Candy and Gentlemen

Coming Clean

When Candy gets the call from James, she could not hold back her bewilderment. It stuns her like a warrior struck down by a belligerent bullet.

"Where exactly are you, James? I'll excuse myself right now to see you," she says with utmost concern for her childhood friend.

James and Candy were called lovers by friends and folks back in their high school days. They attend the same high school back then. Roosemore College wasn't the first place they met each other. They actually met first when Candy was having a party for her fifth birthday. James came along with a family friend of Candy. There and then they became close friends.

Then they lost contact for two years and later met again at Roosemore College Texas.

They watch out for each other throughout their high school days. James was a year her senior then. He wades off bullies for her and fights for her.

They identify as siblings in school back then, even when they never look alike a bit, but many of their school mates call them lovers.

Candy loves the company of James so much that she refrains from having a boyfriend during their school days. James in the other hand has one, but she left him when he will not stop talking about Candy into her ears.

"You're all about this girl Candy!" Joanne had screamed. "You wanna lick her arse all day long? Go ahead, do it and leave me alone, you arsehole!"

Joanne walks away never to return to James back then.

Candy's reaction to Joanne's departure is a scene to watch. Seems like a Hollywood blockbuster movie. She floats like a soap bubble in slow-mo.

"So Joanne left you, Ah, Ah, Ah!" Candy laughs hysterically.

When Candy gets to the health centre where James has gone to get himself treated from the wounds he sustains during the fight with her moronic lover, she loses her voice. Her mouth goes wide open but her vocal cord ceases. She could not pronounce a word freely.

"Y-you m-mean...Ma-son d-d-did this t-to you?" she stutters in disbelief.

James nods in approval.

"He stalks me to my workplace and let hell loose on me."

"I can't still believe this," she muses under her breath.

Candy will not take it from anyone. She boils in rage. Thousands of toxic thoughts rush through her brain. She feels like stabbing Mason to death at once. As if James knows what she is ruminating about, he says "Please don't do anything nasty. Go to him. He loves you, that's why he's fighting for his love."

Candy could not believe what she just heard. She wonders if James hasn't gone nut. Perhaps every component of her friends brain has been unscrewed by the punches to the head he receives from Mason. Maybe he is really punchdrunk in the literal sense of that word.

"Are you crazy?" Candy screams at him. "You're speaking so well of a punk who just did this to you?"

Candy stays with James until he gets the all clear to leave the health centre later that evening. She accompanies him to his home.

Of course a lot of calls come ringing up her phones. They are all from Mason expectedly, but she ignores them all. She vows not to pick them up. She has assured herself of ending it all with him.

"How insecure can a man get to act this way?" she has said.

Mason has come begging for umpteenth time but Candy lets all his pleas fall on deaf ears.

He has located Tracy her best friend to help mediate and reconcile them, but Candy has made all efforts futile. She even threatens to dissolve the friendship existing between herself and Tracy if she will not stop bothering her about Mason.

She says she has moved on. She announces it to James, but to her surprise she gets a cold shrug.

"You can't break off your relationship because of me Candy," James says.

"That's no freaking relationship. It's just matter of days James," Candy says quickly. She has said it like she has prepared long for it. She must have thought it over.

Mason won't stop coming. He sends flowers, gifts, greeting cards--they all end in the waste bin. It doesn't seem Candy will forgive him anytime soon.

Mason thinks he has an idea. He pays James a visit. It's a chilly afternoon when James just gets back from work. Mason has been waiting at his door for a while.

"Hey man, you're home at last. I've been waiting," Mason says.

James is taken aback. He doesn't see it coming.

"Are you still stalking me?" he replies.

"Not what you think fella," Mason says. "I come in peace."

James acts cautiously, keeping himself at a safe distance from Mason--safe enough to avoid getting a punch to his face by Mason's outstreched hand waiting to be shaken.

"Why don't you keep your hand away for now man?" James replies nervously and Mason forces a grin out of his lips.

"I'm sorry for how I treated you that day,"Mason says apologetically. "I shouldn't have."

Eventually the two come to an understanding. They laugh it off like real men. James offers wine and they drink to a toast of friendship.

James picks a date to visit Candy in her home. She gets overjoyed. She loves being around James or the other way round. She looks forward to it. She will be preparing lunch for two.

James hints Candy that he will be coming with someone, so she should prepare lunch for three.

"Your girlfriend right?" Candy says. "I guess she won't leave you like Jane the moment she discovers how intimate we are."

Candy laughs and James laughs along with her over the phone.

Candy makes her hair. She gets it washed and well arranged in expectation of his guests. She gets herself new necklace, shoes, bracelets, earrings and even rings. She wants to be at her best before her friend and her guest whom she supposed is James' new lover.

Over the years, Candy has developed this benign nature. She wants things to go perfectly well for everyone. So she has allowed this nature to override her jealousness over her friend James.

She has said to herself on several occasions, "I don't think a lover can put a stop to the BFF relationship I've developed with James."

Candy is antsy as she walks around her living room like a security guard patrolling a suspected crime scene.

She has gone to the door twice to open it at the hallucinatory sounds of the doorbells she feels she heard. Disappointed she becomes those two times when no one is at the door.

Eventually the doorbell rings loud and clear and James gets in. She screams excitedly and gives him a tight hug.

The euphoria has gotten much of her that she doesn't seem to care about the absence of the guest he had talked about.

"Where is my guest?" James asks as he gets in the room fully.

"Oh, your guests, where's she?" Candy says with eyes wide open in excitement.

Reluctantly the guest steps in.

It is Mason!