In Your Words Read online

In your words

  A Short Story

  By

  R J Samuel

  Including Extracts of FALLING COLOURS and HEART STOPPER

  © RJ Samuel 2013

  Author’s Note

  This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are fictional and the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or companies is purely coincidental.

  License Statement

  R J Samuel

  Site: https://www.rjsamuel.com

  Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: @R_J_Samuel

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RJSamuelAuthor

  Books by R J Samuel

  The Vision Painter Series

  Medical Thriller

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  SHORT STORY – In Your Words

  About the Author

  Extract From Falling Colours

  Extract From Heart Stopper

  IN YOUR WORDS

  She was reading my book and the expression on her face suggested she was finding something hard to swallow. I waited by the armchair and considered whether to help or not. I lowered myself onto the plump cushions and decided to wait until she looked up. She could ask me then, if she wanted.

  I felt the drudge of the last few days of travelling seep out into the stuffed depths of the cushions. I closed my eyes. I would talk to her in just a minute, if she wanted.

  I could not keep my eyes closed. I opened them and watched her. Her blue eyes flickered over my words, her face a backdrop to the stark design of feathers on the book cover and to my black and white face in miniature that covered her cheek. She was delicate in the strength of her features, laughter lines that pointed to the ground. She was wearing a masculine shirt in a very feminine way, the swell of breasts visible behind her folded arms, behind the hands that cupped my book.

  I looked back up and she was staring right into my eyes from a few feet away, thumbs holding her place in the closed book as her eyes moved from the face in front of her to the colourless stamp of authorship that smiled from under her fingers.

  I smiled. Might as well speed up the recognition and it came like a train roaring past the crossing guard. I could see her pupils dilate and I crept into those pools of sunlit blue hoping to drown in the depths of their black centres.

  She glanced back down at the public me, the confident, straight-jawed me with the looks that shouted ‘I am an author!’ They had posed me well. I wondered if the reality lived up to that image. My hair was shorter now, easier to manage in hotel rooms. My eyes bore less hope as I watched people swallow a message that I now found hard to believe.

  She was smiling, the book lowered onto her lap. The smile was shy but it transformed her face into a blaze of heat that sizzled through my heart. I felt the crackling in my chest with a mild sense of surprise. She was the fan, was she not?

  “On page 40, you say that love exists to bond two people together in such a burning fury of emotion that they don’t notice the tedium of their everyday existence.”

  I frowned as I tried to remember if I knew where I had put that in the book.

  She laughed and the sound was like a soft hand holding my heart. “I’m sorry, yes, it’s here, you obviously wouldn’t remember the exact page. It’s just that I was reading that and wondering whether you really believed that and the next thing I look up and you’re there. I’m sorry, I just blurt out things sometimes as I think them. You probably escaped here for some peace and quiet. The last thing you want is some reader bothering you with questions.”

  I looked around at the oasis I had found in the noisy cathedral of books. There were a few empty armchairs beside the two we occupied. Coffee tables with piles of books pulled out of their regular lines on the shelves, strewn over the table tops. A Starbucks coffee cup nestled between the stack of books nearest to her.

  “I don’t mind. You’ve taken the time to read what I’ve written, the least I can do is explain what I obviously haven’t been able to in the book.”

  I didn’t mean to sound petty or like a jerk even though that was exactly what I felt when I saw her eyes. I cursed my twisted tongue; she wasn’t responsible for my insecurities, my lost beliefs, my anger.

  I shook my head and said, “I’m so sorry. That sounded awful.”

  She nodded. Then the smile re-appeared and I felt the rainclouds evaporate. “I wasn’t actually asking you to explain it. I understood what you meant. What I was asking is if you believe that.”

  “Do I believe that love is just a distraction?”

  She nodded and I sat back. I worried at how slow my answer was in coming.

  “Yes, I do. But I also believe that it can happen in an instant and it can change your life so dramatically that you don’t care anymore about the tedium of your everyday. Because it does not exist anymore. There is never any tedium in your everyday when you find that love.”

  She looked puzzled. “That’s not in your book.”

  “You haven’t got to that part yet.”

  She laughed. “Or you just thought of it and you’re going to put that in your next book. I’ve read this one a few times and I know it doesn’t say that anywhere.”

  I had to smile. For so many reasons but the biggest one at that particular moment was her. And the fact that a woman who could melt my heart with her smile had read my words and connected with them; had thought enough of them to read them again and again.

  She looked slightly dazed. I looked at her fingers, she wore no rings.

  “Can I get you another coffee? It is the least I can do considering you just gave me the idea for my next book.”

  Her hands fluttered over the cover and I felt my breath catch to see her fingers stroke my face as she closed my book.

  “Thank you but I have to go.” She looked at her watch and I saw another line show up to join the laughter lines, one that was not as happy as its neighbours.

  She said, her voice low in the high cathedral, “My girlfriend will be home in a few minutes. I’d better get back.”

  Her movements were clumsy as she collected her cup and the book and a rucksack from the ground beside her armchair.

  I got up as well. We were the same height, her brown curls giving her an extra half inch of air.

  I said, “At least let me sign the book, it might make it more valuable some day.” I laughed and hoped that my bitterness did not taint the sound.

  She searched in her rucksack and I pulled out the pen I had been using for the book signing downstairs. Lots of ink left in it anyway. Though it was just Monday, I had a week of watching the other more established authors interacting with their readers.

  She handed me my book and I opened it to the front page. I found my fingers strangely immobile. No words came to my scrambling mind.

  My voice squeaked a little as I asked and I couldn’t work out the grammar, “Who should I make it out to?”

  I looked up and found that at this range her eyes were patterned crystals of blue.

  I held my breath and braced myself and there it was. Her smile. Though nervous, it was brilliant.

  “Bella. Just make it out to Bella.”

  “How appropriate.” I realised I had spoken those words aloud and hastened to cover my blush. “I’m Amelia.”

  We both looked down at the book and at my name in large font and my blush deepened. As did her smile which I could see from the corners of my eyes. She chuckled but must have taken pity on me because she said nothing. And I could find no words.

  Not wanting to scribble the first and only words that would come to my mind, I closed the book and handed it back to her.

  “I’ll sign it
on my last day here. On Friday.”

  She didn’t meet my eyes as she popped the book into her rucksack. “I really should go. Caren doesn’t like it if I’m not there when she gets home.” She hefted the rucksack onto her shoulder and a pinned pink badge wobbled on the army green. “Some of us have no choice but to live the tedium of our everyday.”

  She was gone before I could say anymore. Her absence was a horrifyingly painful breath that didn’t seem to end. I rubbed my chest and stood for a moment wondering how a stranger could elicit such pain with her absence when an hour ago all that there was of her to me was absence.

  Well, you might just have proven your beliefs to yourself. The thought was strangely comforting, the return of an old friend, a blanket warming the cold disbelief around my heart.

  I returned to my station downstairs and placed a smile on my face as I waited