3,650 Days Later

I apologize for taking so long to update the blog. I took a break while pushing to finish writing "War Angel." I'm almost done so I decided to write something new, exclusive material for the blog instead of posting samples of the novel. Enjoy, and thanks for sticking around, even when I disappear.

3,650 Days Gone By

By Keith Kareem Williams

The smoke from her cigarette danced and swirled around the room as they lay naked together in the hotel room. She had offered him one but he had refused which was strange to her because they always shared cigarettes whenever they saw each other. She didn’t know that he had given up smoking cold turkey years before.

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

Since the time they had first met, there had been many gaps where they became strangers again but the ten years that had just gone by had been the longest.

“At first I missed you a lot. It was hard to be apart. Less and less as time passed by. Then, right before I ran into you by accident, I had started to miss you again and I felt like how I felt in the beginning,” he answered.

“Maybe it wasn’t an accident then? I mean, us running into each other again after all this time,” she said while staring up at the random imperfections in the smoothness of the paint on the ceiling.

“I swear I wasn’t looking for you,” he answered. “I didn’t seek you out.”

“Maybe not with your eyes. Maybe you wanted to find me in your heart,” she told him.

“Well, that’s a poetic way of looking at it. Wow.”

“Wow what?” she asked.

“You’ve changed.”

“Changed how?” she asked.

“That sounded cheezy coming from you. You were never the type to romanticize anything. You were never that type of woman.”

“Maybe I am different. Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. It just feels strange. By the way, did you miss me?”

“No, not at all,” she answered.

“Now THAT’S the you I remember.”

“You’re different too,” she told him.

“Different how?” he asked.

“If I had answered like that before, you would’ve gone nuts. I used to love to drive you crazy.”

“I guess I am different. Ten years is a long time. Not much gets under my skin any more. I care about a lot less.”

“Do you still care about me?” she asked, turning to look at him.

“I never stopped caring about you.”

“So why’d you just stop seeing me and speaking to me the last time?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Now THAT’S a lie,” she laughed.

“Maybe,” he laughed, taking the cigarette from her hand and putting it to his lips.

“So, what’s the truth?” she asked as she watched him inhale a lung full of smoke.

He hadn’t missed the taste of nicotine since he had given it up. He exhaled and watched the smoke from his nostrils circle his head. Somehow, the cigarette tasted sweeter because it was hers. He took another pull and handed it back to her.

“The truth is complicated,” he told her.

“The truth is simple. You’re what’s complicated,” she answered.

“Loving you the way I loved you was dangerous.”

“Dangerous? For who?” she asked.

“For me.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If you loved me so much, why did you walk away from me?”

“Everything felt wrong. We never seemed to fit together.”

“So, if we never fit as you say, why did we do what we just did and why are we here now?”

“I don’t know. Curiosity I guess. It felt like unfinished business…something that was inevitable. Call it fate if you want.”

“Fate?” she laughed. “You think fate would have made us wait ten whole years, just to lay down together?”

“You are the first woman I’ve ever looked at and wanted to cry.”

“Cry? Why? I don’t think I’m THAT ugly,” she joked.

“You’re not ugly at all. It’s the total opposite.”

“I mean…I know I’m not the prettiest girl in the world…”

“No, you’re not. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he told her.

“Oh please,” she said and started to get out of bed.

“There was a time that I loved you so much that it hurt. I always found a reason to leave you, or stay away from you…long before things ever had a chance to get bad between us,” he explained.

“Why?”

“Because, if they ever did, it would kill me,” he answered. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me because you were the one I loved the most.”

She was quiet for a long time, thinking about what he had just said. All at once, it made the ten years that had gone by more painful. She wished that things could have been less complicated between them. She always had.

“Do you still feel like that now?” she asked.

“We’re talking too much when we should be enjoying this now…this moment. It took a long time to get here but it might not last forever,” he answered.