Blackberry Wine

 

Matilda Ann Davis was very sorry that she’d forgotten her wide-brimmed straw hat and dark sunglasses, as well as sunscreen. Redheads always fried in the Georgia sun and looked like nothing so much as a lobster dropped in a pot of fiercely boiling water. Well, it was just this one time, and she wanted to watch what was going on across the street more than she wanted to go home and get a hat and sunscreen. Besides, Jason was supposed to meet her here, and he was a little past the time they’d agreed on, and she didn’t want to risk not meeting him. She tried to resist the urge to look at the heart-shaped face of her silver wristwatch, but finally she squinted down at it. Jason Whitman Freeman, you are 20 minutes late, already, and I don’t see any sign that you’re coming, which means you are really going to be late! Why, possibly even half an hour late!! And you know what happens when Matilda is kept waiting……it means that SHE keeps YOU waiting about other things, as well, and you know damned well what they are! She barely curbed the impulse to stick out her tongue as some tourists walked by her table, and her flushed face felt even hotter than it already did. She sat and squirmed in the wrought iron chair she was in for what seemed an eternity, before she finally gazed down at her watch and saw that it had actually been 10 minutes, which meant that Jason was now officially half an hour late. She decided that it must be important, whatever this thing was that was making him late, as it was one of the things she loved most about him: he very, very rarely made her wait to see him, and of course the reverse was true about her. She finally couldn’t stand sitting in her chair any longer, out of nervous energy if nothing else. She stood up and tugged on the ragged edge of her jean shorts, to get out the creases that had gotten there while she had been sitting, shifted her feet in the bright blue flipflops she was wearing, and then pulled on her wrinkled blue tshirt, that was a shade darker blue than the flipflops were. She shook her head of burnished auburn hair, adjusted the thin red leather strap of the small clutch that was carelessly thrown across her left shoulder, looked each way, and finally started across the street, to the screen door where all of the tourists were still streaming in. Matilda didn’t ever realize she’d opened the door, until she heard the screen door slam behind her after she had walked into the welcoming coolness of the small general store and heard the sounds of purchases being made going on around her. She brushed against the shoulder of a girlfriend of hers from high school, a blonder cheerleader type named Nancy Sue Rivers, who was working in the store for extra money until her return to college in the fall. “Where you been, girl? Go on out back, everything’s ready and waiting. I’ll be out in half an hour, myself, soon as my shift ends.”, Nancy whispered as she straightened and refolded piles of colorful tshirts. Matilda grinned and ducked her head, as her face was flushed even in the cool, dimly lit store. She went out the back door of the door and heard the screen as it smacked shut behind her. She walked thru the soft, powdery dirt behind the store, accepted a cup of homemade blackberry wine from another old friend from high school, and slipped behind the old fence now completely covered in kudzu. Between the kudzu and the sounds from the store, no one ever heard or saw anything. She felt that Jason was there waiting for her, and without even having to look, her arms slipped around his neck as they were locked in a searing kiss, her green eyes raging with hot blue fire. He lifted her in his arms and carried her ……somewhere…….it didn’t matter where, It seemed as thought their clothes had taken themselves off, because the next thing that Matilda was aware of was Jason in and out of her in an almost rough and yet strangely gentle pace. Every time was more incredible than the one before it, and no one ever, ever knew, except for the two of them……… ReplyForward