Freed: Through Grey Eyes

Lemonade

This is the beginning! Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of my version of Darker. I read your comments and I am truly grateful for your love of the story. Here starts Freed...

"I fear we've made a terrible mistake," I say to Flynn, as I pace the floor in his office. The wood creaks as I watch my footsteps imprint—one by one—on his mock mid seventies shag. It's so mock, it's early twenty-first century Pier One. Each knotted snag representing my failures as a fiancé, and his at tasteful decor. There is doubt. Confusion. And that damn laughing Buddha on Flynn's mantle stares at me in my anguish... "The wedding is just three weeks off and... well, I think we rushed into this decision." I run a hand through my hair and pull. "And I fear it's too late to back out of it now."

"Really?" Flynn scribbles on his session notes, eyes following me like I'm a lab rat on a wheel. And not the healthy placebo pumped set, the ones who've been subjected to multiple genetically manipulated brain eating diseases. "But you seemed so sure last week."

"I was," I say in great despair. "We were both so excited, new to all of this, and I really just think we jumped the gun."

Flynn eyes me as I prop my elbows on the mantle in front of Buddha, then bury my head in my hands in anguish. "I don't think I can go through with it."

"Christian, it's cake," he finally says, after fixing his bespectacled eyeballs my way for far too long. "I know it's disappointing to feel you've made a less than favorable decision on the centerpiece for the wedding reception, but for what it's worth, I'm sure your lemon cake will be lovely."

"Lovely?" I pull my head from my hands, my hair mussed, as I glare at him. Buddha still laughs. "Are you crazy? Lemons aren't lovely. They're sour and they clean furniture... They represent broken down mistakes and children peddling sugar soaked outcomes of them for pennies on brown summer lawns."

"For what it's worth, I've always encouraged people to take any lemons life hands them and make lemonade." He chuckles.

"Nobody who actually has lemons handed to them believes that psycho-babble." I shake my head. "Why do you think they call old cars lemons? Because they don't work. They're untrusted. Who wants their wedding cake to be synonymous with road failure?"

He shakes his head, biting his lip to stop more of his mirth from my misery to escape. "I don't think that should be a chief concern," he says, shifting in his seat now to get a more judgmental view.

"Oh, I get it, you think it's ridiculous that I'm having panic attacks over our wedding cake. But this is serious." I clench my jaw as I think back to that fateful day at the Le Glacé Bakery. "We were strong armed by this French hotshot baker fucker with this lavender lemon lace tower. He said lemon is a thing in France. But he was fucking lying. Lemon isn't a thing anywhere."

"Lavender lemon?" Flynn asks.

"He said it made it unique and special." I scoff.

"Well, doesn't it?"

"Lavender doesn't make anything special but bath water," I say.

And now I'm thinking of bathing with Ana...

"This was the highly decorated pastry chef, correct?" Flynn asks. "The one whose clients with long held appointments you paid off to get  to the top spot in line."

"Yes, that's the criminal," I say, with the bitter remnants of spa infused lemon on my tongue. That pastry chef recommended by Mia and adored by my wedding team— Pascal St. Germaine. What a pompous shit. "I was having so much fun shoving sample cakes into Ana's mouth I couldn't think straight. I just said yes, yes, yes. And then we fucked so good afterwards, that solidified our love soaked decision."