Member-only story
Black Pearl Earring
A Short Story
We stood in the kitchen, tea cups in hand, leaning against opposite counters.
Shoes discarded, tie loosened, top buttons undone. I’d let my hair out of the sleek ponytail that had beautifully highlighted the earrings he’d given me. We stood silently. The raucous noise of the night’s events still ringing inside our brains. The dreamy, loose hold of a few glasses of wine and a puff off a shared cigarette.
I studied him as I sipped from my mug. A colleague, a coworker; this friend who suddenly seemed too familiar. Spoken for and loved somewhere else…a far away somewhere.
He lifted the cup to his lips and I watched how the delicate skin at the base of his ear, right where his cheek met his left lobe, wrinkled slightly as he opened his mouth. A hitch in my breathe.
We had discovered just this night, as we mingled separately and then inexplicably together, that we shared a birthday. A few years apart but the very same day. Almost the same hour. We had laughed at the coincidence and then fell silent. Let something shimmer through the air between us.
He had a way of listening to people that made you want to talk to him. I’d realized it from our first day on set. He was a empath, a keeper of the kind of energy that made people feel ok. He had a quick wit and a seriousness for…
