 More of the story... several months in the making. Sherry continued into the house, the inside already becoming dusky as the clouds started to roll in. She swept off the jacket she was wearing in a quick motion and hung it on the hook just inside the door. She pulled the tie from her hair and it drifted down her neck and half-way down her back, what light was left glittered in the black, silky strands.
Sherry was a small woman, not much more than 5 feet tall, but voluptuous and beautiful all the same. Her breasts heaved in the black tank top she wore as she sighed and bended to grab a sweater. This drafty old house didn’t provide the protection it once did from the wind and the cold. Nothing a sweater couldn’t fix.
As she bent, the faded blue jeans caressed her body snugly and showed every curve of her form. She lifted the sweater over her head and pulled it down neatly and buttoned two of the buttons on the front and crossed to the kitchen where there was coffee brewing.
Her face was somewhat hard, troubled, and almost normal to look at... a complete mismatch for the body around it. Her cat jumped up on to the counter, and she smiled. When she smiled, the beauty beamed suddenly from her face-- just as beautiful as the rest of her. She ran her slender fingers over the small cat and rubbed behind the ears and the kitten purred with delight.
She turned her attention to the coffee maker and poured a large cup, adding some cream and just a little sugar substitute to the mix, stirring with a small spoon that sat by the coffee maker for that purpose. Sherry picked up her book and crossed to the living room where she sat in a large overstuffed chair, crossing one leg under her as she sat.
She looked small... was small... in that large chair that used to be her father’s. She sighed a contented sigh and opened her book to the place where she had left off and began reading. It wasn’t but a few pages before the thunder rolled in and the rain began to fall.
Sherry liked the rain and the thunder. It comforted her when she was angry and brought tears when she was in pain, washed her melodically to sleep when she had insomnia, and wrapped her in a song when she was happy. Sherry read on in her book, but the words on the pages began to blur a little bit... and it wasn’t long before she was fast asleep, a book in one hand, a purring cat in the other and a mug of hot coffee steaming on a small table next to her chair. The rain had washed her to sleep.
*****
Roger was a local trade professional in the same small town where Sherry lived. He spent his days mostly on the phone or on the Internet, finalizing contracts and making new deals. He wasn’t a sales guy, oh no. He was just a deals guy. He never did any selling. His natural charm and wit were the tools he used to do his job, and he made a comfortable living at it. His father used to tell him that he’d never make a sale in his life, and that if business could afford it, they’d GIVE him what he wanted.
To this end, Roger knew that his father had always been right. This is why Roger was an avid supporter of local pet shelters and food pantries, and would give tirelessly of himself to others in pursuit of their goals and dreams.
Certainly, Roger had been through some tough times in his life-- even more than most people had-- but what didn’t kill Roger made him stronger. He was a fighter and survivor surrounded by tireless friends that would never let him quit or give up when times got tough. And he owed them for that. More than he could ever repay.
Roger was a heavy-set man in his 30’s, also not much taller than 5 feet, always with a smile and never too serious about much at all unless it was strictly called for. He was polite and often quiet when it was called for, but had a ruthless tongue around his friends that would always be humorous unless he was on one of his "rants" that seemed to be vigorous and bitter, but were actually meant to be funny. Unless you knew Roger, it was almost like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. If you could see his face, and knew him just a little, you knew he was just blowing off steam.
Roger had a fondness for Sherry up in that old house on the hill. He wasn’t what most would call a handsome man-- nothing, it seemed to him, compared to Sherry’s beauty in his eyes. He was truly a weak man in her presence in contrast to the strength and character he possessed when dealing with other people. Roger had a way of bending everything to his will without so much as a word. We call this charisma. Roger called it "the glass". Sherry was the only person Roger (and his friends and familiars) that could melt his glass.
Roger had known Sherry for only a few short months, but in that time he had quickly fallen for her in almost every way. Roger wasn’t sure, but he felt that perhaps he had fallen in love with Sherry. They had taken part in many conversations with one another only to realize that they had much in common with one another. Sherry would always smile in his presence, her eyes would dance in his and make Roger’s glass melt and his heart burn with quiet eagerness to talk to her-- to--- now...hold her in his arms.
Roger, as we know now, was much too polite to do any such thing and felt that perhaps this was a passing fancy, and their contact had been much too brief over the months that they had known one another to call this any such thing as love, right? But those eyes... he was transfixed by them, carried away by them. She was beautiful to him... more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. And as he looked at other beautiful women, they all were measured against her. And none could measure up.
"Stop being silly," Roger muttered to himself, "to think that in reality you barely know this girl." He tried to put her out of his mind, but found that the women all around him, the women in the shops the women walking by his office, the women in magazines and trade rags-- if at all attractive in any way would whisk him back to Sherry.
If we do, even but this one time, a small experiment and I pull us out of this story as a simple narrator and take a look at the relationship of these two people, we know that Roger is not a handsome man in the respect that women down fawn all over him. We know that Roger isn’t the kind of man that women naturally fall for. But what about Sherry? What do we know of the world’s perception of her?
She’s an attractive woman, yes. But put under the microscope of the populous, Roger truly elevates her. Her beauty comes from places unseen by the eye. To a fashion model, she doesn’t measure up. She’s not a rocket scientist, although very intelligent. She’s not a comedian, though very funny. To Roger, however, she is everything. And that scares him.
Roger feels honest pain that he cannot hold her and whisper to her. Pain that he cannot be there to share her pain and to help heal it. He feels honest pain that he cannot be there for her when times get tough. He feels honest pain that he cannot tell her how he feels because she melts him and his strength is gone, lost in her eyes.
Roger got up from his desk and walked to the window where he stared up the street to the house on the cliffline and looked at the door, hoping to see her once more. He hoped above hope that she would come down and pass by his door so that they could meet for coffee. This is the one thing that Roger had figure out how to do-- meet up for a friendly coffee. Their chats over the months that Roger had lived in the small town had been enriched by their chats.
Roger took in a deep breath and let it out in a quick sigh. This is how he reacted to the pain when he thought about it. Whether she was in his presence or not. It’s all he knew how to do. She would often ask Roger if everything was alright, and Roger would blame it on stress, or say that he was thinking or that he wasn’t feeling well-- anything to keep from stating the seemingly darkly obvious truth.
*****
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