Once Upon a Time...

Part Thirteen

Matthew- 20

            I'm not sure how much time we ended up staying out on the golf course. All I know is that eventually Amelia nodded off and I had to wake her up and send her back to her suite, since I couldn't be seen anywhere near her.

            The next morning I woke up at the crack of dawn, giving me a grand total of 45 minutes of sleep, and threw my bags inside a taxi in a daze. In the car ride to the airport, with my parents chatting excitedly about New York and what a great future I'll have there, I stared out the window the whole time. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach when the car drove right in front of the Grand Floridian, on the road I had become so familiar with.

            I tried sleeping on the plane. My brain refused to shut down as I replayed everything I had done during the summer, and everything I will never be able to do again. I thought about Amelia. She would have to move on sometime, that I knew. I moved on, so who was I to keep her from finding her happy ending with someone else? But the thought of Amelia wrapped in another man's arms mad me sick, all the same.

            I knew it would happen eventually. But I definitely didn't think it would happen as soon as it did.

            New York was everything I had imagined it to be as a child. The buildings rose so high you couldn't look up at the top from below without getting dizzy. The streets were lined with broken glass and homeless men. Cars horns were constantly blaring at either pedestrians or other drivers, and the amount of people everywhere made my head spin. After being in Florida, where things were slow and relaxed, New York City seemed a thousand times more fast-paced and chaotic.

            I hated it. I hated it more than a child hates eating their vegetables at dinner. I hated it more than I hated Charlie Clark. But most of all, I hated it because I knew that I had to spend the rest of my life there. I also knew that no matter how many people I surrounded myself with on the streets I would feel alone, always.

            My first day at work was less than a week after we arrived in New York. By then, I was already moved into my penthouse apartment in Upper Manhattan and all of my parents' former employees had been informed of the new position change. I was officially in charge.

            Early the next Monday morning I changed into my nicest sports suit and caught a cab that took me to the Frank's Stocks and Bonds building on Wall Street. The sight of all the balding businessmen with gray, sunken-in faces made me immediately weary as I realized this was my future.

            I leaned back in the filthy leather seat and closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in a moment of peace before the storm hit. Then, with the loud, obnoxious scream of another cab waiting behind us I was awoken from my meditation. With a sigh I paid the driver and exited the car, which brought me right in front of the monstrous building.

            My first day on the job was filled with long board meetings with rare breaks. In the middle of a particularly awful lecture by a man droning on nonstop for hours, I realized this was what Amelia had to put up with every single day.

            The weeks went by, and no other days were better than the first. Summer faded into fall, and fall into winter. I celebrated the least joyous Christmas I'd ever had in my life, complete with no decorations in the office and no time for me to buy presents for anybody.

            On Christmas Eve, I received a letter in the mail sent all the way from Orlando. My heart was beating three times faster than usual as my shaking fingers opened the packaging. Inside there was a single photo. The quality of the picture was pretty bad; all the pixels were big and grainy and the color looked deformed, like it was taken on a cell phone. The image was barely clear enough to make out what the photo was of. In the middle of a sand dune sat the turtle eggs Amelia and I discovered when we went to the beach. But instead of being whole, perfect eggs, most of them had been crack open and along the edge of the nest you could barely make out about a dozen infant turtles carefully making their journey to the ocean. I flipped the photo over, and in big careless writing it said, "Here's to the miracle of a new life... Amelia."