When Sparks Fly (19 page)

But can you ever really know someone on the Internet that you’ve never met? She could be a psycho stalker with a fetish for romance and erotica. Or she could be an ex-girlfriend with a fake identity, another personality going by the name of Raven Elise just to be close to me again. Or she could be exactly who she says she is—a lover of books, my books specifically.

I begin to wonder what it was that made her seem so familiar. Part of it was the name Elise. My mother’s name was Elise and I missed hearing that name. I always overlooked the familiarity in our conversations as nothing more than comfortable, but then she said something and I think I knew. It wasn’t just familiar. It was natural… like we had done this song and dance before. That suspicion made me even more confused about Angel, but now, I’m sitting behind this screen, locked in a condo in Florida when she thinks I’m in California wondering what the hell I am to do if I am right. Thinking the web of lies Angel has spun have now trapped her inside. I have another decision to make. Do I want to be the one to free her, or do I want to see how far she’ll go to keep deceiving me? How long will she pretend to be Raven, someone she’s clearly not?

Six Months Earlier

I couldn’t get my conversation with Raven out of my mind, and I didn’t know exactly why that was, but it was there blasting in my head like a song on repeat.

“Your stories frustrate me,” she said in her direct message. I asked her why with a laughing emoji. It wasn’t the first time someone had said that. “Because they are so close to happiness and then something or someone fucks it up,” she replied with an angry sticker comment.

I puckered my lips, chuckling and put some thought into that statement. Angst isn’t beautiful, not always. “True, but how do you feel when you get to the end and all that pain was worth it?”

Her reply was what kept me up that night. “Sad,” she said. I hadn’t ever been told that the ending in a romance novel where the couple finally gets the happily ever after makes a person sad.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s nothing. Just that sometimes those HEA’s don’t exist and I get jealous of fictional people.”

“Aww…Raven. Has your heart been broken?” I was kind of joking, but then she got real.

“Into a thousand tiny pieces. They’re scattered across a few states.”

I didn’t reply, not right away. I just stared at those two sentences and my mind began to wander.

“Sorry. Heartbreak isn’t easy.”

“Has your heart been broken before?” she asked.

I took a chance and was honest. “Yes, but I deserved it.”

“Why?”

“I broke her heart first. I didn’t choose her when I should have and when the roles were reversed and I had a chance at redemption, she didn’t choose me.”

“Sounds tragic,” she said. “Choose her over what?”

“Writing. My career pulled me in a different direction, one without her.”

“Regrets?”

“Plenty, but writing is who I am. Do you have regrets?” That was probably the deepest conversation we had ever had, and I was a bit uncomfortable with how close to home the topic was, but for whatever reason I felt like we needed to say these things.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she answered.

I re-read that conversation over and over again. Something about it, all of it, struck a cord and pulled at my heartstrings. I felt pain for Raven. She seemed so sad and lost. Then again, aren’t all hopeless romantics a bit sad and lost, always high when they’re in love and then low when it’s not so perfect? I guess that’s why we thrive in fictional worlds because the characters always seem to find their way. Don’t they? And they’re always confessing love to the highest degree, saying cheesy shit that makes us all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

“Why did you choose to be a writer?” She wrote to me the next day.

“Raven, are you writing a documentary about me?” I could imagine her laughing and it made my stomach flutter.

“Ha! I wouldn’t know the first thing about writing. I’m just curious.”

“Let me think about that question and get back with you. It wasn’t an easy choice and I want to make sure I convey the truth in my answer.”

“Okay.”

Curiosity got the best of me. “So you can’t write. What do you like to do besides reading romance novels written by your favorite author?” I wasn’t sure why I relished in these conversations with Raven, conversations that were getting all too personal lately.

And then she said, “Dancing.”

My heart exploded in my chest and lightening bolts lit up bright like a thousand stars. Angel was a dancer. She loved it so much that she moved to New York to study dance in college while I took classes at a nearby university in Journalism and Creative Writing. Then I left her there and when her life fell apart and she fled for home, Ezra was the one to pick up her pieces and help put her back together again. I took several deep breaths to steel myself for what I was thinking. Could it be that Raven was actually Angel? I drank a lot of whiskey and prepared myself for an investigation of my trusted Internet friend.

Hours later I sent her a direct message. “I used to know a girl that loved to dance.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, she was absolutely breathtaking on stage and damn the way her body moved when she was free was like a drug to me.” I smiled as I waited for her reply.

“Hmmm… I used to know a guy that hated dancing. He’d stand at the bar and watch me move, and I delighted in dancing for him,” she said. Raven was taking my bait.

“Funny. Us guys must be the same.”

“Must be.”

“So, you asked me why I chose to be a writer and I wanted to get the answer right.”

“I’m sure there isn’t a right answer, but…”

“Maybe you’re right, but here’s mine. I don’t feel like I made a choice to become a writer as much as I think writing chose me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not myself if I don’t write. Words are always in my head. For example, you might see a couple on the street having an argument, and in my mind, I will see why they’re arguing, spinning scenarios for what occurred to make them fight, plotting the aftermath and or the makeup (sex) for said argument. It’s not normal really, but I can’t stop the wheels from turning.”

“Is the makeup sex good,” she said and I grinned at the computer.

“The make up sex is mind blowing.”

She doesn’t reply right away and I’ve begun to get used to this—the pauses when a statement is made from the other that requires a moment to breathe.

“You said you chose writing over love? Isn’t that counter productive to what you write? Your movies are romantic, your novels are romantic and yet you chose it all over someone you loved. How come?”

I swallowed her words like a jagged little pill, burning my throat. “Yes, with that choice came sacrifice and loss of love, but with it also came great achievements and I can’t forget all I’ve accomplished because I took a risk that was painful.”

“Sounds a bit sad and lonely, but beautiful, too.”

“We live on islands for long periods of time, us writers. It can be a bit lonely and isolated at times, but what an adventure it is when it’s not. My mind is a playground where not even I know what will happen next. I can create new worlds and it’s a thrill seeing them come to life on pages or on screen. As lonely as it might be, it fulfills me.” And that was the honest to God truth.

“You have a beautiful gift, lonely boy. I’m sure the love you lost understands your reasons and thinks so, too.”

I wanted to ask her so. I believed in that moment she was on the other end of the computer screen pretending to be someone else. But if I were wrong, if she wasn’t, if she was just a girl named Raven who happened to have a likeness to Angel, if my mind was creating this possibility out of nothing, then I would have felt like an ass and ruined a perfectly good friendship with a girl that I had grown fond of. So I waited. I played. I fell for Raven.

‡
Chapter Three

Angel

I wake up feeling damp with sweat and feeling like I can’t breathe. I’m too hot and an arm is draped over me, trapping me into the mattress. I look over my shoulder at the guy all over me, cringing on the inside.

My stomach roils as I slither my way under his arm, careful not to wake him. I tiptoe around the slightly dark room looking for my clothes, blouse here and skirt there, scattered like they were ripped off in a hurry because they were. It’s all a haze, but not enough that I can’t remember it. I always remember, no matter how much I wish for a blackout.

I’m thankful for the fingers of sunlight shining through the blinds so that I can find every piece of who I was last night. I gaze down at the man on the bed before me after I dress in the filth I wore the night before. Beautiful and a stranger to me as are they all these days. I turn my back on him and walk into the bleeding sunlight of my latest mistake. Hailing a cab and revolting when the driver’s eyes rake up and down me sickeningly as though he can see what I’ve done…again.

“Where to miss?” he asks, his eyes flicking up in the rear view mirror to meet mine after I’ve seated myself.

Where to? Every time I am asked that question I want to say California, where my heart lives. I ruined the home I could have had with Ezra and he’s been playing house with another for well over a year. I never had a home with Kane to go to so that was never even an option. Besides, Kane West, screenwriter and now novelist is taken by a lovely model named Sasha. I speculate she’s a stripper on the side. Jeremy thinks I’m just jealous, which obviously I am. Avery thinks she’s a decoy and not really his girlfriend, but what does she know? Girlfriend, stripper or model…who the fuck knew. Clearly, she’s a bitch with a name like Sasha.

I meet the eyes of the cab driver, seeing his eyebrow lifted in impatience. Right. Home. He’s waiting for my answer and so I give him my address to my home of bricks layered in betrayal, deceit, rejection and regret. My home is where the ghosts haunt me, and my demons mock me for losing everything I ever wanted. The rest of the drive is done in silence with the exception to the thoughts that always wreak havoc in my head.

I stare out the window, counting the palm trees as we pass them by until there’s water. Going over the bridge, alerting me of my nearness to my own bed and a warm shower to wash away the dirt my skin is scarred with. Sadness washes over me as I trace a raindrop falling down the glass—it’s direction mimicking mine—downward.

I picture Kane’s face behind a computer screen writing to Raven each night, flirting with her and divulging secrets. Inspiring a novel, becoming his muse. Then I think that if he knew all this time that it was me he was speaking to, that all of those words, all of those confessions and soft intimate conversations were truly his and mine. Angel and Kane, not Kane and Raven.
Shit!
My head hurts. My heart aches. Yet, I want to stand in this ache and wait for the levee of lies to break. Maybe Kane will ride the waves to me or I will wash away to him.

“$10.50,” the cabbie says with his hand out after we’ve stopped. I pay and stand on the sidewalk in the rain, letting it sting my skin.

Please, wash away my sins. Please!
I beg of Mother Nature.

I’m careful to be quiet once I enter the apartment, not wanting to get the third degree from either. I make my way into my bedroom and shuffle into my drawers for fresh clothes. Just out of curiosity, I flip open my laptop to see if Kane replied to Raven’s direct message to his post on Facebook last night. I didn’t comment with words because I wanted to explore the possibility of my cover being blown. I left him a sticker comment, though with a dancing minion and he liked it, then I messaged him.

“I’d love to meet you, but not as much as my friend would.”

His reply makes me tense instantly. “Perhaps, your friend should come too, unless you can’t both be in the same place at the same time.”

I see he’s online so I reply. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. Who’s this friend that wants to meet me and why haven’t you mentioned him/her before?”

I sigh, “She’s just a girl.”

“Just a girl?”

“Yes, a girl. She read your latest book and fell in love.”