’s so-called revolt, never touching each other as I stared longingly. And my chest rose and fell as if it took great pains to control its pattern.

  “Do you like the artist then?” I could faintly hear Anthony ask me – almost as if from a distance.

  I swore my heart stopped momentarily then as I unintentionally squeezed his hand tightly – tighter than one should squeeze a hand she was holding for the first time.

  The artist. If he only knew.

  I still said nothing.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Julia?” he asked, sounding just short of worried.

  No, was what I wanted to say, but I didn’t, as a decade of memories and what seemed as if it were a heartfelt confession flooded my mind and lay heavy on my jaded heart. I could tell Anthony was starting to grow concerned by my short leave of absence and my sudden, distressed state. His voice held a lingering uneasiness, and I knew I wasn’t being fair, but I still couldn’t tear my stare away from that old sedan even as the traffic light turned a blaring green and the vehicle sped away, taking its melody with it.

  I stared for long, drawn-out seconds until I was unable to see the car any longer. Then my eyes followed a conscious path from my elbow to my clammy hand to his hand and then up to my company’s questioning, soft, brown eyes.

  “Yes, I’m fine. It’s nothing,” I said softly, hastily, habitually tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.

  His big, chocolate, long-suffering irises made him look like an anxious puppy, waiting for its master to recognize its presence, waiting for her to say something, waiting for her to come back to him. He was so gorgeous – the mysterious, foreign kind of gorgeous – if you could call the South a foreign land. Really, he was the kind that you dreamed about – and here I was getting lost in some loud, old sedan. I knew that he probably didn’t get this type of behavior very often. And he was so innocent, still so oblivious to my past and the people who had shaped it. And he looked as if he wanted me to say that I was fine and that my world hadn’t just turned on its end, but I wasn’t fine, and I wasn’t ready to act like I was either. I wasn’t ready to come back yet.

  I took a second to take one more glance back at the cobble-stoned piece of the world where the old sedan had been resting just moments before. The car was definitely gone now, and by now a much larger, rusty pick-up truck with an early American flag plastered across its back window had replaced it. There was no music pouring from its speakers – no more lyrics, no more words. With the sedan, had gone the song, and it had left my world painfully quiet and eerily still.

  I turned back toward the harbor as my eyes caught once again the surprisingly sultry creature still attached to my hand, still waiting unwaveringly for my reply. I counted it a blessing that he was still there, that he hadn’t fled in my brief lapse of worldly consciousness. It was time to come back. After all, it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t just dropped the entire weight of my past onto my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “How about the pier?” I both asked and stated with the best sincere smile I could muster up, forcing my attention back to him, back to us. I must choose my words carefully, I reminded myself.

  “And, no, he’s not my favorite artist,” I said to him softly.

  I took a deep breath in and then let it out slowly. Then, I flashed another half-hearted grin back up at him just before taking one last look over my shoulder.

  “He used to be,” I whispered.

  Second Glance

  I could feel the fire warming my face as I stretched my bare fingers closer to its flames. The smell of burning logs filled the air around me and sunk deep into the fibers of my hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans. My eyes were entranced by the orange blaze, watching it sizzle and pop as it ate away pieces of the cedar’s bark little by little. The night surrounding the fire was unseasonably crisp, but not altogether unusual for a Missouri summer, and voices echoed in my background over the flames’ constant chatter.

  “Hey, Julia,” I heard one of those voices call out from behind me.

  Before I could turn around, a lanky, teen-aged boy jumped over the log I was sitting on and plopped down next to me.

  “Oh, hi, Jeff,” I said cheerfully, after he was already making himself comfortable. “Getting a little chilly out there away from the fire?”

  “Nah, I’m alright,” he said shyly, then paused.