"That's not a real word!" she exclaimed, setting her Diet Pepsi back down on the table with a sudden plop. "Crapulous? Come on! There's no way that's a real word."
John smiled. "You going to challenge it?" he asked. "I'm warning you, though. I just got that word on my word calendar a couple of days ago. Trust me," he added, with a villainous gleam in his eye.
Yea, trust you, she thought. She loved John more than life, even waiting anxiously for him to pop the question, but trust him? In a game? "I don't think so," she said.
Sliding the Webster's toward her, he watched as she flipped the cover open and thumb quickly toward the C's. "Are you sure?" he said, baiting her. "You'll be sorry!"
The sound of his patronizing tone grated her nerves like 40-grit sandpaper. She hated it more than anything she could think of, but it was worse during competition. John had this air of superiority slathered all over his 6 foot 1 inch frame and it never ceased to make her feel like she was trying to catch a greased pig.
"Crap!" she said as finger fell upon the word. She could feel her one remaining nerve twitch. "It's no fun playing Scrabble with you," she whined.
"Why? Because I'm so devastatingly handsome?" he asked, smacking his hands together and leaning over for a kiss.
She peered at him through slatted eyes and paused ever so briefly before leaning over to reciprocate. "No," she muttered. "It's because you're so smug."
Though nearly imperceptible, John noticed the slight hesitation and it pierced him like an ancient sword. She wasn't the first to slight him in such a manner, but that whole series of unfortunate events had taken years to be excised from his heart. Now he felt the pain again like an aching fire.
He had searched his soul on countless occasions, hunting for the right words to tell her about his past. He'd wanted to confess the foul deed to her a thousand times, but the courage always seeped away before he could get the secret out.
"What is it, John?" she'd ask him quietly in some of their most intimate moments. It was like she was looking through him with a magnifying glass, examining every dark corner of his existence. She always had that way about her. Though never intrusive, she could get to the real subject of the matter with amazing alacrity.
"It's nothing," he found himself muttering on more than one occasion. "Really, it's nothing. I'm fine."
Tonight, peering anxiously for rescue out the back window of his studio apartment, John could see the Empire State Building glowing like a lighthouse warning lost souls on a foggy evening. She cuddled up next to him, letting her hand rest on his and accidentally spilling half of the Scrabble tiles on the floor.
"It's beautiful tonight, isn't it?" she said, looking toward the radiant monolith.
John sighed. "It's always beautiful," he replied, looking deeply into her soft blue eyes. "Always."
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Coming soon - Part II
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