Masked Thunder

CHAPTER 4

FREDERICK HOFSTADTER'S POV

“I love you so much, Bro,” I said wholeheartedly, and slightly teary-eyed.

“I love you, my brother!” Aaron responded, and gave me a manly tap on the back. As we walked back into the club, I knew that I wanted to talk to the beautiful gray-eyed goddess dancing drunkenly to the swaying and ever evolving genres of music the Disc Jockey pulled us through.

Lionel Riche’s Deep River Woman came on then, and I saw her roll her eyes and start to walk away from the dance floor while I was halfway to her. I took that as my cue. I virtually waded through the pool of bodies to get over to her.

I was so nervous and felt very ill-prepared when I was close enough to actually smell the creamy coconut smell that reached up into my nostrils from her beautiful gold-highlighted brown hair. I felt like I was watching fine sand slip through my fingers and my hands were sweaty.

I reached out impulsively and touched her arm. I wanted so badly to use my voice instead of touching a woman without her consent, but it was too late to change my actions.

She turned so quickly to face me that she stumbled, and I had to act fast to hold her steady, but also be very soft in the way that I held her. It felt so delicious that brief moment when I held her body close to mine.

I saw how porcelain her skin really was, and her full lips were just a few feet from mine. But she broke free from my hold and threw her hands in the air like she couldn't imagine what had almost just happened to her because of my rude interruption.

Then, I thought that I should have calmed down and waited for her to get to the bar before approaching her like a gentleman. But here I was, being the recipient of a withering stare from a beautiful goddess.

As expected, she asked why I had touched her and who I was. But while she spat at me in anger, I was just mesmerized by how her eyes seemed to glint in anger, but also burn with so much hurt. I was taken by her.

I apologized, and she walked away from me and back to her friends. I walked back to my own friends and sat with them, still watching her intently.

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

My head was banging heavily when I woke up that morning. With my eyes still shut, I yawned and stretched, feeling a little woozy. I thankfully did not have a hangover, but I still felt out of it.

Then last night played back slowly in my mind. Her lips. The shape of her eyes and the gray of them. I whispered her name, Marilyn, before abruptly turning to the left side of the bed to look at her face in the bright morning light filtering into my handsomely furnished room.

The woman lying fast asleep next to me, however, was definitely not Marilyn.

MARILYN GREEN’S POV

I felt extremely uncomfortable that morning. I moved to Montgomery, Alabama to stay with my aunty as the winds grew colder and the leaves forsook the trees, leaving them standing forlorn and lonely. I could not believe that I had actually gotten pregnant.

I sat by the large sitting room window like the character of Penelope did in Bridgerton. I loved looking down at the world sprawled by my aunty's window outside. I loved smiling and waving at some of her neighbors when they walked past. But this morning was different because I had done something absolutely abominable.

The drama was crazy in NYC. When I explained the situation truthfully to my parents after the home and hospital-confirmed tests, my mother went berserk on me, which I preferred to my dad's fear of standing up for me.

“I know you play a lot of jokes, Marilyn. But please tell me that you are pranking us right now,” My mother said very calmly. She was always so pragmatic and logical but also ruthless. Well, I would never have described her that way in the past, but her reaction to my pregnancy really changed my view of her forever.

I looked up at my dad, who sat beside my mother, staring at me with a half-smile. I sat silently, but I took out an envelope from my bag and placed it on the dining table between my parents and me. I pushed it towards the them

As both parents went through the contents of the envelope, I watched my dad's face fall as he held the picture of their first grandchild starting to gently move in my belly. My mother looked angry.

Growing up, I'd always wondered if my mother was capable of showing any other emotion besides anger. It was comforting to her, or so it had seemed to us. I had always secretly wished that my dad would leave my mother because she was everything he was not.

My mother looked at the pregnancy test sticks, the picture from my sonogram and the pregnancy test result which I had printed out for my pregnancy reveal to my family.

“What the f**k is this, Marilyn? Who's pregnancy tests are these?” My mother asked thunderously after looking at the test results once.

I felt fear like a scalding liquid descend from my throat and stay solidified as a crossbow in my chest so that it hurt; terribly.

“Mine?” I pushed out through my suddenly parched throat painfully.

There was something akin to pure hatred on my mother's face, “Who is the fool that did this to you?” she yelled at me.

I whimpered painfully, afraid of, but also praying for a miscarriage, so that I could move on with my life still being the apple of my dad's eyes and the daughter my mother endured. She had always wanted a boy, and had simply never warmed up to me.

I had to grow up with my dad as the only parent who actually even cared about me. He was at every event at school even until college. I was always doing so much in order to feel loved by my mother, but I was never going to be enough. I wish you'd known that back then though.

The happiest that I have ever seen my mother was when she had been pregnant. I was eight years old then, and super excited by the prospect of having a sibling. My happiness soon waned though because I became nonexistent to my mother.

She danced round the house, working out, eating a clean pregnancy diet despite her cravings. I felt abandoned during those fifteen long months because as much as my dad tried to be there for me, everyone fussed over my mother and my baby brother more.

“I don't know his name,” I said in a low tone & added, “It was a one-night stand,” The pain in my dad's eyes as he looked through the contents of the envelope in utter disbelief. I knew that even though he most definitely felt a cocktail of pain, shame, guilt, fear and anger, he'd still have given me a hug if he could.

“Are you f*****g joking? You ungrateful little b***h! How dare you bring this disgrace to us? I have borne your excesses enough actually. I never wanted you… I never did!” my mother yelled angrily. I knew she was going to say more to me, but my dad had reached out to pat her back gently.

“You never wanted me?” I asked in disbelief after almost sixty seconds of silence. “How quick you always are to remind me of that fact. And if you did not want me, why the hell did you give birth to me then?”