The Fallen Footwear

By Jeremy Bursey

Gary Hartland isn’t looking for love. After a difficult breakup with Victoria, he has basically written off the idea of loving again. But thanks to a freak bus accident that he narrowly escapes, he is given the serendipitous opportunity to meet Nikki Rose, the girl of his dreams. At first, he is reluctant to talk to her: Never mind the pain he still feels over Victoria; finding love at the site of a bus wreck just doesn’t happen. But there are few whom he would consider more his type, and to let her fade into the drawer filed under “lost opportunities” just isn’t something he can allow.

So, Gary gives love another try, starting with that awkward first step toward her. Meeting her isn’t exactly easy, though, and gaining her interest is even tougher. Like Gary, Nikki isn’t looking for another heartbreak, so like Gary, she isn’t looking for a new “friend.” But he takes that chance anyway, puts his heart on the line, and once again he finds himself experiencing the thrill of discovery and the pain of heartbreak that love so notoriously heaps on those who just want to get it right.

“The Fallen Footwear” is a story about the distances we may travel to make a relationship work. But, it’s at its heart a story about healing and forgiveness, about letting go and moving on. It is the story about imperfect people looking for perfect companions and making the most of the results. It is about building hope when hope is at its most elusive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeremy Bursey
• Release date: Feb 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311438164

Jeremy Bursey

Jeremy Bursey is the author of many short stories, essays, and poems, along with a modest number of novels and screenplays, each covering topics and genres that differ from what he had written previously. He hopes to bring many of these into the ebook generation over the course of the next few years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Central Florida and currently works at a local college as a writing tutor. He appreciates feedback for anything he offers to the public.

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The Fallen Footwear

by Jeremy Bursey

Copyright 2016 by Jeremy Bursey

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Girl that Got Away

Chapter 2: The Happy Accident

Chapter 3: Conversational Therapy

Chapter 4: Hot Girl, Cold Date

Chapter 5: Wild Luck

Chapter 6: The Relationship Montage

Chapter 7: Rebounding

Chapter 8: Recycling

Author’s Note

Ebook Version

About the Author

Other Books

Contact and Questions

Coming Soon

Chapter 1

The Girl that Got Away

As the car sped from the driveway, mental images of the last three years flashed through his mind. Thoughts of expensive dinners and cheap ice cream came and went like lightning. Pictures of the past hovered out of reach, haunting him with the ghostly hope that he knew he would never again grasp. They mocked him with their silent pictures, invisible to everything but dreams. He stood there on that cold pavement, trying to touch those mental images. But he felt nothing on his fingertips. Just a phantom pain in the making. When his reverie exploded and his thoughts evaporated into afterimages, he found himself staring across the void at the fancy burgundy ’98 Toyota Camry disappearing from the street into darkness. The pit of his stomach lurched. He knew he was likely to never see her again.

Then his body shook. He pitched himself forward at the waist to stifle the real pain he was feeling in his gut. If this moment were true and not a game, then he was experiencing his first minutes of an indefinite heartbreak. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do about that.

Gary waited by the curb to see if she would turn around. Hope was fleeting now, but as long as a trace of it existed, there was still a chance. Her heart could’ve changed as she got further away; her thoughts could’ve longed for him at least one more time.

But he wasn’t about to kid himself. Even as he pictured her vehicle reemerging from the darkness, headlights beaming through the mysterious shroud that now separated them, he knew that scene would only ever be fiction in his overactive imagination. Nikki was not the type of girl who believed she was wrong, nor the type who ever changed her mind. If she was out of his life now, she was out of his life for good.

But hope still lingered in the particles that formed the dark cloud over his head. There was always a chance she could turn around.

He sat on the pavement to figure out what had happened. Until a few minutes ago, everything had seemed okay with them, for the most part, as far as he knew. If he were being honest with himself, he’d agree that things were never perfect, which is what Nikki had often said she wanted in the relationship, but he’d always figured it was good enough—he’d always assumed she was happier with good enough than with nothing at all. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d done his part to wow her with flowers and to remind her how beautiful she was, and she’d always seemed to appreciate it. Seemed. In his mind everything was going just fine. But then she sprang this devastating piece of info on him, that things were not fine at all. And that was it. That was the end. Everything he’d thought that was working out had in fact fallen apart.

The trouble with believing in something that was no longer relevant, no matter how much he wanted it, no matter how strong he held on to hope, was that he would look like a complete idiot the moment he’d try to get her back. Sure, he could’ve played the heroic lead in a romantic epic, rip off his shirt, and go chasing after his lady love like a lunatic in the night, screaming out her name. But that wasn’t his style. He was a closet lunatic with the kind of body that didn’t need undressing in public. His path to idiocy would play out more subtly. In fact, the odds were high that the only person to notice would’ve been himself.

Which was why he caught himself completely off-guard when he reached his fingers down to his belt, grabbed the hem of his T-shirt, yanked it up and over his head, and started running down the street, shouting Nikki’s name. He was about halfway down the road when he managed to pull the shirt off completely.

Nikki!

Even as he covered two blocks in just over a minute, he knew he was fighting a pointless battle. Not only could she not hear him, but she was so far away by now that he’d never catch her. Yet, he continued to run after her, as if tomorrow had no meaning if he couldn’t win her back.

Nikki!

Her echo didn’t shout back from the dark. The only voice to respond was the gentle howling of a dog on the next street over. But it didn’t stop him from crying