Mama's Boy

Facing the Sun

Josie sat in her window seat, sipping a mug of tea and staring into the water. A knock at her door took her out of her reverie, and she frowned, going to check the peephole and finding Lenny outside.

Releasing a heavy sigh, she opened the door. "Lenny, what are you doing here?"

"You weren't answering the phone."

"You know that doesn't actually give you the right to just show up?"

Lenny rubbed his neck, looking down at Josie with anxious eyes. "This always the way it starts, Jo."

Josie closed the door, making her way back to the window seat, giving him no comment. She knew exactly what he meant, and he wasn't exactly wrong.

"Do you want tea?" she offered instead.

"Josie..."

He stopped short. He had done this so many times before. There were no words he could use in any pattern she hadn't already heard from him. There was nothing he could say to delay or prevent the inevitable.

"What did Syida say to you?" he demanded.

"Syida said what Syida always says."

Lenny released a heavy sigh, sitting down and staring at Josie as she resumed her position in her window seat, not looking at him.

There was a heavy silence in the room as Lenny tried to find any way to make Josie stay.

He watched her sitting there with her knees in her chest, hair brushed into a bun, half-dressed in a sports bra and shorts.

Everything about her was beautiful, magnetic. Her body caused admiration and envy. Every time he looked at her face, the picture of sweetness, he wished to keep her where she was.

Lenny had never learned how to love without capture. He could never understand Josie's free spirit, but he always let her come back when she was done roaming. He just wished that there had been a way to keep her near him.

Josie stared blankly out of her window, absolutely aware of Lenny on the other side of the room. He always had a strong presence, one she found irresistible but also that she could not allow to cage her in.

"Josie, why can't you just stay still for me?"

Josie turned her gaze on him then, unflinching as she looked into his soul. "Stay still for you, Lenny? You married another woman. I do not have to stay still for you. I owe you nothing."

"You have always felt you owed me nothing," he said bitterly. "You knew that I wanted you to be my wife."

"And you knew that I didn't want that."

"Why?"

Josie didn't blink or move as she continued to stare at Lenny. "The life you wanted for us required too much restriction on my end. We didn't fantasize about the same things in life, Lenny. You let me go. We're living our happily ever afters."

"Is that what you think?" Lenny questioned, his eyes searching Josie's for answers. "Is that what this is for you, your happily ever after?"

"I am fulfilled and happy. Is that not what the happily ever after should be, Lenny? Are you unhappy?"

Josie never got the impression that anything was lacking in Syida for Lenny except for the fact that she wasn't Josie. He never looked at Syida like he didn't adore her.

"No," he answered honestly. "But my happily ever after was supposed to include you."

"You didn't feel that way when you broke up with me."