White & Black

Jessie M.

The Duality of Nature

Ice & Fire

Dark & Light

Male & Female

Black & White

*

Was it just meant to be?

Chapter 1

He could feel himself slipping away, back into the fuzzy warmth of his dream. He had a constant need to go there, to see if he could find an answer…

He couldn’t see her, this dream lover he held in his arms, but he knew he wanted her desperately. He burned with desire deep inside. He bent his head and placed a soft kiss on her lips. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back passionately, her tongue swirling around his. She pressed herself up against him, his arousal tight and hard between them. He smoothed her hair back with his hand and pressed his cheek to hers, whispering against her ear in the darkness…

‘I love you. Don’t ever leave me. I want you and need you so much’

The instant he spoke the words, the soft pliant warmth of her body was gone from his arms.

She had disappeared…

Evaporated…

and he was left clutching at an empty space.

‘No, no, you can’t go… come back… I love you more than life itself.’
He was in a wild panic feeling for her in the dark, trying to find her again. The beginnings of tears were stinging at his eyes.

He sank to his knees in despair, his body still aching for her.

She had left him and he felt so alone, unloved and unwanted.

His eyes shot wide open and he woke up. He sat up quickly swinging his legs off the side of the bed, his chest heaving, his heart thumping. Perspiration was cooling on his body making him feel shivery all over.

He rubbed his face roughly, took a few deep breaths and shook his head trying to clear the bad feelings that remained away.

‘Fuck these weird dreams to hell…’

They always went something like that. Sometimes they were much longer and far more sexed up. They’d been going on for weeks and were really starting to get to him.

He looked at the clock on the bedside table and sighed loudly. ’
4.32 am. well that’s fucking great’.
He could really do without this shit just now. He had an important fight tonight and he really needed his sleep. But that obviously wasn’t going to happen, he was far too awake and unsettled.

He didn’t like the idea but he might have to get some sleeping pills if this went on for much longer.

Devlin got up and put on a T-shirt. He got a bottle of water out of the cooler and sat down on his sofa to watch some TV to take his mind off things. He’d have to take a nap later, in his room at the Arena.

Chapter 2

Ella had just got home from working her lunchtime shift and was going through the mail.

What an absolutely dreadful week it had suddenly become… Jake playing up skipping school again… her hours being cut at the diner…

But all that paled into insignificance when compared with this.

Her dad’s anxiously awaited test results were now sitting on the kitchen table in front of her and weren’t at all good.

She sat with her head in her hands, looking at the summary diagnosis from the hospital. A few choice words popped out at her as if they were in bold print.

‘Thomas White…. Permanent brain damage’

Shit no!
She couldn’t read any more. The enormity of it suddenly hit her hard, like someone had punched her inside her head.
Not her dad
… this couldn’t get any worse. Her stomach churned over with anxiety and her eyes blurred with tears. She folded up the letter and sat thinking.

How was she supposed to function with all this dreadful news descending from above? It was too much responsibility for a twenty one year old to handle all on her own.

The electrical accident at the construction site he had been working on had already caused severe nerve and muscle impairment and now it was confirmed there was permanent brain damage as well. She had known something wasn’t right, but this was far worse than she imagined. She always imagined he’d get better somehow. This was such terrible news. She just couldn’t, couldn’t tell him, not yet… She didn’t know what to say, or how to say it, or what it really meant to him long term.

An appointment was being arranged with the consultant to discuss it all soon, that would be the best time. She’d have to keep it to herself until then.

Although her dad could just about look after himself, doing the simple tasks in life, he needed someone to keep an eye on him. He was absent minded, partially disabled and behaved and spoke oddly at times, living in a world of his own. It was quite likely he would never work again and this arrangement was a permanent one. Ella loved her father very deeply and would never abandon him to a care home or anything like that, but still, it was a lot to ask of a person her age. It was looking like she would have to support and care for the three of them, all by herself, for the foreseeable future. It all weighed heavily on her mind.

If only he had taken out some income insurance cover, things would have been so much easier, she wouldn’t have to be worrying about money on top of everything else. She could be concentrating on caring for him and studying and they would be okay financially at least. But he hadn’t. It was kinda ‘end of’. There was no point dwelling on ‘if onlys’, was there? But it did really rankle now and then, suddenly invading her thoughts and winding her up. That small extra amount of money being spent would have made a world of difference to them now.

She was finding studying just impossible lately, she must have slipped at least three weeks behind on her course too. She had way too much to manage around the house.

There was just too much pressure on her.

She looked at the text book taunting her from the kitchen worktop with a grimace and a sense of gloom. ‘
The History of Taxation and Modern Accounting’
. Yuck! These topics were not easy to read or absorb, even when her head was into it. She had been having a lot of difficulty with her course for a while. It wasn’t really her, she found it very, very dull. Mind numbingly boring in truth. She had been side tracked into it as she was fairly mathematical and analytical by nature and the salary she could earn sounded good. But she was so much more creative inside than this allowed her to be. The whole subject matter made her want to scream out loud with frustration at times. She wished she’d never started it and could turn back the clock and do something else.

It had taken her a whole year to decide what to do after high school, as she couldn’t afford to go to college or leave her dad and Jakey alone. Jakey had been too young and her dad worked long hours. She had been far too young to make such decisions and she’d definitely made the wrong one. Still, she wanted to finish the damn home study accounting course, she’d invested too much time and money in it to chuck it all out of the window at this stage, even though she really wanted to. Hopefully she might even scrape through her next round of exams, if she could ever get herself back into it.

But that definitely wasn’t going to happen any time today, she was far too upset, worried and wound up about things. Her stomach was so tight she felt sick.

The latest knock back with her waitressing hours was more than a disaster. She knew Benny and Gill weren’t doing too great with the brand new Cheese Steak & Grill opening up just down the street. She didn’t even complain when Benny told her as she knew they already had more than enough worry going on. Her stomach had simply sunk to her feet and she had said that it was okay, she understood. They knew her situation only too well and wouldn’t have done this if they had any other choice. She counted herself lucky she still had any hours at all.

There really was only one thing for it. She needed to find another job.

She pulled herself out of her miserable moment, got up and walked through to the living room.

“Hey dad, you okay?” Her eyes blurred up some more with love and understanding, seeing him sitting there.

“F…f…f…fine love… yeah, just f..f..fine” He stuttered in reply.

Her dad’s speech wasn’t so good lately. He’d always had a touch of a stutter before the accident, but now it was much worse.

He was watching mixed martial arts on MMA Live. He loved all that macho, getting down and dirty on the floor, grappling, kicking and punching. It really was quite entertaining Ella thought to herself standing behind his chair and watching for a minute. Ella did kickboxing herself at her local gym. In her opinion it was the best stress reliever ever invented. Not only that, it was a great form of self defence, discipline and a perfect way to keep fit and toned. She had been doing it for quite some time and was ‘better than average
’
. Her instructors opinion, not her own.

She watched the two opponents battling it out as the referee skirted around them. Their tightly muscled sweat drenched bodies were twisting around each other in an impossibly fast and technical manoeuvre. She half recognised some of the movements going on between them. MMA was a fairly new and up and coming sport which had really taken off lately. It appealed to almost anyone who liked one on one highly skilled fighting.

The buzzer sounded for the end of the round and the two fighters returned to opposing sides for some water and positive ear bashing from their coaches who had swiftly entered the cage.

She sat on the arm of her dad’s chair and hugged him around the shoulders, stroking his arm. This was where he sat all day. He couldn’t walk or stand very well at all. It took him twenty minutes just to get to the bathroom. He insisted he did as much as he could for himself and wouldn’t take her help unless it was absolutely necessary.

God, if only she had someone to share all this with. She’d tried offloading on her friends now and then. Lyn her married friend, who also worked at the diner, was very good with her. Letting her ramble on and on. But what she really needed was help, not a sympathetic ear. At least she had her kind and helpful neighbors, that was something.

“Wouldn’t m…m…m…mind some coffee Ells…?” he asked her, placing his hand over hers.