Contrition

Disclaimer

First of all, let me say hello to you. Thank you for stopping by and reading this story. I wanted to provide this little disclaimer with this story as not to confuse the readers. The story switches P.O.V's quite a bit and that sometimes throws folk off who are trying to stay within the flow of the characters and find the stories heartbeat. Normally, it is advised not to switch p.o.v's like I do in this story. But at times I am one to throw out conventional wisdom. I like the fact that my story is told from two different view points. After all, most stories have two sides, don't they? Anyway, I have put these *** above the parts of the story where the view point changes. So whenever you see *** you'll know that you are about to see life from the other perspective. Okay now that that is out of the way, please read on. Oh, one more thing before I let you go. I solicit your feedback. It is vital to my growth and improvement as a writer. If you read this please let me know something. Even if you don't wish to rate it, a simple thumbs up or down will let me know if I am headed in the right direction. I'd like to give special thanks to those of you who have left detailed feedback, tips, encouragement and suggestions. It is greatly appreciated. If I have not yet sent you a personal thanks, I intend to do so. Okay without further delay here is the story of two quirky lovers. Enjoy.









          Thomas honestly didn’t know how serious it was until he saw her green eyes flicker with anger. “What do you mean it winked at you,” Sonya half cried—half yelled at him.
          He sighed and ran long pale fingers through his jet-black hair and replied, “It winked at me. You know, winked.” He didn’t see what the fuss was all about. He was a man of impulse, a man who acted on his urges. She knew that. After all, it was what had attracted her to him in the first place. She had to remember that. She had to remember their first meeting.

Their First Meeting

          Thomas was sitting on a park bench right outside the Starbucks on Mainstreet in Royal Oak. He was studying the passers by that paraded up and down the active strip. “Match the freak with the geek,” he mused. It was his favorite pastime. He would look for someone who interested him and then try to decipher his or her life in the matter of time it took for them to walk out of his eyesight. Every now and then, if the mood fancied him, he would follow them; interact with them for a short while. Sometimes it would be as simple as a, how do you do and a friendly smile, sometimes more. It would all depend on their vibe.

          He sat quietly on the wooden bench and scanned his surroundings. “It’s dead out here today,” Thomas said to himself then kicked at a rock that was in front of the bench. He watched the rock shoot off of his shoe and hit a garbage can, then ricochet off of it and hit some girl in her late teens/early twenties, on the foot. “He shoots, he scores,” Thomas said and fought back a laugh that was forcing its way up his throat.

***

          Sonya looked down and watched the rock spin to a stop. Then she looked over to her right side and watched some young punk in cut up jeans and a Megadeath t-shirt smile impishly at her. “Sorry. Accident,” he said and Sonya could have sworn she felt him giving her an appraising gaze.

***

          At first glance, she looked unimpressive at best, a petite girl with streaking blonde hair that was pulled into a tight ponytail. She was dressed in a brown t-shirt and skirt and a pair of brown suede boots that came up to her knees. She looked just like one of those annoying models that you see in a Gap commercial. “Boring,” Thomas sang to himself while giving her a dismissive glance. She was too bland, to carbon copyish for his taste. Then she did something that grabbed Thomas’s attention. She flipped him off.

          Hmm…maybe she’s not so boring after all, Thomas thought to himself. He gave her a wry smile in acknowledgement of her lewd gesture then did something, that to this day, he blames on a perverse compulsion. Thomas slid off of the bench and laid prostrate on the concrete surface before Sonya. Then he kissed her boot in the spot he thought the rock had touched. “Begging many pardons, milady. It was not my desire to strike your precious foot with the rock.” It took all the will power within him to keep from falling into a fit of laughter. Somehow he managed to get through it with a straight face and now he would be rewarded for his labor.

***

          Sonya would have kicked this prick right in his teeth, or at the very least, hocked a lougy and aimed for his head if she weren’t so shocked by his actions. He had taken her by surprise and left her dumbfounded. However, she quickly recovered and chose to acknowledge him by not acknowledging him at all. He kissed the boot again and went through the same monologue, this time raising his voice a few octaves. Her eyes danced out over the streets to see whom, if anyone had noticed this weirdo’s act. Not that it really mattered. She was just looking out of curiosity. There were some onlookers and a few gawkers staring out of windows or turning their heads as they passed by. Sonya smiled and waved at them all. Truthfully, she sorta liked the attention and besides, the weirdo was kinda cute. She chuckled to herself when she saw him gear up for an encore performance.

***

          Thomas kissed her boot, wrung his hands together, tucked his head tightly between outstretched arms and spoke with a passion that would make Charlton Hesston envious. “BEGGING MANY PARDONS, MILADY“

          “Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. You didn’t mean it,” Sonya said with mock impatience and then stepped over his lying body and plopped down onto the bench. Thomas paused long enough to hear her take a seat, and then he started back up in the same grandiose fashion, becoming more pronounced and over the top with each moment that passed, pounding the pavement, kissing the ground and going into the same spill, never betraying his script. Then when he was done, he sat up from his prostrate position and rolled onto his knees in enough time to see Sonya slipping out of her right boot and placing it on the bench next to her left one. “There all yours,” she said. “You seem to have more need for them than I do.” Sonya rose to her bare feet, patted Thomas on his head for being such an original chap and said, “I’ll leave you and my boots alone to get better acquainted.” Then she winked at him and started off down the street. He watched her walk away and felt a funny sensation come over him when he saw her disappear around a corner.

          What he felt was more than just a vibe, more than just a compulsion. He felt something electric. He felt fate telling him, no leading him around the corner. So he scooped up Sonya’s boots from the bench and gave chase. “Wait,” he called out while bending around the corner. He saw her padding away on bare feet on the other side of the street. “Hey! Wait a minute. Hey, you forgot your boots!” He ran out into the street and dodged in and out of traffic as angry motorists gave him the finger and honked their horns. By the time he reached the sidewalk everything was moving at a blur.

          “Just say no,” yelled some bald headed chick that drove by in a purple Beetle.
The car went by so fast that Thomas didn’t have time for one of his witty comebacks so he just scowled at the ugly bug of a car until it got lost in the throng of traffic.

          “You guys make a nice couple or threesome…or whatever it is you call and man and a pair of boots nowadays,” Sonya said and then pointed at the boots in Thomas’s hands.

          “What,” Thomas asked and then turned to see the girl he had been chasing was standing before him in all of her barefoot glory. “Oh…ahhh yeah. You really think so?” She smiled and nodded and then returned to her brisk walk down the street. “Hey wait,” Thomas cried and followed his fate around another corner. He was really starting to enjoy this little cat and mouse game she was playing. “What’s your name? Maybe we’ll name our first kid after you.”

          “Are you following me,” Sonya asked and then stopped in front of a little brick bungalow.

          “No, I just thought I would bring you your boots.”

          “Then why do you want to know my name? You don’t need to know my name to give me my boots, right?”

          “Well I figured that we could make a fair exchange. You give me your name and I give you your boots.”

          Sonya’s lips pursed into sort of a half smile-half pout and Thomas couldn’t tell if that were a good or a bad thing. Then she did something that Thomas had done a million times himself, she gave him an appraising gaze. Got her! All he needed to do now was pour on the charm. Then she wouldn’t be able to resist. So that’s what he did. He poured it on thick. He gave her his half-cocked smile, his one raised eyebrow, and then ran his fingers through his shoulder length mane and set his jaw in a dignified GQ sort of sexy way. I’m the Lion King, he said to himself. You are my prey. He almost gave her a knowing wink when his gaze captured her own. His deep pools of brown absorbed her small form and stared unflinching into his destiny. He called to her with his eyes and his mind grabbed her/fates hand.

          “What’s my shoe size,” Sonya asked and then took inventory on the puzzled if not troubled expression that went across Thomas’s face. “You mean to tell me that you are interested enough to ask my name, but not interested enough to check my shoe size? I mean, you do have the boots right in front of you.” Thomas tried to give the boots a quick scan but Sonya stopped him. “Ah sorry, you had your chance to find out. If you give me the answer now I’ll be insulted.” She wished she had a camera so she could capture the dumb expression this guy had on his face. The look was priceless. She couldn’t have ended this encounter on a better note, so she didn’t try. “Ta ta.” And with that, she sauntered up her walkway.

          “Hey, wait a minute. What about your boots?”

          Sonya spun around on her bare heels and smiled playfully at him. “Oh those aren’t mine. They’re my mother’s.”

         “Your mother’s? You mean to say that you are giving your Mom’s boots away? What’ll you’ll think she’ll say when you tell her that?”

          “Oh, I’m not going to tell her I gave ‘em away. I’m gonna tell her some kid in a Mega-Death t-shirt stole ‘em.” She laughed at her little inside joke and then ran into the house with her tight little ponytail wagging behind her. Thomas watched her vanish into her quaint little home and contemplated for a moment’s time if he should go after her. He didn’t know if what she was doing was part of their cat and mouse game. When he saw her mother and father coming to the door, he knew it wasn’t, or maybe it was. Either way, he ran.

          The next day when Sonya came out of her house she got the biggest surprise of her young life. Thomas was standing in her walkway with three brown suede boots. He fell prostrate on the ground when he saw her come out of her home and started in with Act 2. Scene 1. of his play. “Begging many pardons, milady this humble and lowly squire requests that you kindly take these foot wears.”

          Sonya let out an audible gasp when she saw him fall face first to the ground. “Oh no, not here,” she whispered then ran down the walkway and tugged on Thomas’s arm. “Get up before someone sees you!”

          “Not until you take all the boots.” He snatched his arm away from her and bowed his head.

          “Okay. Okay,” she said as she started to collect the boots. “Wait a minute…what am I going to do with three boots?”

          Thomas smiled at her and jumped to his feet. “Two is for your mother. That one there is for you. So, technically, you’ve got one boot.”

          “A boot? I don’t want a boot. It does me no go—“ Thomas fell back down on the ground and without uttering one word Sonya knew what she had to do. She grabbed the boots. “Okay. Okay. I’ll take the boot. You’re crazy you know that?”           She didn’t figure out that Thomas left a letter for her in the odd boot until later that evening. Actually it was more of a bio than a letter. It gave his name, his birthday, a list of his favorite things, and his shirt and shoe size and a quick rundown of other little trivial things one might disclose on a first date. At the very bottom of the letter Thomas wrote Sonya a little note. Fate is the poetry of reason and the rationale to chance. Fate is a girl who wears a size 5 and walks barefoot on the city street. If you believe in fate then give me a call tonight.
P.S There’s another boot in it for you if you do.

2 Years Later

          “It was fate that winked at me, Sonya.” Thomas leaned back in his chair and looked down at their apartment floor. “You know how it is with me. I feel something and I go with it.” His voice was soft and apologetic. Not because he was sorry for what happened. But, he was sorry for hurting her. He couldn’t apologize for fate. He could only act upon it. What had happened wasn’t that bad. He’d slept with her cousin. So what! Big Deal! He felt compelled to do it, so he did. And he hadn’t felt a thing, one way or another about it until now. Now he felt his love’s hurt. A hurt that he caused and it white washed his soul. The only thing he could say, the only thing he could blame it on was fate.

          “Well, if fate is winking at you then it must be frowning at me. Because if fate were such a good thing then I wouldn’t be feeling so bad, now would I?” She wanted to say more. She wanted to say something that would make him understand that everything he feels isn’t fate. Everything he does isn’t divinely ordered. But words failed to hold any true impact or depth to her right now. So she screamed. She screamed until her lungs cleared of air, until her mind cleared of thought, until her voice cleared of audible sound, until her heart told her it was enough. Then she grabbed her coat and car keys and walked out of the door. Maybe she wouldn’t come back. I wonder what fate would have to say about that, she thought.

         That night Thomas lay prostrate in the front hall of their apartment, his hands cuffing a suede boot. Inside the boot were a dozen red roses and one little note. I’m sorry.