Fish Out of Water

Scene Twenty (Brandon)

"Why have you dragged me into this strange place," I mutter to James as he and I sit to the side of the fitting rooms while a sales lady with a measuring tape carries a bundle of clothes toward Astrid.

"Because the young lady can't live in your clothes forever," he answers primly. "Especially with your rambunctious friends coming this weekend. I won't open her up to their ridicule."

I roll my eyes. "You make it sound like she's going to be staying with us for a very long time."

"One never knows."

Astrid walks into one of the changing rooms and accidentally closes the door too loudly.

Spinning in my seat, I give James my full attention. "Seriously, man, what is going on here? You act like you know Astrid."

"I don't." James stares straight ahead. "But, I once knew someone very like her."

There's a hint of melancholy in his voice that roots me in my chair. I didn't know James could feel that kind of emotion.

Before this moment, I always assumed James was born an adult, and never made a mistake or had his heart broken in his life. But now I'm seeing something beyond the constant suits and the beige walls in his bedroom.

"Who was she?" I ask.

"I don't know." A dream-like glaze falls over Jame's eyes. "Not things like her name or even where she was from, at least. But I did see a glimpse of her soul. She was kind in a way that is so rare among humans. It made her ethereal beauty even more unworldly."

I whistle. "Wow, she sounds like some kind of chick."

James glares at me for a moment before getting a dream-like smile again. "She was something."

"How did you meet?"

"She saved my life, rather like Astrid saved yours."

"You mean, like you were drowning?"

James nods. "It was a different ocean and time, but similar circumstances."

I lean forward, more interested in this than anything else James has ever said. "Whatever happened to her?"

"I don't know. She was gone by the time I regained consciousness on land. No one else seemed to see her."

"Wow. Was she maybe a hallucination, or something?"

James sighs and shakes his head. "That's what everyone said. But that would be impossible. I didn't tell anyone before I got on that boat, but I couldn't swim. And we were at least a mile from the beach I washed up on. And in that storm- there was no way I could have survived, especially dazed as I was."

I blink, registering what James is saying to me. He almost died before ever meeting my parents. Before ever getting a chance to raise me.

Where would I be now without him? "Wow. Maybe she was your guardian angel."

"I thought that myself, too, but..."

"But what?"

The fitting room door opens, and Astrid steps out. Her long brown hair is brushing at the waistline of the summer dress that is so blue it makes her eyes glow. The cut is simple, compared to the contraptions my ex used to wear, but it hugs her slim frame perfectly, leaving no doubt to the fact that a woman is wearing the dress. The skirt falls to her knees, and I find myself missing the view of her long, long legs.

"But," James says, shaking me out of my trance, "she looked a little too much like the flesh and blood standing before you."