When Cellphones Go Crazy
by Jeremy Bursey
Copyright 2015 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
PART ONE: Veni
PART TWO: Vidi
PART THREE: Vici
Author’s Note
Ebook Version
About the Author
Other Books
Contact and Questions
PART ONE: Veni
When he briefly met Melissa at the university party last semester, Avery Ward collapsed from the wave of deep smit overpowering him. Whether those supercharged feelings surged at him through her laugh or her smile, he couldn’t tell, but they hit his stomach full force with the weight of iron, keeling him over onto the backroom sofa. Melissa was enchanting from head to handbag, like an adult-sized pixie fluttering up from the depths of a mirror-calm spring. He couldn’t avoid his eminent infatuation with her, or the punch to his gut that her telekinetic beauty had given him. And he didn’t want to.
As he prostrated across the couch, nervous of the words filling in his mind, he resolved, somehow, to speak to her again before the night ended. After a violent season of heartbreak, he needed her intoxicating face to numb his pain and her warm touch, assuming she was warm, to bring him back to the living. Although she was woman, like the beast that had mauled him in August, she was also soft. For that, he had to believe in her sensibility—that her first sixty seconds of cozy amiability, before she had gotten that call on her cellphone, were genuine.
Therefore, once he finally found the courage to initiate the sequel to his interaction, his emotions were bushwhacked when he discovered she had left the party. He fell on the couch again, smitten not by infatuation but by the cold, cruel hand of life. He even cursed the old hobo who lived in the fraternity house attic for his ill fortune, not that the hobo had anything to do with it; it just felt right.
Sometime later, when he recovered from his daze, Avery Ward felt the wave in his bowels sucking his nerves down into a whirlpool. He didn’t know whether to cry or to puke. Fortunately, he chose to cry, since the party was still raging around him, and the frat brothers wouldn’t have liked him vomiting in the crack between the couch cushions. He stayed there the rest of the night. A few people may or may not have sat on him at some point.
The story might have been common fare for most guys his age, but a spellbinding of this level had happened to him only three times before—most recently with Allison, the girl who betrayed him. For the crush to happen again, with Melissa, he was convinced that she was special. But seeing that she had walked out of that party, leaving him bereft of a second chance to converse with her, burned into him a torment equal to the fierceness of a bloodthirsty bog monster, which he believed was pretty fierce. He was afraid he had been burned for the fourth time.
So he had to thank God for second chances when he veered into the condiment aisle of a ritzy supermarket several months later to find her shopping there.
***
Melissa strained to grab a bottle of olive oil from the back of the top shelf, facing opposition from her inch-too-short arm length. Her long, wavy brown hair danced against her shoulders as she bobbed on her feet trying to divide the mass of fatty cooking grease cans that blocked her target. Unfortunately for her, her efforts were futile. Fortunately for Avery, he had a window of opportunity to unfutilize them. His arms were just the right length. He was pretty certain of that.
Avery examined his desire to assist her first. As long as she was in his sights, she had the potential for needing him in other, more important matters. What if she couldn’t pay for her groceries? He could swoop in to cover her ticket. That would certainly drop him smack dab in the middle of her radar. Heroes weren’t born for small things, but small things were judged by the eyes of the beholder. Buying her groceries would’ve been huge. This small thing seemed legitimately small; coming up with a credible reason for rescuing her would’ve required rationale. He figured a stock boy could drag a ladder into the aisle and kick the bottle off the shelf as easily as he could stand in her place. It was a small thing. But he didn’t want to give a stock boy such advantage. Her petite form stunned him: a physique resembling a pepper mill, moderate in length and remarkably thin, hands shaking to finish the job she had started. Just his type. The thought of a stock boy thundering in and stealing his advantage actually brought him to a slight panic. He dug his fingernails into the edge of the soup shelf as he thought about this. Buying her groceries for her would’ve been a grand gesture, but this was one he could act on now, and sometimes now was the antithesis to never.
He made his decision: He had to act fast. Whether he could develop a convincing story to sidle up to her or not, he wasn’t sure. For all he knew, she had forgotten about him.
There was only one way to find out.
In his heart he knew he didn’t need any more bottles of olive oil for his pantry, but he didn’t want his brain to know that. After taking another short breath to verify his aliveness, he stepped once, then twice in her direction, followed by several more until he stood within whispering distance of her. He smiled at his newfound courage. This was definitely the better choice. He could already taste the scent of her Evergreen Dream perfume pilfering the staleness in his nose. Smelled like peppermint and spring water!
“Here,” he said, feeling some heat rising from his collar. “Let me help you with that.”
Without waiting for a response, he pushed the remaining cans of grease aside and grabbed for the first olive oil bottle in reach. It felt wet and slimy, so he searched for a dry one. Satisfied with the better choice, three options later, then scrutinizing a fourth or fifth just to savor the moment beside her, he pulled the first bottle from the shelf and placed it in her hand. He considered stroking her soft palm free of the oily residue on the bottle for added bonus, but decided that might be too forward. Probably better to have gone with the drier option. At that moment, he caught glimpse of her green eyes and lost his train of thought.
“Thanks,” she said.
He expected more from her, perhaps a demure smile or seductive hair-flip, but he received only thanks. After placing the bottle into her shopping cart, she scooted off. The moment seemed wasted. But watching her skirt rise and fall made the departure worth it. He just wanted so much more. How to get it though….
Another moment passed before he remembered why he’d come down the aisle: He had to find some Italian dressing and steak sauce for his barbecue bash on Memorial Day weekend, which his college friends had commissioned him to host. Since he knew his fraternity brothers were an analytical lot, he wanted to acquire the highest quality of condiments available to waylay them of overreaching opinions they might form about him, or at least to distract them from his lack of wealth. Even though his miniscule salary had made it difficult for him to shop at classy, high-quality supermarkets, he reasoned that the risk to buy into the National Chain Grocery Saver would have had a nice deceptive payoff. Of course, he hadn’t counted on the anomaly of the salad dressing aisle distracting him.