September 2008

Dustin Crenshaw had been in love with Susie Wright since their first year of high school. He’d done everything he could think of to get Susie’s attention, but no matter what he did, she continued to ignore him. He was a good-looking young man, but his family wasn’t well to do and because of that reason, Susie refused to have anything to do with him.

Susie wanted to date boys who had money to spend on her, not some poor kid trying to save for college; and she especially didn’t want to date some nerdy computer geek. She knew Dustin had fallen for her and it made her feel superior to know she could hurt him simply by turning him down whenever he’d ask her out for a date. Therefore, she always refused Dustin anytime he asked her out. She knew the expression people used to describe her was, ‘She’s a bitch!’, and it described her to a T, but as long as she got her way, she didn’t care if she hurt other people’s feelings.

Finally, Dustin quit asking Susie out and started dating other girls from their class, but his heart still wanted her, as he never felt strongly for the other girls he dated.

Dustin knew if he wanted to go to college, he would have to save up for it or get a scholarship. In order to make either one happen, he studied hard to keep his grades up and worked at a nearby grocery store to save up for school in case he didn’t get a scholarship.

The years passed and soon it was time for graduation, and Dustin was ecstatic, as he’d received an academic scholarship to a college in California. He decided that once he was there, he could get Susie out of his system. Dustin knew he needed to move on with his life and find a woman who would love him for who he was, instead of what money he had in the bank, but still that thought didn’t stop him from driving past her house just one more time before he left for college. He knew through a mutual friend of theirs that Susie was staying in town and attending the local community college, so he knew she would be home.

As he drove by, he saw her outside washing her car in her bathing suit, which was a very small pink bikini. The sight was too much for him, and he had to drive by a second time. Since this was his last night here, he decided to stop and talk to her.

Susie noticed out the corner of her eye that Dustin’s car was stopping and she smiled. “That boy just doesn’t learn,” she said aloud. What did she have to do to get him to leave her alone for good?

Dustin parked his car at the curb and walked over to her car. “Hi, Susie.”

Susie turned and looked at him. “What do you want?” she asked him hatefully.

Her words hurt, but it didn’t deter him. “I’ve come to tell you goodbye. I’m leaving for California in the morning and won’t be home until Christmas.”

“Goodbye and good riddance,” she told him rudely before turning her back to him.

He didn’t reply, but simply turned and walked back to his car. Not once did he turn and look at her, figuring tomorrow he would start his new life and forget her for good. Dustin dated many women during his four years at college, but none of them ever captured his heart the way Susie had.

After he left for college, his parents, Delbert and Sharon Crenshaw moved to Chicago, then every summer he went to Chicago to stay with his parents, but he missed Kansas City, and planned someday to move back to his hometown.

Finally, college graduation came for Dustin and he was now a degreed computer programmer. He felt lucky when he’d landed a great job with Highland Industries, the largest consulting firm in the Kansas City area. He regretted leaving his parents, but Kansas City was his home, and he couldn’t wait to move back. His parents had been hoping he would find a job nearby and was sorry to see him leave, but they’d been expecting their son to spread his wings, so they wished him good luck, then watched him drive away, with tears in their eyes.

His starting salary was going to be one hundred thousand a year, which he thought wasn’t a bad starting salary for a new graduate. When he accepted the job at Highland Industries, he received a large signing bonus, and with the money, he bought a house. Unsure how he wanted to decorate his new home, he bought just a bed to sleep on and some food, then he started a new chapter of his life in his old hometown.

On his first day at work, he was surprised to see no other than Susie Wright working at Highland Industries. When he asked his boss, Forrest Stanford about her, he told Dustin she was the administrative assistant to the sales manager, then suggested he stay clear of her, because she was bad news, but Dustin already knew that. Then Forrest took him into the room where their meeting was being held, and introduced to him to the other employees.

Susie hadn’t seen him as she hurried into the meeting room, but it when she did, she gave him a hungry wicked grin. This was the first time in his life, she was actually looking at him, but he wasn’t shocked, as he knew his salary was what she was interested in, not him as a person. Still that didn’t stop his heart from jumping when she reached out and took hold of his hand.

“Hi, Dustin. How are you doing?” Susie asked him sweetly, hoping he wouldn’t hold her rude actions of her past against her.

Dustin was so excited she was finally taking notice of him after all these years that his throat went dry, then he swallowed as he nodded his head. “Hi, Susie. I’m doing well. How do you like it here?”

“I love it. I’ve been here for two years, and I work for Chad Driver, the Sales Director. It has been a long time since we’ve seen each other. I’ve missed you.”

“Would you go to lunch with me tomorrow?” he asked, forcing all his hurt feelings of their high school years and her harsh treatment of him to the back of his mind.

“I would love to,” she purred, giving him a seductive smile, thinking soon all his money would be hers.

* * *

The book hit the wall with a loud thump, the pages fluttering as it fell to the floor, landing with the cover of book facing the floor.

“Stupid man. Can’t he see the bitch is only interested in him now because he’s making a large salary?” Ambria Washington asked loudly to the empty room. “Sometimes people can be so blinded by their wants that they can’t see the truth right in front of their face. Susie wouldn’t have anything to do with him before, but now Dustin’s making the big bucks, suddenly she’s interested.”

She walked over to the book, reached down, and picked it up. “I think this book is a piece of crap and I’m not to read another word of it,” she said unwaveringly, “and the next time I go to the used bookstore, I’m going to trade it in,” she stated determinedly.

She stomped across the room to a bookcase on the other side of the room and started scanning it for another book to read, but before she could pick one, she looked down at the one in her hand. “What I don’t understand is why do authors write stuff like this? The last thing he should have done was ask her out,” she said to the book. “Dustin should have turned his back on her, laughed in her face, or at least told her where to go.” She nodded at her statement, thinking that was what she would have done.

“Why couldn’t it have been me he was interested in?” She touched the man’s face on the cover with her finger and smiled. “I would have gone out with him back in high school,” she muttered as she stared at his picture. She started to reach for a new book, but quickly changed her mind as a thought entered her head and her expression brightened. “I know, maybe Susie isn’t the woman with him on the cover,” she said, then shook her head in disgust, knowing now if she didn’t continue reading the book, she wouldn’t ever know if that was true or not. “Maybe he’s just being nice to her so he could set her up for a fall later on,” she said, then let out a hardy giggle. “Yeah, right.”

She gazed with longing at the cover. “How I wish he was real.” Then she shook her head, and the tips of her red hair danced against her shoulders. “Even if he was, he probably wouldn’t be interested in me.” She walked over to the mirror on the wall to look at herself. If she hadn’t been so fixated on Dustin and his interest with Susie, she would have noticed the similarity between the girl on the cover and herself, especially the girl’s hair color, but she didn’t.

“I wish I was beautiful, then maybe I could find someone to love me,” she said to her reflection. “Maybe if I didn’t have this red mess on top of my head,” she said, flipping up the ends of her hair away from her face, “then maybe I would be prettier.” Her mother had told her she had the same hair color as her father, a man she never knew, but she still didn’t like the color, which was really a pretty shade of auburn.

Ray Washington and Melanie Adams had parted ways before Melanie knew she was pregnant with his child, and when she told Ray she was expecting his baby, he hadn’t believed her. He was going to be a doctor and wasn’t ready to settle down to play house with her or any other woman. Ray gave her two thousand dollars, told her to take care of the supposed baby and he never wanted to see her again.

Melanie finished out the semester, and then returned to her parents’ home to have her baby. She didn’t contact him after Ambria’s birth, but she did put Ray’s name on her daughter’s birth certificate, hoping that some day the two of them would find each other.

For the first ten years of her life, it had been just Ambria, her mother, and grandparents. Then one day Melanie Adams met Louis Petree and they fell in love. They were married a few weeks later, and then they moved to Kansas City to start their new life together. They had a wonderful marriage and Louis had been a good father to Ambria, but two years ago, Louis had been killed in a car accident, and her mother still missed her husband.

* * *

Ambria left the mirror, walked to where she had left her bookmarker, and picked it up. She flipped through the book until she found the page she’d been on and stuck it in the book. She wanted to read more, but it was getting late. She could read more of the book tomorrow after she got her housework done, so she closed the book and laid it on the coffee table. She then turned off the living room light and headed to bed.

The next morning she was up early, after she ate a quick breakfast, she started on her housework. She finished just before noon, so she decided to fix herself a sandwich. After she finished making her sandwich, she grabbed her book and sat down at the kitchen table, and promptly opened it.

* * *

For the next month, one thing or another came up to prevent Dustin and Susie from going out to lunch, but that didn’t stop Susie from trying to get him to go out with her. Then one morning after working an hour on the project, Dustin decided he needed a break and went out to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen, but before he got there, he saw something that took his mind off getting coffee.

“Hi, Dustin,” Susie called to him sweetly when she saw him on his way towards the kitchen.

Dustin didn’t seem to hear her as he walked right by where she was standing, as his attention was on the striking redheaded woman standing at the receptionist’s desk. As he gazed at her, he wondered who she was, thinking she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen, even more beautiful than Susie was.

As he stood there, he saw Irwin Lester, the Director of Marketing, come out to greet her, and as Dustin continued to watch, she vanished from his sight as the two of them walked down the hall toward Irwin’s office. Hoping she was Irwin’s new assistant who was scheduled to start work today, he walked over to Margie, the receptionist, to see if she knew anything about her.

“Is that Irwin’s new employee?” he asked the motherly receptionist.

“Yes, Irwin will probably take her around later to introduce her to everyone.”

“I can’t wait to meet her. What’s her name?”

“Her name is . . .”

Susie was furious when she noticed Dustin wasn’t paying any attention to her and before Margie could respond to him, she grabbed hold of his arm. “Dustin, are we going out to lunch today?”

He turned his attention to Susie. “Can’t go today, I have too much work to do. We’ll have to make it another day.” He turned back to Margie, but she was now on the phone. He waited a few seconds, but each time she hung up the phone, it rang again, and she had to answer it, so he decided to come back later to find out what the new woman’s name was.

Susie was disappointed at his refusal, but smile at him as if she didn’t mind. “That’s okay. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Dustin said over his shoulder as he walked down the hall, but Susie was already out of his mind, as he was thinking he wanted to be the first one to ask the new employee out. He knew if he didn’t hurry, all the other single males in the office would beat him to it, and he would have to wait in line to go out with her.

An hour later, Irwin took the new employee around the office to introduce her to the other employees, but when they came to Dustin’s office, he wasn’t there. Irwin told her he would introduce her to him after lunch.

It was a good thing Dustin didn’t know they came while he was gone, as he would have been furious, but after drinking so much coffee this morning, he couldn’t have waited any longer to use the men’s room.