Kick Ass Shoes

 Kir is guest hosting at The Red Dress Club this week and prompted us "to write about a topic very near and dear to many of us: shoes.

You were to write about a pair of shoes of yours or your character's. They can be real or symbolic."

This continues the R.S.V.P. fiction that I shared two weeks ago.  If you are interested in more of the story, you may want to read that first.

Kick Ass Shoes

With the same rashness that her whole relationship with him had been, she began trashing any object that reminded her of what had been.

The little box of trinkets on her dresser called her.  She debated whether to open it and take one last sprint down memory lane.  Her heart skipped a beat, her breath caught.

She moved on to “his” dresser drawer.  She scooped up the contents, unceremoniously dumping them into the large black trash bag waiting at her feet.  And she began to breathe again.

In her closet, she closed her eyes as she wadded up his favorite shirt, her favorite shirt.  A couple more items, ripped from the hangers, dived into the black bag.

When she grabbed his hiking boots, left behind from their camping trip, she saw her own tennis shoes.  Sitting back on her heels, she realized how much those shoes screamed what had been going on, what she had been oblivious to.  They had gone camping rather than to L.A. with their friends because she was a secret to those friends.  He had lived two lives.  Though at the time, she was only aware of the one.

Her tennis shoes joined his hiking boots in the trash bag.  She also slipped off her cute black shoes, the ones she’d bought for their first ‘official’ date and they had to go.  She slid on a pair of kick ass cherry red heels while her mouth hinted at a smile.

In the kitchen, she chucked the beer bottle opener into the bag.  It landed with a satisfying clunk against something else, some other memory that she was done with.  The glassware he gave her shattered as she tossed it in.  Not wanting even a single speck of a memory to be left behind, she grabbed another bag and doubled up. Those slivers of glass, shreds of her life she had handed over to him couldn’t be allowed to escape.

As she moved into the bathroom, it became easier to keep moving forward.  Deodorant, shaving gel, razor, and toothbrush all found a new home in the black bag.  Her anger was fading with each tossed object.  She was giddy, almost dizzy with giddiness.  Each item, each memory gone from sight made her feel free and even a bit braver.

She grasped that bravery and headed back to her dresser to take on the box of trinkets.  With a light creak, she gingerly lifted the lid.  She was dizzy alright.  Steadying herself, she picked up the movie tickets and bagged them with the other memories.  A flash drive loaded with their music, a charm, a stone from that camping trip, a piece of driftwood, letters tied off with a red string all went, one after another, into the doubled black trash bag.  She was almost done, almost ready to kick all of her memories of him to the curb.

She picked up the silly little bracelet he had made with shiny foil gum wrappers.  Her breath caught again.  The room spun.  And she was dashing for the bathroom.

She didn’t make it in time and her red heels suffered the consequences.  The shoes that reminded her of who she had been before him suffered the consequences of forgetting for just a moment that there was one memory of him she couldn’t be free of.  The memory that was growing inside of her would make sure of that.

Cleaning up the mess, she threw her cherry red shoes into the black bag and quickly scooped the trinket box up off the dresser and dropped the whole thing in as well.  She slipped on a pair of sensible shoes and carried the black trash bag full of memories outside.

She hoped that one day she would be ready to wear a new pair of kick ass shoes.