The Fallen Footwear
by Jeremy Bursey
Copyright 2016 by Jeremy Bursey
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Girl that Got Away
Chapter 2: The Happy Accident
Chapter 3: Conversational Therapy
Chapter 4: Hot Girl, Cold Date
Chapter 5: Wild Luck
Chapter 6: The Relationship Montage
Chapter 7: Rebounding
Chapter 8: Recycling
Author’s Note
Ebook Version
About the Author
Other Books
Contact and Questions
Coming Soon
Chapter 1
“The Girl that Got Away”
As the car sped from the driveway, mental images of the last three years flashed through his mind. Thoughts of expensive dinners and cheap ice cream came and went like lightning. Pictures of the past hovered out of reach, haunting him with the ghostly hope that he knew he would never again grasp. They mocked him with their silent pictures, invisible to everything but dreams. He stood there on that cold pavement, trying to touch those mental images. But he felt nothing on his fingertips. Just a phantom pain in the making. When his reverie exploded and his thoughts evaporated into afterimages, he found himself staring across the void at the fancy burgundy ’98 Toyota Camry disappearing from the street into darkness. The pit of his stomach lurched. He knew he was likely to never see her again.
Then his body shook. He pitched himself forward at the waist to stifle the real pain he was feeling in his gut. If this moment were true and not a game, then he was experiencing his first minutes of an indefinite heartbreak. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do about that.
Gary waited by the curb to see if she would turn around. Hope was fleeting now, but as long as a trace of it existed, there was still a chance. Her heart could’ve changed as she got further away; her thoughts could’ve longed for him at least one more time.
But he wasn’t about to kid himself. Even as he pictured her vehicle reemerging from the darkness, headlights beaming through the mysterious shroud that now separated them, he knew that scene would only ever be fiction in his overactive imagination. Nikki was not the type of girl who believed she was wrong, nor the type who ever changed her mind. If she was out of his life now, she was out of his life for good.
But hope still lingered in the particles that formed the dark cloud over his head. There was always a chance she could turn around.
He sat on the pavement to figure out what had happened. Until a few minutes ago, everything had seemed okay with them, for the most part, as far as he knew. If he were being honest with himself, he’d agree that things were never perfect, which is what Nikki had often said she wanted in the relationship, but he’d always figured it was good enough—he’d always assumed she was happier with “good enough” than with nothing at all. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d done his part to wow her with flowers and to remind her how beautiful she was, and she’d always seemed to appreciate it. Seemed. In his mind everything was going just fine. But then she sprang this devastating piece of info on him, that things were not fine at all. And that was it. That was the end. Everything he’d thought that was working out had in fact fallen apart.
The trouble with believing in something that was no longer relevant, no matter how much he wanted it, no matter how strong he held on to hope, was that he would look like a complete idiot the moment he’d try to get her back. Sure, he could’ve played the heroic lead in a romantic epic, rip off his shirt, and go chasing after his lady love like a lunatic in the night, screaming out her name. But that wasn’t his style. He was a closet lunatic with the kind of body that didn’t need undressing in public. His path to idiocy would play out more subtly. In fact, the odds were high that the only person to notice would’ve been himself.
Which was why he caught himself completely off-guard when he reached his fingers down to his belt, grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, yanked it up and over his head, and started running down the street, shouting Nikki’s name. He was about halfway down the road when he managed to pull the shirt off completely.
“Nikki!”
Even as he covered two blocks in just over a minute, he knew he was fighting a pointless battle. Not only could she not hear him, but she was so far away by now that he’d never catch her. Yet, he continued to run after her, as if tomorrow had no meaning if he couldn’t win her back.
“Nikki!”
Her echo didn’t shout back from the dark. The only voice to respond was the gentle howling of a dog on the next street over. But it didn’t stop him from crying out every minute, hoping that maybe this time she’d hear him, and maybe this time she’d respond, and maybe this time she’d admit she was wrong, change her mind, and come running back for him, even though she was driving, not running, and driving into his arms would’ve been more painful than the pain he felt from her abandonment, most likely.
By the time he got to the end of his neighborhood, he was winded. Then he glanced to his left and to his right. Nikki would’ve been long gone down the highway by now.
He shuffled his feet as he headed back home, now facing the curious stares of neighbors who had come outside to see who was causing the commotion. He gave each of them a gentle wave, but he was not at all feeling sociable. After he would flick his fingers in their directions and curl his lips in a weak smile, he would lower his head and watch the asphalt passing under his shoes. None of them asked what was wrong.
As soon as he got home, he fell to his knees beside the back tires of his car and wept. His impromptu plan didn’t work, and now he was out of sensible ideas.
Chapter 2
“The Happy Accident”
A little over a year ago, Gary Hartland was walking along a downtown sidewalk with his friend, Shawn Sizemore, looking in shop windows for a place to grab some pizza, when he heard a terrible grinding crunch to his left. A blast of wind swept over him, nearly knocking him into the nearest windowpane and throwing Shawn to the ground. Out of reflex, Gary swung his hands in front of his body to control his forward motion, then spread them to his side when his momentum stopped and he found himself pressed against the brick wall beside the window. In the seconds before the terrifying sound of metal-chewing carnage assaulted his ears, the street had maintained a peaceful ambience of birds, light traffic, and the hiss of a large vehicle trying to stop. Prior to the ruckus, he and Shawn had been talking about how hungry they were.
When he recovered from the initial shock wave, he glanced to his side to see the results of what he had heard. Three empty cars were smashed against each other and a city bus with a damaged front end was parked diagonally against the back of the last car.
The bus had stopped half in the street, half on the sidewalk, and several downed parking meters were spilling coins around its wheels. The bicycle that was strapped to the front bumper had come within inches of hitting Gary in the back. He felt himself clawing for the bricks in the shop’s wall, even though he hadn’t told his body to do that. Shawn, who had gotten up as soon as he fell on the sidewalk, ran into the buildin
g.
Unlike the three cars, which had been mashed together into a junk sculpture, the bus had suffered minimal structural damage. But the passengers nevertheless billowed out with their hands rubbing various banged-up parts of their bodies. It seemed that most of them were feeling pain in their necks and shoulders; though, some complained about their backs and foreheads while others complained about their chests and clavicles. One man complained about his groin.
Gary stepped away from the wall and allowed himself a moment to digest the scene before him. The bus had come so close to hitting him that he was lucky to be standing right now. Even though his heart was slowing, he still felt the adrenaline raging through his system. If there were ever a time to take advantage of life and its freedoms, it was now. He began jogging in place to get in some of that exercise he had been neglecting for so long, and to steady his thoughts. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he had nearly been killed just seconds ago.
When Shawn returned to the street, his breathing now more controlled and his eyes less widened, he caught up to Gary, gave the bus a once-over, and then slapped him on the shoulder.
“One thing about nearly getting killed while minding our own business,” he said, “is that it makes you hungry for life. And when I say ‘life,’ what I really mean is ‘pizza.’”
“Pizza is life,” Gary said.
Without missing a beat, Shawn started walking down the sidewalk toward the next shop, but Gary stopped him.
“Hey, shouldn’t we stick around?” he asked.
“Why?” asked Shawn.
“Well, you know. We’re witnesses to a bus wreck. Someone might want our statement.”
Shawn thought about it for a moment. Then he shrugged it off.
“That’s ridiculous. Come on, I’m hungry.”
“No, seriously, the police might insist.”
“Insist what? We didn’t cause it. We weren’t in it. Relax. I’m sure there are plenty of store cameras around here that caught it on tape. They don’t need us. Come on, let’s eat. We only live once.”
Shawn started walking again.
“How do we know unless we wait and find out?”
Shawn stopped and turned to face him.
“Gary, look. The thing about the police is that—”
Suddenly, something to his left caught Shawn’s attention. Then he hopped to Gary’s side and nudged him in the elbow.
“Dude, hottie at ten o’clock.”
Gary followed Shawn’s gaze and noticed a petite brunette in a blue flowered dress stooped over her book bag. She was massaging the nape of her neck while scanning her cellphone for information.
“She’s your type, man,” Shawn said. “Go talk to her.”
Even though a loud, metallic wave of destruction had cluttered the soundscape just moments ago, the birds were back, and they were singing. In spite of the eight-story buildings around him, Gary was beginning to notice how blue the sky was today. And for some reason, a stupid little force beyond his control was spreading that tingling feeling throughout his body. Maybe it was adrenaline. But he was near certain it was something else.
Gary found himself staring at the woman. His center of desire was suddenly at war with his center of logic. But he tried to let logic win.
“Seriously? She was just in a bus accident.”
“Perfect. Then you know she won’t be leaving any time soon.”
Gary looked at his friend as if he’d also been in a bus accident, maybe even hit by the bus, but Shawn was awash with sincerity on his face. It seemed he actually believed this was the right time and place to meet a beautiful woman, and if Gary knew Shawn well, then he knew what he was also thinking: any time was the right time to meet a beautiful woman if she was there and alone. When Shawn glanced back at him, he smiled.
“Dude,” he said, “it’s either you or me. I figured after what Victoria did to you, you need this more than I do.”
Gary wanted to respond, but as he processed the lovely creature he was staring at, he noticed his jaw was already hanging open. The woman with the injured neck was among the most beautiful he had seen in recent memory.
Shawn was dead right about her being his type. There weren’t many who were more his type. It was true that this was the worst place and the worst time to meet a girl like her. But it was a time, and it was a place, and she was the type of girl he needed to meet. Against all sense, against all reason, he knew Shawn was right.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go talk to her.”
***
It had been two months since Victoria gave him the boot, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to move on. Maybe it was typical young adult drama—he loved Victoria, she was getting bored of him, he pursued her with flowers and candy, she complained he was trying to make her fat, he told her he loved her, she told him he was crowding her, and so on—but he had invested far more of his heart into her than she had in return, and she had known what she was doing to him when she allowed him to carry on in the loveless vacuum he had somehow gotten sucked into anyway. She’d complain when he bought her gifts, and she’d complain when he didn’t, and he was often confused about what it was she wanted out of the relationship. But he was so in love with her that he’d put up with the madness. He had seen it as a badge of honor, a requirement, even, for proving his love for her was real. He had certainly made it feel real. So when the time had come that she finally shut him down, he was devastated, and he knew that destruction to his heart was real. He had learned that day that love was a sword that could swing back at the wrong moment and stab him in the balls if he wasn’t paying attention to its trajectory.
***
The first thing Gary realized when he zigzagged through the crush of passengers to reach the lady of his dreams was that he was making a huge mistake. His walk was wrong for starters. It had begun as a stride, but somehow morphed into a drunken waver. The more he thought about talking to her, the more he worried he’d mess things up. What was he supposed to say? Hi, I saw you from afar nursing your injuries and thought I must have you right here right now? No, that was absurd. As he dipped and dove around each disenfranchised body on that sidewalk, carving his path with the grace of a rhinoceros, he realized he had no starter line, and thus, no game.
When he got within eight feet of her, he turned around to face Shawn. Shawn had not one but both thumbs pointed up at him. And the smile on his face was beaming. He could already imagine what he was thinking. That’s my boy.
Yep, Shawn’s “boy” was about to disappoint him.
Gary turned back and tiptoed the remaining eight feet to the injured girl of his dreams. By now, she had put her phone away and was biding her time massaging the back of her neck. Gary stuffed his hands in his pockets as he thought about how to head this conversation. Then he closed his eyes, shook his head, and told himself that this whole endeavor was ridiculous. The girl had just been in a bus accident. The last thing she’d want was to be hit on by a strange guy on the street. But he was already there, just inches behind her. And it was too late to turn back. He could’ve just kept on walking, brushing his hair back like he didn’t notice her, like he had somewhere else to be past her position, like vanity or an itchy scalp was the only thing on his mind, like a sane person would do at a time like this. But he didn’t. He reached out and touched his fingers to the back of her neck.
She flinched at first—of course she did—but then she reached back, gripped his wrist, and pressed his palms tighter to her skin.
“Yeah, right there,” she said. “That’s where it’s sorest. Thanks.”
Gary had no idea what was happening. Was he making a move on her, or was he acting as an onsite therapist? The way she tilted her head back, letting her hair fall over his knuckles, brushing his hand with every rhythm of her bobbing chin, seemed like an invitation to make a move. But the way her shoulders tightened, and the way she sighed with relief, was most likely an invitation for something else, something that screamed, “Help! I’m in pain,
” but in a soft-spoken, almost ecstatic kind of way.
He dared to believe the latter, which was less risky than the former. It would also yield a shallower reward, but he was content with baby steps if it meant taking bigger steps down the road. He put his other hand next to the first and began to dig his fingers into the muscles connecting the back of her neck to her shoulders. Then he let his palms float down to either edge of her wingspan and back again toward her neck, digging hard into the muscle with the gentlest touch he could muster. She whined softly as she rotated her head in complete circles.
About a minute into the massage session, Gary glanced back through the crowd to see Shawn standing alone by the shop entrance. He mouthed the words “help me” at him. Shawn turned both thumbs upward and widened his smile. That was the best advice he would give.
Gary shrugged. He was basically on his own now. He knew nothing about this girl, including her name or why she was on the bus, but he did know she was absurdly attractive and, though he couldn’t place his finger on it initially, he had breathed her in long enough to pinpoint the fragrance, so now he knew; she smelled like coconuts. Not enough information to glean the future of their relationship, but certainly enough to know that he wanted to explore the possibility of starting one with her, assuming she was single. And the only way to unlock that possibility was to start a conversation, so he started with the most appropriate icebreaker he could think of, the one that would teach him whether this adventure was even worth packing his bags for:
“So, you dating anyone?” he asked.
***
The girl was taken aback by his question. In fact, she turned toward him, breaking free of the grip he had on her shoulders, for a better view of him. The look on her face was quizzical. Either she was confused or upset, but she was definitely not happy. Gary stuffed his hands in his pockets, raised his eyebrows, and smiled. Last thing he wanted to do was to appear threatening.
“Pardon?” she said.