I looked into the hole that held my past.  “Six feet may not be deep enough to bury the burdens and the hurt and the pain that you caused me.”  I said in a voice barely above a whisper.  The people around me, were to busy crying and holding each other to notice, that I shed no tears, I held no one, and I smiled as the casket was lowered into the earth.

***********************

It was a sunny day in May, the breeze blew my hair around my face as I stood on the shore of the lake with the water lapping over my feet.  The sensation of the sun on my skin, the water on my feet and the breeze causing my hair to blow wildly around my face, made me smile and giggle out loud.  I turned my face up toward the sun, and heard the tell-tale click of the camera.  I looked back over my shoulder to see Charles standing there with his camera to his face.  I flashed a toothy grin at him then turned back to the sun and water.  I soaked up as much of the sun as I could stand, then turned to Charles and walked slowly toward him, each step brought a click from the camera as the shutter opened and closed.

“You are obsessed with that blasted camera, love.”  I said as I strode purposefully toward him.  He took the camera down from his face long enough to smile at me devilishly.

“Only because you are the most beautiful creature I have ever photographed.”  The camera came back to his face, as the shutter continued to open and close.

I stopped about four feet away from him.  Turned my back to him, and smiled over my shoulder as I reached up to untie the blue bikini string around my neck.  The camera slowly dropped.  “I may need some assistance here, Love.”  Was all it took.  The camera was placed back in the bag, and Charles was at my side.  We kissed softly at first, and as the passion built, everything else fell to the ground.

********************

I was born on Valentine’s Day, at 2:14am.  Ironic, isn’t it?  My mom, thinking it was cute, named me Liebe, she pronounced it like “Libby”, but it meant love in German.  I was a bastard child, conceived outside of marriage, by a father who didn’t know I was even around.  My mom was very open, so to speak, and slept around.  She knew who my father was, but chose not to tell me, just said one day when I was older, I would find out.  When I was thirteen, my mom died of a heroin overdose.  I went to go live with grandma and grandpa in Texas.  Growing up for thirteen years on the coast of California, and then moving to Texas was like taking a fish out of water.  I grew up way to fast out in California, my body developed quickly, and I knew that I was quite pretty.  My red hair, never had a hair out-of-place.  My green eyes always shining.  My teeth were perfect, mom at least made sure of that.  She just knew one day I would be the next big thing.  Unfortunately her heroin addiction outweighed my career.

I started school two weeks after my move to Texas, I stayed to myself and tried not to interact with to many people.  The boys all stared at me, and the girls scowled.  This was something that I would get used to as I grew up, it was a regular occurence.  The first few months seemed like a haze of monotony, the same thing day in and day out.  Go to school.  Come home.  Do homework. Eat dinner.  Go to bed.  Nothing ever changed.  The next three years, seemed almost as uneventful.  I made a few friends, none that I would confide in or spend and inordinate amount of time with, just more of annoying acquaintances.

My freshman year in high school, I met SueAnne, she was a lot like me, but from the East Coast.  She grew up in Georgia, Savannah, to be exact.  She was one of those “Georgia Peaches”.  We had a lot in common.  Her dad was a businessman that moved a lot.  Her mom was a prima donna.  SueAnne and I got close very quickly.  We wore the same types and size clothes and shoes, and were always exchanging clothes.  We blew through our freshman year, and into our sophomore year.

SueAnne and I were pretty much inseparable, one of us was always at the other’s house.  We were more like sisters than friends.  We did everything together, we only dated brothers, and we only went out on dates together.  The boys didn’t seem to mind.  As we moved through our high school years and graduated, SueAnne and I thought about where we wanted to go for college.  I had a desire to get back to the West coast, and she wanted to get back to Georgia.  This was the only thing we ever had a problem with.  We decided on our graduation day, that we would travel for a few months, and then decide for the following year what college we wanted to go to.  We were both pretty smart, and had a GPA of 3.8, college choices wouldn’t be an issue.

Our families, thought it would be a good idea for us to go out and see the world.  The week after graduation, we loaded up SueAnne’s Jeep and hit the open road.  Two free spirits looking for life and possibly love.  Little did we know what we were up against, and the road that fate had us pointed to.

(To Be continued)