Piece of Chapter One

Stepping out the door this morning, my scenery seems to come to me in stages of senses.
I can hear the birds that are left after the rest have migrated. I can see my truck parked by the curb in front of me. I can feel the cold metal knob of the door, under my right hand. I smell the dead leaves of the fall that will soon turn into dust with the coming snow of winter. Mostly I sense ‘her.’
Why should I?
I barely know her. She is almost a ghost- like memory in my head. Just as transparent and elusive as the chimney smoke that fills the air at the tops of some of the houses around here. Why would a memory of her even be conjured in this cold place? She belongs in the south. Her slanting, laughing blue eyes, wide open smile, a fine sheen of sweat upon her freckled skin, and long curly brown hair. That’s my girl. That’s the girl who fills my dreams and my wakened state as well. Here she would wither away with hardly any sunshine, half the calendar year wrapped in cold and snow, and crowded noisy cities surrounding the suburbs. No hot nights and even hotter days like there. No fields that go on for miles, or forests of trees begging to be explored, like she likes to do so much.
Like I said, I barely know her and she is so far out of my reach anyway. I have made her forbidden to me through my promise to myself. So now I am tortured from day to day.
It doesn’t seem to keep my heart; at least I’d like to think it is my heart, from loving her. Or is this purely infatuation? Why this aching, churning feeling in my soul, as if the one opportunity at happiness has slipped away from me?
The grass is crunching beneath my feet, still stiff with the eight o’clock morning frost, as I walk across this pristine lawn in front of my home. The perfect yard, for the man who is going perfectly insane. By the hedges, out of the corner of my eye, there seems to be a flash of brown hair. I stop, my heart palpating in my chest. I feel dizzy, giddy, all over nothing at all.
I take a deep breath to start towards my truck again. I stop and turn around. I have left the front door open. I never did that before I met her. Now, I have done it a lot in the past two years. I take the concrete steps two at a time. Not hard to do for a six foot man, but I still get slightly out of breath because I’m a big guy. I’m an easy 300 pounds on a good day. I’d guess she was no more than half that. She said she liked big guys though. She had married one in fact.
My brown hair is done in one of those modern styles topped off with highlights. Brown eyes, no special color there. I have dimples though, as if that helps my appearance. She told me she thought they gave me a boyish look. The main feature she typed to me about that night that we opened up a can of worms over the internet was my lips and how she wanted to run her fingertip over them. She typed ‘They are the sexiest lips I’ve ever seen,’ and I wanted her to do whatever it was to them she cared to do, short of ripping them off my face. She wrote me many other things she wanted to do as well and her honesty astounded me. I’m shivering fumbling for the key pad to open my truck, I hope whoever sees me thinks it is the cold. Early October in Michigan is cold enough for even the very stout hearted, so hopefully it will give me an excuse. I climb into the truck, sliding onto the seat, gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles are turning white. Breathe, I tell myself. Images rock my body and my brain. ‘Pull yourself together,’ I grind my teeth, ‘Think about your dogs, Great Aunt Susan, anything but her or you won’t be able to get back out of this truck without embarrassment.’ Mrs. Henderson is walking by on the sidewalk with her poodle, looking at me with concern written in her wrinkled face. I feel a cold breeze; stupidly I fumble for the A/C button on the truck, and then realize I haven’t even turned the ignition key yet, much less stuck it in the ignition. My door is still open, so I shut it quickly. I am going crazy, I tell myself for the umpteenth time in this month alone. Closing my eyes, I try to gain some sort of calm or at least the appearance of it.