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Purple Cherry Lips

G. Anderson

New Member
Hi All,

I am reading fan and a self-published writer, and here's a short story that I recently published. I hope you'll enjoy it. Feel free to leave feedback!

Best,
G.

PURPLE CHERRY LIPS

‘Your lips taste of cherry.’

Natalie stopped kissing James. She looked at her husband to whom she’d been married for five years now. In all those years, plus the two in which they’d gotten to know each other, he’d never - not once - commented on the taste of her lips. His eyes were still closed and his lips were pursed together and put out, as if he were a little boy waiting for his first kiss. Natalie closed her eyes too. She leaned in and gave James a short peck on the mouth. He groaned and immediately opened his eyes.

‘Is that really all I’ll get from you after years of marriage?’

‘Of course not.’

Natalie smiled sweetly at her hubby and hugged him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek before she spoke again.

‘But wait here for five minutes, okay?’

James smiled as she stood up. She wondered whether it was normal for other married folks to be so affectionate. She’d been told otherwise. They’d been younger than most when they’d married and everyone had been warning them that they would be regretting it soon. Well, they hadn’t yet. At least she hadn’t and she didn’t believe that James had either. Yet there were times when she wanted to be alone. But surely that was normal? She’d been reminded of her first boyfriend, Gary, when James had said the cherry thing. She’d worn cherry lip gloss on the date which she’d first kissed Gary.. And before when she’d looked at James she’d thought she’d seen Gary for a moment. She imagined if she’d ended up with Gary. She had no idea where he was right now. She poured herself a glass of water and walked out into their garden. They’d been lucky that James had inherited a small house from his grandparents, and Natalie had been lucky that it had a small garden with a small pond which she could imagine to be a small lake. Natalie sat down on the moist grass and put a finger in the pond. She started swirling her finger around. Soon she knew that she’d be lost in her own world again. The water in the pond stirred up and Natalie now sat on her knees and looked at the colours she could see in the water. First it was dark blue. Then it became a lighter shade of green. Then it was red and pink and as it became purple she jumped in and she knew that she was back home again.


Natalie brushed her knees as she stood up on the wooden floor. She was back in her childhood home. In the background she could hear her parents yelling, but she was not here to visit them now. She heard her little sister talk to herself while playing and Natalie peeked her head around the door to see the silhouette of her little sister running a toy car with her doll on it, while imitating a very innocent form of road rage which she’d probably picked up by their father while on a family trip. Natalie could not help but smile a little to herself. Her sister had always been more observant than herself. She’d been funnier too. But Natalie wasn’t here to play with her little sister. She walked through the hall and finally found her old room. It was painted a dark purple with stars in the ceiling and waves on the walls. Her bedsheet and pillows were different shades of purple. Then she saw it. She’d left the key in the keyhole of the drawer. Natalie tiptoed to the drawer though she knew that no one would be able to hear her. She opened the drawer carefully. Her diary was worse for wear. She’d been a wild child and had brought it with her everywhere. In her angry moods she’d torn the pages. When her heart had been breaking she’d shed tears on them. But now she was a grown woman and she treated her diary almost as gently as she’d treat a child. After all she felt that it was the only thing left from her own child self. No one could disturb her there, but still she looked to check whether she was alone before she sat down on her bed. She found the page quickly. There it was. Written in a purple pen was:


,,Dear Diary, Today I kissed Gary. I kissed Gary!! I wore a cherry lip gloss and he said the kiss tasted of cherry. To me it tasted of cucumber. I like cucumber but I am not sure I like Gary. I know other people would kill me to say that but he kept talking about boats. I suppose I could give him a chance.”


Natalie held the diary against her chest and laughed at the recollection of how passionate Gary had been about boats. He might be a sailor now she thought to herself. She had given him a chance. After that kiss they’d gone out for a year. Gary had been nice to her but she’d never fallen for him. She’d thought about breaking up with him several times, but her parents had liked him. And the two, who would fight so often and so harshly, had been adamant in insisting that it was the right thing for Natalie to have someone as steady as Gary. They’d called him a good grounding influence to her flighty nature. Then after a year, Gary had asked her to meet him urgently. They’d recently turned eighteen and she’d thought he was going to propose. When she’d arrived, he’d stood there with this apologetic smile and told her that he’d been in love with someone else for awhile now. He’d never done anything behind Natalie’s back, but now that he’d learned that his feelings for the other were returned, he’d have to let Natalie go. She’d cried that night. More than she’d thought she would. She wasn’t in love with Gary but he’d become a friend. Her only friend. Until she had met James. Natalie looked in the drawer and took out the cherry lip gloss and put it in her dress pocket. She thought about how everyone had warned her against marrying James when they were both so young. ‘The same will happen again, you know!’ had been the recurring words from her mother, who formerly had been so supportive of her eldest daughter’s romantic life. But unlike with Gary Natalie hadn’t first kissed James because others expected her to. She’d kissed him because she wanted to. Natalie closed her eyes once again and thought of the pond in the little garden of the house where she now lived with James.

Natalie blinked two times as she felt the grass beneath her again. She put a finger in the pond. It was still and the water was muddy. It had gotten darker and she could only just see the shadows of the bushes, so she stood up and went inside. James was leaning back in the sofa and his open mouth suggested that he might have fallen asleep. Natalie padded her right pocket. The lip gloss was there. She took it up and dipped her finger in it and put it on her lips. As she sat down next to James, he woke up.

‘What have you put on your lips?’ he asked her.

‘Cherry,’ she replied with a smile and kissed her husband on his cheek. ‘To make sweet memories,’ she finished.
 
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