Newsprint

By Queen Anne

July 5, 2003

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"I made it," she said. "I made it." He nodded. She sat by the window, looking out into the bustling street below.

"Why aren't you somewhere, out with all the rest of our friends? Getting drunk, partying…isn't that the type of thing you do after you graduate? I mean…" He held up an empty glass with traces of bourbon at the bottom.

"Don't drink on your own, Tristan. If you're going to get drunk, at least do it with someone else around," she laughed.

"You're someone else," he pointed out, practically laying in his massive desk chair. "Come to think of it, why are you here, and not out getting drunk and partying?" he threw her own words back at her. She eyed the glass, how the angles threw the light from the window onto his face and around his office, little drops of shine that colored the contours of his face.

"I don't drink, though sometimes I wish I did. Today would have been a nice day to do it. Perfect. Harvard…it seems like such a nice thing to drink to. And leaving it seems like an even better thing to drink to, and…wait, why aren't you somewhere else?" she asked again, remembering.

"Because I had to come here."

A boy in an adult's office.

"Aren't you happy?" she questioned him, turning her gaze from him to the light, looking down to see the people, the lives that ran around in such a hurry, when in the office it seemed as though life had slowed to a staggering heart beat.

"I have you and my bourbon and my company, and I just graduated from Harvard against the orders of my father. And in fifteen minutes, I'll join the bustling group of friends who have congregated in the lobby downstairs to look for us and laugh to my hearts content. So yes, I am happy."

His father's desk was tall, ornate, built for a king, a DuGrey. She liked to sit on it, move his papers out of the way and perch on top of it. She crossed her legs at the ankles gracefully, her hair pinned up beautifully, her navy strapless dress accentuating her grace until he could swear she was Audrey Hepburn in a tea-length princess dress. Her hair was the same color as the bourbon, and it swirled atop her head dizzyingly. To pull a pin there, a clasp there, and it would come bounding down in curling waves in his hands.

He wanted her, there was no doubt, and always had. Had since high school, had since he kissed her, had since he returned from exile, since he found her at the high school graduation, had every day of every year they had gone to college. And she no longer knew it. Once, she was aware, of his gaze on her, and what it meant. Now, she wasn't sure it was anything but the light, and he didn't quite know how to tell her.

As she sat there, a vision, he surveyed the ornate class that covered every inch of the massive office. Leather, crystal, dark polished wood that ran together with rich eggshell carpet. And her in the middle of it, of his office. May his father rest in peace, but he was left a life that seemed too big for him when she was in it.

And then she started taking down her hair, pulling a pin out at random. When the first long strand of gilded dark brown hair fell in a cascading curl and hit her shoulder, he poured another glass of bourbon and downed it in a second.

"Let's go," he said, before she sat there any longer.

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Thank you for reading! The next installment comes soon. --Annest