From The Heart by Kristina Ortiz - HTML preview

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47

 

 

 

be Nathaniel Rivers, but tonight, you’ll see the real me. I am back. I am in your life and this time, I am not going to leave you here by yourself. I am here to stay. “You know, I think you‘re suffering because you‘ve never really moved on. Ever since we met…” he finally found something to watch and he tuned to the show. It was a stupid soap opera on one of the local channels, but he liked it. He enjoyed drama in any form. These TV shows gave him hope that these meaningless beings that called themselves human, that they had feelings and emotion, and they were not as evil as they seemed to be. In reality, Marlon Smiley was never human. He did everything imaginable to seem human. He had numerous procedures done on his face, including his eyes. He made his pupils seem dark, like everyone else‘s, and he even got those ridiculously-expensive contact lenses that he‘d created, that, if worn for more than three months, would permanently change the color of one‘s eyes. Marlon changed his eye-color from lilac to green, the normal, but bright green. In reality, Marlon was so incredibly beautiful that now that he was showing his true face to his true love, he was just like the Brady twins, Robinson and Caleb, and like all these other extraordinary living things. His physical and inner beauty could not be measured. “…You‘ve been talking to me about Smiley. His death really broke your heart, didn‘t it?”

 

Geri came to the living room with the cup of cappuccino in her hand. It had chocolate-flavored creamer on it, and the coffee mix had a little bit of chocolate flavor in it also. She wanted to impress him just the way that he‘d impressed her. “Yes, Nate, it really broke my heart. That‘s why I‘d appreciate it if we didn‘t talk about him right now, or ever. I‘m sick of ruining every moment we share together by talking about him. Me talking about him, I am not going to bring him back to me, am I?”

 

That’s what you think. “I think you‘re right,” he said as she sat beside him and he took his cup of coffee in his hand, and finally, he took a sip and a few swallows. She‘d been incredibly successful at impressing him. She knew that he absolutely adored coffee, but this particular cup of coffee was perfect. The coffee was hot, not too sweet or unsweetened, it was creamy, and delicious… the coffee that he‘d craved and couldn‘t have since this morning, when he had to rush to work because he had woken up late. Just sixty seconds later, the coffee was gone. Nate put the empty cup down on the coffee table and stretched his legs on the coffee table, just like he‘d done since he first met Geri by coincidence, and she invited him into her home, just because she needed someone to talk to at the moment, someone with whom she could share things that she‘d never told her family about Ricky and Marlon.

 

“For some reason, you are starting to look familiar,” said Geri, his arm around the back of her neck and on her shoulder. He didn‘t dare to lay his hand on her big and welcoming breast because they‘d been friends for almost a year, and he respected her as much as he loved her. They met one afternoon when Nate‘s beloved cat, Mia had gone missing, and he was searching for her around the neighborhood. He went to each house and knocked on the door. The men that answered the door would simply say that they hadn‘t seen any cats and shut the door right on his face. The women that answered the door would invite him to come in and seduce him. That totally turned him off because he knew that all of these women were married and he wanted a woman for him. He didn‘t want someone else‘s woman. Geri was crying when she answered the door for him that day. She told him that she hadn‘t seen a cat with the characteristics that he gave her, and that she really wanted to talk to someone, so she invited him in, they started talking about Marlon, and from that day on, every night, they would drink coffee together and talk about