"I'm not cheating, I'm not cheating, I'm not cheat... Oh my gawd ...."
I was back at the coffee house. I had an adventure that I wanted to go on, one that I had not gone on in a very long while. Jack was closing up, again. I waited until all of the regulars, the people who knew me had already left before I returned... in a new outfit.
"Hey, uh, Jack... I changed my mind. Are you still free tonight?" Alright, I was still sounding desperate but at least my voice didn't waver this time.
"For you Nicole, I'll be free any time you want me." Oh gawd, that wink, and charismatic tug of his lopsided grin when he smiled... Oh please, I can't fall for him, I was with Rascal!
"Well, what time do you want me to stop by again? I can come back after you close up?"
"Naw, you sit your pretty little tush right there and we'll be ready to go in about 15 minutes. You don't mind that I smell like coffee when we go out, do you?"
Coffee? Coffee? It's only my favorite smell in the entire world! "Not at all!"
Jack wiped down the tables and chairs, refilled the canisters sitting on the counters and shooed the last of the customers out of the shop. It was only 7 p.m. but the coffee shops closed early around here, no one really wandered around after 7:30 anyways, no one ever liked the dark in this town. When we first moved in Rascal was warned to keep an eye on me after dark, apparently there was a town superstition that a vengeful spirit was wandering the roads looking for his murdered mistress and wife. Or maybe it was just the mistress. I'm not one for fairy tales or ghost stories so I didn't pay attention.
Long story short, one of the original town founders, George Trian married a pretty little blond waif like beautynot much older than 15 from a few towns over and she died in childbirth. Poor thing. Well, he didn't waste any time finding someone to take care of his little girl and remarried. So it's told is that he married the little girls older step sister, Belinda, who really wasn't that pretty. She was the maid of the family, and was never home when someone came to call for her hand so she never got married until her younger sister died. Well, she ended up raising her dead sisters daughter. Now since he has a woman at home that he doesn't really want, raising a beautiful little girl that he doesn't know how to raise, he decided to leave the town. As the town founder, that is a little difficult, since everyone knows your name and your story. Trian left behind his second wife and child and headed East, towards the mountain villages when the daughter, Vanessa turned 4.
Years passed and Trian never returned. In the meantime Trian's little daughter grew up and became the spitting image of her mother, much to the annoyance of her aunt/step mother. When she turned 16, Vanessa decided to head out and find her father. Knowing that he headed East, she headed out herself, alone. It just so happened that Trian decided to head home and see how the town that he helped found was doing and headed West. Halfway between the two towns father and daughter met at dusk and camped across the road from each other, both unaware that the other was there. George got up in the middle of the night to do his business and wandered across the road to where Vanessa lay. Finding her laying there, her blond hair illuminated by the moon, curled under an aging blanket that once adorned his wedding bed, Train became frightened. It does not take much for a cheating man to become spooked. He believed that since he fell in love with the other woman, Clarissa from the other town, that his beautiful first wife had come to haunt him after he left Clarissa's village.
And so, George killed Vanessa in her sleep. None would have been the wise if he had headed East that very morning. However, being a foolish man, he headed West, back to his first town. Everyone at that point had been looking for Vanessa, not knowing that she had headed East and were shocked when George had entered the town. They pleaded with him asking if they had seen the girl, small, waif like, blond hair, young, and George became frightened. He repeated three times, "No, I have not seen the girl that you seek." Belinda heard him state this three times and took him home. She sat him down and searched his clothes, his hair, and his shoes for a sign that he had indeed been cheating. She found on his backside, one of Vanessa's long blond hairs. She became furious believing that this hair belonged to his mistress, who in truth was not blond, but lost in time and legend, and struck George down. The townsfolk hearing the trouble rushed to the house and saw Belinda with the weapon and George dead on the ground, and lost no time in sentencing to a hanging until death. And thus George Trian, his first wife, his second wife Belinda and his daughter Vanessa had died.
To this day, the townsfolk do not stay outside and keep an eye on their cheating husbands, and the husbands/dates don't dare cheat for fear that Belinda will come and strike them in their sleep.
Being one of the new kids on the block, I didn't believe in such rubbish. The better question was, should I believe in these tales when I myself was about to cheat on Rascal?
