The Third of July:
A Romantic Holiday Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake
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The Third of July
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2014 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © Amanaimages – Fotolia.com
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Author’s Note:
The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar! Happy reading… and happy holidays!
Enjoy!
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The Third of July:
A Romantic Holiday Story
“Why me?” I ask, stretching out the collar of my new special edition “Third of July” Barnacle Bob’s Raw Bar T-shirt.
Eva looks at me, pug nose crinkling and bright green eyes winking with delight.
“You’re a manager now, Milo,” she reminds me, straightening her red, white and blue headband. It has glittery red stars that bounce on glittery blue springs whenever she nods or shakes her head. “Time to earn your keep.”
“I’ve been a manager for, like, three days,” I remind her, but it’s no use. She’s drifting away, handing me a crinkled Barnacle Bob’s application before rushing to check on the delivery of red, white and blue glow sticks for the night’s festivities.
I sigh, tuck my new shirt into my blue cargo pants and poke my head around the service bar. There, seated at a table for two in the corner – the same one the servers use to roll clean knives and forks in white paper napkins at the end of their shifts – is a woman waiting nervously.
She’s in her mid-40s, maybe. I dunno, she could be older judging by the single gray streak running through her long black hair, but she has a younger look about her. Thin and wiry and alert, or probably just anxious, she’s biting on a nail and I smile as my finger is halfway to my mouth, about to do the very same thing.
She spots me, peeking around a stack of iced tea glasses and slips her finger from her mouth. I smile and clear my throat and walk toward her, trying to look confident.
“Ms. Elliot?” I ask, barely glancing at the top of her application while reaching for her hand.
She chuckles a little and says, “Oh, did I fill that out wrong? Elliot is my first name.”
I slide down into the wooden chair across from her wearing a curious expression. “It is?” I ask, cocking my head.
“Yes, it is,” she says, voice hoarse and raspy and just a little sexy. “Elliot Avery.”
“I love that,” I say, stupidly, so stupidly, glancing at the rest of her application to avoid making eye contact after saying something so stupidly stupid.
“Thanks?” she says, with a question mark in her tone and I’m sure if I was brave enough to look up I’d see a big, fat smirk on her face.
I don’t blame her. Then I realize: I never introduced myself.
“I’m Milo,” I say, jutting out my hand again, even though we’ve already shaken and there’s a Barnacle Bob’s nametag right over the ship’s wheel logo on my chest. “I’ll… I’ll be conducting your interview today.”
She smirks a little, but keeps it professional. “Thanks?” she says again, the same question mark lingering in her tone.
I chuckle to myself and scan her application, stifling the frown that’s so busy tempting my lips to turn downward.
“How do you like it at the Buccaneer Arms?” I ask, noting her current residence.
She arches one eyebrow, thin and black, and I smile. “I recognize the address,” I explain. “I live at the Silver Seagull, just down the block.”
“Oh, the blue ones?” she says, her voice a little lighter, smile a little brighter. “With the white trim? I checked those out, but I only needed a one-bedroom.”
I nod. “Me too, but I turned the second bedroom into a media room.”
She cocks her head quizzically and I explain, “You know, big screen TV, recliner, old monster movie posters on the wall, DVD library featuring the worst, most cheesiest horror movies of the 70s and 80s, that kind of thing.”
She nods. “Like a home theater.”
I nod back, looking through the large window behind her as one of our new servers spills a tray of “Red, White and Boom” frozen drink specials all over her table. I stifle a groan and turn back to Elliot with a fixed smile. “So… I see here you haven’t been in town long?”
She looks down at her hands, a fresh coat of maroon polish on her nails, already bitten to the quick. “No, I haven’t,” she answers directly, looking back at me. Her eyes are brown, soft and clearly wounded. The rest of her seems brittle as well, and subconsciously I wonder how she’d handle a table for four, all wearing a tray full of spilled drinks.
Not well, I imagine. Not well at all.
“I needed a fresh start,” she explains after an awkward silence, when it’s clear it wasn’t a rhetorical question and I’m actually waiting for some kind of an answer. “Someplace with no memories. A blank slate, you know?”
I smile reassuringly. “Egret Cove is a great place for a fresh start,” I say. “I moved here from Tennessee myself.”
“Really?” she says. “How long ago?”
“Five years now,” I say, remembering how I sat in her very same chair, getting interviewed for her very same position, once upon a time. “Think you’ll be around here that long?”
She smiles, wrinkling her straight nose. “I hope so,” she says unconvincingly.
I glance back down at her application before asking, “What was so bad about… Alabama?”
“Nothing,” she lies, avoiding my eyes. “I just always wanted to give Florida a try, you know?”
I nod. “I didn’t have much of a reason for coming down here myself,” I confess. “Like you said, new start and all.”
She smiles and looks gently away and I can feel the desperation coming off of her in waves. I look at her slacks, nice and gray, but worn; like maybe she packed them knowing she’d have to find a job and go on interviews. Her black blouse is shiny but out of fashion, her purse small and battered.
She catches me looking and I glance back down at the three rectangles on her application under the heading “Experience.” Only one has been filled out.
“So, you were a librarian back home, huh?”
She smiles, blushes, meets my eyes again. “I know that doesn’t count for much when applying to be a waitress,” she says, “and there wasn’t room on the application to explain but I worked in the children’s section, and I’m real good with kids, and I see kids running around all over the place here and…”
Her voice trails off and I nod, understanding. “So, you’ve got this great job in Alabama, you’re great with kids and one day you just decide to drop it all and run away to Florida?”
“I wasn’t running away,” she says, a little harsh, a little quick, voice cracking on the last syllable or two, like maybe she totally was. “I wasn’t,” she insists, voice breaking completely when the first tear drops start to fall.
Oh. My. Sweet. Jesus.
“Elliot?” I ask, instinctively reaching for her hand.
She pulls it back, not harshly, but only to wipe away the tears. “Oh dear,” she says, snorting a little. The next table looks over and she snorts some more, laughing, I guess, to keep from crying some more. Although now she’s doing both. L
aughing, crying, softly, but crying just the same.
“I couldn’t stay there,” she says, talking gently with her hands. “Too many memories, you know?”
She sits back, and I know; I know it’s the minute she gives up on working at Barnacle Bob’s. And she knows I know it and, somehow, it makes everything that comes after easier.
Not easy, exactly, but easier.
“I do know,” I tell her, not going into detail. “And I wonder if, well… maybe those memories didn’t follow you down here. To Florida.”
She doesn’t quite roll her eyes, but I can sense her wanting to. “Wherever you go,” she clucks, “there you are.”
I chuckle. My grandmother used to say that. I look down at the silverware on the table in front of me, wrapped gently in a white paper napkin. I unroll it and hand her the napkin.
She accepts it gratefully and wipes her eyes, then her nose. She’s not wearing much makeup, so nothing’s running, but she checks her face in a compact just the same.
“Are you okay?” I ask, leaning forward and speaking more softly. “Do you want to stop?”
She chuckles, a little harshly, but mostly at