In this installment of Washed Right Out, Riley wrestles with seeing his ex Jonathan again and there is an unusual confrontation.
Washed
Right Out, Chapter Twelve.
Prompts used: have your character buy something.
Riley
truly wanted to follow Karen's thoughtful, learned advice of staying
in his office and waiting to be kidnapped, but there was something he
had to do. He would have to talk to Jonathan, once and for all. He
could end the situation all by himself.
Forty-five
minutes. It would take Karen and Samantha forty-five minutes to get
from the Les Belles Vagues Boutique to the building where the Belle
Facce offices were. Half
of that time would actually be spent in the car. The other half would
be getting ready, stopping for a coffee and a light snack at the
nearby bodega across the street from the salon.
Who
knows—they might even be waylaid by a customer, popping in for a
quick trim and a wash. If Sam ever had a weakness, it was the
customer with no prior appointment but who
carried
cash and shot sad puppy eyes at her until she acquiesced and let them
sit in her chair for a cut. That would be another ten minutes tacked
onto the ETA, hypothetically speaking.
These
thoughts occupied Riley's mind as he mechanically went through the
motions of setting his work station on standby and taking the
elevator down to the lobby. Anything to push away the mental images
of Jonathan, looking like a homeless person,
desperation in his eyes. Jonathan, who’d
spent
most of his adult life obsessing over every detail of his appearance,
who would lose his mind if his clothes and hair were not
perfectly
coordinated and
who
often demanded the same from
Riley.
"It's
only a talk," Riley muttered to himself. "It's only a
talk."
It's
never just a talk, sweetheart,
said every single dating show he’d
ever
seen and every
relationship
article he’d
ever
read.
"It
could be..." His voice trailed off when he realized he was
answering his own weird thought process out loud. He was so glad he
was the only one in the elevator.
At
that point, the doors opened with a sharp electronic ding,
and a minute later, Riley was standing on the sidewalk outside the
office, squinting into the light of the mid-day sun that had broken
through the clouds. He wished
he’d brought
a hat. Actually, he wished
he’d brought
a weapon, like one of the mace canisters Sonia had left in his
apartment.
There
were several people sitting at the outdoor patio area of the Dairy
Square, including a woman with a baby in a papoose and an elderly
couple sharing a large dish of frozen yogurt, but Jonathan was
nowhere in sight. Riley frantically scanned the street that Dairy
Square sat on,
but his choppy-haired
ex-lover wasn't there. Even when he crossed the street and traveled
the length of it on foot, Jonathan was a no-show.
He wasn't lurking in an alleyway or hiding in the doorway of a
clothing boutique or ducked down in an abandoned phone booth.
Riley
made his way back to the Dairy Square and dumped himself into an
empty chair.
He wanted to be relieved, but that wasn't happening. He’d
finally
psyched himself up to confront Jonathan, and now he was
disappointed—in
himself, in Jonathan, in the
remains of their relationship.
He
had time before his co-workers would register his unusual absence, so
he went inside and ordered a small Styrofoam dish of pomegranate
frozen yogurt. The elderly couple had left by the time Riley returned
to his chair, replaced by a young man in jeans and T-shirt,
with the most delicious looking blond hair Riley had ever seen on
another human being's head. It didn't look so much like hair as
strands of gold overflowing in unkempt waves.
Riley
bit down hard on a sizable chunk of yogurt, hoping the brain freeze
would put his brain back in order. It didn't help. The bowl was
portable, the spoon was portable, he
was portable;
he
had better things to do than sit in the cold and eat even colder
yogurt by himself.
Something
soft brushed against his arm. He would have turned his head to look
but the voice behind him froze his body.
"Riles.
You're here."
A
hand—Jonathan's hand—set itself on Riley's shoulder. He’d
been
trapped.
Here are the other bloggers who are flashing this Wednesday:
Here are the other bloggers who are flashing this Wednesday:
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