A Random Story

So I was just messing around writing some nonsense the other day and all this came pouring out from goodness knows where. I thought I could share it here :)

So here it is!


David looked back towards the living room, sighing tiredly as he loosened his tie. Knowing he was distracted, I stared at the lips of the man who had become my betrothed well against my wishes. Long story. There was a business deal and two powerful fathers with children poised to take over their respective family businesses who had no plans on getting married or having kids and then came the threats of disinheritance and hey presto! I was engaged to a man I had never met. 

It dawned on me that the man who had been a complete stranger ten months before, had a mere hour ago wrapped his fingers so tightly around my own that I could barely imagine them existing without his calloused hands fused around them. We stood on the stairs where I had caught him trying to sneak away from the stares and the pitying smiles. Even the fact that I was standing on the stairs of his childhood home like I belonged there gave me pause. A lifetime ago I had stood on this very spot, spitting rage and vomiting hate at the man I swore I would never let worm his way into my family’s wealth and empire. 

Yet here I stood, staring at one of the many parts of him I had come to allow myself to be curious about. I had been doing that a lot lately. Staring at his lips. I never let myself wonder why. That was one road I was not ready to even think about traversing. 

“Is it weird that I’m more tired than sad?” he asked me quietly, looking at the people who still lingered in the living room. Some were there for the food and some for the company of the influential and powerful, but the respectful and loyal few still exchanged fond memories and tall tales of David’s father Charles, M. McCallum, speaking wistfully about a great man. I had known him as the bedridden white-haired sweetheart who had told me stories about his mischievous boy who had grown up to be my (I still choked over the word sometimes) fiancé, but everyone else knew a giant. A man who had been larger than life and harder than steel. 

David and I had never made a habit of holding hands before. Even after he had slid an obscenely large diamond onto my left ring finger at an engagement party to rival any in the 21st century, we had never even pretended to be close, not even in public. Sure, we had agreed to get to know each other but it had all been in the name of a business deal. Hardly the way to deal with matters of the heart, but neither of us chose to acknowledge the truth in that. 

But as I reached for his hand to, heavens forbid, comfort my fiancé, like some…normal couple who could actually relate to and like each other, maybe even lov..? Okay so maybe I’m not ready for that particular ‘L’ word just yet… 

“It’s been a hell of a week,” I offered lamely, my attempts at comfort falling to my thumb rubbing little circles on the back of his hand. “We have time to be sad tomorrow. Today, tired wins.” 

He gave me that smile that I had come to understand meant that he appreciated my dry humour even though it always came at the most inopportune and inappropriate of times. But I knew where his focus lay when his eyes darted quickly to our linked fingers. Somehow the combination of that indulgent smile, usually accompanied by a snort or rolled eyes, and those darting eyes that were capable of smiling at me all by themselves, was what got to me. 

We were a couple. By no means were we in love, but we sure as hell weren’t in hate any more. We were in…understanding. We would get to friendship, to trust. In that moment, I was satisfied to know that we knew each other well enough to communicate without words which, let’s not kid ourselves, both our parents who were very much in love, did on a daily basis. 

So when my father and his mourning mother found us holding hands and granting each other the privilege of our broken smiles, they smiled knowingly before interrupting us. When they summoned us for introductions to people we would one day need to know, I let David slide his arm around my waist and tuck me into his side, the image of the golden couple who would one day rule a business empire all their own. 

We would grow into that image and one day grow beyond it too. Today, I held my fiancé’s hand and stared at his lips, letting myself wonder how they would taste.