I just sat there staring at Diane completely speechless. My mind went numb the minute she said she was a reporter. She’d lied to me since the day I’d met her. Can you feel pissed and happy at the same time?
She was a reporter, really?!?
Then Thomas’s name popped up in her sentence. I didn’t know whether to cry or cheer. Diane could be Lily’s and my ticket out of our hellish life. If she turned up some dirt on Thomas, I might be able to get custody of Lily. I felt the butterflies in my gut go supersonic.
This could be it! We might finally be free!
While all of these thoughts ran through my head, I sat perfectly still and utterly silent. Diane continued to stare back at me waiting for some sort of response. I didn’t have one for her- at least not yet.
I had trusted her with a small isolated segment of my story, but I wasn’t prepared to give her all the gory details. That would take time. Diane would have to prove herself trustworthy before another word spilled from my lips.
“Oh…” was all I muttered
“Oh? That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“What exactly would you like me to say, Diane?”
“Anything would be better than just, OH.”
“Ok. Oh, how can I help?”
Those were the words Diane had been waiting to hear me ask. We spent the next hour talking and formulating a plan to bust Thomas. We hadn’t a clue what we were going to “bust” him doing, but we knew he was up to some sort of no good.
I watched Diane hurry out the Café door with a quick wave in my direction, her mind already on the next step in her plan of action. I let out a gush of air. Diane resembled a whirling dervish when she got an idea in her head. She would probably check more items off her “To Do” list in the next two hours than I would get done in the next two days. Sometimes, it was exhausting just being in the same room with her.
I willed my body to relax breathing in deeply through my nose. Then exhaling out through my mouth. I continued this breathing exercise for the next couple of minutes as I concentrated on relaxing each muscle in my body. As I relaxed I let my mind wander. I should know by now that mind wandering is dangerous. My thoughts went back to my early days with Thomas, the days when we were intensely in love with each other.
I remember the day I met Thomas like it was yesterday. I was a horrifically shy teenager, always keeping to the perimeter of the high school social life. For some odd reason, one of the older popular boys had chosen me to be his girlfriend. One night my boyfriend told me he had a family emergency he had to take care of and he would be back later on. My boyfriend told me that Thomas would be keeping an eye on me. I knew of Thomas, but I didn’t know him.
What I did know, was that he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever laid eyes upon. His jet black hair had a colic that constantly caused a strand of hair to cover his left eye in the sexiest of ways. His dark green eyes were framed by the longest eyelashes the world had ever seen. And his body – well, according to the entire high school female population- his body rivaled that of a Greek god.
How had I gotten so lucky to have Thomas “girlfriend sit” me for an entire night? We walked to the park with him on the side closest to the road, because he said that’s what a man does for a woman. We talked about everything from his football plays to my summers in Maine. He made me laugh until I cried with his wicked sense of humor. He told me I was, “brilliantly beautiful” – his slang for a knockout with a brain.
Then he charmed me right out of my virgin panties, literally. I was his from that night on…
