It was just more than she wanted to deal with. It was like drinking flat champagne while everyone else got the bubbles. And she realized with unexpected clarity just how unsatisfied she’d been with the absence of bubbles all her life.
“I can’t do this now. If you don’t understand, nothing I say will make a difference.”
She grabbed her purse from the table next to the couch and headed for the front door. If she didn’t get out of this house right away, she was afraid she might choke to death. How could she explain to Andrew what the problem was when she wasn’t quite sure herself? How could she tell him that sitting on that couch, watching a movie she hated, she suddenly saw a vision of herself fifty years in the future doing exactly the same things in exactly the same way, and life would have passed her by? She had to get away.
Andrew followed her onto the little porch, his fingers closing on her arm before she could make an escape. “Wait a minute. Emma, hold on. Come back here. Let’s talk. Please.”
Talk? About what? There was no way he’d ever understand the sudden need for excitement that was raging inside her. She saw clearly that it wasn’t in his makeup.
“No, I can’t.” She moved away. “I have to get out of here. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’ll call you.”
She hurried down the steps before he could try to stop her again, pressed the button on the fob to unlock her car, and jumped into the driver’s seat. Andrew was still standing on the porch beneath the overhead light, staring. Bewilderment in every line of his body.
“Emma?”
She slammed the car door, cranked the engine, and quickly backed out of the driveway. She had no idea where she was going except away from here.
Poor Andrew. This wasn’t even his fault. It was hers. She had no one to blame but herself for wearing blinders all these years. The good girl who never colored outside the lines. If her roommate hadn’t been passing through town, if they hadn’t met for lunch, she might have still been content and never hungered for something else. She drove through the quiet residential streets, wondering how she’d let this happen. How she’d managed to be satisfied with a life so defined. So confining. Constricting. So much that she felt suffocated.
She stopped at a red light at a busy intersection and tapped her thumb impatiently on the wheel until the light changed.
All these years she’d seen nothing wrong with the pattern of living her parents had established for her. They were truly wonderful people, but she saw now that they led a life you could set clocks and calendars by. She’d accepted the same for herself. Dating boys then men they considered appropriate and acceptable. She was comfortable with a conservative style of dress—plain, unadorned jeans, an undistinguished tailored blouse. In a pale blue.
The way good girls dress.
Her only rebellion had been one time in high school, when she and three of her “proper” friends had taken Sandy Piper’s father’s car for a joy ride. The thrill of the forbidden had lingered in the back of her mind all this time, buried but apparently still bubbling. Waiting for something to let it loose.
Turning right at the end of the street, she blended into the traffic on the four-lane thoroughfare lined with stores and other businesses. She passed a restaurant with sidewalk tables under outdoor lights, happy couples laughing and chatting. She’d never done that. Not with Andrew or any of her other dates. They all hated eating outside. Too many bugs. Too much exposure.
She drove aimlessly up one street and down the other, thoughts chasing each other around in her brain. Her birthday was closing in, and she was frightened that a life she’d never thought about or even known existed was passing her by.
She lost track of time and direction as she drifted toward no particular destination, so it was with some shock that she found herself on a street at the opposite end of town in front of a cement block building. The sign over the doorway read “Aftershock”, and even with the car windows rolled up, she could hear the heavy sounds of a rock band bleeding out into the night.
I’ve never been to a rock club.
Because the men she dated didn’t hang out in places like that. Or even listen to that kind of music.
But now, without thinking about it, she pulled into the crowded parking lot, climbed out of her car, and headed for the entrance as if on autopilot. The sign next to the door read “Now Appearing - Lightning.” An appropriate name for a band playing in a club named Aftershock. The moment she opened the club’s door, she was assaulted by the sheer volume of sound, the noises of the crowd mixed with the blast of the music.
Someone was shouting in her ear. “Ten bucks.”
She stared at the large muscular man blocking her way, intimidating in black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, his hand outstretched.
She frowned. “What?”
He leaned closer to her ear. “Ten bucks. Cover. No money, you don’t get in.”
Emma fumbled in her tiny purse and found a ten-dollar bill. When she passed it to the man, he grabbed her arm and pressed a rubber stamp to her wrist—a stamp in the shape of a lightning bolt. She gawked at it, fascinated. She’d never been to a place where they stamped hands.
She looked up at the man. “What’s this for?”
“So you can get in and out,” he explained. “You never had a cover stamp before?”
Not that I’ll admit to anyone.
“Oh. Of course. Thanks.”
The place was so dark, she had trouble adjusting her eyes. Blackness shredded by the molecules of light illuminated the stage from the booth located high on one wall. Red and yellow mingled diffusely with the darkness, creating a surreal atmosphere for the
