Chocolate By The River: A Story, by M.

Just thought I'd publish another wee story based on the writing exercise: A piece of chocolate wrapped in shiny foil glints in the heat of the noonday sun. You're on a porch. Barefoot. What just happened and why are you carrying an umbrella?

"Dammit!"

Mae runs to the back porch, rivulets of water running down her, bare legs. The umbrella drops to the ground. She stares at the piece of chocolate glinting in the sun and notes how deceptively beautiful it looks. She moves closer, her shadow breaking the sunny peaks of the glossy brown foil. She leans down and hesitates to touch it, deep and mysterious chemical changes already taking place. This would not be the same chocolate that was set down. It would be an unwieldy liquid mess.

"What are you looking at?" Adam stands in a grimace.

"The saddest moment of my life."

"Chocolate, ooo."

"No, don't touch it."

"You capsized us for this didn't you?"

Mae nods. Glancing at her now soggy paper umbrella, where just a moment ago, she had been upon sparkling waters of the river, graceful, and idyllic. Possibly English or at very least Jamesian.

"Well are you going to eat it then or not?"

Mae considered this. It was still the last piece of chocolate from her last trip to Europe/Belgium and she'd kept it sealed in 5 freezer bags inside a container, that she'd carried to her grandparents house, and she'd set it out just for a moment, a brief minute, she'd remembered and then she was going to eat it. It was going to be a positive sign of her moving on and letting it go and then rather ominously or maybe fortuitously, she couldn't be sure yet, she'd forgotten all about it. She glanced around.

"I need something to pick it up with."

Adam disinterestedly glanced around, little bits of dirt and grass clinging to his feet, "Go get a spatula from inside."

She curled up her lip and bit down in thought, "Ok." She paused. "Don't touch it."

But of course the brave heroine, did not fully understand the disgruntled disposition of her friend. Who after having been thrown over by his latest boy, and had lost the part in Candide, to Jim Fagin, that fuck, he was now being over thrown by a piece of chocolate, felt a great sense of indignation welling within him. Mae after all did not have the right to be more melodramatic then he, after all he'd gone through. And why was he here then in this strange place, reeking of vegetation and humidity, if it wasn't to agitate sweet gentle Mae's disposition.

He stepped up to the holy monument of Mae's youth and gingerly picked it up with his thumb and forefinger. She was right though about not touching it. The corners quickly squinched in and he put in the palm of his hand and folded back the edges of this oddly, dark chocolate, rectangle. Mae had always struck him as more milk chocolate. Her whole character in fact, sweet, almost too, but lately yes, there'd been signs of a change. He cocked his head and shrugged at the damage already done. What she didn't know was that the properties of the chocolate were now grossly unstable and irreversible. There was no refreezing it. But, my it smelled good.

He heard her quick steps in an instant as she came back around the house. (Not through. Conscientious Mae.) He licked the dark liquid pool, as she rounded the corner and shrieked, lunging at him, with as he'd sadly forgotten, now armed with a metal spatula. He had hoped that, the offering, so close to his face, would represent an impenetrable barrier, but
Mae had brothers and her spatulad hand swung out with instinctive righteous justice at what was hers, at what was not his.

The unfortunate chocolate now flung into his face with hot fury.

And as Adam, now fully scrunched up and running about the porch, "It burns! It burns!"

Mae gave a smirk of satisfaction, which relented into snickers and disintegrated into a belly laugh. Penitent, sort of, she followed after him yelling, "I'm sorry. So sorry." And he in mock horror approached her and said, "Get. It. Off."

"Alright," she said calmly, "sit down."
She paused and drew her finger down his cheek and tasted it.

"Good, huh?" Adam automatically asked.

"Yah."

"You never used to like dark chocolate."

"I know." She tasted another bit dribbling off his chin, "It's something new."....