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

feels her stomach knot up. Taking off the lid she lifts a stack of pictures from the small blue shoe box and lays them on her lap. “Where are you?” she sighs. Drifting off to a warm summer day beneath a cloudless blue sky, she lies on a quilt hand made by her grandmother. “You’re so beautiful”, he whispered staring up at the sky above. They lay together hand in hand dreaming of their life together.
“We were so young”, she thinks to herself. “What could we really have known about love?” she says out loud shaking her head. It felt so right…. The innocence of it all. Brand new hearts that have never been broken…experiencing love together for the first time. A roller coaster of emotions, fear, excitement & breathlessness all rolled into one. “Blake if love is what we truly shared…she pauses, “Where are you?” She smiles as she sifts through old photographs each one containing a precious memory, wondering where her high school sweetheart could be after all these years. What became of him? She wanders. The memories are bitter sweet; she tries to fight back the tears as once again she feels her heart ripping from her chest as he holds her for the last time.
She smells him as she travels in her sweetest memory to his arms again. His soft lips meet hers as he touches both sides of her face as he bends down to her short stature. Ironically on the same September day miles from the love that imprinted his fragile young heart, Blake Daniels thinks of Savanna. Sitting on the bank of the river, where he often swam and fished and reflected on his life. Fishing pole, tackle box, cooler, folding chair and all the usual equipment, smiling to himself as he feels a tug at his heart as he remembers her…
“Promise me you’ll always love me”, she says holding both of his hands.” It’ll cost you”, he laughs. “Blake, I’m serious!” She squeezes him around the middle. “Blake I’m serious”, he mocks her. He lifts her up and kisses her softly, “I promise, forever”, he looks into her innocent eyes. Shaking his head he wanders where life had taken her and if their paths would ever cross again. “Where are you little girl?” he mumbles as he casts his line. No one had ever touched him the way she had and he often missed her, the sound of her voice, the smell of her…Would he ever love or be loved like that again? Only time would reveal the answers that they searched for. In the bottom of the tiny blue shoebox she finds, a sea of memories, a stack of letters with a thin pink ribbon around them tied in a small bow.
She unties the silky ribbon with a sigh. She smiles with a sad heart, picturing Ryan in his military uniform. He is so handsome, she closes her eyes, sniffs for a scent of cologne.She opens an envelope with a military stamp and unfolds a letter written on military stationary. She begins to read…

Dear Savanna,

I can’t wait to see you again. No one has ever made me feel the way you do. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, I love you so much!!! I can’t wait to hold you again, I miss you so very much baby! Write me soon, send me some sexy pictures.

Love Ryan
xoxo


Savanna recalls a letter one of many she had written to Ryan. Sitting at her dresser, she begins to write…

Dear Ryan,

I miss you too, I feel like you took my heart to North Carolina. Please call me when you can, I’ll be waiting. I’m so glad I met you! I can’t wait to see you!!! I’m sending some pictures, I hope you like them. Please send me some too, when you can. I really don’t know what to say, please think of me, I’ll think of you every minute until I see you again!

Love Savanna


She digs deeper and sees “Savanna” written in black sharpie on a big red envelope, and it brings a big smile to her once again. She wipes her eyes; it’s a valentine’s card, bright red with gold hearts. She opens it, something falls out, it’s a coupon. “Oh good grief” she laughs. It reads; coupon, good for a lap dance, massage and/or anything else kinky you can think of! Love you, Blake She run her finger across the letters of his name and began to read the card; “Sweet as candy, fine as wine…Won’t you be my Valentine?” Corny but cute, signed at the bottom, I can still taste your sweet kisses, Blake.
The phone rings. She tosses her memories away and gives them a gentle shove back under the bed. “O.k., I’m coming already!” “Hello”, she grabs the cordless. “Hey sis”, Sierra her sister calls to check up on her. “Hey”. ”You’re house is quiet, where’s the kids?” “They’re at moms”.” What are you doing?” I was just going through some old pictures and stuff”. “I was thinking about doing some scarp booking”. “Harmony and I had talked about it”. “Oh I thought I might run up”. “That’s cool, I’ll be here”. “Do you need anything?” “Yeah, do you want to do Chinese?” “That sounds good, let’s call it in, we can get it delivered”. “Put the coffee on!”
In an antique rocker on her front porch Savanna curls up in the quilt her grandmother made her. She clinches her cup of steaming coffee; her breath is visible to the eye. The air is chilly; the coffee warms her along with grandma’s quilt. Clyde sniffs at her toes, the yellow long haired stray cat that found its way to her doorstep and her heart the same day that the news came of Ryan’s helicopter going down. Maybe it was a sign of comfort…Maybe Ryan is Clyde…Anyway, he really liked her and became her permanent shadow, her permission to smile, even though she didn’t want to. He woke her up at five a.m. by purring and licking her face, time to eat, he nudged. “O.k., ok already “, she stumbles out of bed and finds her way to the kitchen. Clyde has a big red bowl that says “Clyde”, she fills it and flips the red switch on the coffee pot she had set the night before, she gazes out the window and a few stars peek through the trees it’s still dark out.
Soon it would be daylight she thinks to herself. Coffee is ready, she pours her coffee and pauses, the knot in her stomach reminds her that she is pouring coffee foe one instead of two, even now her eyes tear up and her heart is sad. She grabs her quilt and climbs into her antique rocker that waits for her every morning on the front porch. She found it worn and weathered at the local flea market. She had to have it! She loved to go to the flea market on Saturday afternoons. She loved to find a good deal. As soon as she found it sitting in a corner all beaten up looking, paint chipped,” memories”’ she smiled as she thought of all the babies that had been rocked, all the happiness the old chair had brought over the years and how she must have it! She stripped it, stained it and gave it a permanent resident on her front porch. Many sunrises, many sunsets, amber and gold flowing across the mountaintops, birds singing good morning, crickets chirping goodnight. She sits and sips her coffee and dreams as dreamers often do.
A dog barking in the distance startles Clyde. As he jumps from her lap she tries to stabilize her coffee cup. She realizes the morning is getting away from her… she sighs as she will soon be facing the holidays, a bitter sweet time. She’ll have the kids and they make it wonderful but yet she’ll be alone. Fall is soon approaching. The last days of summer desperately trying to hold on. She thinks to herself… “What is wrong with me?” First Blake then Ryan!” Is there some kind of curse on my life?” “Am I meant to be alone?” Do I choose it?” I’m probably the talk of the town.” The lady with all the cats who chose to spend her life as a spinster!” I know people talk, this is a small town.” I guess I do feed all the neighborhood cats… but… well… I don’t choose to be alone. “Maybe I’m too picky.” I don’t want to settle” I want love, I’ve been there, and I want to go there