I’d been anticipating a relaxing day at the park, but the day took an unexpected turn after I met her.

She seemed nice, but when I told her I had to leave, she became upset. Really, really upset. I tried to explain that I had to run errands, but I was cut off when a menacing man suddenly slapped duct tape over my mouth and threw me over his shoulder. Stunned and finding myself tossed in a backseat, I tried to make sense of what was happening. Then things cleared up.

“Thanks, Daddy! Now my friend can stay and play!”

A cigarette and coffee whilst watching the sun come up in Tahiti is so amazing that I wish I’d written it on a bucket list, just for the satisfaction of crossing it off. Even with my life in shambles, there was peace in this moment. I inhaled and thought about the last twenty-four hours…

My wedding. I was halfway down the aisle when I looked at my husband-to-be's face and my life flashed before my eyes. Not the events in my past, but what awaited me in my future. With an abrupt about-face, I turned tail and ran past the shocked expressions of the guests who came for a wedding and stayed for a show.

Was it tacky to make use of the tickets to our honeymoon destination? Probably. But I needed to think, and the incessant ringing and pinging of my phone was starting to make my brain hurt. I turned it off and told the limo driver we’d hired to take us to the reception to head in the direction of the airport instead. And with that decision made, I'd felt calm for the first time in months…though I did have a moment of hysterical giggles when the TSA agent frisked me in my voluminous wedding gown. Thankfully, everything we needed for our trip was already in the car and I was able to change out of the fluffy monstrosity in a bathroom near the gate. I left my dress on a hook on the back of the stall door and felt utterly unencumbered when I walked out to await my flight.

I looked around now at my tropical anti-honeymoon. This wasn’t a bad place to think, really. Palm trees swayed in the breeze and the ocean sparkled under the rising sun. The feeling like I was slowly being choked to death was finally starting to abate. My now-ex wasn’t a horrible guy, but when I thought of him in conjunction with passion and love and a soft place to land - not to mention fidelity and loyalty - my mind went blank. It’s amazing what we can talk ourselves into when we fear loneliness.

I’d never been alone and now I was. It felt amazing. Free.

A shit-storm of epic proportions awaited me back home, but the idea of walking in to an apartment devoid of another human being made it bearable. From the rather graphic texts sent this morning, I'd gleaned that he’d moved out. Apathetically, I considered telling him what he suggested wasn’t anatomically possible, but that would just poke the bear. And that I did not want to do.

He’s the kind of man who gets pleasure out of making others suffer in small ways, without them even realizing it. Death by a thousand cuts. He’d build me up and then slowly withdraw his approval, only to give it back to me in tiny portions. A slow-moving roller coaster of highs and lows that left me in tears more times than I could count. I’d do more and more to get back to a place where he thought I was wonderful...and he’d withhold those words, dangling them over my head and I’d jump and jump and never reach them. Innocuously insidious, that one. Too bad I had this epiphany right as I was walking down the aisle.

The face I saw when I looked back before running out of the church wasn’t hurt. It was furious. I smiled at that and took another drag. He never expected me to find my backbone. Live and learn, right?

Sometimes, it’s Autism.

The girl behind the counter slides me my tray, the delicious scent of my burger and fries invading my senses. “Enjoy your meal.”

“Thanks, you too.”

Oh, God. I screw my eyes shut. I’ll think back on this moment for years to come, and the embarrassment will come flooding back.

..

…

..

I get the dreaded call, which I never understood. Why call those who don’t get the job? Just let me slink away into the darkness; no need to shout, “You’re slinking into the darkness” as I go. I’m fully aware already.

“I’m sorry to say you didn’t get the job. They felt you were a little distant. They couldn’t sense your excitement.”

So I curse my inability to make eye contact like a normal person, I curse my apathy that covers my empathy, and I curse some more for good measure because I like threes. And fives and any number that creates a natural middle point. If I text someone three emoji hearts, the middle one can be another color and voilá, you have a nice pattern.

Sometimes, it’s Him.

“Kneel, girl.”

I fall to my knees and bow my head.

..

…

..

He plucks thoughts straight from my mind, molds them after his desires, and shoves them back in. A look, a smirk, a kiss, a tasty little slice of logic, a word that triggers, a touch, and then I’m spinning and spiraling with his sadistic mindplay.

“It’s okay, I’ll catch you afterward.”

I fall, tremble, and trip, out of control.

Sometimes, it’s Characters.

I could bang my head against a wall. I want them to go there, and they insist on going in the opposite direction. I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready; just obey me, you imaginary people, and they refuse. They go their own way. I write them as they wish, as they set the pace for them, never me. Never me.

“How’s the book coming along?” he asks, and I tell him to go away. Go away, go away, go away. I’m arguing, you see. I’m the one fighting with fictional characters because their minds are stronger than my own.

“I can’t argue logic, okay?” I snap. So I obey characters.

..

…

..

Clutching my head, fingers digging into my hair, I rock back and forth and try to summon the right voice. I need him to speak, but the noise from another heroine is louder. Write me, she demands, and I don’t have time. I’m sorry, but I need that guy behind you; please un-gag him. I need to write him.

“Will you make the deadline?” my editor wonders.

I scream.

“What’s it like to be normal?”

“What’s it like being you?” I took a sip of my coffee and refolded the paper. My quiet morning on the porch steps took a hike whenever Pipsqueak joined me.

She glanced up at me with a scrunched nose, all freckles, sleep lines on her cheeks, and messy pigtails. “I asked you first. You’re a teacher. You’re supposed to answer and teach.”

I snorted and rested my elbows on my knees. Sun was about to come up. Soon, the dew covering the grass and bushes in my front yard would glisten with the first rays of sunshine.

“If a teacher never asked questions, there’d be no quizzes,” I pointed out.

“That would be cool.”

She was twelve or thirteen, this neighbor of mine. At times, her logic belonged to that of a genius. She had Autism and tended to put things in a perspective completely foreign to me. But then, she was also a kid. Kids didn’t like studying for tests and quizzes.

“I’m going somewhere with my question,” I said patiently.

She whipped her head to the left, then the right. “Where?”

I smirked briefly at her way of taking things literally. “Just answer, you nut. Or I’ll tell your parents you left the house in your PJs.”

She huffed. “Fine. It’s weird being me, okay? I don’t understand humans.”

I nodded. “Most people go through that. Screw what’s normal, Pipsqueak. Don’t worry about others. You do you.”

“You could’ve just said that…”

There was no winning with this little hurricane. She was extra persnickety this morning, too. New school, new teacher. It put her on edge and made her ramble.

“Never said I was a good teacher, did I?” I emptied my coffee mug and checked the time. Summer was officially over. I had a week of faculty meetings, and then I’d be seeing new seniors. New students whose lives were just waiting to be fucked over.

“Do you have to go?” she asked.

“Soon. I might give myself a late start today.”

That made her sigh. “I can’t wait to grow up so I can do what I want.”

What could I say? The girl was in for a rude awakening. One day, those emerald green peepers of hers that were constantly filled with curiosity and wonder would dim and cloud with the shit life brought. She would grow up and lose her innocence. No longer a girl… Along the way, she’d lose her honesty, too. It was what women did.

“You know what I’ve noticed?” She turned to me, a serious expression on her face. “You never smile, mister. Not even today, and—and, and, it’s your birthday!” She tripped over her words. “I almost forgot. Happy birthday. How old are you now? Oh! Let me guess, please?”

I couldn’t even fake a smile. The times she dropped those tidbits of genuine reflection or observation, it felt like she was kicking me in the gut. Of course I never smiled. I had nothing to smile about. She’d learn one day. Or she’d meet a man who would get a taste of it. Perhaps she’d make her future son feel it. It…being this hollow void that somehow weighed a ton and dragged you down.

“Are you thirty?” she guessed.

I nodded. “Good guess.”

She snickered. “I remember you turned twenty-nine last year.”

Right. Well, it was time to face another hellish day.

*

“Do it,” I whispered.

I sucked in a breath and pressed the barrel to my temple.

Do it, do it, do it.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror caused my hand to tremble, and I promptly screwed my eyes shut. This could all be over if I only had the balls to pull the trigger. History would be wiped clean. I’d feel no more hatred. I would be gone. Erased. Would I find peace? Or would I just…fade into nothingness?

Do it, do it, do it.

A rushing sound thundered in my ears. My throat closed up. Fuck—it would be over. Wasn’t that what I’d craved for as long as I could remember? The rage wasn’t even the worst of it. This sense of confusion and loss, being lost, constantly wondering, was what I couldn’t live with. I didn’t fucking understand myself. I didn’t know who I was other than a box of crippling emotions. I had no identity.

You never smile, mister.

“You coward.” My eyes burned behind closed lids. “It would be over.” I tensed up as I brushed my finger over the trigger. “Do it.” You’re almost there.

But what if…

A strangled sound escaped me, and a tear rolled down my cheek.

I was caving.

You never smile, mister.

Two knocks on the door were followed by my wife’s voice. “Are you almost done? I have to shower.”

The air was knocked out of my lungs in defeat. Lowering my hand, I opened my eyes again and stared at my pathetic reflection. What was wrong with me? I clenched my jaw. Hating, hating, hating. It felt like I’d run a marathon.

“Yeah.” Exhaustion took over. Today wasn’t the day I killed myself, either. “Be right out.” The gun went back in the cupboard under the sink. It was time to get ready. A new day. I was driving down to Seattle for my monthly visit with my mother.

*

The blows kept on fucking coming. I dodged left, only to get a knee in the gut. Then I ducked right, and he was on me like a freight train. Jesus. I coughed, pain radiating from my ribcage.

“Pussy.” Darius grinned.

Wiping my forehead, I jumped up again and charged. Sweat poured down and caused my beater to stick to my skin. I welcomed each punch and did everything I could to return them.

I succeeded sometimes.

“Motherfucker.” He chuckled through a groan when I managed to jab him twice in the face. “You’re a good brawler, I'll give ya that. Bad day?”

“You could say that.”

I gnashed my teeth together.

“I don’t know why you keep coming here.”

Funny, I'd been asking myself that question for years. Leaving the doorway, I entered my mother’s room and eyed the new bed. The sicker she became, the more her home looked like a hospital room. According to her nurse, she couldn’t leave the bed on her own anymore. My mother was frail, and she pulled off seventy-five great for a fifty-six-year-old.

One of the two chairs by the window had been removed so she could sit there in her wheelchair instead. The round little table in the middle was littered with books and notes. As I took a seat across from her, I watched her highlight a paragraph in an old senator’s memoir.

“Imbeciles,” she muttered. “Seven typos in two hundred and sixty pages.” Glasses perched on her nose and a bag of lemon-flavored hard candy on her lap was a familiar sight that made my skin crawl. Then, everything about her made my skin crawl.

I wanted her to die.

Because of her, my upper body was covered in tattoos to hide the scars she’d given me.

I hissed and flew back, Darius’s gloved hand splitting my bottom lip open.

“I have work tomorrow,” I barked. Explaining a busted lip wouldn’t be a walk in the park.

He laughed, out of breath, and we took a break to get some water. “You’re something else, man. You’re shit at technique, but damn, you keep getting up.”

I leaned back against the ropes in the boxing ring and reached for my towel. I wasn’t bleeding too much.

When you’d been born on a battlefield, suffering was as natural as breathing. Darius’s uppercut, no matter how hard he delivered it, was nothing.

“You’re like a dog, Avery,” my mother noted. “Regardless of what I do, you’ll come crawling back. You need a leader to follow because you’re too weak to stand on your own.”

I stared at her, forcing a casual expression. The fury I carried for this woman was putrid and all-consuming, and it was slowly suffocating me. Yet, I did come back. Every goddamn month, I drove down to Seattle to see her.

I didn’t say much when I was here. Was there anything to say? She wasn’t going to wake up one morning and realize what she’d done. By the sound of things, she already knew. Either she lacked empathy for it, or she’d made sense of it in a way that absolved her from guilt.

*

“Good morning!” Pipsqueak closed the gate after her and trailed up the path to my house.

I eyed her, tired as hell. “Morning.”

The past few days, her mood had improved to the point where she was chirpy. I assumed school was going well.

She plopped down next to me and opened a bottle of lemonade. “Nana and I made this. Want some? It’s strawberry and pineapple.”

“No, thank you.” Fanning out the paper next to me, I studied the headlines. Getting back to work and keeping myself updated helped me focus and rid the remnants of the ever-present nightmares. There’s a good one. An article about Rupert Murdoch’s million-dollar contribution to the Republicans should kick off my communication studies class nicely today. I dog-eared the page after reading the piece and moved on.

“Why do people lie?”

I frowned, giving her my attention. “Who’s lying?”

“My uncle,” she replied frankly. “Mom says he’s lying to my aunt about something. They’re all sad.”

I had to admit I enjoyed it when Pipsqueak came over sometimes. It was strangely easy to talk to a kid, but to give her advice she might carry with her into adulthood was fucking terrifying. I couldn’t go there.

I could say one thing, though. “Don’t rush to grow up. Adults are ten times worse than children.” I pointed to her bottle. “Stick to dolls, school, and making lemonade with your grandmother. Because when you’re a grownup, all that is gone.”

And you were left with the thieves, abusers, cheaters, and liars.

They’d turned me into one who was just like them.

*

Title: Lemonade & Lies

Genre: Contemporary fiction/romance.

Age range: 18+

Word count: Work-in-progress.

Author name: Cara Dee

Why your project is a good fit: It targets a wide audience in which I'm confident about my abilities.

Synopsis: Work-in-progress, but it will be a novel about redemption, friendship, forgiveness, betrayal, love, and making peace when you can't find it.

Your bio: The full version at www.caradeewrites.com

Experience: Five years in indie publishing. 

Personality/writing style: Straightforward, realistic, sometimes witty, always with as much focus on the plot as the characters.

Age: 30.

I wonder...if you've never known true love, can you miss it?

I think you can.

My mother's mother. We called her Granny and I loved her fiercely. A true southern lady, but man, did she have some big brass balls.

I am often told I am just like her. And I am to some degree. Southern charm and grace on the outside, inappropriate curiosity and often no filter on the inside. Not nearly as open and brave as she was, though.

She and my grandfather were childhood sweethearts. They even had the same birthday. He was seventeen and she was thirteen when he saw her up in a tree and said, "Someday, I'm going to marry that girl." This was the late 1920s. He married her in 1935.

I tried to get married on their birthday, as a tribute to them both. We were a day late in getting the license and had to settle for July 22nd instead. I was almost inconsolable.

They had a kind of love so rare you don't even wish for such a thing, but hope you at least get close. Cupid himself was probably an active voyeur. She was the outgoing life of the party and he was the quiet, refined professional. They complemented each other. Peas and carrots or some such nonsense.

This was a woman who never met a stranger. There is an infamous tale of the time she encountered a woman in a public bathroom. The woman had very long nails that curled due to their length. My grandmother stopped her, and in what I can only imagine as morbid curiosity cloaked in southern pardon-me, she asked her how she managed to wipe. That story gets told to every newcomer to the family.

Her driving was infamous. This little red-haired woman (she kept up the red for a long time after nature took it from her) drove like a maniac. God help you if you got in her way. To this day, I echo her in calling people turkeys when they don't agree with me that ten miles over the speed limit is the right way to interpret the law. I use it a lot to joke with people, too. It was not even something I noticed until my mom pointed it out. This was followed by the now-familiar, "You're just like her!"

She kept gum in a little silver cup on a shelf for me. I've probably gone through hundreds (thousands?) of five-piece packs of Wrigley's Spearmint gum in my lifetime. And when the flavor ran out, I'd go get a cough drop for the crunch and a minty kick. I still like crunchy gum. Try a Starlight mint and Big Red gum. You're welcome.

When she went into the nursing home, she gave me her car. It stank of her Capri cigarettes, and to this day I can't see one of those weird, skinny little cigarettes and not think of her and smile.

When she died, she left me--out of all of her children and grandchildren--her wedding ring. This is my most prized possession. When my grandfather died in 1980, she basically died with him. She impatiently waited sixteen years to join him. And while she still smiled and laughed and loved, her soul was missing its mate. She was ready for the reunion and refused more treatment for the cancer.

Since I cannot have children, that ring will go to my niece. The one I fully expect to be arrested at Mardi Gras when she's eighteen, and as such, I'll have to put down some strict conditions on bequeathing it to her. She's only two, so we have time to iron out the details.

I have a shitty memorial tattoo for her on my wrist. My ex-husband got a tattoo gun and I was young and dumb. I want to get it fixed or lasered off and done properly, but every time I think too much about it, it seems like I'd be removing her from me. I can't do it.

But what she really left me, and what I'd love to be able to hug her neck for now that I know what a gift it was? A sense of knowing who I am. A take-no-prisoners approach to being me. A sense that if you don't like me...well, bless your heart, that's a personal failing on your part. A knowledge that there are men out there who will love you fiercely and look fondly upon you and laugh when you show your ass. This is what gets me through the loss of love, and what allows me to roll with the punches.

And to know what I am missing.

It's always out of reach. Topics and interests I burn for consume me. I disappear and get lost in people, stories, and fields. I can never split my time, because then, I'd be dividing my attention. You either have it or you don't. From me, you'll get everything or nothing. So balance will always be out of reach.

Underneath the stars and dust clouds of the Milky Way, he left his comfort zone and pushed me toward insanity. This wasn't supposed to happen. The first kiss turned me into his secret, and I was powerless to stop it. Weak, greedy, hard as a fucking rock.

"Did you hit your head?" I sucked in a breath, trembling beneath him. "You know I'm not a woman, right?"

I was the funny guy. Comedy brought smiles to people's faces and concealed my loneliness. Now my jokes were going to fall flat, because this bastard was breaking me down.

"Mm. Very aware." He deepened the kiss.

With the fingers he touched my jaw, there was a wedding ring that warned me about how badly this could turn out. He's heading for divorce, my weakness pleaded with me. Nothing's for certain, my brain argued before it short circuited.

"More." I groaned and gave up.

~Casey, Uncomplicated Choices.

"Dance with me." The man extends his hand.

With a blush, the girl looks away from the breathtaking view of the city, and she lets him sweep her off her feet. They dance in the darkness of the mountains to a song that goes unheard. She can't place him, but she's seen him before. She's certain of it.

"Something's troubling you," he murmurs.

She nods, peering up at him. "Who are you?"

He smirks faintly. A knowing twist of his lips. He knows something she doesn't. Is that it? He knows what's troubling her. As of late, she keeps seeing destruction everywhere. Disease, death. It's in what people eat, the air they breathe, the political matters on which they vote, the water they drink, and in every indulgence.

"We're destroying ourselves," she says quietly. "We're dying."

He twirls her once, then brings her close to his body. "Are you destroying yourself?"

The girl averts her eyes, biting her lip. Is she? She's doing her best to quit her vices, but maybe the progress is too slow. Life makes her happy, and she wants to do everything in her power to enjoy the little time she has on this planet. A trickle of anxiousness seeps in, and she vows to work harder. Life is too short.

"I'm trying not to," is her honest answer.

"That's a good girl." The man sways them gently. "But you should know, my dear." He presses a kiss to her temple. "Death...will always dance with life."