The 19 Year Old Virgin Next Door by Sean Brandon Read Free Book Online

fresh cut
flowers, and the scent and sounds of a luau. Her face even started
to show a loopy grin.
    I could tell she wasn’t going anywhere, but
the fact that she was calming down was a good sign. I opened a
bottle of wine. She watched me with blank look, possibly a smirk,
pasted on her face.
    I turned to face her and asked, “Would you
like some wine?”
    The smirk grew larger. “Are you drinking from
the bottle?” Now I understood the smirk.
    I reached around and pulled out two glasses.
As I handed her a glass she went into full-on cocky mode. “Aren’t
you going to try and impress me with your wine smelling
ritual?”
    “Do you just hate me or everyone?” I asked.
“I let you join me in one of the most scenic spots in America, show
some class, would you?”
    I looked her straight in the eyes and saw
tears building up there. If she was going to be a bitch she could
damned well do it somewhere else.
    “Today was my wedding day, my first wedding
day,” she said as she fought back the tears.
    “Why do you call it your first?” I asked even
though I didn’t want to know the answer.
    “He stood me up, at the altar, in front of
everyone,” she said, and then a torrent of tears erupted.
    I turned to look out at the ocean so she
could cry without my eyes watching every tear drop down her cheeks.
I waited until I could tell the crying was subsiding.
    “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said.
    “It has been a very long day, and since you
asked for silence I won’t tell you about being stood up on my
wedding day in front of everyone important in my life.” She said it
in a detached voice, as if it had occurred to someone else and she
was only the chronicler of the facts.
    I should have run right then, had the limo
drop me at the airport and flown home. I kept my gaze on her and I
could see her eyes starting to puff up. Then a silent tear slipped
down her cheek, her hand reaching up quickly to wipe it away. I
shifted in my seat; bringing my body around yet leaning back into
the large wooden arm of the couch. I said nothing as she drained
her glass of wine.
    I refilled her glass and watched her. “This
is good wine,” said Sasha. I couldn’t tell if she was trying make
conversation or if she wanted to change the subject.
    “Something really ugly happened and I don’t
have the answers to your questions, I wish I did,” I said. I turned
my body back to face the ocean and sipped my wine.
    Another ten minutes went by; ten minutes with
no sounds but the crashing of the waves a hundred feet below and
the luau somewhere far away. When I looked back at her she was
silently crying. The crying was out of place in that paradise. At
first I thought it was a random thing, not going to repeat. But her
quiet crying turned into sobs. I would look over occasionally, but
what I saw were tears streaming down her face, a face that needed
to laugh not cry. But if she cried a lot she might just get back to
happy quicker than if she held it all in so I let her cry.
    She’d cry, sip some wine, then cry some more.
All of it in relative silence except for her sobs. I kept refilling
our glasses and watching the sky of diamond stars break out. Then
she took my left arm, raised it up, slid up close to my side, and
lowered the arm around her shoulders. “I’m not taking no for an
answer ever again,” she said when I looked over at her face. I
wiped away the few tears remaining, refilled our glasses again and
pulled her closer to me. What the hell? I was leaving Hawaii in a
few hours. So if she needed some comfort I would give it for a few
hours. She had taken the step of snuggling up close to me.
    She was warm against my chest and just when I
wondered why she had gone completely still, I heard her sigh. On
this night every star on the team was out. I could see the running
lights of a large ship and several smaller boats, and heard the
constant pounding of the waves. The sound of the waves was a
comfort. Rivers and streams are nice, but I