Talisman 01 - The Emerald Talisman

saying went or not.
    “We’ll know soon enough.”

    After the fish pedicure, we decided to have lunch at a little café in town. We had to fulfill the baby’s craving for Chinese chicken salad and no other restaurants would do. After lunch it started to rain again, so we rented a movie. It seemed fitting for the afternoon. We contemplated going to a theater, but Jo said the popcorn smell made her queasy and I didn’t want to share that feeling with her, so I agreed (with much enthusiasm) to watch a movie at home.
    I prayed secretly John would not come home early so we could watch it in peace. The last time, he talked over the entire movie and even ruined the ending by telling us ‘who done it’.
    But John didn’t show up until closer to six when Jo just about had dinner ready. They invited me to stay. To my surprise, John and I got along better this time, making dinner an enjoyable experience. However, after dinner, the lack of sleep started to catch up to me and I just wanted to go home. I congratulated them again on the great news of the new baby and then drove home.
    When I walked into the house, I planned to head straight for the stairs and my bed, but heard the TV going in the living room. My guilt surfaced as I felt Luke’s dread. He had no idea where my moodiness had come from earlier and it wasn’t fair I’d taken my frustration out on him, so I swallowed my pride and stood in the doorway. Luke faked like he didn’t see me.
    “Hey,” I said.
    He flickered his eyes to me and then back to the TV.
    “Hey.”
    I entered the room and sat down. I didn’t know exactly what to say, so I waited for a minute before speaking.
    “Sorry about earlier.”
    He hit mute on the remote.
    “It’s okay,” he said quietly, while studying his fingernails. He acted tough, but I knew he was more upset than he let on.
    “I’m just frustrated.”
    “About?”
    “You can’t tease me,” I said quickly.
    Luke put his hands up, as if in an act of surrender and I smiled. It was sweet he wanted to know.
    “I just don’t understand guys sometimes,” I said while playing with the string on my sweatshirt.
    “Psscht . . . I could say the same about girls,” he said, rolling his eyes, but then he smiled. He wasn’t being rude. He was trying to sympathize. “So who’s the guy you don’t understand?”
    I bit my lip and then let out a sigh, still afraid to share. Luke waited intently and raised his eyebrows, encouraging me to continue.
    “It’s Nicholas. He said he’d come by a week ago and he hasn’t and then I ran into him last night. He was kinda rude and said ‘ I can’t talk now’ and rushed away. I didn’t expect him to be like that, so I don’t get it.”
    “Really,” he said, surprised. “Wow. I thought he was a cool guy. I wonder what happened.”
    “Me too.”
    “Well, it sounds like he’s blowing you off.”
    “You think so?” I said disappointed.
    “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I wasn’t there.”
    “Why do you think he did that?”
    “Heck if I know, but you can’t just sit around here and hope he’s going to come and see you. You need to move on, have fun and realize, if he’s blowing you off, then he’s a jerk and he doesn’t deserve you.”
    It warmed my heart to hear Luke hold me in such high regard. I knew he was right about the moving on part. I just hated not knowing.
    “Julia, there’s a lot of cool guys out there; you don’t need this one,” he said with a convincing smile
    I found his gesture sweet, but I didn’t want any other “cool” guys. I wanted Nicholas.
    “Yeah, I know.”
    I continued playing with my sweatshirt string. And after Luke realized I was finished, he turned up the TV and started watching his show again.
    I sat for a few minutes, happy we’d reconciled, then headed towards my room. Flopping down on the chair at my desk, I listened to the rain coming down outside and thought about what Luke and Jo had said. There were way too many thoughts going on in my head, so I decided I needed to write them down to get closure and clarity. I pulled out my journal and began to write.
    Dear Diary,
    It’s been a week since I’ve seen Nicholas. Tomorrow, I’m going to say goodbye forever.
    And then I knew what I wanted to do. I pulled out another sheet of paper and began to write.
    It started out . . .
    Dear Nicholas,
    I’m writing to say goodbye . . .
    I just wrote what my heart needed to say in order to move on. As the ink spilled the words