Champagne Tales

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous posts, Chapters 1-5: I walked into the house wearing my black dress, and immediately was greeted by a sea of smiling faces. Everywhere I looked, it looked like fake smiles were plastered onto the faces of these strangers. I immediately regretted my decision coming here as I saw there was a dining room table where we would be seated this evening. I had envisioned the evening standing only – standing while drinking my cocktail and standing while I held onto appetizers passed around. I hadn't dared think of how I was going to endure an entire evening seated next to others. With that type of setup, it wasn't as easy for me to make a quick and early exit from the party. I was destined for failure. "You must be Elizabeth, I'm Sue Ellen and this is my husband John," the woman stretched out her hand with her fake smile plastered across her face. So she and her husband had known her name, contrary...

The following is a work of fiction, and continuation from the previous posts, Chapters 1-4:   I would be lying if I said I didn't go to the party thrown by my neighbors that Friday. However, if someone had asked me, I would have pretended not to be interested in attending. But my curiosity had peaked when I held that invitation in my hand at my mailbox, and had been sealed after the girl had introduced herself to me. I had starred at my closet for what felt like a couple hours as I fretted over what to wear. I hadn't been to one of these in years. I hadn't been into someone else's home in a few years. I hadn't talked socially with others in God knows how long. If I had had my entire wardrobe with me that were hanging on lonely racks back in Los Angeles. If I had had that entire closet, I would have spent half a day trying to decide what to wear. My entire closet was a beautiful story – it was filled with cocktail dresses that had danced with famous souls, su...

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous posts, Chapter 1-3: The next few days looked exactly like the past few months – sleeping in, runs and walks on the beach, gluing my eyes to a book, intricate dinner feasts made and prepped for one person, lots of wine, and vodka sodas. I had turned my life into somewhat of an auto pilot with these activities being my daily rituals. It was almost as if I was living a gray daze. I was in denial about my future, and even more petrified to look at my past. One evening after I had been on a walk for a couple hours, I stopped at the end of my driveway, and checked the mailbox. There had hardly been any worthwhile mail thus far my stay there. Most of it had been spam, anything from oil changes, grocery coupons, or advertisements intended for the owner of the house I was renting from. I continued to have my mail sent to my current address in Los Angeles, and had my assistant, Mary, who I wildly overpaid collect and o...

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous posts, Chapter 1-2: I thought it would take me much longer to figure out who my new neighbors were, due mostly to the fact that I had turned into an extreme introvert. I wasn't the kind of neighbor who would bring in your trash can for you if you were out of town. Or for that matter, I wasn't the kind of neighbor who was ever asked to do a simple task as that. I had kept to myself on the usually vacant street, and I had preferred it that way. I had woke that next morning, still with no idea what day of week it was, and heard laughter again. It was again like a bullet piercing my chest. Oh how I used to laugh. My twenties and thirties were filled with endless laughter, cocktails, and traveling. My forties had turned a different path. It looked something like a mixture of insecurity, seclusion, sadness, but still endless cocktails. I had lived here with a constant sense of not knowing what time it was. I li...

The following is a work of fiction, and a continuation from the previous post titled, Chapter 1:  The next few days looked almost exactly the same as the previous weeks. I woke up late in the morning, went for almost an hour walk on the beach, ate a late brunch, read in the late afternoon, and if it needed it, I did some house work. Dinners were the most intricate affair of my day, involving homemade creamy pastas, or angel hair lemon pasta with a garnish of capers. My love for Italian food stems from the time I lived there in my twenties, but more on that later. Cooking made me forget about everything else in my life. For that hour or two I spent in the kitchen inventing new recipes, chopping anything from peppers to fillets of fresh fish caught just that day, to eating the final dish, I escaped from the world. I was creating something – something every human craves to do in this world, whether it's painting, writing, cooking – we all crave and need to create. Cooking was what ...

The following is a work of fiction: Ever since I left Henry, I have felt like some part of me has been missing. When I'm laughing at a funny movie, I find myself questioning if what I'm watching is even funny. Or if I'm out to lunch with a friend, it's as if a part of me was only half heartedly hearing what they were saying, even though my undivided attention is on them. It was more than feeling like something was missing - something was missing. I wish I could tell you that my life is pieced together into a perfect web of circumstances and tales. I wish I could tell you that I'm a loving woman who didn't deserve to fall out of love with a man who so deeply cared about me. I wish I could tell you that I appreciated my beauty, that I cared about others more than myself, or that I am making a difference in the world. Better yet, I wish I knew the woman I was destined to be in this world. Instead, I sit here on a cool night, smoking what I promise to myself ...