Amelia Cerise Banks pulls up to a dilapidated hardware store crammed into a row of small shops and office buildings.
She stamps on the brake, stops the car, puts it in park.
She closes her eyes.
A tingling sensation rises to her cheeks and travels through her veins, filling her arms and legs and soul with a feeling lost long ago.
Her eyes fill with tears.
She wants to run out of the car and smash everything in that damn hardware store to smithereens. This isn't how it was supposed to be.
This isn't how it was supposed to be.
The speakeasy that she would spend long nights dancing until her feet were sore and her soul filled with jazz, then kiss the tender dawn good morning with the swish of her dress-replaced, forgotten, gone.
Everything. Every damn thing she longed to remember.
She shuts her eyes a little tighter.
Him. Suit and tie blue enough to match the eyes that made her want to swim in the sea and drown in his presence.
For a moment, the memories hit her hard. She strains to remember the small details and big ones to piece together a night from her happiest times, to, for the slightest moment, feel her soul at ease again.
The shattered fragments of a happier time are left hanging in the air around her, but she can't get a strong enough grasp on the pieces to truly remember.
The small things linger- the bass player and his green Hawaiian shirt printed with palm leaves and his tweed fedora, the blues king with his leather paperboy cap and electric blue suit, the one that belted out the blues like it was the only thing he could do to keep his heart pumping.
She understood. She understood now that a life depends on things like that.
The nights of dancing, loving, breathing, laughing...
Amelia opens her eyes and for a moment, he's there again. Her girls and her jazz and him. She smiles.
But another blink reveals the truth.
It's not The French Slip. It's a plain old hardware store. Everything has changed.
It
was
not
supposed
to
end
up
like
this.
She should have never fallen for his charms or the dangerous promises, whispers of adventure.
Those days are gone.
The tears begin to fall more rapidly and he's more gone than ever.
Forget, forget, forget.
Amelia holds herself tightly as her body rocks with tears. She tucks her chin into her scarf, soft fabric lightly saturated with her favorite perfume. She inhales the sweet fragrance and it wraps her in the memories of his drunken midnight whispers into her ear, admiring her loveliness in every quality.
She lets him slip away.
Those were the happiest days, and she tried her hardest to believe there were more to come. But without him...
She squeezes her eyes shut harder and tries with everything to forget.
Suddenly there is a knock on the window.
Amelia jumps, and upon seeing the young police officer with his kind but tired eyes and concerned expression, rolls the window down.
"Ma'am, are you alright?"
"I, I'm just..." Amelia draws a long breath and tries to continue. "Yes, thank you."
"Do you need help?"
"No, no. I'm..." Amelia closes her eyes again. Maybe if she shut them long enough, things would change back and this would all be a bad dream.
But she heard a siren wail in the distance and realizes that the officer remains in front of her, blinking and gazing at her with vague curiosity.
"I'm not from this area, I'm a journalist. Just wondering, um, was there a lounge or, or nightclub here before? I don't recall..." Amelia asks, gesturing toward the hardware store.
The officer gives Amelia a long, slightly amused stare.
"No, ma'am. A while ago, maybe. I wouldn't know. But is there anything else you need?"
Amelia shakes her head, and forces her lips into a wan smile.
"Just a bit emotional today, thank you. I'm fine."
The officer says something, but Amelia can't hear a word he says.
Nothing she didn't know before.
But hearing other people say it makes it so real.
Her world quakes.
Life had gone on without her or him and time, time is a cruel and bitter thing.
Over time her beloved speakeasy had been replaced by a damn hardware store.
Over time she had constantly made the wrong decisions and now understood why she was so at fault.
And over time he had lived, laughed, loved, and left.
She wanted to forget him with every bone in her body. But each passing day brought with it another reason to remember.
And it was like no time had passed at all.
His, -and her- secret was buried under years and memories.
This is the story of Amelia Banks, the girl born at the wrong time, with a soul on fire for everything that had already been lived out- and the boy who made her feel some sense of truth.
He was hers. She was his.
But time was against them both.
