2014 ~ Echoes of Eternity

Nudity, FYI

Her legs were soft, smooth, and silky, I thought, as I ran my hand up her thigh to her well-toned ass, grabbing a hold of it and massaging it carefully. She moaned in pleasure and grabbed fistfuls of my hair in her hands, while I nibbled on her earlobe, making sure that my teeth didn't grab onto the small studded earrings she was wearing. A hint of peach fragrance poked through the overwhelming smell of vodka that enveloped us, causing me to bury my face in her hair which was the source of the peach scent. I felt her pepper kisses along my jawline, and then I moved my face up to meet hers, pressing my lips against hers, which she parted willingly and hungrily. Her right hand moved from my hair to my back, and then to the hem of my shirt, which she tugged upwards. I got the hint and briefly removed my hands from her, raising my arms up so she could continue removing my shirt. No sooner had my shirt hit the floor, then I was taking off her top and bra. She had such nice tits, they were perfectly round, sitting firmly on her chest, nipples erect as if they were standing at attention and ready for some action. Her hands were running all over my body as I was staring at her, and she teased me by lifting her skirt up to reveal her panties, which I could clearly see, even through her pantyhose.

Just as I was about to go for the waistband of her panties, she stopped my hand, took her hair down, and went for my pants, kneeling down as she undid the zipper and belt. I was getting so hot once I figured out what she was doing, and patiently stood there as she pulled the front of my jeans open roughly and took me into her mouth. Her warm breath made me tingle all over, and as she slid her mouth up and down, I was finding that it was becoming increasingly difficult to stand.

When she came back up, I searched around in my pocket for the condom I had brought with me, then dropped my pants on the floor. She touched my chest as I put the condom on, and when I was finished with that, I placed her on the bed, removing the rest of her clothes. She spread her legs voluntarily and I could see the lust in her blue eyes. Putting my hands on her bed, I positioned myself in just the right spot, touching her softly, teasing her with my proximity before I entered. She had the pillow case in her left hand, grabbing it each time I thrust into her, and I could tell I was driving her crazy.

I was not in love with her by any means, but she had been talking and flirting with me all night, so we decided to have some fun together. In all honesty, I didn't want anything other than meaningless sex, I had seen my dad go through a horrible marriage and all of that relationship stuff just didn't seem appealing to me. I kept most people at arms length and I made sure that people I slept with knew that they shouldn't expect serious from me. It's true that some will argue intimacy is a form of being serious, but I only see it as sex, and I don't get attached to someone just because I've seen them naked. Tonight was no exception, I had gone to a party at one of the sororities, and this girl, Reese, a blonde, had been talking to me all night, mostly about nothing since she was drunk. I had been standing at the counter drinking some jello shots when she had come over and said hi. I hadn't minded that she was there with me for most of the night, since I had come alone because some random girl in my class said she was having a party tonight, and she needed some hot guys to populate the area. I really enjoyed parties, even if I didn't have anyone to bring, I just liked the atmosphere, being able to remain anonymous if I wanted to, with the ability to disappear into the crowd if someone was bugging me.

Usually, sex with an extremely drunk girl would result in the girl passing out and falling asleep almost immediately afterwards. It worked perfectly for me because of my not wanting to be serious with anyone, and it gave me the chance to grab my clothes and go home without much hassle. After cleaning up a little in the bathroom, I collected my clothing off the floor and got dressed. As I stepped outside into the morning air, I was hit by a blanket of humidity. Luckily it was cool, somewhat, and the temperature actually felt like what it read on my phone, which was 74 degrees. Normally, in Louisiana, what it felt like was always hotter than what it actually was, by about four or five degrees. I much preferred being outside at night rather than the day because the sun always beat down on me and made me feel so warm, often times too warm. The weather was one thing I loved and missed about California, but my decision to move had nothing to do with not liking the location and everything to do with the memories I had there.

Shortly after I turned eighteen and graduated from high school, my dad and I were discussing what I wanted to do with my life. I admitted to him that I felt somewhat lost because I had interests and hobbies, but I didn't feel like I was good enough to pursue them. Despite my dad's constant support for my singing and art skills throughout my childhood and teen years, it was my mom's words that affected me the most. Sometimes my mom would scream at me if I was singing along to something, which may have caused me to equate my singing to noise, even though my dad always told me he thought I had an ear for music. She always did it when my dad wasn't home, but I think he knew anyway that she wasn't supportive of me. I consistently felt like a failure in her eyes, and I spent a lot of my childhood torn between hating her and wanting her approval. She wasn't always like that, however, because I remember a day when she had genuinely smiled at me. I had apologized to her after a really big fight we had at Disney World and given her the picture of Cinderella and I that was the source of our argument. She had taken the picture, smiled at me, and given me a hug afterwards. Things between my mom and me got better after that, but when my dad started working at the office, things took a turn for the worst.

My mom was happier, but my dad was sadder. They started fighting a lot and she became increasingly more irritable with me as well as him. It would usually start with my mom being excited to see my dad, my dad being sad about everything, and then my mom would yell at him because he was sad. I felt bad for my dad more than I did for my mom. He always used to have such a sparkle in his eyes before the office job, but after, he would come home and plop down on the couch, staring into the distance. I never knew what he was looking at, but I would always imagine he was trying to see something that would make him happy. I tried to stand up for my dad, and one day after my dad had been moping around for a month, I told my mom that he wasn't happy and I thought maybe the office was making him sad. That's when the rocky relationship turned into much more than just not getting along. It started turning into hatred. I started feeling like my mom never wanted me around her, as if the mere sight of me disgusted her, so I kept to myself. I used to want to watch a movie with my mom or play a game with her, but after she found out I was on my dad's side, I guess, that was the start of her calling me stupid, and I found it easy to ignore her. It wasn't like I particularly enjoyed her company, either.

I would hang out in the multi-purpose room that had a treadmill and my easel, and just paint and sing along to my music. I wondered if my dad started not to like her as well because sometimes after they fought, he would come upstairs and sit on the couch in the room where I was painting. He would just stare out the window, and those were the times I felt he was sad and looking for something he was so desperately missing. The house I grew up in felt empty, and the only times I felt comfortable in it were when I knew my dad was home. When it was just my mom and I, I always felt afraid that I would say something wrong or do just the right thing that would piss her off and she would yell at me. I don't think I was old enough to know she had a drinking problem, but I knew something wasn't right with her. When she stormed out of the house the day she died after screaming at me about cake, I had no idea that was the last conversation we would ever have. I know for a fact that the way my mom treated me had a great effect on how I look at relationships as an adult. I don't want to have a relationship because I don't want to end up like my parents. I don't want to feel like a prisoner in my own home, unable to do anything that I want because I'll feel guilty if it makes the other person upset.

I hated how my mom would treat my dad, and the way she would look at him, with disdain and disappointment in her eyes, as if everything he did pissed her off. I had no desire or need for that kind of shit in my life. Later after my mom died, my dad started his magic act again, and he's doing well for himself, finally. I never understood why my mom couldn't just be happy for my dad. It seemed like she always wanted him to feel like shit, so whenever he was happy, she tried to sabotage it somehow. I don't know if that was true, but that is how it looked from my point of view as a child. I have always been proud of my dad and how he held strong for me even when he was miserable. He made time for me, and made sure I knew I was loved, at least by him. He tried to tell me that my mom didn't hate me, but I don't know that I ever believed him. Of course I wanted his words to be true, but every time she would act a certain way towards me, I just couldn't see how someone who treated me that badly could actually love me.

After a ten minute walk, I finally made it home to my dorm. I went into my room and softly shut the door behind me, plopping myself face down onto my bed. Ugh. I liked parties, and I had a lot of energy while I was at the party, but every time I came back to my room, that was when I realized how tired I actually was. I knew I was on the verge of passing out, so I quickly changed into my pajamas and crawled under the covers. Before I knew it, the alarm clock rang on my nightstand next to me. Even though I was still sleepy, I had this annoying quirk where when I heard my alarm clock, it was hard for me to go back to bed, so I ended up just rubbing my eyes and turning the clock off.

I wondered if I had developed the quirk of how I couldn't go back to sleep because of how often I had heard my parents screaming at each other after I had gone to bed, like I thought something bad was going to happen if I didn't keep myself somewhat alert even if I was asleep. I rolled over groggily and swung my feet over the side of the bed, yawning as I did. I dressed myself in a towel since the dorm had communal showers, and there really wasn't a place to put clothes without worrying they were going to be stolen, so I simply didn't take clothes into the bathroom with me. I took a shower about ten minutes long, washing all the smells of the previous night's party away with my soapy hands. When I was done, I went to the sink and put some gel in my hair to give it the tousled look that I always preferred.

I took all my shower supplies back to my room and put some clothes on, wondering what I should do today since it was Saturday. I turned my back to my dresser and looked around my room. I had picked a single room with a double bed and generous space, not really wanting to actually share my room with anyone. Luckily my dad was rich so he had no problems paying extra to get me a single room. I stared at my easel and guitar, and it brought a smile to my face because those were the two things I brought with me that were actually good memories of home. When I had just started school as a kid, my dad bought me an easel for my fifth birthday and taught me how to paint. Before then, I had colored a lot in various coloring books and I really liked to draw and be artistic. The guitar was my high school graduation gift and I'll always remember what my dad said to me when he gave it to me, 'Armand, you make me proud. This guitar is for you to practice your singing because I know you love it and I always want you to be able to do what you love. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.' I liked what he said because the advice I had given him when I was a teenager had stuck. In a way he was giving my own advice back to me, but the fact that it had stuck in his mind just made me feel like my dad always took what I said to heart, and he made me feel like I mattered, even if he didn't agree with me.

I decided to play my guitar for a little bit, as it would kill two birds with one stone. I was a Fine Arts major, and raising my guitar skill actually contributed towards my grade. That was one of the things I loved about my major, that natural skills I already had would help me do well in school, so I could do what I loved while I was here. Of course, I still had some wierd classes that the school deemed required that I thought were unnecessary, this semester it was The Culture of Herbology 102, but I felt like I was more willing to go to them because I was still able to do what I loved for my other classes. Tests and homework sucked of course, but you can't win them all. So far I had been enjoying my time at college, and I hoped I would continue to as time went on. I had been playing the guitar since I was fourteen, and I was glad that I no longer had to hide it like I did at that time. I used to play in the living room of my house, but after my mom came and yelled at me for making noise because she was reading, I had taken to playing outside, in the front of the house between the front door and the gate. Sometimes when my dad would come home from work, he would go inside and change, then come back and watch me play. Of course, then Mom would come out eventually and yell at my dad for ignoring her.

My fingers danced across the neck of the guitar as I played the notes, and the song got much harder sounding, matching my rising anger, as I thought of the memories of my mom yelling at Dad for dilly-dallying around instead of getting dinner ready. My mom couldn't cook, and she never tried to learn, so my dad was often the one who made dinner for us. He was a great cook, and I admired his abilities. Any time my dad tried to spend time with me, he would get in trouble, and sometimes I wondered if my mom had wished I had never been born, as if she was somehow competing with me for my dad's attention. I don't know what all had happened with them regarding me, like had I been an unwanted child? Did they get married just because she got pregnant? I obviously felt like my dad wanted me and his love for me was genuine, but my mom was an entirely different case. Other times I wondered if my mom hated me because I supported my dad when she didn't, so she felt all alone or something. Maybe she was just jealous of me and Dad, and maybe she wished she could have that with me. I'll never know now. There are so many questions I wish I could ask her as an adult that I'll never get to, and it makes me angry. Her death left me feeling incomplete about some parts of my life, and I don't think I'll ever forgive her for that.

"Today we are gathered here to celebrate the life of Katya Eliza Hunt, beloved daughter, sister, mother, and wife. Katya was a sweet, innocent girl who was tainted by life's hardships. We won't go into the details of that because we are choosing to remember her in a positive light. Katya's father, Jack Monroe, will be giving the eulogy."

I watched Jack as he made his way up to the podium that was next to Katya's coffin. He looked older than when I last saw him, with gray streaks in his blonde hair, and more lines on his face than he probably cared to admit he had. I had only interacted with him during my wedding to Katya, and he had accepted me as his own. I wondered how he felt about me now, and I wouldn't blame him if he hated my guts. I knew Katya's death wasn't my fault, and from past interactions with Jack, I didn't think he would be someone who would play the blame game, especially since he knew so much about how Katya could get when she withdrew into herself.

Since he lived in France, Katya and I didn't visit him often. I knew Katya had been estranged from him for a while because of family problems, only reuniting with him on her wedding day, but I had no idea if she kept in touch with him or not. If she hadn't, I almost wished she would have because from what I remember about him, he was a very wise man. Even if he would have been mad at me or taken Katya's side while we were fighting, it would have made perfect sense, and I would have preferred that Katya go to him for advice because it might have helped. Today was a day of what-ifs for me, and I was weary, scared of what everyone would think of me. Would I be known as the husband who drove his wife to alcoholism because he was a selfish bastard, or would I be the widower whose wife was such a loner that she couldn't face her own problems with the help of her husband who wanted nothing more than to support her?

I looked over at Katya, laying there with her pretty blonde hair braided like it was when we first met, and her hands crossed over her stomach, fingers intertwined. Peaceful and tranquil. Funerals always made me feel wierd because it was just strange seeing the deceased lay there so calm and collected, when I was used to the person being far from calm while they were alive. I got the same feeling when my Aunt Helena died because I remember her fighting a lot with my parents, and she was always yelling like Katya was. I wondered how I would feel if someone I was very close to passed away, since the two funerals I had been to so far were people I was theoretically supposed to be close to, but somehow they ended up feeling like strangers to me.

"Katya was always a bit of a loner, even when she was a little girl. Some people think that only children long for the companionship of a sibling, and although some of them might, I always felt like Katya would have preferred to be an only child. She was a sweetheart, and she enjoyed spending time with me, usually at the library because her greatest love was probably her love of books. She never got along with people very well, and after a long day at school, she loved to retreat into her room away from her two sisters. When I would go in search of her, I would always find her sitting at her desk doing her homework, or reading. She also had a terrible habit of not opening up to me or anyone else when she had a problem, choosing instead to suffer in silence. Sometimes I worried that she would alienate herself too much to the point where she would become a hermit, so when she got married, I was ecstatic. I tried to help Patrick as best I could with advice about Katya when she would get into her moods, but ultimately, her demons won. I wish that things had gone better for Katya, and I sincerely hope that wherever she is right now, she is at peace with herself."

When Jack got to the part where he mentioned me and trying to help me to the best of his abilities, my fears dissipated a tiny bit that he wouldn't just come up to me and point his finger in my face with disdain. I was glad that he was able to see both sides of the story, despite not even being in the same country for any of it. Even though in my heart I truly believed that I was not the cause of Katya's death, my head was filled with lies like 'If you'd stopped her from hanging out with Carisa, she wouldn't have been drinking so much,' or ' If you hadn't been such a stubborn asshole, and just been happy giving up magic, maybe she'd still be alive.' I knew that was stupid because common sense told me Katya made her own mistakes, and that I had worked my ass off trying to compromise and make our marriage work, while she had remained stubborn and unwilling. I looked over at Carisa, who was sitting on the bench opposite me, leaning forward with her legs crossed.

I wondered what she was thinking because I didn't really understand her and Katya's friendship. I knew that Mikayla was her daughter and Armand's childhood friend, but I always felt like Carisa was somehow telling Katya what to do, as if she liked Katya because she could boss her around completely. Not when it came to me, but more when it came to raising children. I wondered if that was why Katya was never able to get along with Armand, that maybe her constantly taking child rearing advice from Carisa was actually a terrible idea. I didn't know Carisa that well, and I wasn't going to judge her on how she raised Mikayla, but I wasn't too excited about the way Carisa treated Katya. Still, she was here, attending the funeral, so maybe she did genuinely care about Katya.

Emmanuel and Ephemera sat behind Armand and I during the service. Ephemera had a look of regret on her face, probably because her and Katya had grown further apart during the times that Katya had started nagging me about quitting magic. I felt bad for her that she felt she had to take sides, but in her case, family was not stronger than friendship. Ephemera would hang out with Emmanuel and I sometimes at mine and Katya's house while I was home alone with Armand and Katya was out with Carisa. I was sad that she and Katya had become acquaintances again after they had both mended their fences on our wedding day. Emmanuel had been there through thick and thin for me, always loyal, never wavering. Ephemera had also done that somewhat as well, with her taking my side, even though Katya was her sister. They were both there for me when I had my accident, and Emmanuel's quick call to action had saved my life. I was very grateful to both of them.

My parents were also here, with their arms around each other, as usual. I loved that they were still happy after thirty-five years of being together, but I was also jealous of their closeness. I felt like a failure somewhat. Don't they say that only people who have a terrible childhood end up with miserable lives? That's what they blame it on I guess, but I had good parents, so what they say must be a crock of shit. My marriage had sucked. Sure, I had good times with Katya, but the majority of our years together sucked. My parents taught me better than this, so why did I fuck it up so bad? I thought back to the day when I had my first successful show at the Starlight, and how I had seen Katya there, wishing I could have a love with her like my parents had with each other. How wrong I was. How very, very wrong.

By this time, Jack had finished the eulogy, and we were having a moment of silence before we left to go to the cemetery for the burial.