Careful What You Wish For

Chapter Four

The pool is so especially refreshing today that Sophie doesn't want to get out. She swims an extra ten laps before she pulls herself exhausted from the water.

Panting she towels herself off, pleased that she has pushed herself today. She hasn't been down to the pool enough recently. She used to swim every day - it was her time to herself. She watches the other people doing laps absently, her mind elsewhere. Her mind is always elsewhere lately.

She is thinking about the time Evan took her to the beach. It was an hour's drive down the freeway, and they sat in the sand of a nicely secluded beach watching the waves. Sophie had been wearing her brand new green bikini, a colour that set off her eyes like magic. She had never felt so sexy. They had swum out past the waves and paddled in the deep. Evan was a strong swimmer. Sophie remembered thinking that she should invite him here to her favourite pool to swim laps with her. Maybe they could sneak into the showers together afterwards...

With a desolate sinking feeling Sophie glances over at the entrance to the showers. She is unbelievably grateful that she never did in fact offer that invitation. This is one of her few Evan-free places. There are no memories here. But here she is, thinking about him anyway.

Sophie takes a very long soothing breath and closes her eyes. She pushes the memory away.

She wraps her towel around her and heads for the showers. It has been a particularly long day. All she wants to do now is have a nice shower and go home. A movie on the couch sounds like a dream. She wonders if Jenna is going out tonight. Her housemate met a new guy recently, and has been spending a lot of time with him. Sophie has yet to meet him. She imagines however, that he is probably a catch. Jenna has good taste. She was, for instance, the first person to tell Sophie that Evan wasn't a keeper. It had been at the beginning of the relationship too. If only Sophie had listened!

She was so smitten with Evan right from the beginning. He had pursued her rather relentlessly as well - although he needn't have bothered. She knew from the first conversation that she liked him, a lot. They met at a house party a week after Valentine's Day. The place was filled with students. It was in the early hours of the morning that Sophie had run across Evan. He sat on the front steps of the house, smoking a cigarette and staring at the street. He looked so handsome and romantic with his dark hair falling in his face and his eyes so far away.

Sophie came around the corner of the house, searching in vain for Brianne – who had vanished with a full bottle of cheap wine. Sophie stopped in her tracks. She couldn't figure out if she should backpedal, or interrupt this beautiful man and his private thoughts. He looked up, caught her eye, and smiled. His smile was extraordinary. They talked for the rest of the night. The memory of them watching the day begin together was perhaps the most painful for Sophie. It was tinged with the feeling of forever she had imagined. How ridiculous she had been.

Shame bubbles to the surface as Sophie ducks beneath the shower head. She washes the chlorine from her hair and muses on that first memory of her relationship with Evan, and the stupidity it now brings to mind. Her instincts had not been so off before, and she curses them silently and passionately.

It occurs to her - in a detached monotonous way - that she is once again thinking about Evan. Not simply in passing either, she has dredged up the saddest memory she has and is replaying it over again for her own painful pleasure. Why?

Does she need to talk to someone? Like a counsellor? That seems a little over the top. She's just a bit heartbroken. Right?

This is what Sophie is thinking about as she opens her locker. She is distracted, frustrated with herself, and completely oblivious to the world around her. It takes a very long moment for her brain to process what she is looking at.

Sophie stands with one hand on her locker door, the other holding the towel wrapped around her body. She stares into her locker. She is seeing red rose petals again. Sophie can't quite understand what is going on; her mind is having trouble reconciling the memory of her bathroom with the present. It's like the bathroom has imprinted on her mind and is randomly projecting rose petals into strange places.

Very, very slowly Sophie reaches out a hand. She touches one of the ruby red petals that are sitting on the floor of her locker. It feels soft and velvety.  It's real.  Sophie sucks in her breath and takes a step back.

How would someone know which locker was hers?

She spins around in a panic, looking around the empty showers. The shivers creeping up her back are making her feel certain there is someone in here with her, even though she knows she is alone.

Like a crazy person Sophie suddenly launches forward, grabs her bag, gets dressed in a shaky frenzy and then bolts out the door. She leaves the locker door open and rose petals falling onto the floor.

Someone was in her locker when she was in the pool.

"Screw this". Sophie mutters as she runs to her car.