Wear me like a locket around your neck

You're looking like a Stranger part 6

The next instant she feels something warm and soft on her lips.

'Oh Jared's lips... They feel so good on mine but –'

"Wait Jared stop," she is out of breath.

"Sorry," the singer backs up.

"What are you doing here in the first place?" the blonde asks as she dials the door code and enters the building.

"We were supposed to have dinner together tonight –"

"You cancelled remember?"

"I do, but I wanted to see you anyway. So when my guests left I drove to your place."

Indeed the bright Bronco was parked few spots away.

"Now that you're here, would you like to come in and have a drink? I have smoothies waiting in the fridge."

Jared nods and follows the mother of his child to her apartment. It's been a while he has been here. In fact he has only been here few times at the beginning of their relationship.

"Make yourself at home," she puts her handbag on the back of the armchair and disappears in the bathroom.

When she comes back in the living room, Jared is standing near the sideboard. In his hands the only picture of him and Ana that the young woman had been reluctant to put away.

It had been taken on the day she met Constance for the first time. Shannon was the one who took it without telling them it was only two days after when the drummer brought it to her apartment all framed that she discovered he had shot them numerous times during the evening. This specific picture had Jared lying on the couch and Analyne between his legs leaning against his chest, the both of them wrapped in a green comforter.

Analyne's memories are coming to life before her eyes as she relives the events of that night. Constance had left and the three of them – Shannon, Jared and her – where watching 'The Shining' one of the brothers' favorite movie.

"I've never seen it" she said.

"We've got to do something about it!" exclaimed the older brother. He put the DVD in the player and pressed play.

"Come here," Jared had held his hand out for her to come nestle against him.

And that is how she had fallen asleep as Jack Nicholson was destroying the bathroom door with an axe.

Back to the present, Jared has not noticed her presence back in the living room. His fingertips slightly brushing the picture.

Analyne lays a hand on his left shoulder and he starts. He puts the frame back where it belongs.

"I've never seen that picture before." He whispers.

"Shannon took it, the night I meet your mother. We were watching –"

"The Shining, I remember now."

Their eyes meet and for an instant they are lost in each other. Again.

"Good ol'times." She murmurs and turns away from him.

Her hair flipping through the air so gracefully that the smell of her perfume caresses Jared's nostrils. She smells so good. She smells of Saint-Laurent, and her. She smells of Analyne.

Jared sneaks in the kitchen behind her and massages her shoulders.

"It could all happen again. If you let me come back in your life." He takes the risk of kissing her purely white neck.