The Boss's Daughter

"Robby," she said coolly, lighting the cigarette and holding it in an awkward, dangling way. "I have something to tell you."

"What's that, Babe?" I said getting up to sit nest to her, swinging my arm around her waist.

"We've gotta stop meeting like this," she sniffled as a tear wandered down her cheek. "It just can't go on."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Being with you is just too intense for me, Robby," she said, her shoulders starting to quiver. "I just can't stand it. You make me tremble and shake and I feel things that I never knew existed. I try things with you that I would never otherwise think of in a million years. I thought I had my life all figured out. I'd marry Greg, we'd have a couple of kids and live in this big house in the suburbs with a pool and a dog and the whole shot. Then you came along and I haven't been the same since. You've opened up a side of me that I didn't know existed and now I can't close it up. I can't see you anymore, Robby. I just can't see you anymore."

"Wait, what did I do Babe?"

"Nothing. It's not you. It's me."

"That bit always means that it is me."

"Maybe it is a little bit of you. But when I'm around you, I can't control myself. There isn't anything that I wouldn't do with you, or for you. Like that business with Reggie. For Christ sakes, I was having sex with another woman! My best friend! We never did anything like that before, and now she won't talk to me. And the other night, I can't believe I was begging you to fuck me. I was begging for you. God, I'm supposed to be my daddy's good little girl and I'm such a slut begging for the most disgusting things!"

She brought a hand up to her face and began to sob, her whole body shaking uncontrollably. I took the cigarette from her hand and tossed it into the ashtray.

"Oh, God, Lizzie! I had no idea that you felt this way. I thought it was you spurring me on to all of this. I thought I was the one just going along for the ride."

"I need to get away, Robby. Far, far away from all of this."

She grabbed up her raincoat and quickly slipped it on and darted out the door into the storm. I pulled on my long overcoat to cover my naked body and caught her on the porch, grabbing her arm and pulling her to me.

"Don't go!" I shouted as the snow settled onto her hair and shoulders. "We can work this out. Goddammit, Lizzie! I'm in love with you!"

We embraced, her body trembling, her tear-stained face pressed against my shoulder, washed clean by the snow melting on her cheeks.

"I love you too, Robby. I love you so much!"

She leaned up and kissed me. I held onto her so tightly that I could feel her heart beating like a hammer; our steaming breath commingled in the falling snow.

"That's why I have to go away, Robby. Far, far away."

She pushed away from me and pulled her raincoat tightly around her body as she plunged off the porch and ran to her car. From what I could tell, she didn't even look back and wave. She just peeled out from the driveway and sped off through the snow and out of my life.

**********

And that was the last time I saw Lizzie. All they said at work was that she was moving away to attend school out of state. Her old man never looked at me twice afterwards but I didn't really give a shit. The twenty years since that snowy spring night when she vanished from my life have flown past. I survived and moved on to other things.

I later quit the band and eventually ended up with a good paying day job. I got married and had a couple of beautiful children. Just recently we had moved into a new house in a great neighborhood. It's a bit upscale maybe, but a neat, older town nonetheless with great old Victorian houses and a cute little grocery store downtown. And so there I was wheeling my cart through, picking up some odds and ends to fill up an empty cupboard, when I turn a corner and run into a cart being pushed by a woman with short blonde hair. I whispered a quick apology but took a second look and knew right on the spot who it was. The heavy-lidded clear blue eyes, the narrow shoulders, and the pert little breasts. I also couldn't help but notice the huge rock on her left hand.

"Hello, Liz," I said timidly.

She paused for a moment unable to place me.

"I'm sorry," she said with a polite little smile and a vacant look in her eye. "Do I know you?"

"A long time ago. Remember, Robby Scott!" I said trying to put on my most charming smile.

Then I realized that I no longer had the sun streaked long hair halfway down my back, nor the Fu Manchu mustache. For a moment she looked at me with a blank, unrecognizing stare. Then her mouth opened as if she was about to say something, but then she caught herself. She raised her hand up to her mouth and for a second I thought she was going to cry.

"Oh, my God! It's you!" she cried out loud. "My God, Robby! It's you!"

Her shoulders were shaking. She bit her lip.

"You look terrific, Lizzie. How have you been?"

She took a couple of moments to recover her composure. The other customers passing by must have wondered what the hell was going on. I moved my cart closer to hers so that we could talk. Even up close she still looked beautiful. The years had been easy on her. She would have to be forty now, maybe forty-two and looked ten years younger, maybe a bit broader in the rear, but with the same wonderful breasts, still unsupported just as she preferred back then, her taut nipples pressing out against the light blue T-shirt. In those brief moments the torrents of emotion came flooding back inside me, and I was a love struck twenty-something all over again.

"I've been fine, Robby," she said finally, her voice still husky but with a dense maturity that only age can bring. "Well, okay, actually. And you?"

"I'm doing all right. We just moved onto Ring Street this past weekend and I was just taking my first tour of the neighborhood grocery."

"I can't believe it's you," she remarked, her hand passing through her short blonde hair as she tilted her head up to look at me. "After all these years."

"It has been a while, hasn't it?"

We chatted for several more minutes comparing notes on the number and ages and schooling level of our children. She seemed impressed when I told her about my job; she was a stay at home mom. Neither of us said a word about our spouses, and for a moment, then two, we stood close together in silence, our eyes locked on one another. I could see the questions welling up in her eyes, questions that she didn't want to ask; I could see the apprehension too, anticipating the answers that she didn't want to hear. And I must have looked much the same, wondering what had happened, what had gone so wrong, how had she gotten on with her life, and what miracle had brought us together now, at this point in our lives. I could feel the old connection, dormant yet undying and knew--I just knew--that I would see her again.

"So, maybe I'll see you around?" I ventured.

A momentary look of panic crossed her face only to be quickly replaced by a smile; not unlike those I remembered seeing years before.

"Yeah, perhaps so," she said, breaking into her cool, elegant smile. "That would nice, Robby!"

And I know the next time it definitely will be!