METANOIA

LISA

As Silas reached the kitchen, he heard another familiar voice, "Where is he?"

Misha said, "He is changing in the bathroom."

Anda added, "He should be out any minute. He's been in there for a while..."
Silas walked toward the back door of the kitchen. It led to the patio in the backyard, which was where the voices were coming from. The door had a large window in it and Silas could see them through the linen curtain. Anda, Pete, and Misha were talking to someone; someone who looked familiar. That is when he saw Lisa for the first time in over three years, although he could only make out her silhouette.

As he reached for the door handle, something inescapable and familiar crawled up his spine. He felt a knot in his chest, but neither panic nor fear was attached to it. It was the same sensation he had felt when he first arrived in the backyard, but indescribably more intense. He felt lighter, but his breathing became erratic. He wasn't sure if he liked this sensation; he was not used to losing his sense of self.

He took a second to reorient himself, took a deep breath, and opened the door to step out onto the patio.

He saw Lisa in the backyard, this time in full frame rather than a silhouette. As she turned toward him, the sensation intensified to the point of becoming overwhelming, and in Silas' now skewed perception, that instant seemed to stretch to a few minutes. In that moment, all that was in his head reduced to white noise...

Misha noticed Silas stepping awkwardly out the back door, "Aaaaand here he comes. Are those my shorts?"

Lisa exclaimed, "Oh, man!"

The moment had passed, and he found himself in the warmth of a strong embrace that almost sent him flying over the edge of the patio. He felt like he was being rescued from drowning in his own thoughts. When his brain became capable of thought processing, he found himself staring into a pair of hazel eyes that smiled back at him reassuringly. This was a more flattering angle for Lisa. Her beautiful face glowed in the sun. There was a small beauty mark just above her lip, and her once short hair had grown longer, with curls that flowed around her. Lisa had given him a huge, friendly hug that pushed both of them to the edge of the patio. Silas could feel the railing dig into his back slightly, but he didn't care.

Despite her glamorous figure, Lisa could, given the opportunity, swear like a sailor who hasn't seen land in six months. She considered that swearing at people was as useful as complimenting them. Lisa had, at least for most of her life, smoked like a chimney, which made her voice slightly raspy. She tended to distance herself from people with sarcasm, dry and somewhat harsh criticism. She was, in some ways, an asshole...

Then again, all of that was also a complete farce.

Beneath the veil of coarseness, Lisa was sensitive and caring to her core. Behind all the swearing was the eager desire to push people to do better, become better people. While she thought etiquette was a social foxtrot, morals and principles were almost a creed for her. She didn't compliment people because she believed compliments were redundant and overused. When used aptly, the phrase, "Fuck you," could convey a number of compliments. It was her way of showing affection. And underneath all the crassness, her life was ruled by love, universal and endless love. She was smart, to say the least, and her intelligence, combined with her cynicism and acerbic sense of humor, made her disarmingly witty. But there was pain there too, which frightened the little child in her when anyone offered her warmth.

Lisa was also incredibly beautiful, as her Nigerian and Icelandic mixed heritage had bestowed on her the most gracious features of the respective ethnicities. At a glance, anyone could see there was something majestic, if not graceful, about Lisa's features. In addition to her physical beauty, the thing that was most disarming about Lisa was her smile, which was radiant, contagious, and genuine.