Valerie on the doorstep

Valerie stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

She took a step back and attempted to regain some control over her breathing. She was aware that the t-shirt she was wearing depicted Marcy and Peppermint Patty saying ‘Never give your heart to a blockhead’. It seemed somewhat appropriate.

“If this was a movie this would be the framing shot” she thought.

The three hour drive over here had been a masturbatory fantasy in which she was cast as the lead in a tragic-romantic comedy. “This is the bit where the introductory credits would roll” she decided as she pushed a homemade mixtape into the car’s ancient tape deck and lit a cigarette up, pulling away from her preferred parking spot in the office’s car park. Earlier that day she’d been sat in that car whilst having her lunch trying really hard to concentrate on the book she was reading and getting nowhere. The same words were stroked by her eyes again and again and yet none of them managed to connect with her brain. Excitement and fear jostled for pole position in the assault of feelings she was being subjected to. She was going to see him. That boy, the one who six months earlier had said he loved her, that had said he thought of them belonging together and who had subsequently pretended like it had never happened. Six months on the consequences of this were going to be played out.

It had been a long time coming.

The drive itself had gone by in a blur. Valerie’s favourite songs fought for prominence over the sounds of her rattling engine. The sky had been full of vivid reds and burnt oranges, which were so bright they were literally stunning and had made it difficult to see as she drove determinedly toward the sunset. When beauty blinds is it time to turn back? she pondered. I can be such a dick when I want to be she countered.

The service station had appeared at the exact right moment on her travels. Her legs were starting to cramp up and she could feel a spot aching to burst it’s way to the surface of her skin that needed immediate attending to. You always have such good timing she told the spot. The spot did not reply, silence was its weapon.

She shook her legs as she unfolded herself out of the car and made her way, fighting against the drizzle, into the neon lit husk containing the usual amenities; toilets, fast food, slot machines, and massage chairs. She had yet to ever see anyone pay for these massage chair services but sometimes toyed with the idea of giving it a go herself – she would always immediately discard such a ridiculous notion: people could see you in those things.

The sun had set by the time she wandered back to her car (a run-down, beat up, wreck that still worked even though no-one thought it should) and continued the journey still thinking all this would make excellent montage material for the opening credits.

Eventually she pulled up to the kerb a little way away from his house and rechecked her make up, then rechecked her make up again. Now or never she told herself, unsure what was awaiting her at the end of the garden path she dawdled up to.

She stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

The door opened. She wavered a second before walking inside.