The Beat of Black Wings by Josh Pachter

Author:Josh Pachter [Pachter, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime/Mystery
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Silky Veils of Ardor

by Greg Herren

The elevator doors opened. Cautiously, her heart thumping in her ears, she stepped out into the hotel lobby and took a quick look around. At the front desk, a young woman in uniform was checking in a couple. They didn’t look familiar. But it had been so long since she’d seen any of them…would she recognize anyone?

She didn’t notice she was holding her breath.

She walked across the lobby to the hotel bar entrance. A reader board just outside said WELCOME BACK BAYVIEW HIGH CLASS OF 1992!

The black background was faded, the white plastic letters yellowed with age.

The urge to head back to the elevators and punch at the UP button until the doors opened, get back to her room and repack her suitcases—everything she’d just carefully put away neatly in drawers and hung in the closet—was strong. She resisted, recognized the need as irrational, closed her eyes, clenched her hands until she felt her ragged bitten nails digging into her palms.

You can do this you can do this you can do this you can do this….

A dull murmur came from the hotel bar, laughter and talking, the rattle of ice against glass, the whir of a blender. From where she stood, she could see the bar was crowded, cocktail waitresses in too-short black skirts and white blouses with trays balanced on one hand maneuvering expertly around groups of people.

Maybe no one there was from the reunion. Maybe she was early. Maybe—

You can do this!

She’d always had social anxiety. Had never made friends easily, couldn’t make small talk, sometimes said the wrong thing, alienated people without even knowing what she’d done. Parties and dances had always been agony. Even with friends, people she felt relatively certain actually did like her, there was always the irrational fear she’d say the wrong thing, forget a birthday, commit some horrific social faux pas that would turn them against her, show them what a damaged, worthless person she actually was. She’d started seeing a therapist after college, years after she should have, but her parents thought therapy was all touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo for the weak and all you had to do was suck it up and forget about it, not worry, lock it all away in some dark corner of your mind and move on.

But she always worried, never able to relax, be honest with people, be herself, share her secrets.

You can do this. You can. You can do anything. You’ve come back to Florida and survived so far, haven’t you?

The Xanax had made the airport and cross-country flight from California bearable. But it was wearing off now, and she didn’t want to take another. Dr. Silverman had been so happy, so thrilled, when she told her she wanted to come to her twenty-fifth high-school reunion. “I’m so proud of you,” Dr. Silverman had beamed. “This is such a huge step.”

You can do this.

“Lany? You are Lany, aren’t you?”

She smiled hesitantly at the short woman in the mom jeans and ugly beige knit sweater with sequined cats appliqued to the front.

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