Chapter 1

Part 1

The girl stood before the mirror. It was glass, silver backed. It did not lie. Or at least she had never considered it to, before. Frowning, she glanced for a second and then away.

'That man should be shot, ' Amy thought. 'What does he know?'

Behind those outward thoughts, were the ones that had brought them to the surface. Thoughts best left hidden, left untouched. Thoughts that deep could only hurt.

It was the manner in which he spoke, as though he knew.

"Ha," Amy almost blurted out while thinking.

The initial reason she'd been attracted to him, made the notion he knew anything about what she felt...

Her mind came up with many fanciful ideas. The most outrageous was that her mother had put him up to this. Her mother didn't know him, or that he existed in her life at all. Still, it made almost more sense than this.

Raising her hands to her face, she ran her fingers through her hair.

It had been almost a year ago when they met. A chance meeting. He had been playful, flirtatious, yet reserved. He had made her feel special. She liked it, so she had made sure to coordinate more 'chance' meetings.

The phone rang in her room, startling her. Both because it jerked her out of her daydream, and because of the proximity of the noise. She was standing now by the phone, several steps away from the mirror. She didn't remember walking away from it.

"What?" she answered.

"Amy? What's got you all strung up?"

Shaking her head, as if that would shake the ideas out of it, she responded, "Nothin'. What's up?"

The conversation was non-existent. Her friend could tell Amy wasn't 'there, ' and that this conversation was going nowhere, so she cut it short.

Amy didn't feel any better. 'What the hell did she mean, 'deal with it?' Deal with it? Like she has a clue.'

Purposefully, Amy moved in front of the mirror and looked.

She smiled, but even she could tell it was forced.

Then she made faces, venting some of her frustration. That ended up making her laugh. She caught that twinkle in her eyes, the smile on her face, the skin pulling up and accenting her cheekbones.

Things he had told her were there.

Turning, she walked away, this time with intent. Away from that mirror.

What had pissed her off more than him telling her she was more beautiful than she realized was him going into nauseous detail of her face, and then telling her why she wouldn't want to believe it. She had never considered him an arrogant bastard, but the thought was something she was now mulling over in her mind.

'I am not going to want to believe it, because with that comes responsibility that I don't want.' She replayed in her mind. 'Responsibility!'

She sat down hard in her chair; so hard that the chair went off balance and she ended up on the floor.

Her head shook with rage. She wished these crazy thoughts would just go away.

Standing, she grabbed the phone and dialed his cell phone.

Closing her eyes when she got his message, she wasn't sure she was relieved or not, that she didn't have to speak to him in person.

"What right do you have to do this to me?"

She slammed the phone down. It would have been much more satisfying to do that to his ear, rather than to the answering machine.

"You radiate a beauty you have no idea you possess. Your outward looks can grab even the most disinterested, but what keeps someone leaning towards you is what emanates from you. It is an aura, if you will. A force that you don't even know you have."

She had been so dumbstruck at what he'd said, that she could now repeat it verbatim.

'Beauty, indeed... '

The phone rang again. She wished she had caller ID, or that her cell worked. She picked it up, this time answering it a bit more politely.

"Amy."

"Mad at me?"

"Fuck you."

"I guess that means 'yes.' Amy when you are ready to listen to me, I'll tell you why I know what I do. Right now, you have to look at yourself and see that there may be some truth in what I'm saying."

"Are you done?"

"No. I have one thing more to say."

"What?"

"I love you enough to have you this mad at me."

"Shit."

"Goodbye, Amy. Give me a call when you want."

Part 2

Kenneth Stapleton's hands shook as he replaced the receiver. It had taken every ounce of power he had inside himself to remain calm and even sounding on the phone. It wasn't the way he felt, inside.

What had possessed him, in the first place, was something he had mulled over and over.

It was not like him to do something like this; to upset someone else's world and at the same time make himself vulnerable. He had built a nice wall around himself. It felt good and people responded well to it.

Now he found that he had opened a door. A door he'd had little idea was there in his wall. Although the door was cracked open for just one, he could tell that if the door was pulled open all the way... He didn't like the thought of having the wall crumbing down. It would make him open in a way he had never liked.

Without the wall, life had hurt.

It was after half a bottle of Zin, and before dinner, that his brain was able to get past the possible hurt and deal with the realities of 'why.' Deep down, he knew 'why.' It wasn't so much love, although there might be some of that there, it was compassion. Amy and he were almost identical in so many ways, that it was eerie.