Dancing With Devia (16 page)

Julian stretched and yawned.
The room was in darkness.
He didn’t know what time it was.  He just remembered the fact that he had fallen in love.
After a year of being alone, he knew he loved Sophie.
She had come into his life and brought light into his life with it.  His heart felt joyous.
He smiled in the dark, his hands resting behind his head.  He cocked his head and listened.
Where was she?  Had she gone to the bathroom?
Gone to get a drink?

He got out of bed and ambled through to the living room.
It was in total darkness.
He switched a light on.
She wasn’t there.
He walked around the house, switching lights on as he went.
She wasn’t anywhere.
Strange.  Strange that she would go without saying goodbye, just crept out without saying anything.
He hoped she didn’t regret the events of yesterday.
He went back in to the bedroom and tripped over her clothes.
He laughed, now he knew she would be back, she had obviously borrowed his, and gone to get something.
A woman didn’t leave her clothes behind.
He smiled and went for a shower.
 
He stepped in a slippery wet patch on the floor and almost skidded across the floor.
The carpet was all messed up and so he wiped the floor with a cloth and straightened the mat.
The toilet hadn’t been flushed and so he flushed it.
He would have to teach her to tidy up after herself.
He wasn’t her keeper, but maybe as it was early and she was tired, she didn’t want to disturb him.
He showered and came out, wrapping the towel around his waist.  He smiled, as he found his brown leather belt hanging over the towel rail.
‘That’s where I put it,’
he thought.

He picked it up and took it to his bedroom where he threw it on the bed.
He would wear that today.
He picked up Sophie’s clothes and threw them all in his laundry basket, to do with his wash later.
He dressed in jeans, a casual loose shirt and put the belt that he had found, on.

He went around the house and opened the curtains, room by room.
Today he was going to start sorting out his
closet
. It was time to remove Crystal’s things from there. He was finally ready to face it, and to start
going
through her things.
He needed to move on.
It wouldn’t be fair to Sophie if she saw Crystal’s things still hanging in the closet.
It would mean that he would have to explain things to her too.  Tell her of the events that emptied his heart before her.  He didn’t want to do that because he didn’t want any downer on their time together.
He would just close the door on that chapter and start again.
He could change the children’s bedroom into a study or something too.  But until he had time to do it, he would lock the room, so she wouldn’t go in there.
  Up until now, they had avoided coming to his house and for the most part would go saili
ng or out for dinner.

He went back into his bedroom, opened the wardrobe and took out Crystal’s clothes.
He started folding them on the bed.
There was one red dress that he saw her in every night, in his dreams.
He was tempted to keep it, but instead, he added it to the pile with the rest. A couple of times he was almost in tears, but he steeled his heart and carried on.  If he had a choice, he would never have had to say goodbye to her.
She was ingrained in his mind, in his heart and he had wanted to be with her until his dying day.
That day, far off in the future where you are both so old, that it’s a relief to step out of the body and become young spirits again.  He had looked forward to growing old with her.  He thought of Sophie, she was young, and he hoped she would stay with him, and love him the same way he loved Crystal, and now her.

He was willing to take a chance on her.
He would be a fool not to.  He carried on folding the clothes, working swiftly through them. He looked down at the floor, and found one of his shoes, wet inside.
He looked up at the ceiling for a leak, but found none.
Fetching some empty boxes from the garage he filled them with everything.
He also put the wet shoe in the charity box and threw the other in, to join it.
It looked as though a cat had peed in it.
He marked charity on the boxes and carried them out to the car. The phone rang and he put them beside the back door of his
E
e
xplorer, to load later.
When he went into town, he would drop them off.  The phone stopped ringing before he could get to it. He wondered when Sophie would be back.
He realised he didn’t even have her telephone number so he could call her
.

.
Maybe she was calling him.
Did she have
she his number?
He couldn’t remember.

Outside, in her car, Devia watched him putter around the house.  She had dressed up especially for him, and now that she could see she had been losing weight, she felt much more confidant he would not refuse her.
In the past year, she had been exercising more, horse riding more and also having sex with him nightly.  Her figure was now svelte and toned.

She rang the doorbell.
He opened it, smiling, expecting that Sophie would be there and his face dropped when he saw Devia.

“Hi Julian,” she said brightly, pretending she hadn’t see the look on her face. “I just thought I would come over and see how you are
doing
.
We haven’t spoken much since Crystal…Well, you know.”  She stepped forward, expecting to be let in, and he let her pass, not quite sure whether to bar her entry or not.
He really wasn’t in the mood for Devia.
She had been so clingy with him in the past and that was the last thing he needed or wanted.
She also spoke to him with a fake sincerity that he now found grating, especially now that he had met Sophie.
There was no comparison between the two, one was happy and laughing all the time. Devia, she seemed to walk around the world with a constant scowl and her own thunderstorm of negativity above her head.
She was forever trying to boss him around.
He had been glad when she had left, and had tolerated her from the distance of her seat at the marina.
Julian wanted her no closer than that.

“What do you want Devia?” Julian asked outright.
He wanted to get rid of her before Sophie returned.
He didn’t want Sophie to get the wrong idea, and it
would
be the wrong idea.
He wouldn’t touch Devia with a ten-foot pole and he didn’t want her messing up his relationship, which was just starting with Sophie.

“Oh, I didn’t want to tell you straight out.”

“Tell me what straight out?”

“I heard a young girl in town, talking about you.”

“What?” He said in confusion.
He wondered what she could possibly say, or know that would be of interest to him.

“Well, not really talking, laughing more.”

“What, I am sorry, I don’t get you.” His brows furrowed as he started to lose patience.  Where did she get her ideas that he wanted anything to do with her?
He had never encouraged her.

“I was in the coffee shop this morning to get my morning coffee, and there were these young kids, all s
itting
at laughing together.”

“So what has this got to do with me?”

“It was you they were talking about.”

“So what? I still don’t get you. I don’t care.”

“Oh, but you will. There was this girl…erm” She paused to make it look as though she were trying to remember something. “Sophie, I think.”
She stopped talking again to watch his eyes become more interested in what she was saying.
She felt such power, and she loved his sudden interest in her.
She continued.
“Well she was laughing about how she was screwing around with this older guy, and that he was so easy.”
Julian’s face went white as his heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. “Yeah, said she was leading him on for money, or something.” Devia looked down at her fingernails, and pretended to pick at a hangnail.
She looked up to see the pain in his eyes, and she smiled inwardly. “To be honest, I didn’t take much notice, until she used the name Julian and mentioned the name of your boat.”

Julian turned away, his jaw clenching as he tried to hide his raw emotions. Sophie had been the beginning for a new life for him, and she wasn’t who he thought she was. She was just playing with him. He felt stupid and clenched his fists, wanting to hit something, or someone. Devia watched every emotion cross his face and she revelled in his pain.  It was delicious to see.  She wanted to lean in and kiss him hungrily.  The more vulnerable he became the more she wanted him.

“She said she stayed over, last night and you screamed you loved her when you came.  She was laughing at your stupidity.”  Devia looked directly at him, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. Julian was gutted. He tried to hide his thoughts and feelings from her as she spoke. He didn’t want to hear any more. With each word that she spoke the door to his heart was slamming tightly closed.

“Was it really you she was talking about? I would like to think I was wrong, but I thought I should let you know either way.” She smiled, a fake ‘poor you’ smile.

There was no way that Devia could have known that.
She might have seen them together at the marina, but she had no idea about what had happened afterwards.  Or what he was like in bed, or had said to Sophie, in his moment of passion for that matter.
She couldn’t know.

“Ok. Thanks for stopping by Devia.” He said curtly.
He grabbed her by the arm and pushed her roughly back towards the door.
He was afraid that he would lose his temper and he didn’t want her in the way, nor did he want her to start giving him the ‘poor you’ speech again.
He opened the door and pushed her outside, and then closed the door firmly.
He went into his bedroom, and paced backwards and forwards as he thought what to do.

Outside, Devia stood confused and angry.
Why hadn’t he reacted the way she had expected him to?  Walking back to her car, she saw the charity box left by his Explorer. She bent down and went through the folded things.
She smiled again, when she found the red dress.
She was delighted to find it.  She needed that dress to continue to visit him in the night.
Getting in her car she drove off, all she had to do was wait for nightfall, so that ‘she’ could visit him.

Julian was sick of everything.  He was angry, raging inside and he didn’t know what to do or where to go.  He phoned Andrew to see if he had any bookings for him.
He offered his yacht for anyone that wanted an upgrade, but Andrew said things were quiet.
He said he would call him if things changed.

He was still so angry and hurt that he took Sophie’s clothes out of the laundry basket and threw them in the bin.
If she wanted them, she could dig in his trash for them.  He got in his car and drove around, fighting the urge to argue with someone.
He needed to calm down.

He was coming up to a T-junction and was just turning into the lane; it was his right of way, when a car suddenly slammed into the side of his pickup truck.
‘Could this day get any worse?’
He thought angrily.
He hit his steering wheel and swore loudly.

It was all he needed to totally lose it. He jumped out of his car, went round to the driver’s side of the car that had hit him. He yanked open the door and grabbed the woman inside, pulled her out, to her feet and started shouting at her. She looked at him in total shock.

“You stupid fucking bitch. What were you doing?  Are you fucking blind?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you coming out in time. I slammed on my brakes. I tried to stop. I did. I tried, but you were just there.”  He hit the top of her car with his other fist, and continued to shout. Other cars stopped and their passengers started coming over to assist the lady who was now crying, her arm held firmly by Julian. He was shaking her as he spoke.

“Hey you!  You can’t do that.
That’s assault.
Let go of the lady.
She said she’s sorry.”  A woman’s very angry voice rose above the others, and he turned to see a confident attractive woman striding towards him.
She was impeccably dressed, her dark glossy hair expensively coiffured, and she was dripping in jewels.