Ok.  So I had the chance to write a story for Nina's fic-swap at her blog Wickfield. Mine was written for Lindsey. (:  I thought I'd share it here for everyone to read.  Here were the two requirements:

1. Set in 1920s.
2. Contains the line "Even so, she could hear the storm rumbling in the distance."

A Million Tiny Pieces
For Lindsey (:

        It was midnight.

  Even so, she could hear the storm rumbling in the distance.

  Storms should never be at night, Evelyn thought as she propelled herself over onto her side, the hot sheets sticking to her sweaty body like a melting piece of caramel.  All they ever do is keep people who need a good nights sleep awake, thinking. The warm air was filling the room like smoke.  Any second now Evelyn was expecting to suffocate, and every second that she didn’t she could only think about how long she had been awake, and every second she thought about that the suffocating thought came back in her head, and then she would get hot again and flop over, and the sheets would stick to her exposed limbs until she got to thinking how long she had been awake, and then the suffocating thought would burst into her head like a flame; this cycle went around, spinning like stirred tea in a cup.

  Evelyn turned over on her back.  She forcefully kicked the sheets off and let her long leg escape from the edge, so that her whole body was trapped beneath the hot jail, except the leg she had let out.  She tossed her arm back over her head and stared at the ceiling. 

  “This day was just too much,” she muttered under her breath.  She thought of every thing that had been said to her, every garrulous conversation she had had that day.  Oh, it seemed like years ago.  Would she ever fall asleep?  “I need to move,” Evelyn sighed, pushing the sheets off her and letting her hot legs dangle carelessly from her bed.  She put her head in her hands.  Maybe Tom had been right, maybe every single word he had inarticulately yelled at her was right.  “I need to move,” she repeated and with one push sent herself off the bed.  She stood there, the warm stifling air surrounding her, the thunder booming outside the window, thoughts of Tom embedding themselves into every surface of her brain, and the sudden desire for iced tea pulsating in the spots Tom had not invaded.  Evelyn rubbed her arm, staring at the bruise that seemed to be changing to yellow in front of her eyes, as she stumbled somnolently to the kitchen.

  That bruise was an accident.  Tom had just grabbed her too hard, that was all.

  She took out the pitcher of iced tea that had been in the refrigerator.

  He had just gotten angry and upset, the bruise meant nothing.

  She poured the cool tea into a glass.

  It meant nothing, the bruise meant absolutely nothing.

  Evelyn pulled out a chair and sat down.  The ice-cold tea felt cooling to her throat; it went down softly, and she could feel the chill of it all the way down into her stomach.  This was exactly what she needed on a hot night like this.

  Sitting there, staring into her cup of tea, Evelyn laughed deep in her throat.  Now this was a predicament, wasn’t it?  Truly a predicament.

  “Why on earth did I decide I had to go get milk that particular day, and that exact hour, in that exact month.  What the devil…” Two years ago, Evelyn had gone to the store.

  To get milk.

  November 2, 1927, at 8:00 in the morning.

  Evelyn had gone to buy milk.

  On that particular day.

  At that exact hour.

  In that exact month.

  And that was when she had met him.  November 2, 1927.  The day seemed to be plastered in her mind, right where she could see it; maybe it was engraved on her eyes, or in her skull, or on the right lobe of her brain, but wherever it was Evelyn could always see it.

  “If I had JUST waited…” she thought.  “If I had just waited until 9:00, or the next day…”

  Because the day that she met Tom everything changed. 

  And nothing was ever the same.

  Every boy she met, she compared to Tom.  Every time her mother said, “There are plenty of boys out there, Evelyn, you just have to look!” Evelyn would sigh and think, There are boys but there will never be a boy like Tom.

  The shocking thing was that she didn’t even know why she wanted Tom.  He was a snake.  A snake in the grass, that just slithered along on his belly, waiting for the next victim, waiting for the next time he could take a girl’s heart, call it his, and then slam it on the ground and laugh as it smashed into a million tiny pieces, covering the ground with glass like shards.

  “But he did it to my heart,” Evelyn thought, “and I want him to only do it to my heart.”

  It was her way of thinking she was special. 

She had loved Tom with every ounce of her being.  She loved his hair, his eyes, the way he smelled, the way he laughed, the way he smiled, the way he joked, the way he looked at her, the way he looked at others, the way he wanted to talk to her, the way he smiled back at the words she said.  But she hated the way he drank, the way he cursed, the way he smoked, the way he gambled, the way he drove recklessly, the way he flirted with other girls, the way he cheated, the way he fought with her, the way he bruised her arm, the way he broke her heart.

   She loved him.

  And she hated him.

  It was that simple.

  The phone rang.

  The ringing made Evelyn feel like a startled cat.  She jumped and her tea sloshed over the side of her glass, rolling down the side and on to the smooth wooden table.  She went to answer it, wiping her hands on a towel that she had grabbed on the way to the phone.

  “Hello?” she said quietly, the way you do when there is no reason to be quiet, only for the fact that it is late at night.

  “I can’t sleep, Evelyn,” a throaty voice said on the other end.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked, her voice quivering with anger.

  “I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about you,” his voice quivered too, but it wasn’t out of anger, it seemed to be out of sorrow.  Evelyn didn’t buy sorrow.
  “You think you can call me up at my apartment in the middle of the night, telling me that you can’t sleep because you are thinking of me?  Who do you think you are, Tom?  I have given you everything of mine, I have given you my time, and my money, and my heart and you didn’t appreciate ANY of it!” she was growing louder by every tick of the clock on the wall.  “You think that you can CALL ME UP and take MY TIME FROM ME when I AM SUPPOSED to be asleep, and tell ME THAT YOU CAN’T SLEEP BECAUSE YOU are thinking about ME?!” Evelyn was yelling by now.  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?  Just…let me be!  I am doing FINE without you, and frankly I don’t care one BIT how you are coping with out me because I hate you with every fiber of my being.  I LOATHE you, Tom”

  There was a pause.

  “I love you, Evelyn.”

Evelyn slammed the phone down on the hug, and ran her long fingers through her coarse hair.  She went to the window and looked outside.  Rain began to tap against the window, slowly at first, but steadily increased to a rapid stacato.  Evelyn listened to the rain.

Tap.

Tap.
Tap.

   But all she could hear was Tom’s name, repeating itself over and over in her head.

Tom.

Tom.

Tom.

  She couldn’t stand it anymore.  Without grabbing her rain coat or her boots, only her keys, she ran outside, into the rain that was now pouring rapidly.  She opened her car door, started the engine, and quickly backed out of her driveway, slamming the door as she did so.

  Evelyn was going straight to Tom’s house.

  There was no way she could keep this up, no way they were going to argue over the phone any longer.  She was done, and he was going to choose: was Tom in love with her, or was he not?

  She drove to his house, the rain splashing against her tires, nothing stopping her from gietting the answer she wanted from Tom.  As she turned the corner to her house she slowed down.  She drove slowly past his house, and saw the door open.

  He knew I was coming, she thought as the light poured out onto the porch.  But then she saw someone who not Tom being let inside.

  A girl.

  A small, pretty girl.

  Evelyn gripped the steering wheel.  All the arguments, all the heartache, all the phone calls, like the one tonight.

  Evelyn continued on up the road, tears beginning to pour fill up her eyes, her face getting hot with anger and embarassment.

  Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.