Anyone But You

Chapter 2

Run! Just turn and run. 

The voice in my head screamed at me. Go home! So what if you miss your sister's wedding reception? You've already been to the ceremony and that's the important part, isn't it? The voice continued, and the more I looked at that name on the name card, the more I was going to listen to it. So, I turned, and without so much as another thought, I started to ru—

"FUCK!" I felt it before I knew it was happening. The tug of the dress as my heel slipped into that lace detail at the bottom (probably something else to add, I don't wear heels!) There was a ripping sound, like fingernails down a blackboard, and then there was a moment where I teetered, suspended in the air, neither here nor there. Not falling, but not standing either. It was as if it happened in slow motion too. My arms shot out, I flapped them about, waved, made circles as the teeter turned into a fall which turned into a lean into a...

Double fuck! I was falling. Face first. Fast. Accelerating towards the floor. I could see it, but I couldn't stop it. I put my arms out, closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable big bang! The inevitable feeling of my face smashing into something hard. I hoped it wouldn't hurt too much­–mind you, it probably wouldn't hurt as much as being hit in the nose by a drunk man during one of my first arrests, I've become a better cop since then. 

Suddenly, my shoulder connected with something hard, my guess was the chair, and then in the next second, like bungee cord reaching the bottom, the momentum of my fall stopped. For a second I was completely still, and then I was pulled back with such force that I was sure I got whiplash. With my eyes still closed, I couldn't make out what was happening. All I knew was that I was no longer falling, and that I was suddenly standing, and that someone was holding me up. I let out a sigh of relief as my body relaxed. But the relief was only temporary because... I recognized that smell immediately.

His smell.

The smell that had plagued me for so many years. That had been embedded in my pillow from that night and didn't want to go away until I'd been forced to throw the pillow away. I stood there, every single muscle in my body tensed, my eyes still tightly shut. I refused to open them. Please do not let this be him. Let it be anyone but him. Not him, not him, not— 

"Amantha? Amantha?" Are you okay?" His voice. I'd heard that voice so often; passing by a TV at work, on the radio—the bastard also did husky, sexy, voice-overs–and in the depths of my dreams, I sometimes, much to my horror, had those on repeat. Had those words on repeat...

'Do you know how long I've wanted you.'

"Amantha?" he pressed. Still, I refused to open my eyes.

"Babe?" It was my sister's other bridesmaid Becky. No one in the world called me babe, except her. She called everyone babe, even if she'd just met them. She was one of those.

"Are you okay, babe?" she continued, but still, I refused to open my eyes. If I opened them, then this would all become real.  "Oh My God, I saw the whole thing happen, I got such a fright. I was so worried about you," she gushed.

"Sorry. It's the dress," I mumbled. "I tripped."

"But aren't you soooo lucky that Jack was here to save you?" Her voice had taken on a sing-song, flirty quality. "It's so great that you were right here at the exact moment so that you could save her, don't you think Amantha." At that, my eyes flipped open and I took a step back.

"Save me? I don't think so!" I put my hands on my hips and stared at him. Stared into the eyes of the man I wished I could forget. Oh God, those eyes. Those swoony, knee-weakening, green eyes that stared down at me from all those billboards in shopping centres.