Mourning the Forgotten

Chapter 1-Shelley

Wearing sunglasses was Shelley's thing. Always. Indoors. Outdoors. Day. Night. It was better to be known as the crazy girl in shades than the girl with the bug eyes. She figured that out in high school, that awful place she was so glad to be through with. At least doing food delivery she was on her own a lot. She picked up. She dropped off and the rest of the day was beach time or pool time in the backyard.

"Whaddup?" her current best friend Chris greeted her with a half hug outside the In N Out next to campus. His feeble attempt at a beard scratched her cheek but she knew better than to say anything about it. He was almost as self conscious of his baby face as she was about her overly large blue eyes that contrasted eerily against her almost too olive olive complexion. People were always asking if she had on contacts or if she was some exotic mixed race love child. As if it was anyone's business. No, she'd answer, I'm just a boring white girl.

Chris had a slightly more interesting pedigree with a touch of Chinese to mostly white pedigree thanks to a Chinese grandparent. Although some girls found his combination of almond shaped brown eyes and sandy blond hair cute, Shelley never could think of him as more than just her grade school friend. Or maybe it was the fact that she had always towered over him. Some girls were above such trivialities like height difference but Shelley wasn't one of them.

"You forget to shave today?" she took his dimpled chin between her thumb and forefinger knowing full well that he'd been working on this beard for the past month.

Chris pulled a face and shrugged her away, "How's work."

"Same as it was last week. How's school?"

Unlike Shelley, Chris had real ambitions. He was a sophomore at University of California Irvine studying Human Biology and Genetics with the ambition of becoming a research doctor. Shelley often wondered what a brainiac like him saw in her. She had no intention of going to college. Ever. Maybe it was the nerd vibes she soaked up from her overachiever brothers. Or maybe it was her parents, the Super Mormons who still believed that she could be shipped off to Brigham Young University to be cured of her religious apathy.

"Um, who is that Asian guy waving at us?" Shelley peered over her sunglasses to get a better look at the tall hottie approaching them from the parking lot with what appeared to be a guitar case strapped to back.

Chris turned around then beamed as the guy called his name. Instead of drawing back in confusion he opened his arms and shouted back, "Hey, you made it!"

Shelley pushed out her lip like she was put out but in reality didn't mind the new guy's presence in the slightest. Up close, he wasn't as tall as she'd originally thought. He was maybe an inch taller than herself with a lean, muscular build that said he was probably athletic but not a gym rat. She also noticed that he probably rocked a little German or Irish somewhere with a light smattering of freckles across a slightly American nose and brownish black close cropped hair.

The two guys greeted each other with a back thumping bro hug and questions about life and how it was going. Not one to be left out, Shelley cleared her throat then gave an innocent smile when they stopped the reunion and turned to look at her.

"Oh yeah, Shelley, this is my cousin, Brandon. You remember him right?"

Maybe Chris had mentioned something about a cousin but she most certainly would have remembered this guy if they had met before.

"Actually, no. We met?"

Brandon's grin was more from the leftover excitement of seeing a favorite relative rather than any interest in meeting a slender beauty in sunglasses. However once he really took a look at her, Shelley could see in his eyes that he noticed not her long, tanned legs in the cutoff denim shorts and the form fitting mini tee but her eyes. It was then that she realized that she had lowered her sunglasses to look and had forgotten to push them back up to hide her eyes.

"I would've remembered if we had," he said trying to sound cool after losing himself to a momentary fog.

Shelley pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and jutted out her chin in a way that covered her annoyance at letting him see her worst feature, "Yeah me too."

"Brandon, Shelley, Shelley, Brandon," Chris said by way of introduction as his hand reached for the restaurant door.

Only something behind her caught his eye and he paused.

"What?" Shelley asked, turning around to see.

Across the parking lot was a more posh restaurant, the kind that sold expensive coffee and overpriced tiny sandwiches and salads. On the outside patio she saw a man in his late forties or early fifties enjoying a glass of wine with a woman at least twenty years his junior. She wasn't sure what the big deal was about an older guy trying to woo a younger woman. Around here it wasn't unheard of for a professor or one of the research doctors to put the moves on an intern or student.

Only when Shelley looked closer she realized what the big deal was. That woman sharing a bottle of wine and salad, smiling lovingly into the man's eyes as he spoke was her brother's wife.

And that guy wasn't her brother.