The Magic in the Moment (Short Stories)

Shadows and Spirits

            It was six in the evening and Charlie was running late to open her bar. She bounced from wall to wall like a pinball as she ran down her hallway, still pulling her black t-shirt down her torso. A quick glance in the mirror told her that her blonde and blue curls were riotous from her nap and her gray eyes were puffy and framed by purple crescents. Nonetheless, she grabbed her keys and left. It was nothing unusal.

            The naked man sitting beside her black Harley sportster, however…well, that was new.

              “Oh, shh…oceans,” Charlie sputtered, attempting to filter her language.

        The man turned his head toward her, but his startlingly dark eyes remained unfocused, blinking.

               “Dear god, just how drunk are you?” Charlie said. “I mean, shit – where are your clothes?” So much for making her vocabulary bright and cheery.

                He looked down at his hands, scrutinizing them as though noticing that he controlled them for the first time. He didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t cover himself. He was dark-skinned, toned—attractive if Charlie was being honest with herself. His dark hair was tousled, unkempt, curling raucously across his forehead.

            “Damn,” she said. It just isn’t natural for people to look like that. Probably a vampire, she thought, recalling the recent hype over Eddy What’s-His-Face. Or maybe a werewolf, she concluded, smiling at the absurdity.

            The man braced his hands against the pavement and pushed himself to his feet. Charlie stared fixedly at the branches of the weeping willow tree behind him, refusing to acknowledge the toned shoulders, the narrow waist, the—nope, she was definitely just looking at the tree. He never even made an effort to cover himself, never shied away from her reluctant, inevitable ogling.

                “I’m not drunk,” the man said, meeting her charcoal eyes unflinchingly.

            “Right, sure, well in that case, I’m gonna go with shit-faced. More power to you, to each his own, and all that, but I’m gonna need you to relocate the peep show.”

            “Why? You aren’t enjoying it?” he asked.

                He made no attempt to hide his perusal of her, his gaze sweeping over her. He looked at her in the way a sunrise is studied by the fresh eyes of a child. It was appreciative, masculine, but not threatening.

                Scrutiny always made her uncomfortable. She shifted from one gray converse-covered foot to the other, her fingers picking at the hem of her black t-shirt. When he reached her face, she tucked her blue-tinged blonde curls behind her ear.

            “Take a picture. Heard it lasts longer,” she said, crossing her arms and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Allow me to rephrase myself. Get your gloriously naked ass off my property.”

            “Glorious, huh?” he said, his full lips spreading in a slow smile to reveal his luminescent teeth.

            “Wow,” she said. “I can’t. I just can’t.”

            She shook her head and tried to meander her way around him.

        “Wait, just listen for a second. I’ve just crossed to your realm from my own.”

            “Oh. Uh-huh. Okay. Sure ya did,” Charlie laughed. “Alright, well, can you cross over into the realm of not-my-driveway?”