Chapter 4 I Would Have Given You All Of My Heart
The bite of January was in the air. The New Year celebrations were over and life returned to the cold monotony of winter, without the pleasure of being able to look forward to Christmas. It was Shawn's last day in Salem. He had had enough, and the Merchant Marine Academy beckoned. He had spent months trying to win Belle back, sitting outside of her bedroom door at Brady's apartment for the first three months as she refused to come out, talking to her, singing lullabies to her when it was time for her to go to sleep, though he knew she wouldn't, and would lie there crying her heart out, passing notes and love letters under the door, watching her mourning her baby and her loss of faith in everything, refusing to talk to him, and then watching in despair as she ran around with every other boy in town. He saw her kissing them in Dot Com, wearing black leather mini-skirts, stiletto heels and mid-riff tops to go to 'the cinema'. She didn't lose her reputation, just tarnished it a bit, but it was too much for Shawn to take anymore. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to forget everything that happened, make new memories to cover the old ones, to erase the emotions that had been so real the year before. She was trying to forget their love. Trying to kill that love, and it was killing him too, because somewhere along the line, and he would never know when, she had become a part of him, and without that part, he was incomplete.
Shawn sat in the Brady Pub for the last time, eating the last of his French fries and slurping chocolate milkshake, watched by his ever loving grandparents. It was almost time for him to go. He didn't want to leave Salem, but if he stayed, he would be destroyed by Belle. He loved her, he doubted he would ever stop loving her, but now he had to let her go or he would never be able to live his own life. Perhaps, in the far distant future, he would even find someone else to love, but he doubted it. She had all of his heart, even if she didn't want it and could no longer bear to look at him.
He took his empty plate into the kitchen, kissed the cook on the cheek and said goodbye to them all. He had told few people that he was going, only his immediate family, until an hour ago when he had told Mimi Lockhart and she had announced it to the town.
He noticed the time and raced out of the front door of the Pub. Outside, everyone was waiting for him. Half of Salem, or in other words the Brady, Horton and Kiriakis clans had turned up to wave the prodigal son off. Shawn kissed so many aunts, grandmothers, nieces, and other relatives of the female persuasion on the cheek that he lost track. His friends were there too, or as many as had remained in Salem. One person was missing though. Belle. She hadn't come to say goodbye, she really didn't care. Forcing back the tears as he hugged his baby half brother goodbye, watching the tears flood down his mother's cheeks, Shawn wondered if Belle even knew he was leaving. He had to forget her, or he would drive himself mad.
Chloe wasn't there, neither were Brady, probably absent out of sibling loyalty though he and his cousin had never been closer and Penny was with him, Philip, who was studying at Stanford, Kevin, who was doing his nerd thing at MIT and Susan had made her way to a very fine cosmetics and business school on the east coast. Jan and Jason were there, as in lust as they ever had been, and Mimi was dancing around in the cold air as she had done every January of her life for as long as either of them could remember. There were tears shining in her brown eyes. She knew what had happened between Shawn and Belle, and seeing him leave without her being by his side was like seeing Romeo without Juliet, Laurel without Hardy, Angel without Buffy. She sighed in despair.
He missed them, missed them more because Belle rejected him and he had been lonely. He wouldn't be lonely where he was going though. He would be alone, but also he would be away from everything associated with the people he had loved the most. In the taxi, as he drove away from his oh so loving family and his friends that cared as much, the radio was on.
Leaning his head back, and unsuccessfully trying not to think of Belle, Shawn listened to the music.
IWe've already said - goodbye,
Since you've got to go,
Oh, you'd better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Before you see me cry
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
Cause how many times do I have to tell you,
Darling, darling, I'm still in love with you now whoa/I
He wondered if Belle would ever be in love again, or if her serial dating would end with her alone and still living with Brady, and Penny or whatever woman he chose in the end.
I We've already said - so long,
I don't want to see you go,
But oh you better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Don't you even try,
Telling me that you really don't want it to end this way
Cause darling, darling, can't you see that I want you to stay?
Ye-ea-ah/I
She did want to end it this way. That was the problem. She wanted his heart broken, not because she was cruel, but because she needed him to understand her pain and there was no way he could comfort her anymore.
"Bye, Belle," Shawn whispered to her, though she could not hear him. "You'll always be my Perfect Girl."
I Since you've got to go,
Oh you better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Before you see me cry,
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now,
And how many times do I have to tell you
darling, darling, I'm still in love, still in love with you now?
I don't want to see you go, but darling you'd better go now!/I
The DJ came on, the radio crackling slightly as the song ended. Before the next song was introduced, though, Shawn caught his own name being spoken. "That was 'Go Now' by the Moody Blues for Shawn Douglas, from his Isabella."
The rest of the words were lost on Shawn, but he knew what he heard. Belle was telling him to leave, that she knew he was leaving and that she was going to miss him, perhaps? Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Shawn pushed the thought away. He couldn't think about Belle like that anymore. If he did, he would go insane.
The Merchant Marines were to be his home for as long as he cared to stay. Perhaps, if he really liked it there, he would chose never to come home, never to face Belle and her boyfriends again. Then he would never have to see JT, to be reminded of what had happened between their parents to create the boy, but he would never stop wanting to see JT, never stop wanting to be able to play the big brother role as he had longed to do for so long, to be part of the family he had wanted his entire childhood. He had read stories his entire life of sailors who found a better home at sea with their shipmates than they ever did on shore, and if he could find the same home there as they had, perhaps he would never set foot on land again, family or no family in Salem.
Belle watched from behind a corner as Shawn's taxi pulled away, tears streaming down her face. She had known that the longing for the sea in him was powerful, and that she was pushing him into 'her open bountiful arms', but she had never expected him to leave forever. She had been about to run to him, to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay with her, to make a life with her, to marry her as he promised to do all those months before, but just as she had steeled herself to it, he had turned and climbed into the taxi, and it had been too late. She had lost him again. Suddenly Belle was terrified that, after months of running from him, hiding her feelings behind a veil of short lived flings with other boys and rejecting her Tough Boy again and again, and knowing that he would come back every time that she pushed him away because he loved her, that he had finally had enough and left her forever. She wept, more for herself than for him, and if he could have heard her calling him back at that moment, she thought she would scream in vain. He was gone.
It was eight months since he had left Salem, eight long and lonely months. He had missed it more than he would ever be able to say. It was more than missing the place, his family, JT, his friends, it was missing Her that was driving him to distraction. His friends on board the ship had noticed and as tonight was their first shore leave they were determined to get him 'laid' as they put it. He didn't mope, or sulk, or talk about Belle all the time, but he was neither as jovial or as bouncily happy as they all were. He would wander the decks at night, insomnia haunting him, and look up at the stars, remembering the stars on her ceiling the night of graduation, the way she had felt in his arms, the smell of her hair, and the promises they had made each other, promises that would now never be fulfilled.
Mark, Shawn's bunkmate and best friend on board, especially noticed that Shawn was 'quiet', and he was determined to find himself a beautiful Spanish senorita in the port of Cadiz and a slightly less beautiful one for his friend who would make him scream in the night. He might be a good Samaritan, but he wasn't a selfless saint.
"Come on, Brady," Mark whacked Shawn around the back of the head with the letter he was re-reading. It was Shawn's letter really, one from his great grandmother, but Mark had practically adopted Alice, writing to her more than Shawn did, and read the old ones she had written to Shawn to get a better idea of her. Shawn didn't care. Great Gran only wrote about Salem business, what was happening with JT and other family matters, and she had not once mentioned his Belle. "You are coming with us, have a few tequila shots, a little dancing with some hot girl and then you are going to find the biggest assed whore in the whole of Spain and take her to bed and not come back until Sunday. Whadda ya say?"
Mark shot a grin at him that nearly rivalled Shawn's own trademark smile. Shawn groaned, sat up, and after six preceding hours of similar comments and innuendo, finally agreed. His one hope was to get drunk and unconscious fast, so Mark couldn't set him up with some girl for a one night stand that he would regret for the rest of his life.
Cadiz was a beautiful town, in the old Spanish style, and it took Shawn and Mark all of sixteen minutes to find the rowdiest, noisiest, coarsest, most dangerous, whore filled bar in the whole place.
"Isn't this place great?" Mark called to his moody friend between taking body shots off a dark haired waitress who seemed to like his short blond hair as much as he loved her curvaceous figure. "Where else can you get drunk, laid and sing songs from 'Jaws' without getting kicked out of the place?"
Shawn raised his shot glass to his inebriated friend and knocked it back fast. It had little effect. He was reaching for the next in the line of them when a slender brown hand descended and grabbed it first. Turning, Shawn confronted a girl of about twenty, with beautiful black brown hair and almond shaped brown eyes. She wasn't beautiful as Belle had been, but she was pretty, and had a mouth that was an artist's dream.
"Excuse me," Shawn's voice wasn't slurred yet, but if he had anything to do with it, he wouldn't be able to walk straight or say tongue-twisters by the end of the night. He wasn't about to let any of his drinks pass him by, not even for a pretty Spanish girl.
She knocked it back fast and turned to look at him fully, her eyes dilating as she took him in. "Yes?"
She raised a well shaped eyebrow at him, and for a moment he became lost in her brown eyes, then Belle's image floated before him and he snapped out of it. "That was my drink," he informed her, his chocolate coloured eyes gazing deeply into hers, with more liking than hostility.
"Sorry, I didn't think you were going to manage another one." Her voice was low and throaty, and her English had a strong Spanish accent to it. "Drowning sorrows?"
"Is it that obvious?" Shawn signalled to the bartender for another round of drinks.
"Only to me. I have this psychic talent, I know when there is a broken heart in the same room as me." She smiled at him.
"And? What about mine, is it broken or just a little bruised?" Shawn dropped his gaze to the bottom of his glass.
"Hmm, let's see." She took him by the chin and turned his face to hers. She stared into his eyes and then dropped one incredibly steamy kiss onto his lips.
"Go Brady! Thank God for that! I was beginning to think you were gay," Mark slurred from his place next to the busty Spanish girl with the tequila bottle.
The girl with the brown eyes released him. "Brady, huh?" she asked in that growling voice of hers.
"Shawn Douglas Brady at your service," Shawn saluted her with a mocking smile on his full lips, then asked the obvious question. "Why did you kiss me?"
She shrugged, hair cascading over her shoulders. "I wanted to see how your heart was, Shawn Douglas Brady."
"And?" He raised his eyebrows at her, wondering if he was wrong and his heart was only bruised.
"Completely shattered. Worst case I've ever seen. My name's Christina, by the way. Chris to you." She stared at him hard, memorising his features. "You know there's only one cure for a broken heart."
"And that is?" Shawn reached for another drink, but Chris's hand descended on his wrist, clamping it tight and stopping him.
"Not the demon drink." She smiled a smile full of white teeth, and licked her red lips lasciviously. "Another woman."
"I don't think so." Shawn shook her hand off and gulped down another shot, turning his head to catch sight of Mark leaving his Spanish senorita and staggering drunkenly towards them.
"'Take me to bed or lose me forever!'" She threatened.
"Yeah baby!" Mark attempted to take her up on her offer.
"No thanks," Shawn answered her, as Mark fell down into his arms as Chris pushed him away from her. "Good, you passed my test for crazy, sex mad bastards without consciences. Come on, we'll take your friend home and then you can tell me all about the girl who broke your heart." Chris smiled at him again, with less teeth and with more warmth, and Shawn decided that there were worse things than talking to a pretty girl all night.
"Can I bring my drink?" He asked her with only half a hope.
"Of course, now come on before he starts harassing Martina," she nodded towards a huge, bearded woman of approximately sixty who sat with a bottle of gin and a deck of cards in one corner of the bar.
Shawn smiled his trademark grin at last and slung one arm around Mark's waist, half supporting and half carrying him out of the bar and down the street.
"Farewell, and adieu to you," Mark started singing, "fair Spanish ladies."
'Eh, why not?' thought Shawn through the haze of drink while Chris watched amusedly as the two merchant marines staggered unsteadily down the street and sang the old song.
"Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain," Shawn joined in, and together he and Mark made a fairly respectable job of it, especially considering they had had an extraordinary amount of tequila between them. "For we've received orders to sail back to Boston, never to you or Spain again."
Shawn had dumped Mark into his bunk and wandered back out to find Chris still waiting for him.
"Ready?" she asked him patiently. "I think this broken heart of yours is going to take some mending."
"Really?" Shawn asked sarcastically. "and there I was thinking that it was only a little bruised by her high heel."
"Quit the sarcasm, sunshine, or I'll show you a high heel," Chris raised her foot slightly and aimed it at Shawn's most sensitive spot. Jumping backwards, Shawn laughed and conceded victory to her.
"Right. Now what's this girl's name and what exactly does she look like?" Chris was business like about it, but she could see a world of pain behind Shawn's chocolate eyes.
"Her name," Shawn sighed softly, "is Belle, and she has hair with sunlight in it."
They talked all night. Not just about Belle, but about Chris and her broken heart too. She had to admit that Shawn had undergone worse than her, but wouldn't let him feel sorry for himself. The fire that had kept her going was to stoke his spirit into a burning passion and she wasn't letting him go anywhere until he decided the ultimate answer: could he still love Belle enough to return to Salem and fight until he had her back, or should he just view her forever after as a dream like figure who had broken his heart once, but had never really been true love?
The bite of January was in the air. The New Year celebrations were over and life returned to the cold monotony of winter, without the pleasure of being able to look forward to Christmas. It was Shawn's last day in Salem. He had had enough, and the Merchant Marine Academy beckoned. He had spent months trying to win Belle back, sitting outside of her bedroom door at Brady's apartment for the first three months as she refused to come out, talking to her, singing lullabies to her when it was time for her to go to sleep, though he knew she wouldn't, and would lie there crying her heart out, passing notes and love letters under the door, watching her mourning her baby and her loss of faith in everything, refusing to talk to him, and then watching in despair as she ran around with every other boy in town. He saw her kissing them in Dot Com, wearing black leather mini-skirts, stiletto heels and mid-riff tops to go to 'the cinema'. She didn't lose her reputation, just tarnished it a bit, but it was too much for Shawn to take anymore. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to forget everything that happened, make new memories to cover the old ones, to erase the emotions that had been so real the year before. She was trying to forget their love. Trying to kill that love, and it was killing him too, because somewhere along the line, and he would never know when, she had become a part of him, and without that part, he was incomplete.
Shawn sat in the Brady Pub for the last time, eating the last of his French fries and slurping chocolate milkshake, watched by his ever loving grandparents. It was almost time for him to go. He didn't want to leave Salem, but if he stayed, he would be destroyed by Belle. He loved her, he doubted he would ever stop loving her, but now he had to let her go or he would never be able to live his own life. Perhaps, in the far distant future, he would even find someone else to love, but he doubted it. She had all of his heart, even if she didn't want it and could no longer bear to look at him.
He took his empty plate into the kitchen, kissed the cook on the cheek and said goodbye to them all. He had told few people that he was going, only his immediate family, until an hour ago when he had told Mimi Lockhart and she had announced it to the town.
He noticed the time and raced out of the front door of the Pub. Outside, everyone was waiting for him. Half of Salem, or in other words the Brady, Horton and Kiriakis clans had turned up to wave the prodigal son off. Shawn kissed so many aunts, grandmothers, nieces, and other relatives of the female persuasion on the cheek that he lost track. His friends were there too, or as many as had remained in Salem. One person was missing though. Belle. She hadn't come to say goodbye, she really didn't care. Forcing back the tears as he hugged his baby half brother goodbye, watching the tears flood down his mother's cheeks, Shawn wondered if Belle even knew he was leaving. He had to forget her, or he would drive himself mad.
Chloe wasn't there, neither were Brady, probably absent out of sibling loyalty though he and his cousin had never been closer and Penny was with him, Philip, who was studying at Stanford, Kevin, who was doing his nerd thing at MIT and Susan had made her way to a very fine cosmetics and business school on the east coast. Jan and Jason were there, as in lust as they ever had been, and Mimi was dancing around in the cold air as she had done every January of her life for as long as either of them could remember. There were tears shining in her brown eyes. She knew what had happened between Shawn and Belle, and seeing him leave without her being by his side was like seeing Romeo without Juliet, Laurel without Hardy, Angel without Buffy. She sighed in despair.
He missed them, missed them more because Belle rejected him and he had been lonely. He wouldn't be lonely where he was going though. He would be alone, but also he would be away from everything associated with the people he had loved the most. In the taxi, as he drove away from his oh so loving family and his friends that cared as much, the radio was on.
Leaning his head back, and unsuccessfully trying not to think of Belle, Shawn listened to the music.
IWe've already said - goodbye,
Since you've got to go,
Oh, you'd better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Before you see me cry
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now
Cause how many times do I have to tell you,
Darling, darling, I'm still in love with you now whoa/I
He wondered if Belle would ever be in love again, or if her serial dating would end with her alone and still living with Brady, and Penny or whatever woman he chose in the end.
I We've already said - so long,
I don't want to see you go,
But oh you better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Don't you even try,
Telling me that you really don't want it to end this way
Cause darling, darling, can't you see that I want you to stay?
Ye-ea-ah/I
She did want to end it this way. That was the problem. She wanted his heart broken, not because she was cruel, but because she needed him to understand her pain and there was no way he could comfort her anymore.
"Bye, Belle," Shawn whispered to her, though she could not hear him. "You'll always be my Perfect Girl."
I Since you've got to go,
Oh you better go now,
Go now, go now,
Go now
Before you see me cry,
I don't want you to tell me just what you intend to do now,
And how many times do I have to tell you
darling, darling, I'm still in love, still in love with you now?
I don't want to see you go, but darling you'd better go now!/I
The DJ came on, the radio crackling slightly as the song ended. Before the next song was introduced, though, Shawn caught his own name being spoken. "That was 'Go Now' by the Moody Blues for Shawn Douglas, from his Isabella."
The rest of the words were lost on Shawn, but he knew what he heard. Belle was telling him to leave, that she knew he was leaving and that she was going to miss him, perhaps? Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Shawn pushed the thought away. He couldn't think about Belle like that anymore. If he did, he would go insane.
The Merchant Marines were to be his home for as long as he cared to stay. Perhaps, if he really liked it there, he would chose never to come home, never to face Belle and her boyfriends again. Then he would never have to see JT, to be reminded of what had happened between their parents to create the boy, but he would never stop wanting to see JT, never stop wanting to be able to play the big brother role as he had longed to do for so long, to be part of the family he had wanted his entire childhood. He had read stories his entire life of sailors who found a better home at sea with their shipmates than they ever did on shore, and if he could find the same home there as they had, perhaps he would never set foot on land again, family or no family in Salem.
Belle watched from behind a corner as Shawn's taxi pulled away, tears streaming down her face. She had known that the longing for the sea in him was powerful, and that she was pushing him into 'her open bountiful arms', but she had never expected him to leave forever. She had been about to run to him, to throw her arms around him and beg him to stay with her, to make a life with her, to marry her as he promised to do all those months before, but just as she had steeled herself to it, he had turned and climbed into the taxi, and it had been too late. She had lost him again. Suddenly Belle was terrified that, after months of running from him, hiding her feelings behind a veil of short lived flings with other boys and rejecting her Tough Boy again and again, and knowing that he would come back every time that she pushed him away because he loved her, that he had finally had enough and left her forever. She wept, more for herself than for him, and if he could have heard her calling him back at that moment, she thought she would scream in vain. He was gone.
It was eight months since he had left Salem, eight long and lonely months. He had missed it more than he would ever be able to say. It was more than missing the place, his family, JT, his friends, it was missing Her that was driving him to distraction. His friends on board the ship had noticed and as tonight was their first shore leave they were determined to get him 'laid' as they put it. He didn't mope, or sulk, or talk about Belle all the time, but he was neither as jovial or as bouncily happy as they all were. He would wander the decks at night, insomnia haunting him, and look up at the stars, remembering the stars on her ceiling the night of graduation, the way she had felt in his arms, the smell of her hair, and the promises they had made each other, promises that would now never be fulfilled.
Mark, Shawn's bunkmate and best friend on board, especially noticed that Shawn was 'quiet', and he was determined to find himself a beautiful Spanish senorita in the port of Cadiz and a slightly less beautiful one for his friend who would make him scream in the night. He might be a good Samaritan, but he wasn't a selfless saint.
"Come on, Brady," Mark whacked Shawn around the back of the head with the letter he was re-reading. It was Shawn's letter really, one from his great grandmother, but Mark had practically adopted Alice, writing to her more than Shawn did, and read the old ones she had written to Shawn to get a better idea of her. Shawn didn't care. Great Gran only wrote about Salem business, what was happening with JT and other family matters, and she had not once mentioned his Belle. "You are coming with us, have a few tequila shots, a little dancing with some hot girl and then you are going to find the biggest assed whore in the whole of Spain and take her to bed and not come back until Sunday. Whadda ya say?"
Mark shot a grin at him that nearly rivalled Shawn's own trademark smile. Shawn groaned, sat up, and after six preceding hours of similar comments and innuendo, finally agreed. His one hope was to get drunk and unconscious fast, so Mark couldn't set him up with some girl for a one night stand that he would regret for the rest of his life.
Cadiz was a beautiful town, in the old Spanish style, and it took Shawn and Mark all of sixteen minutes to find the rowdiest, noisiest, coarsest, most dangerous, whore filled bar in the whole place.
"Isn't this place great?" Mark called to his moody friend between taking body shots off a dark haired waitress who seemed to like his short blond hair as much as he loved her curvaceous figure. "Where else can you get drunk, laid and sing songs from 'Jaws' without getting kicked out of the place?"
Shawn raised his shot glass to his inebriated friend and knocked it back fast. It had little effect. He was reaching for the next in the line of them when a slender brown hand descended and grabbed it first. Turning, Shawn confronted a girl of about twenty, with beautiful black brown hair and almond shaped brown eyes. She wasn't beautiful as Belle had been, but she was pretty, and had a mouth that was an artist's dream.
"Excuse me," Shawn's voice wasn't slurred yet, but if he had anything to do with it, he wouldn't be able to walk straight or say tongue-twisters by the end of the night. He wasn't about to let any of his drinks pass him by, not even for a pretty Spanish girl.
She knocked it back fast and turned to look at him fully, her eyes dilating as she took him in. "Yes?"
She raised a well shaped eyebrow at him, and for a moment he became lost in her brown eyes, then Belle's image floated before him and he snapped out of it. "That was my drink," he informed her, his chocolate coloured eyes gazing deeply into hers, with more liking than hostility.
"Sorry, I didn't think you were going to manage another one." Her voice was low and throaty, and her English had a strong Spanish accent to it. "Drowning sorrows?"
"Is it that obvious?" Shawn signalled to the bartender for another round of drinks.
"Only to me. I have this psychic talent, I know when there is a broken heart in the same room as me." She smiled at him.
"And? What about mine, is it broken or just a little bruised?" Shawn dropped his gaze to the bottom of his glass.
"Hmm, let's see." She took him by the chin and turned his face to hers. She stared into his eyes and then dropped one incredibly steamy kiss onto his lips.
"Go Brady! Thank God for that! I was beginning to think you were gay," Mark slurred from his place next to the busty Spanish girl with the tequila bottle.
The girl with the brown eyes released him. "Brady, huh?" she asked in that growling voice of hers.
"Shawn Douglas Brady at your service," Shawn saluted her with a mocking smile on his full lips, then asked the obvious question. "Why did you kiss me?"
She shrugged, hair cascading over her shoulders. "I wanted to see how your heart was, Shawn Douglas Brady."
"And?" He raised his eyebrows at her, wondering if he was wrong and his heart was only bruised.
"Completely shattered. Worst case I've ever seen. My name's Christina, by the way. Chris to you." She stared at him hard, memorising his features. "You know there's only one cure for a broken heart."
"And that is?" Shawn reached for another drink, but Chris's hand descended on his wrist, clamping it tight and stopping him.
"Not the demon drink." She smiled a smile full of white teeth, and licked her red lips lasciviously. "Another woman."
"I don't think so." Shawn shook her hand off and gulped down another shot, turning his head to catch sight of Mark leaving his Spanish senorita and staggering drunkenly towards them.
"'Take me to bed or lose me forever!'" She threatened.
"Yeah baby!" Mark attempted to take her up on her offer.
"No thanks," Shawn answered her, as Mark fell down into his arms as Chris pushed him away from her. "Good, you passed my test for crazy, sex mad bastards without consciences. Come on, we'll take your friend home and then you can tell me all about the girl who broke your heart." Chris smiled at him again, with less teeth and with more warmth, and Shawn decided that there were worse things than talking to a pretty girl all night.
"Can I bring my drink?" He asked her with only half a hope.
"Of course, now come on before he starts harassing Martina," she nodded towards a huge, bearded woman of approximately sixty who sat with a bottle of gin and a deck of cards in one corner of the bar.
Shawn smiled his trademark grin at last and slung one arm around Mark's waist, half supporting and half carrying him out of the bar and down the street.
"Farewell, and adieu to you," Mark started singing, "fair Spanish ladies."
'Eh, why not?' thought Shawn through the haze of drink while Chris watched amusedly as the two merchant marines staggered unsteadily down the street and sang the old song.
"Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain," Shawn joined in, and together he and Mark made a fairly respectable job of it, especially considering they had had an extraordinary amount of tequila between them. "For we've received orders to sail back to Boston, never to you or Spain again."
Shawn had dumped Mark into his bunk and wandered back out to find Chris still waiting for him.
"Ready?" she asked him patiently. "I think this broken heart of yours is going to take some mending."
"Really?" Shawn asked sarcastically. "and there I was thinking that it was only a little bruised by her high heel."
"Quit the sarcasm, sunshine, or I'll show you a high heel," Chris raised her foot slightly and aimed it at Shawn's most sensitive spot. Jumping backwards, Shawn laughed and conceded victory to her.
"Right. Now what's this girl's name and what exactly does she look like?" Chris was business like about it, but she could see a world of pain behind Shawn's chocolate eyes.
"Her name," Shawn sighed softly, "is Belle, and she has hair with sunlight in it."
They talked all night. Not just about Belle, but about Chris and her broken heart too. She had to admit that Shawn had undergone worse than her, but wouldn't let him feel sorry for himself. The fire that had kept her going was to stoke his spirit into a burning passion and she wasn't letting him go anywhere until he decided the ultimate answer: could he still love Belle enough to return to Salem and fight until he had her back, or should he just view her forever after as a dream like figure who had broken his heart once, but had never really been true love?