Chapter 20: Tangled Up In Blue




     "Rise and shine," I holler from the screen door, sweat trickling down my ribs and dripping onto FM's welcome mat in the mid-morning sun.

"Go away!" echoes across her studio apartment through the stifling mid-June heat at the edge of the Virginia tidewater.

"What happened to breakfast at 9?" I grumble back, stood up again by my fickle friend.



     This was my first summer spent in Magnolia, usually retreating to Central Jersey where dog days only last for the month of August. In this torturous southern land, situated between shaded piedmont and breezy coast, the stifling humidity came in with the May flowers and remained until Halloween. This rabid dog could live with a mercurial owner for a few table scraps, but not if she was going to stifle an occasional bark. I needed to be able to hum the tune running through my head for a relationship to last.



     "Oh shit," I overhear before she shuffles out in soccer shorts and an oversized Blondie T-shirt. "I call raincheck!"

"Nope, rain out!" I bellow before tempering my bite with "sorry, I can't keep doing this."

She turns around to look at me as I'm walking away, and I think I hear her say over her shoulder "we'll meet again someday on the avenue." 



The End

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