The Gravity of Love Read online

  The Gravity of Love

  by

  Anne Thomas

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2 Sometimes the Sun goes 'Round the Moon

  Chapter 3 I see the Passion in your eyes

  Chapter 4 Sometimes it's all a Big Surprise

  Chapter 5 Sometimes All I Did was wish you'd tell me this was Love

  Chapter 6 It's not the way I hoped or how I planned it

  Chapter 7 But Somehow, it's enough...

  Chapter 8 How could you Give your love to Someone Else?

  Chapter 9 And Share Your Dreams with Me

  Chapter 10 Sometimes the Very thing you're looking For...

  Chapter 11 Is the One thing You Can't see

  Chapter 12 And now we're Standing Face to Face

  Chapter 13 Isn't this World a Crazy Place?

  Chapter 14 Just When I Thought Our Chance had Passed

  Chapter 15 You go and Save the Best for Last

  Epilogue:

  Introduction:

  Molly sighed, running her hand through her curly hair. "You don't understand, Marty."

  "You're right, I don't. You got the love of your life right in front of you and you refuse to admit it to yourself or him, or anyone!" Her best friend said from her spot on the sofa. Shrugging, Molly began to pace across the floor. "Red is half of me; half of my life, half of my soul. He's the only guy I can stand talking to for hours on end and who I eat with for almost my every meal. The only one I share my deepest thoughts with since I first had deep thoughts. He's inspiration and my support in everything I do. He understands me and expands upon all my wildest dreams and constantly pushes me to do more and better. He's who I run to when I'm hurt or something goes wrong. Why would I try and mess with what's already so perfect? Why jinx my great luck. Why risk it all to add lover to that list?"

  Marty shook her head in disbelief. "No Molls, no! What you just said is the perfect reason why you should make him your lover and probably even more!"

  A tall frame filled the doorway then, showing Harrison's arrival. He cocked an eyebrow, backing away slowly.

  "Why are the two of you staring at me like that?"

  _______________________________________________________________________

  Chapter 1

  "Where the hell are your pants?" Molly exclaimed through the door that was cracked open only an inch or two, the chain lock still attached. The man outside her apartment looked like he was suffering. It was true, he wore no pants. Instead, he was dressed in a white muscle shirt and a hot pink towel.

  "She won't let me have them back. Please Molls, you got to help me."

  Molly suddenly understood what was going to happen next, so she slammed the door before it could happen. It was the same story. Harrison Redford always came to her when he needed her help in getting his latest girlfriend back. He would beg her to befriend this latest girlfriend and find out what had gone wrong and how to fix it. She'd then relay this information to Harrison, along with advice on how to go about getting this unlucky girl back. But she was sick of it now. She already had so many so-called friends, that it nearly filled all of the Nevada state and the California Coast. All these also doubled as Harrison's exgirlfriends. No more. Never again. Not after helping him to shatter the last girl's heart and many more before her.

  Leaving the door, she walked over to the black leather sofa and sat down, picking up a menu. "Chinese is good."

  "Well yeah, but Chinese has it's down sides too." Marty said, looking through the different home delivery food menus. "I mean...there's so many boxes and you never eat them all. You either are faced with leftovers to stick in your already overfilled refrigerator or you have to throw it out and it's a total sin to throw out something so amazing as Chinese food. By the way, what's with Harrison?"

  Ignoring the last comment, Molly picked up an Italian menu from the coffee table. "How about here then? You like Italian."

  "Lots of carbs and fats..." Marty said, biting her lip in temptation.

  Molly rolled her eyes. "Oh please forget about all that crap. Loosen up a bit."

  "...I will, if you tell me why Harrison keeps knocking at your door."

  She groaned because they could both hear that he was still there, knocking and yelling through the wood. "Molly! Come on, Molls! Please help just one last time! Please? At least let me in for a pair of pants! Or...or a manlier colored towel? Please?"

  His voice sounded muffled through the door and not very loud, so Molly kept going. "Maybe I'll get eggplant parm. It's horrible anywhere else, but the Italian restaurants get it perfect...oh, and spaghetti and meatballs...though I'd want to watch Lady and the Tramp if eating spaghetti and meatballs from a real Italian restaurant..."

  "Bread sticks...I want cheesy bread sticks." Marty said, licking her lips. "If I'm going to forget all this 'crap' about carbs and all, I'm going all out. And a...medium pizza for us. Unless you're going to invite Harrison in?"

  Molly shook her head. "No, medium will work. Why don't you go order in the back room so the restaurant don't think their delivery guy will be threatened by the madman outside the door?"

  Marty took the cell phone from her pocket. "Okay, I will. But when I get back, I want to know how you got such a strong stubborn man like Harrison Redford to be groveling at your door and why you're not answering it."

  "Molly! Please? You have those forest green towels...that'll work just fine. And I need a phone to call the taxi you can just slide it through the mail slot if you want..."

  She groaned, grabbing a throw pillow and making its name literal.

  "Hey, was that directed to me?" Harrison yelled.

  Marty walked in a few minutes later and checked her watch. "Food should be here by seven. Want to go through your movie collection a while?"

  "In a moment." Molly said, cleaning out her refrigerator to ready for more food.

  "Is Harrison still out there?"

  She shrugged. "I think so. At least from in here you can barely hear his anger."

  Marty watched a smirk appear on her friend's face. "So...why is he here?"

  "He wants pants, I think."

  "Pants? He's standing outside your door for pants?" Marty said, looking as if her friend had gone insane.

  "Well, that's the only part I'm willing to acknowledge."

  "And the other part that you're not?"

  Molly sighed, leaning against the fridge and opening a can of soda. "He wants my help with another one of his girlfriends. He knows I won't do it, but he thinks if he begs long enough, I will because I caved before. He thinks he can walk all over me. I'm showing him he can't."

  "So you're not even going to give him pants?"

  Molly laughed with a sigh. "He expects me to do too much for him. Let him suffer a bit and learn how to take care of himself."

  "Huh...well, he's your friend. I guess he's not going anywhere anyway. I mean, you two have been in so many fights through the long years..."

  "Twenty four years," she noted. "Yeah...we got into some horrible disputes through them."

  Marty walked out of the kitchen and looked towards the door, where Harrison was still groaning in fizzing anger. "I'm sure there will be many more through the rest of the years."

  Molly shook her head. "Just ignore the doggy. He'll get hungry eventually and find his own way back home."

  "Yeah...unless he snatches our food before we get it in here." Marty said in worry.

  Molly and Marty sat on the black sofa with their fee
t crossed on the coffee table, watching Lady and the Tramp and eating all the food they ordered, save the cheesy bread sticks that Marty had so craved. Those had been snatched up by Harrison and his bright pink towel before the bags made it in to the apartment.

  "Just wondering..." Marty started as a song she thought boring on the movie came on.

  "How do you get such an unbreakable man to plead for your help? I mean, just to know for myself when I find a guy like that. How do you get them to beg?"

  Molly laughed. "You don't! Red is better when he's being closed and stubborn than when he's outside your door pantless."

  Marty got a devilish look in her mismatched color eyes that made Molly put up her hand to stop her. "None of that, thank you."

  She giggled, but relented. "If you say so."

  Outside the door, Harrison shoved in the last part of his last bread stick. "You know, if you don't help, Amber will leave me. And then the whole breakup ordeal will have to start all over again...isn't it easier to just help me get her back?"

  "No!" Molly growled from her spot in the room, then made the movie louder.

  The alarm clock blared some kind of eighties music on the radio, the time flashing warningly. Molly groaned, burying her face in her

  pillow, wishing for anything but to wake up now.

  Yet as she snuck a peak and the angry numbers, she moaned and slowly got up, dragging her weary body in to the shower. After she was awake enough, she shut the water off, toweled off and quickly got dressed. Looking in the mirror, she turned on her hair dryer to full blast, drying her soft auburn curls that cascaded down to the middle of her back. Not having time to brush it out, she ran her hands through it to fluff it enough to look suitable, then rubbed at her bloodshot dark brown eyes.

  "Molly! Hurry up, we'll be late! Harrison already left for work!" She heard Marty yell in.

  Slipping on a pair of brown suede high heels that matched her mid calf length skirt, she grabbed her coat and messenger bag and ran out the door to car pool with Marty.

  _______________________________________________________________________

  Molly grabbed her bag and walked down the school hallway and swung in to the classroom that was Marty's. "You ready?" She asked when she saw all the kids gone.

  "Yup, just a minute and then we can go to lunch."

  "Is Harry coming?"

  Marty looked up at her in surprise. "What, didn't you hear the girl talk today? Harrison is already out to lunch with a new girlfriend."

  Molly's eyes widened. "What? No, I didn't hear that! But...but it's been less than a week since he was whining outside my door about Amber he already has a new girl?"

  She shrugged. "You know Harrison. He don't fool around when he don't have a girl in his life. He goes from one to the next as fast as possible. And look at the guy he sure has the goods to pull it off."

  Molly groaned, kicking the floor and leaving behind a black mark from the sole of her shoe. "I can't believe him. You see? This is why I don't help him anymore he don't really care about these girls. He don't love them. He just wants his fun. And when it's done being fun...he's done with them and it's on to a new girl. I can't stand the way he treats women!"

  Marty shrugged. "You know him better than anyone, so I know you don't need me to go in to a false comforting talk about how it won't last and that he really does care for these girls and all that such."

  Molly swallowed her anger and started to walk out of the classroom and towards their car.

  _______________________________________________________________________

  The next day, as Molly busily set out to grad the tests that were just taken, Harrison came walking in.

  "What's Principal Redford doing here?" She heard one of the five students that had stayed behind to wait for their test results, whisper.

  "I don't know...anyone here in trouble?" Another one replied.

  Molly nodded. She was.

  "This isn't a good time, Principal Redford. See, I have to finish grading these tests for the students"

  "It can wait a minute." He said instead, taking the red pen from her hand and gathering the testing folder in his arms so she wouldn't be tempted.

  "I think we need to talk about that event a few days ago Radcliffe, now that there's not a locked door between us."

  Molly blushed, vividly remembering this man, now in a respectable suit looking very suave, standing in hardly anything other than a hot pink towel. If any of the students ever found out, he'd have a hard time getting their respect again. Or stop their bouts of laughter.

  "Sure. What do you need? To discuss your wardrobe tastes or your begging techniques?"

  He scowled at her. "Not funny. I'm serious."

  She crossed her arms. "After seeing you in that towel outside my door for hours...eh, so am I." She whispered, but his eyes flamed in anger, and she knew it was time to stop the jokes. "Alright, fine. What do you really want to talk about? Because I meant what I said the other night. I didn't change my mind. I won't do it."

  Harrison put the test folder down on a filing cabinet and took her hands in his. "Please? Molls, you know me. I wouldn't ask you to do something I thought was going to hurt you in any way. I just thought...I needed help!"

  "Help? You're dating a new girl already, Red!"

  "Because Amber dumped me."

  "Not even week ago! Four days!"

  A smirk crossed his face. "You know I wouldn't have to bother with any of these silly women if only you'd just finally say yes."

  It was a joke that they made when they were having relationship problems, never taken seriously. She laughed and slapped his arm.

  "Out of here I got work to do! Now scoot!, Red!"

  He cupped her cheek and smiled, then walked out.

  Indeed, what he had told her was an old joke. But as she looked around her, she saw that her students, whispering and looking vastly interested, hadn't caught on to that part.

  _______________________________________________________________________

  Eighties music blasted from the radio, the time flashing angrily once again. Morning had come and Marty was already yelling from the door so they could take off to work. And once again, she had to rush around to get ready and run. Once sitting in the passenger seat, Marty handed her a breakfast bar. "Because I know you couldn't have had time to eat."

  Molly flashed her a grateful smile. "We're going to have to go shopping after school I'm near out of food and I'm craving all kinds of ice cream right now..."

  Marty laughed. "Then come over to my apartment you know I'm always stocked with your food cravings. And the best part? I'm right down the hall!"

  "Oh yes, that indeed helps."

  "Ya know...I know for a fact that Harrison has plenty of your food craving goodies and he's right above you..."

  Molly rolled her eyes. "Red and I are going through a bit of a...hard time. Today we made it all better on the surface, but we both know nothin has been solved. And until it is solved, that's going to be an uncomfortable barrier between us."

  "And meanwhile, you're both going to ignore it and he'll act completely casual and you'll act like you have no idea what could be wrong between you until you had enough and you explode on him. Then it'll be a whole fit, you two will swear never to talk again and one of you will threaten to move out. Every time...you two are getting to be utterly predictable." Marty rattled off.

  Molly rolled her eyes. "Just get us to the school and I'll worry what to do with Harry."

  _______________________________________________________________________

  But when the two teachers reached the school, they were in for a big surprise. As in, every student surrounding them were smiling, giggling and whispering. So much so, in fact, that when she called her class to order, they simply didn't hear her.

  "Alright!" She shouted over the multiple conversations. "I want to know what's so fascinating for all of you that you can't concentrate on what I'm saying!"

  A boy in the
first row that she knew as Tommy Benskin smirked. "Maybe because we're too busy concentrating on something Principal Redford said yesterday."

  This took her by surprise. "Well...what did Principal Redford say?"

  A girl stood up, a slow, mischievous grin appearing on her gloss smeared lips. "Well yesterday, the two of you were conversing in here...and we heard him say...well he said that he wants you to say yes. So fill the blanks in and tell us how did he propose? And when?"

  Molly's mouth fell slightly ajar. They had to be kidding! Surely they wouldn't have spread such an innocent joke, that wasn't meant to be overheard by other ears, all around the school! Instead of staying and fumbling through something coherent and allow them to witness her cheeks growing more and more scarlet, she swung open the door to the adjoining classroom next door, where the student were all busy with a test already. "Marty, can you watch my students for me quick? I have some...immediate business to take care of with Harrison Redford."

  A chorus of "ooohs" came from behind her and Marty rushed over to the door.

  "Students, everyone keep focused on your test. You have fifteen minutes left."

  "But...but is Miss Radcliffe going to go accept Principal Redford's proposal?" One of her students asked eagerly.

  Marty's eyes nearly popped out of her head as she whipped around to look at Molly. "Do these kids know something I don't?"

  Her fellow coworker rolled her eyes and sighed. "Of course not! Just...just watch these guys. Class, start reading chapter three of Persuasion by Jane Austen. Keep going until I return."

  And with that, Molly started to run down the hallway until she reached the office. Swinging in, she was quickly stopped by the secretary, Mrs. Swiesser. "Mr. Redford is currently busy in his office right now. He won't see anyone."

  "Oh, he'll see me." Molly said with determination, then marched in to the back office that was her friend's.

  "Have you heard yet or am I the last to know?" She asked him.

  Harrison looked up from his papers and took off the glasses he was always embarrassed to be seen in, though Molly always thought they suited his office look. "That would depend...what are you talking about?"