Longing For December - Shelia Burket (best short novels of all time .txt) 📗

Tiny Black Box

“Christmas was wonderful and we were happy”. Savanna reads an entry written nearly a year ago in her journal.“So why am I alone?” His work is there… Mine is here… “MY" heart is there…Is his here? She wandersand begins to write; Dear journal… Why am I so stubborn? Why do I settle for being lonely, when I could be so happy? He calls and begs me to come to Tennessee. I tell him I can’t…he sounds disappointed. He says he loves me. I think I love him. I’m not sure I ever really stopped. “What do I do?” She puts down her journal refills her coffee cup and heads for her antique rocker. Grandmas quilt over her shoulder, Clyde at her feet. She curls up in the rocker. Sipping her coffee. She remembers Blake swinging on the porch swing and smiles. The sky is amber and shades of pink and gold. The air is chilly, its October now, the leaves are falling. She begins to cry. Blake Daniels architect age 41 he sits at a desk in a high rise office building, going-over blue prints, his mind drifts back to December…snow covered mountains, he thinks of her. He picks up the phone and lays it back down. He taps his pencil on his desk. His hands cover his face and then pounds his fists on his desk. Papers fly to the floor. His pencils fly through the room and hit the wall. Shaking his head, he laughs to himself… he was nineteen, he and Savanna, then sixteen go to a Def Leopard concert. They catch a ride with Blake’s friend Mike in the ‘green goober’, Mike’s sad but handy transportation. Savanna looks hot! Her hair is untamed a definite 80’s do. He picks her up; she’s wearing a black mini skirt with a zipper from the thigh all the way to the waist. Her black hose had a seam down the back, black boots, nails and top. Very sexy! Until she totally wiped out in a pool of beer! First her and Blake were talking then he looked back and it’s like”, where’d she go?” She bit the big one!” Totally embarrassing! It was their first real date. She recovered from her fall and they had a wonderful time. He shakes his head and smiles,” I miss you,” he says to himself. He grabs his leather jacket and calls it a day. Driving down the highway in Knoxville Tennessee, Blake’s mind travels back once again to the year he was nineteen. He smiles and shakes his head as he remembers her sweet smell, her soft lips. He feels her in his heart, a knot in his stomach, he suddenly feels sad. He sees her crying as he leaves her, he wants to comfort her. Her sad eyes haunt him. He sees her face in every girl, he remembers her, and he longs for her. Will he ever hold her again? Would he ever dare to reach out to her, would she reject him, could he bare it? After Blake’s marriage had crumbled, he periodically dated nothing serious. Who ever she was, she never lived up to Savanna. He resented her at times, but he knew it was him that was at fault.
He pulls into the driveway to pick up Jake, now 5 from his mother’s. Jake the spitting image of Blake with his mothers green eyes, although his green eye s reminded him of Savanna. Maybe that’s what drew him to his wife. She too was a short red head, sweet but not faithful and defiantly not Savanna. Would his fear and stubbornness keep him away from her forever? After an afternoon at the movies with Jake and a trip to the toy store he returns him to his mother’s house at 7:30pm. Driving home he thinks of her again… his auburn dream. He recalls the letters that she had written, he kept them all. One in particular contained a poem, which he had set to music with his acoustic guitar. He hums the tune and sings the chorus (which was all he could remember). Finally he arrives at his house, it’s a little after 8pm. He unlocks the door flips on the light and heads for the closet. In a small wooden box in the corner of the bedroom closet was her letters. Neatly stacked, he takes the string around them off and fumbles through them one by one. It’s the pink envelope that smells of lilacs. He talks to himself. Actually they all smell of her lilac perfume, but they all weren’t pink so it was easy to find. He takes it out of the envelope carefully he unfolds it and sighs. He begins to read, it comes back to him he picks up his guitar and begins to sing…


Precious Moments in Time

All we had was a moment in time,
How could we have lived and loved a lifetime…
in my mind I play it back again and again,
Precious moment in time…
In the corner of my mind,
Little pieces of my heart,
Takes me back to the start…
Take me back to when you were mine,
Back to that precious moment in time…
A look my way a little smile,
Come and walk with me for awhile…
Two hearts beating at the same time,
A kiss under the moonlight makes a precious moment in time…
Stolen moments no one has to know,
I think I love you I know I need you so hold me,
Like this might be the last time…
Let me hold this moment in my heart forever.
Precious moments in time…
Memories flooding my mind take my hand,
And take me in your arms again…
In you I find a lover and a friend,
Precious moments in time…
In the corner of my mind little pieces of my heart,
Take me back to the start…
Take me back to when you were mine,
Back to that precious moment in time.


He smiles and sits his guitar in the corner, letter by his side on the bed, he wipes a tear that ran down his cheek, “How could I have lost her?” he kicks a shoe across the room. Lying back on his bed, letter in hand he lays it across his chest and stares at the ceiling. I need a cigarette he grumbles. He quit but kept them in the night stand for such emergency. Purely a stress smoker these days. He lights up his emergency Marlboro red and takes another letter. The clock chimes at midnight he grabs a pillow and sleeps on the floor by a over run ashtray and a pile of letters from a distant love. Morning finds him too soon, but work calls so he has to answer. He jumps up and heads for the shower to begin the day. Little did he know this would be the day that would lead him to her. Two cups of coffee and one for the road he grabs his keys and heads for the office. He sometimes wanders what it would have been like to have been a part of her family, what their lives would have been like. He left a part of his heart when he left her behind. He wanders if she ever thinks of him…
Savanna curls up in her grandmothers quilt journal in hand in her favorite spot, in the rocker on the front porch. She sips a cup of hot tea with honey and lemon, a switch from her usual coffee, (clearly she was a addict). At least to the caffeine if not the coffee.
I close my eyes and he touches me again. No matter how many years come between us, he is there waiting for me. In every thought, every dream, of fiber of my being longs for him. The past that I thought I left behind haunts me like a sad song. Pulling at the strings of my heart, I want to run to him. “Is it too late?” My love for Ryan is true, it always will be, but Ryan is gone and before Ryan Blake held the key to my heart. Maybe there were two keys all along. Is it wrong to have loved and lost and to love again? In a way I have lost them both, but maybe what was lost with Blake was there all along. Is it wrong to love two men in a lifetime? Two men so differently, yet loved equally. I think sometime there are some similarities. I saw Blake in Ryan, yet Ryan was his own person. I didn’t want him to be like Blake, he wasn’t. Yet he had that little rebel edge I found so sexy. Ryan will never in this lifetime hold me again, but maybe…destiny will be kind enough to bring me full circle with Blake. When I sleep at night I see him with both of his hands touching my face, I feel his tongue against mine, his breath on my neck, his hand now touching my back, his hands warm. I miss him, I love him, “Oh my God, I do love him,” she finishes her tea and was off to work, she got to the shop a little early to make coffee for her customers (and for herself). She started, took out her paints and began with a beautiful winter scene of the river.
After a long days work 6 pm Blake Daniels sits alone in his room. He opens the drawer by his bedside. In it is a box, a tiny black velvet box. He takes it out and opens it. Inside is a diamond ring, marquee cut, one ct. He bought it in hope that Savanna would come to Tennessee with him. She felt she couldn’t leave, he felt the same. Now both of them were miserable. He thought of December, he imagined touching her. He knew he must go to her, that his life would not be complete without her. He smiled as he thought of the paintings in her shop, of the mountains, of her family, of the way she looked covered in paint, her hair all tossled. Like her mother she was a beautiful artist. Her mother still painted some too. Her dad retired from the army. She had a sister, a N.Y. business woman and her brother was a musician. Staring out the window at the snow falling down, she smiles. She runs her finger tips across her lips remembering the way his wet lips felt against hers.
Drifting back in time once again to the year she turned sixteen...Her mother had gone to store and taken the kids with her. At last they were all alone. Time was limited, yet precious, every second she heard her heart beat louder with each breath she drew. At first she sat in the living room chair, no words spoken. He walked over from the couch and stood by her chair, taking her hand. Still no words, she couldn’t even look at him she was so intrigued by him, yet intimidated. He stood beside her like a gentle giant…he softly brushed the back of her against him, still she couldn’t say no words. He squeezed her hand gently, still moving it slowly across his faded Levi’s. He bent down and said “come over here”. He took her by the hand and faced her, her back against the living room door. He began to kiss her this time she looked at him, again he kissed her, her neck, her lips, and her shoulders. She could hear him breathing he was so beautiful,