The Long Winter
Word count: 1195
Summary: A woman who averts her eyes and a man who stares. This is their silent winter.
He was here.
He was here again. Eloise hated the man who looked at her as if nothing about her was good enough. His eyes watched her every week for two hours, from ten till midnight when she sang at The Ringo on Fridays. He had never smiled at her. He simply stared. When the hours were up, he would get up and leave.
Nobody could really tell who he was. Not even Andersen, The Ringo’s manager, knew much about him. All they could say was that he was a rich boy from an even richer family. Stay away, honey, they all said. Stay away. You don’t play with boys like him.
His eyes made her dread every performance even though only a while ago she had lived to sing. He made her detest the weakness that was slowly crawling and taking over her stomach. She wanted him to avert those eyes. If he was there to listen, why did he need those damned eyes?
Turn, turn, turn. She avoided his gaze as much as possible, but it was difficult. He had a favorite table, which was right smack in the middle of the room where Eloise found her own sweet spot of focus while singing. She couldn’t use that spot now; he would be staring at her as intensely as ever. His stares burned. When she turned her back, she felt a white hot poker dragged across her skin, marking her between the shoulder blades with that unrepentant sight.
Oh, those eyes infuriated Eloise. She felt naked in front of him. She couldn’t slip something on without thinking of him now. She wondered if he had been sneering at her full hip that barely fit into the dress, her arms that slowly lost their toned look and her belly flesh that folded itself into ugly red lines.
Her voice shook when she thought of him. The life she built around her singing was slowly crumbling because of one man, and it was lethal. She would like to tell him to go, but saw little reason in it. It did occur in her mind that she’d been imagining things, yet everybody else warned her to fade away from his eyes. But Eloise would not quit The Ringo—couldn’t. Not with the rent, the bills, the loans, the life of her, everything.
So Eloise stayed on. She screamed her soul out when she sang, to liberate it, to let it escape the prison he caged her within. She roared for courage that did not come, she belted out a war cry to signal her defiance, but all it did was to make him more fixated. He still looked at her as if he found her wanting, though. She wanted to ask him what she was missing, but that would mean she cared.
Eloise knew she was an absurd obsession of his, a cause for desire monstrous in its passion. In turn he was hers. He couldn’t look away and neither could Eloise. They were trapped.
One Friday he didn’t come.
That night Eloise sang with relief and was a wild success. The next day Andersen handed her the newspaper, turned to the Lifestyle section. “Your pretty boy’s there, my bird,” he said in a grim tone.
She saw the photo first. He was pictured smiling straight at the camera with his hand around the waist of a stunning young woman who showed off a ridiculously large diamond on her finger. She’d never seen him smile and was taken aback. He looked almost like another person altogether and Eloise couldn’t help the rising nausea while reading the article.
His name was Julian and he had just gotten engaged as of the night before. His fiancée was an heiress of a multi-national company with excellent pedigree. They had known each other for three months. ‘Indeed it is a quick courtship, but so is love at first sight,’ the article explained. They were to be married in spring.
Eloise found her voice after a while. “Good riddance,” she said.
Andersen shook his head and took the newspaper back. “I told you to stay away.”
In the restroom, she heaved all of her lunch out and prayed for strength. Now she knew what was missing from her. She wasn’t the young woman in his arms. Now Eloise knew why he’d never smiled at her. He only smiled when he was with his love-at-first-sight. What a joke she had made everything to be. It was all in her head. What a joke. She was a joke.
“Good riddance,” she whispered. There was a pain in her chest—she willed it gone.
Eloise moved on. Tried to. The following Friday night she sang to an enraptured audience, but she might as well be singing to none since he was conspicuously absent. She didn’t expect him to show up again. If he did, there was no telling how she would react.
Days went by without him. Weeks turned to months and spring was approaching. She had gotten used to the numb feeling that marked her days and was succeeding in putting the thoughts of him safely locked inside the deepest recess of her mind. Eloise was making a name for herself and The Ringo had never been so packed. She was mending.
At the end of March, Eloise was walking down the streets when her eyes caught a glimpse of a familiar face on the cover of a tabloid. It was him. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked angry for someone who was supposed to be married soon. This Julian was so much more like the man she had known, the man who stared the world down and didn’t give a damn. Against her better judgment, she bought the magazine and waited until she got home to open it.
Her hands trembled as she flipped the pages. The wedding was off. Details were fuzzy, but one intimate source relayed that the fairytale romance had been doomed from the start. Was there a third party? Perhaps, said the source who proceeded to divulge an interesting story.
Apparently the groom-to-be had a weird habit of never being available on Friday nights, especially from the hours of ten to midnight. His fiancée had confronted him about this secretive routine and they got into a big row. She accused him of unfaithful conducts and would be returning the engagement ring to his ‘sorry cheating ass’.
Eloise trembled as she read the words. She feared her heart was making dangerous leaps of joy beyond what her logic allowed. Oh, it was horrible. She tried to summon an ounce of pity for the young woman, but she was failing.
Instead she wanted to laugh, to cry, and to laugh again.
It was Friday night.
Full-house at The Ringo.
She spotted him sitting at his usual table. A bouquet of the biggest and most beautiful peonies was sitting on the dresser of her changing room. The card was simply signed, ‘It was a long winter. J.'
She knew he wasn’t a man of many words. But the smile he gave her when she looked him straight in the eyes told her all.
He was here to stay.
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