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Audrey

~

Alex Larkin picked up his glass of wine. It was one of those wide glasses that were supposed to be specially made to let red wine breathe. He smelled the rim of the glass as he had seen on so many movies and television shows, not knowing exactly what he was smelling for. It smelled like wine. Timidly he sipped, not wanting to look like an unattractive lush.

Audrey would not take kindly to a lush.

Alex put his glass gently on the blanket that covered soft wet grass. He had planned the picnic carefully, choosing all of Audrey's favorite foods, turkey sandwiches on pumpernickel bread with mayo, tuna salad with the expensive crackers that could only be bought at the specialty shop in Brandon, garlic mashed potatoes and cool ranch chips. Everything was perfect, even the blanket he had brought was a deep hypnotic purple, her favorite color.

He pushed his glasses higher on his this nose. The glasses were too big but they were the only pair he had. Wanting is not necessity, his mother had told him time and time again.

As he tenderly painted a mountain of tuna salad on a cracker he looked longingly at his beloved. She was wearing a yellow sun dress today. Her auburn hair would occasionally rise and fall as the wind shifted. Once or twice she shuttered as a cool breeze blew across the lake and he thought she should have brought a sweater. She would look beautiful in a sweater, he thought.

Slowly he ate the cracker, chewing each bit exactly thirteen times. It was by sheer force of will that he did not cringe as he ate the fish and mayonnaise paste. He truly hated the taste of tuna fish but it was her favorite and he would eat his weight in it if she had wanted him to.

Audrey smiled, perhaps thinking something humorous, something only she herself knew.

"What is it," he asked in a low voice, watching her closely. She did not answer. She never answered him. Still, he smiled along with her, pretending in his deepest darkest heart that she had shared her amusement with him.

Audrey picked up her cup and drank from it. To Alex this was the most graceful thing in the world. She had a style to everything she did that took his breath away.

It had been three years before when he had first seen her. Love at first sight was a concept reserved for the movies and storybooks, he had been sure. Audrey had changed his mind on that, and so many other things.

He had seen her standing at the checkout counter at McDuff's on Parker Avenue. She was a renter, coming for the beautiful

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