The End of The World -
Part One
The day had been hell.
They’d had five fussy clients in and out of the office all day and,
to top it all off, Harlan St. James, president of the company was out
sick so she’d been forced to play apologetic hostess all day.
She was bone-tired and her
face hurt from smiling. All she wanted was to go home.
Home.
It was still such a
strange idea to her.
Her mother had been a
professor of evolutionary psychology, who—no matter how hard she
tried—just couldn’t quite make tenure. So they’d constantly
been moving about from college to college, trying to make her
positions stick.
Growing up in temporary,
month-to-month apartments—and then finally her own college dorm
rooms followed by her own cheap efficiency apartment—Ivy had never
really had a real home until she’d moved into Marcus Ramirez’s
house.
But it’d felt like home
since the first time she stepped foot in it. As if she and the space
recognized the other’s soul. It looked like the sitcom houses she’d
stared at with such fascinated longing when she was young. It was a
tall, if narrow, brown Victorian, sandwiched between identical blue
and brick-colored ones. Comfortable. Settled. With steepled towers
and patterned clay tiled roofs. It even had a white picket fence
encircling it. It was what she’d always dreamed of as a child,
every time she’d had to pack and unpack her life into as many
cardboard boxes as their small, fuel-efficient car could hold.
It was Marcus’s dream
house too, she knew. Having been shuffled around the foster system
his whole life, Marcus understood Ivy’s desire—her driving
need—for a home. He had it too. He’d once told her that he’d
bought this house almost before he’d been able to afford it, often
choosing mortgage over food because while he could survive a day—even a
week—off just scraps and leftovers, he just couldn’t survive
losing this house. His home.
Maybe that was why—that
strained, awkward night three months into their relationship—when
she’d told him her most guarded, rarely spoken secret as they sat
in front of the fireplace in his perfect house, he hadn’t looked at
her like she were crazy. Hadn’t looked at her—like so many others
had—as if she were damaged.
She remembered that
thoughtful look on his face, the quiet strength of him filling the
room, right before he’d smiled, sat her on his lap, and agreed to
be her Daddy. Her Papi.
Ivy looked out the window
of the bus at the passing scenery, seeing that her stop was quickly
approaching. She sat up straighter. She needed to get ready.
Reaching up to her bound
hair, she deftly unpinned the blond curls, letting the spiraled curls
fall to brush her shoulders in springy ringlets. She tucked the pins
inside her handbag before taking out her disposable makeup removers.
Carefully, she wiped the
oil-soaked pads across her face, wiping away her foundation, powder,
and blush. Her stress, her worries, and the toll of years. She could
feel herself getting lighter, younger, as the weight of the world was
wiped away.
Once clean-faced, she felt
freer. Felt a smile creep across her face. Not the coy, reserved,
proper one she’d been using all day to placate demanding clients.
But the smile of a child. Unburdened by worries of crow’s feet or
laugh lines. Not mentally measuring the proportion of lips to teeth
to gums, aiming for that winning smile practiced to perfection in
mirrors. Hers was a smile that spoke purely of joy.
It was magic, that smile.
The way it spread through her, changing the way she held herself. The
way she saw herself. The way she felt inside her skin. As an adult,
she was always so aware of how others saw her. Was so aware of the
fact that people were always watching her, judging her, making sure
she toed that exacting line the adult world—the real world—set.
But when she stepped into
her other role—her other self—none of that mattered anymore.
Scooting back in her seat, Ivy marveled at the fact that her feet
didn’t quite reach the bus’s floor. She kicked her legs, letting
her heels—which now made her think of times long ago when she used
to play dress-up in her mother’s shoes—swing and smack against
the bus’s wall. She listened to the hum of the engine, to the weary
sounds of the other riders, and tried to get her beating feet to
match the world’s rhythm. To lose herself in those sounds.
She turned to press her
hands and face against the bus window’s glass and watched the
familiar neighborhood whoosh past her. She breathed a heavy puff of
air against the air-conditioner-cooled pane, watching with delight as
it fogged over the world. She took one finger and traced a big heart,
taking exacting strokes to make it perfect. Quickly, before the heart
disappeared into the clear nothingness of the glass, she scribbled
the initials IF + MR in the heart’s center, sealing it—the wish
of it, the promise of it—into the ether forever before pulling the
bus’s cord to signal her stop...
Read Part Two Here
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