2 Excerpts from My Blood Runs Blue

We turned to look at one another meaning to only say a polite goodbye.  We were eye to eye, almost exactly the same height, so close I could smell her without trying.  The current was soaring through me and she parted her lips, staring into my eyes.

“Jewels,” she said so quietly I could barely hear her over the noise of the bar.  She looked at my lips and I wanted to move closer to her and touch mine to hers.  She looked back up into my eyes then and said, “The two stones that are within my soul, sapphires for the dark of the sky and aquamarines for my dreams of the beautiful blue oceans in the heat of the summer.”

I started into her eyes; they were a liquid blue, bright and warm.  I couldn’t keep myself from saying, “Calista… you don’t know how much I want to take you in my arms right now and run away with you.” 

Her eyes widened then, and a smile crept along her face. “Then let’s run,” she said…

Mr. Taylor’s nostrils flared and his mouth slacked open slightly as he looked into my eyes.  “Dead, she’s dead?”

I stared at him, damn, did I forget to wipe the sign off my face that says, ‘hey man, sorry, but your daughter’s dead.’  How’d he know that?  Had someone from the scene called him already?

I turned back to Mrs. Taylor and found her staring at her husband eyes wide, mouth open as if she would speak. 

Wait, this was not going how it should.  I cleared my head and looked back at them, Mr. Taylor had moved over to stand beside his wife and they were both looking at me now, waiting. 

“Mr. & Mrs. Taylor, I am very sorry to say that your daughter Dawn is dead.” I HATED saying that sentence, but it was a sentence that was drilled into you from the moment you entered the academy.  You do not say, I’m sorry your daughter was in an accident, or your daughter did not make it.  Not in the first sentence. You can elaborate later, but that first sentence, has to be the one that they remember for the rest of their life.  The one that tells them, this is not a sick joke, and they are not just going to wake up tomorrow and find her asleep in her bed.  That sentence had to say it was real and it was final.  

They both stared back me. I saw Mrs. Taylor’s lips move, and I could have sworn I heard her say, “he found us”, but I thought it was more in my imagination until I looked into Mr. Taylor’s steel grey eyes and saw them widen and look at me quickly to see if I had heard what she said.  I managed to keep my face perfectly clear and thought I would mull over that statement later.