Becoming Sweet Girls Read online

  By the end of his rant, it wasn’t clear if Liam was trying to convince Jamie or convince himself. They sat in silence for a moment, and Jamie fidgeted with his mug, trying to decide what to say. Part of him knew he should dismiss the guy as a harmless crank, thank him for the coffee, and be on his way, but another part of him whispered that the thing driving this guy to search for his long-lost soul mate didn’t sound so different from the same mysterious, driving force that called Jamie to the bridge, night after night, without explanation. He felt a sense of solidarity with this man, a sense of compassion for the pain of needing love so badly in his life and not having it, whether or not Liam’s soul mate actually existed.

  “What does she look like?” he asked gently. “When you see her in your dreams, I mean?”

  Liam looked crestfallen. “The setting is different every time, and she’s different every time as well. Always beautiful, of course, and our love and passion is just as strong, but a different woman every time even though she’s the same person on the inside. Sometimes it feels like we must have lived a thousand lives together, always finding our way back to one another no matter the challenges, torn apart by death and then reborn to find each other all over again.” His hand tightened on his coffee, and then his eyes crinkled as he laughed at himself and took a sip. “I sound like such a romantic sap, don’t I? This is the kind of shit poets or philosophers worry about. I don’t know why I can’t just let it go when it’s so obviously a delusional fantasy.”

  Liam seemed embarrassed now, probably feeling like he’d over-shared some deeply private part of himself that no one else would be able to understand, Jamie thought, but his brief outpouring of emotion had touched something in Jamie. Liam was so sweet. So romantic. Jamie felt so bad for him that he just wanted to reach out and hug the guy, although he doubted it would be welcome. Again, he felt a slight flash of attraction toward the man, and had to remind himself that Liam had been quite clear about being into women—it was the wrong time to make a pass even if he thought Liam would be receptive to it or if Jamie had been the type of person to do that, and he wasn’t. No matter how sweet and handsome he was, Jamie was definitely not the soul mate this guy was looking for. But that didn’t mean Jamie couldn’t be his friend.

  “You don’t sound like a sap,” Jamie said quietly. “You sound like a person capable of loving someone very much. I haven’t seen anyone on the bridge that seems like she’d be the girl you’re talking about, but I sure don’t think it’s delusional in the slightest to believe that there’s someone out there for all of us.”

  As for the rest of what Liam had said… who could really say what was true?

  Jamie’s grandma, a small Polish woman who always had a cheerful smile and a gleam in her eye, had spoken quite seriously about spirits and believed absolutely in reincarnation and karma. He’d spent many afternoons with her while he was young, before she’d died, and she’d talked openly about such things to the point where Jamie had accepted them as fact when he was a child. As he’d grown older and learned more about the world, he’d discovered that it was considered unfashionable and unscientific to believe in old wives’ tales, but his early indoctrination ensured that he’d never quite been able to shake the conviction that there was more to the world than met the eye. Even as he’d laid aside his childhood fancies and stopped repeating them to fit into the world of work and adults and rational science, a part of him had also still always believed in them… just a little. Was it such a stretch to think reincarnation might be real? Any more than soul mates? Who was he to judge?

  “Thank you,” Liam replied. “And thanks for listening. I didn’t really think you would have seen her, but I had to ask. It means a lot to me that you didn’t just write me off as a crazy person. I don’t know why I feel so comfortable pouring my heart out to you, but for some reason I do. Maybe it’s just easier to talk to strangers when you know you’ll never see them again.”

  “People always say I’m a good listener.” Jamie flashed a smile. “It’s a nice story. Thank you for sharing it. I’m sorry you didn’t find your lady this evening. So tell me this… if she looks different every time, how will you even recognize her when you meet her?”

  Liam chuckled dryly. “That is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I don’t know, honestly. My hope is that she’s been out there waiting for me just like I’ve been looking for her, and that when we finally meet… you know, we’ll just… know… somehow. Is that crazy?”

  “It’s a good a plan as any when you’re looking for your soul mate, I guess.”

  “Can I tell you something really crazy?”

  “Crazier than what you’ve already told me? Sure, why not?”

  “For the first few years I thought my dreams were just dreams, and I did my best to ignore them. But there actually is something consistent from dream to dream. In every dream where I’m with her, she’s wearing a necklace. The same necklace. It’s a simple silver design, not worth much, but very distinctive. It’s the Greek symbol for femininity, the hand mirror, with a small purple stone set in the middle of the cross. Look at this.”

  Liam slid his hand into his pocket, the same pocket he’d been fidgeting with earlier in the evening at the bridge, and pulled out a small piece of shiny jewelry. He held it up, and Jamie immediately saw that it was the same necklace he’d just described. It dangled between them, sparkling in the warm light of the cafe and swaying from side to side on its delicate silver chain. Liam was correct that it was a simple and unique design, but it also had an aura of age around it, though Jamie couldn’t say why he thought that.

  “It’s pretty,” Jamie acknowledged, intrigued in spite of himself. “Are you sure it’s the same one from your dreams? Where did you find it?”

  “Three years after the dreams began, I was browsing through an antique shop that I’d just wandered into one afternoon, and I saw it. If it hadn’t featured in my dreams so prominently, I never would have looked twice at it. Why would I buy a necklace? I don’t even have a girlfriend. But as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the same one, and I knew I had to buy it.” His voice grew quieter and almost reverent. “I think it found its way to me because I’m supposed to have it. I’m supposed to give it to my soul mate, when I find her.”

  It had to be a coincidence. Maybe Liam was mistaken, or maybe he’d seen a necklace that was close and his dreams had changed to reflect the one he’d purchased thereafter, or maybe this was all just the crazy, cobbled-together beliefs of a lonely, deeply unhinged guy. But Liam didn’t seem especially unhinged. He seemed put-together and more than a little sad. Jamie knew it was silly to believe in the kind of things Liam was telling him, but it was such a good story he found himself wanting to believe that this was the actual necklace Liam had seen in his dreams. He wanted to believe that Liam would find his soul mate, eventually. If there was hope for a story this crazy, there was hope for anyone to find love. Even someone whose feelings about love were as confused as Jamie’s were.

  Maybe that’s why he had been drawn to the bridge night after night. Maybe he was supposed to meet Liam and help him to find this soul mate, Jamie thought. The idea of having some role to play in a love story that spanned the ages was surprisingly appealing to him, and Liam’s desperation had really touched him.

  Liam tucked the necklace back into his pocket and then signed the check that had arrived while he was talking.

  “Anyway,” he murmured, rising from his seat to go. “Thanks for listening. I know it’s crazy, but it really felt good to get it off my chest. Good luck on your presentation tomorrow, and take care of yourself, okay?”

  “Wait,” Jamie protested. “You believe in fate, right? Obviously you believe in fate. What if it wasn’t just an accident that we met tonight?”

  Liam smiled. “I’m not sure what you’re suggesting, Jamie. But yes, I believe in fate.”

  “What if my fate is to help you meet this woman somehow? I’ve felt drawn to that bridge, to that same place where we me
t, for years. Night after night. I’ve told myself I go there to be alone with my thoughts, but that’s never quite satisfying enough. What if I actually go because I was destined to meet you, and now I’m supposed to help you?”

  “It’s a nice idea…” Liam’s smile faltered. “Maybe… but how? If I can’t even recognize her when I see her, how are you going to help me find her?”

  Jamie scratched his head. “I’m not sure, exactly. But now that you’ve told me your story, I’m invested. I want to help, and I want you to have your happily ever after. Maybe I’m just a sucker for romance. So… I don’t know. Why don’t you give me your phone number, and if I see any forlorn looking girls mooning around the bridge, I’ll make some inquiries and text you?”

  It felt silly even as the words were coming out of his mouth. What, was he going to just approach girls by themselves on the bridge like some kind of creeper? Not that he ever saw girls alone on the bridge late at night, and when he did see them they were joggers who avoided eye contact and kept their headphones in, so he couldn’t exactly go canvassing for Liam. But the idea of Liam just dumping this story into his lap and then walking away forever without letting Jamie know the outcome felt totally unacceptable.

  Liam stared at him for a long moment and then shrugged. “Can’t hurt, I guess.” He flipped the customer copy receipt over and wrote a phone number on the back, which he then passed to Jamie. “Text me, and I’ll put you in my phone.” He grinned. “You really want to help a random crazy guy on an impossible quest, huh?”

  Jamie smiled back, tucking the phone number into his pocket. “I guess I’m just a romantic sap, too. Let’s find you your dream girl, Liam.”

  Chapter 3

  Sunlight from a picturesque Scottish morning streamed in through the window of a lavish hotel suite and fell across Katherine’s drowsy, half-awake form as she curled in the mussed blankets of the bed she’d shared with her new husband for the first time last night.

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled to herself—a private smile, a satisfied smile—as she remembered the passionate throes of the prior evening. Her older sisters had warned her, in giggling, half-teasing whispers, about what it would be like to be with a man for the first time, in the way that men laid with women: some blood, some pain most likely, perhaps some discomfort. After the wedding guests were thoroughly drunk, the last dances had been danced, and the lovely, tri-layer cake devoured, Katherine had gone to bed with Roland filled with equal parts trepidation and desire, nervousness and lust. Finally, the culmination of the fantasies that had left her breathless with desire, night after night. Would it be all she had imagined?

  But there had not been so much blood at all, and the mild discomfort of the unfamiliar had been minor compared to the delicious ecstasy of Roland’s fingers sliding down her thighs and gently grasping the curve of her ass to lift her onto him as though she were altogether weightless. She’d gasped both at the warmth of his rough face nuzzling against her tender, naked breasts, his deft tongue teasing at her nipples, and the thrill she’d felt ripple through her body as he’d drawn her close, kissed her on the lips, and slid deep inside of her, claiming her with his stiff manhood as she’d fantasized about him doing hundreds of times during their long, chaste courtship period.

  She heard her husband now, whistling in the bathroom over the rush of water in the basin, and shifted onto her side, adjusting the smooth, pale silk of her slip so that it covered her body just enough to tease him when he emerged.

  My husband, she thought happily. It feels so strange to say it, even to myself. But he is. I found him, and he’s mine now, forever and always.

  There had been times when their union had seemed impossible. Roland was a foreigner, an American stationed abroad—and a soldier, at that! His dalliances with Katherine had been the talk of the small town where she’d grown up with her well-to-do family, but despite her father’s disapproval, Roland had returned again and again to court her whenever his duties at the military base allowed him a moment off. Always respectful, but always obviously burning with the same barely-restrained passion for her that she felt for him. It had been lust at first sight, a seeming twist of fate that had thrust them together, but it wasn’t until they’d started discussing the strange dreams they’d had since their meeting that they realized who they truly were to one another and something deeper than lust had developed between them.

  She fingered the silver necklace nestled between her breasts and smiled absentmindedly. It was a wedding gift from her grandmother, a seeming-coincidence, but also another confirmation of the strange truth that both she and Roland had glimpsed in the privacy of their inner lives. As she waited for her husband to return, her eyes drifted across the room, across the discarded wedding dress and the rumpled suit-coat they’d stripped off in their passionate frenzy, and settled on his faded brown bomber jacket which hung on the back of a chair, just above his unlaced combat boots. The smile fell away from her lips. Roland had looked strange without the jacket at their wedding, as he wore it everywhere. Usually seeing it made her think of nestling inside of its warmth and breathing in the reassuring scent of his aftershave on the cool fall days where he’d lent it to her, but this morning, it represented something entirely different for Katherine.

  “Come now. That’s no way for such a pretty girl to look on her first day as a proper married woman. You’d think I’d gone and left you.”

  Roland had emerged from the bathroom in only his boxers, freshly shaved, his eyes glinting with mischief in the morning light. He now stood arms akimbo, admiring Katherine’s barely-clothed body in a possessive, desirous way that brought heat to her cheeks and made her want to avert her eyes, though instead she steeled herself and brazenly met his gaze. She had nothing to be ashamed of with this man, and she allowed herself the luxury of a slow, appreciative study of her own, taking in his strong muscles and the sculpted sweep of his shoulders that always made her swoon, along with the conspicuous and growing bulge at his crotch that reignited the smoldering embers of last night’s passion inside of her.

  “You’re cruel to tease me like that, Roland. You are leaving me, you may recall.”

  “Yes, and that’s the only reason your father approved the marriage so soon after our courtship began. You can thank the Germans for allowing you the naughty fulfillment of your unchaste fantasies so quickly.”

  Her blush deepened as Roland joined her on the bed, lying beside her and stroking her soft cheek with the back of his hand.

  “That’s not something to joke about,” she insisted. “Think about how I’d feel to lose you, so soon after finding you. It would devastate me. What would I do without you, knowing what I now know?”

  “You won’t lose me, love. I’ll fly out for a few months, shoot down some Nazis, win the war, and be back before the spring flowers have bloomed to sweep you off your feet and give you the gaggle of children I know you so badly want.”

  Katherine’s tone fell to a hushed whisper. “The papers say the German pilots are deadly accurate. There’s a man they call the Red Baron who’s downed over twenty planes on his own! I’m just frightened for you…” She slid her slender arms around his neck and grasped the back of his head, staring deep into the eyes of the man she loved.

  “Pfah,” Roland replied dismissively. “I’m not afraid of this Red Baron, or any other pilot, and I told you to stop reading those papers. They’ll fill your pretty head with nonsense and make a nervous wreck of you. You have nothing to fear, darling.”

  She held him tighter and tried hard to believe him, perhaps hoping to never let him go, but they both knew he must go, and soon. Their bodies were so close on the bed that each could feel the other’s heat, and before long they were kissing again, their limbs tangled, and the soft silk of her garment slid up and off her body, exposing the tender nakedness of her not-quite-virgin form to her husband for a second time since they’d exchanged their vows.

  Katherine, feeling partly curious and partly wanting to le
ave him something more to remember her by in the long, cold nights he’d spend away from her, had him stand beside the bed, and she knelt before him and took his manhood in her mouth, pleasuring him with her lips and relishing how she could make him swell up and cause his toes to curl with the slightest flick of her tongue, while her own wickedness caused her to grow slick and hot with anticipation.

  When Roland could bear it no more, he drew her to her feet with a guttural groan and laid her back on the bed in a single, swift motion. Katherine bounced in place with a pleased giggle and spread her legs wide for a moment, teasing him with a glimpse of the wet, pink warmth between them, and was rewarded for it just as she’d hoped: Roland pounced upon her and slid deep inside, parting her and filling her in a way that drew a delighted gasp from her lips and sent a shiver running through her body, stoking a growing warmth inside of her that only intensified with each thrust. His body was hot and solid, his muscles tensed and firm against her skin, and his rocking weight pleasantly reassuring as it pinned her to the downy softness of the mattress and slowly worked her into an ecstatic frenzy that soon crowded out all fears for his safety, and in fact all other conscious thoughts, except that she loved this man, and she loved how he made her feel. In a sudden flash, a rushing excitement poured over her like a waterfall bursting over the edge of a cliff and doused her in waves of unrestrained bliss that rippled through her again and again in an ever-increasing swell. She dug her nails into Roland’s back, crying out at the overwhelming ecstasy, and clung to him like a shipwrecked sailor holding on for dear life in the midst of an ocean storm.