Beyond Grace: 5

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Warningat the end there is a scene implying sexual acts occurring. It's not overly graphic, but it is there.

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Stippled rain on the crystalline glass windowpane did little to damper Cash's mood as he fastidiously smoothed a hand over his meticulously ironed button-up black shirt. In fact, the lucid diamond raindrops whispered memoirs of his euphoria. The best idiosyncrasy of the rain, howbeit, was the cleansing clarion quality it rendered onto the air.

On a childish whim, Cash traced a smilie face onto the algid frosted glass. The smilie stared unfalteringly back against the accumulating water droplets. Uncharacteristically nervous, Cash mimicked the smile and adjusted his dark navy jeans. Murmured ribbons of his Calvin Klein cologne whispered subtly in the background.

The table had already been booked at 'Amour'; a fancy, yet moderately priced, French restaurant Keira had recommended. Slight arousal emerged as Cash's mind trailed over to Mariah and her inciting body. Her intense cocoa-mahogany eyes resonated from the drug-like memories like a virulent lighthouse in a caliginous storm.

Running his hand nervously through his messy brown hair, Cash grabbed his jacket from his couch and quickly walked to his car. Throwing himself into the front seat, Cash’s excitement faltered for a millisecond. If Keira was here, he could almost hear her laugh carelessly at him, mocking his masculinity.

Cash undid his top two buttons of his onyx shirt. Then re-buttoned them. He paused, and unfastened them yet again. It was not femininity… just caring about his appearance – he reasoned, anyways.

Double-checking the address written hurriedly on his notebook in her neat bubbly calligraphy, Cash eagerly raced the car down the streets. The address she gave him was only seconds away…

The car lolled to a stop outside a tired looking house. Age hung off the splintered balcony and sinewy cobwebs clustered in corners. Scattered flakes of yellowed paint peeled and bubbled from the weary wooden boards. Similar to, but not the same as, the long omitted home of Cash’s childhood.

Reminiscing, the piquant scent of warm vanilla cupcakes almost lingered in the air. Edges of the house metamorphosed into the dilapidated cottage down memory lane. A trail of smoke sauntered from the red and brown patchwork brick chimney.

Ma stuck her head from the cracked windowsill. Her lips held a smile — a smile arduously familiar yet gut-wrenchingly alien at the same time. Familiar like the wet kisses she would plant on him. Alien like the plasticity masking the privations of her life.

“Dad won't be home tonight,” she stated with practiced nonchalance, a Stepford-wife smile painting her lips.

Dad had not “been home” in a long time. Nevertheless, Ma would still rise every morning and paint her face with cheap makeup. Whiffs of discounted boysenberry perfume still trailed after her bounced one-two pace. A stranger would assume, as she trailed a meticulously curled lock of her caramel brown hair around her finger tips, that her life was playing out 'as per quota.'

Yet inescapably, the stage lights would dim to black. The curtain would fall to the Grande Finale. It was shrouded in these desperate stolen moments of solitude...

Cash could hear her cry.

A sharp knock – two, to be precise, brought Cash back to the prosperity of reality. Prosperity was a curious word. Ma used to promise him a future of prosperity – of being prime minister, of a never-ending white mansion with a sparkling cerise blue fountain and neatly shorn grass. As the wrinkles crept into her dulling cheeks, “prosperity” became subdued into a vain hope; a marvellous wonder that twinkled temptingly, perpetually out of reach. “Count your blessings,” she would whisper...

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