Original Story - Eternity's Ending: Our Version of Events (a literary covers novella) by Rochelle Germany (Chapters 1 & 2)

The story of a reincarnated man's search for forgiveness from the love he left behind.

Chapter 1 - Xander

“Did you feel that?” my head whispered to my heart.

A shared experience would make the occurrence more real.

“I did,” replied my head with a serenity that comes only from finding the place where you belong.

Moments earlier I shot into his arms; closing the weeklong gap between our last goodbye and current hello. I refused to let go of him. I clung to the possibility of enduring love as tightly as I clung to his neck.

I eavesdropped on boastful arms swapping tales of the pleasure derived from holding him. The elation in their tone fought to compensate for the limits word imposed on the expression of their feelings. I wanted everything love could possibly offer and so much more. But I suppressed my greed; settling instead for his touch.

No fault was found in our embrace, despite us both being men. I inhabited the moment, banning all thoughts of past mistakes and future plans from encroaching on our fleeting coexistence. He felt right and at this time and in this place, he was mine.

I prayed he felt the same. I prayed he was consumed solely by me. All the while, I silently sought absolution for the possibility of my hunger conflicting with his wishes. The security of his hold convinced me no such forgiveness was required. I was grateful. Through blind luck or sheer genius, I had asked for and received the one whom I would never regret. As I inhaled him, I vowed to capitalize on the chance I had been given.

I grope the buttons of my alarm clock in search of a way to quiet the morning chatter. Three hours of sleep no longer does it for me. I used to be able to party until sunrise, power nap and attend my 7 AM lab without looking like shit. Now that the spring chicken phase of my life has ended, three hours of sleep only pisses me off. It’s someone’s fault, probably mine but I’m not accepting the blame. That leaves one person to take the fall.

I roll my eyes at the redundancy of my nights since meeting Vincent. It’s always the same damn dream. It always leaves me with the same bittersweet feeling of needing something I do not want. And it always, always, always makes me feel like I’m supposed to experience the reality of the dream with Vincent.

He has been trying to understand why I just won’t stay the night at his place for some time now. I show up around 10 PM. I won’t sleep while I am there and I never stay past 1 AM without very good reason (and by good reason I mean marathon sex). He thinks I’m just afraid of letting people in. I can sense it in the patience he shows. He’s wrong. I don’t have daddy issues or abandonment issues. I just don’t like sleepovers or intimacy at all really. I like my sleep in my own bed and unless we are in the throws of it, two is a crowd.

But this dream I’ve been having doesn’t help Vincent’s cause at all. It’s just providing me with one more reason not to stay over. I don’t want him to find out about it. He’s too fucking perceptive not to piece something together, given the chance. And, I refuse to give him the chance to start thinking there’s some truth in the cheesy pickup line he swears won him my “affection”; his word, not mine.

“You loved me in a past life,” he said with absolute conviction.

He was fucking beautiful in a handcrafted to perfection, fit to be admired, let me have your baby because our children would be gods, kind of way. I don’t even want kids but I felt like denying the world the blessing of our offspring would be a sin. My mocha features matched with his golden sand complexion. Not to mention all of the things I would get to do to him during the baby making process. If I did love, he would surely be the recipient of it. I planned to tell him as much. I was going to tell him to lose the lame ass pick up life first. I cased his entire body from the ground up searching for the very best points of entry, as he stood there awaiting my response. Thank God for grown ass men who wear fitted clothes so I don’t have to work so hard to gauge what is underneath them. I took a few seconds to admire the way his shirt hung perfectly on what I imagined was an equally perfect chest before I looked into his eyes.

“Not if that’s the line you used,” I said, forcing myself to stay cool through my internal freak-out.

My tone was slathered in dismissal and I walked away without so much as excusing myself. I downplayed the familiarity of the faded blue eyes that seemed to know me by my soul. I labeled myself as crazy and labeled him as an asshole.

I called my best friend, Cassie, a few hours later because the encounter was still all I could think about. She would confirm the entire thing as pure foolishness. She would even join me in a laugh at his expense.

It wasn’t until I awoke longing for a feeling of completion I knew only he would give me that I realized the joke was on me.

He had, in one line, managed to weave himself into my subconscious and that wasn’t going to fly.

Chapter 2 - Vincent

“You don’t have to leave. You know that, right?” Xander reaches for her shirt. I snatch it from the bed before she can gain possession of it. “I mean, I don’t mind that you snore.”

“I don’t snore,” she extends her hand, sighing impatiently when I don’t grant her the instant gratification she is accustomed to.

“How would you know, you only sleep alone?”

“I know,” her tone urges me to proceed with caution but I refuse to heed its warning. She shoves her open palm in the direction of the shirt I hold hostage.

“You can’t possibly know. But I’m more than willing to help you find out.”

When she finally drops her arm and turns to face me, I know without question, I have awakened a sleeping dragon. I speak before she has the chance to unleash the fire sitting on her tongue.

“We’ll play my favorite game,” I pause to gauge her annoyance level. She doesn’t strike during the silence so I continue. “It’s called, ‘Are you a snorer?’”

I whistle and cheer as loud as a one-man studio audience can.

“Really?” she says flatly.

“You know it?” I try to combat the apathy of her tone with the excitement in mine.

“No, I don’t know it, Vincent,” she spits my name at me.

She is about to raise the stakes to a level where I can’t compete. I throw in my hand but she continues to play her cards.

“Why are you so adamant about me staying over? I mean, isn’t this every guy’s dream; stringless sex? Are you going to insist we cuddle too?” disgust stains her words so she pauses and cleans them up.

“Look, I’m diggin’ what we got goin’ here. Don’t fuck it up by being gay.”

She leans over to my side of the bed and hesitantly reaches for her shirt. Her actions assure me she is not looking for a fight but her hurtful words have rung the bell. I’m not sure I can return to my corner as easily as she returns to hers. I open my mouth to reciprocate the deep pain she has unknowingly caused me. My words are absorbed by her lips without ever seeing the light of day.

“I’m not gay,” I squeeze the words out between kisses hoping to bandage the wound she reopened.

“Maybe a little,” she whispers. I can taste her smile. “But it’s cool.”

She strokes out the argument I am preparing before her mouth becomes too busy to counter.

I let her get dressed without resistance this round, although a part of me is tempted to provoke her into more “shut me up” sex. But in our arrangement, fighting is an unnecessary and exhausting means to an end.

“Leave my money on the nightstand,” I say only half joking.

She smiles, digs $20 out of her pocket and places it next to my wallet.

“Go buy yourself a teddy bear. I hear they love to cuddle. I’ll even let you name it after me if it will make you feel better,” she turns, leaving in typical Xander fashion, without a goodbye.

I roll onto my back and stare at the blades chasing each other around the ceiling fan.

“What fools we are,” I say to them, “doggedly pursuing the unattainable.”

Memories eagerly fill the void she leaves, forcing me to relive my past.

I filled my mouth with enough whiskey to turn my cheeks into liquid packed balloons. I let it sit for a moment before allowing it to escape down my throat. I wiped the few drops that trickled down my chin with the back of my hand and repeated the process. It would not be long before I reached the unconsciousness I so desperately needed. Unconsciousness was the only place where the pain of my heartache couldn’t reach me; the only place where I didn’t love him.

“I don’t love him. I can’t love him,” I argued, raging violently against the final truthful moments before the blackout.

“You’ll love him until you die,” taunted reality.

“I’ll love him until I die,” I repeated.

Finally, I understood. Unconsciousness only provided a temporary reprieve from the nightmare my life had become. Despite my most valiant efforts, I never could get drunk enough to get him off my mind; until that night.

Justifications left my thought process completely congested, forcing me to utilize the only explanation readily available to me. I scribble my thoughts on the back of the scrap piece of paper found tucked away in the drawer holding my handgun. I kissed the bullet that would pry my heart from his hands and loaded it into the clip. I put the gun to my head and took a deep breath. I squeezed the trigger but found myself unable to press hard enough to discharge the weapon. I laid the gun on the nightstand and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. I spent my final moments alternating swigs and suicide attempts until both the bottle and the clip were empty.

Hell is not fire and brimstone. Hell is the vastness of eternity choked with unfulfilled wishes to make amends for the lives you’ve destroyed. I spent a lifetime in hell trying to bargain away two wishes for the chance to be granted the single most important one; to be paired with the soul I abandoned. Time proved no match for the wounds I created.

Xander’s possession of Avery’s soul created an inherent distrust I constantly worked to overcome. On days like this when Xander is exactly who she is and not the person I used to know, I wonder if I would love Xander had I not loved Avery first. The answer to that question is inconsequential. Her soul was hardened by the damage I’d done. Regardless of how trying my attempts to love her became, I owed her the fight.

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So...WTF is a literary cover??

I am not musically inclined. I can't sing. I don't play any instruments. I just love songs. Certain songs stir something in me, something that requires expression. I can't sing but I can write. My pen does what my voice cannot, cover a song and do it justice - hence, Literary Covers.

Eternity's Ending is a literary covers novella inspired by music from artists such as Algebra Blessett, Brad Paisley, Taylor Swift, The Civil Wars, Sia, Beyoncé and more...

Grab your copy - http://bit.ly/EEB1IG