Feeling Special

She could still feel the tingle of his touch and taste his mouthwash as his tongue sought mine. The months since she had seen Brian hadn't dimmed the memory as she had expected. She closed her eyes and saw his face, or watched his long body move with the pulsing rhythm of the music. She used to push his memory out of her thoughts, but now she bid it come to her whenever she needed him. Tonight she needed him.

"I'll be late getting home. Don't wait up, Paula," her husband Tom had said when he phoned.

"You hate me!" her oldest daughter had cried when she refused to give her a second dessert.

"You're fat and I hate you!" her youngest had declared when she made her take her bath.

Neither of the girls kissed her goodnight.

The final notice from the electric company came in today's mail along with her mother's letter saying that Grandpa was dying of cancer, Aunt Mary was going to need serious surgery, and her brother had left his wife and kids. Friends wrote to say that they had had to cancel their plans to visit her during the holidays. Her best friend had been too busy to talk to her. And she had dropped the last of the eggs on the freshly waxed kitchen floor. All in all, it had been a pretty rotten day.

As the quiet of the night closed in around me she felt very lonely. She was using Brian's memory like a balm for the day's hurts, passing the lonely hours by recreating that feeling he gave her of being someone special.

She had been told that she was attractive, in spite of the extra pounds that have plagued me since grade school. She was outgoing, fun loving, warm. Tom and she met in high school. He was the first and only boy she'd ever dated. Since then she'd lived a very sheltered life, knowing few men, spending most of her life with her children and other women.

Brian was Tom's childhood friend from grade school through high school. They had kept in touch off and on over the years. And even though two hundred miles now separated them, Tom and Brian thought of each other as good friends.