I Want You To Want Me. Kathy Love

her. Before she could call for the person to come in, Ren strolled through the door from the glassed-in sun porch.

      “You’re back early,” Maggie said, rising to greet him. He walked straight to her, pressing a lingering kiss on his wife’s upraised lips. “Is everything set with work? Is your stand-in okay?”

      Ren nodded. “Not me, but he’ll do.”

      “Egotist,” Maggie chided with a fond smile. Ren kissed her again.

      Erika watched, a pang of envy tightening her chest. Not that she begrudged her friend the happiness she’d found. Maggie deserved it. Erika just wished she could find her own love interest. Her soul mate.

      Maggie broke off the kiss, but didn’t pull out of Ren’s hold. Instead, they just gazed at each other for a moment. Watching the adoring looks on both their faces, Erika was struck by the need to capture that feeling, both in her art and in her life.

      She quickly reached over to the end table that she’d painted cobalt blue and caught the strap of her digital camera. Before the couple realized she’d moved, she pointed and clicked.

      Maggie made a small startled noise, while Ren turned to blink at Erika.

      “You never know,” Erika said, snapping another shot, “I may want to sculpt you two.”

      Maggie actually blushed. “I would hardly be a good subject.”

      Ren snorted, the sound somehow attractive rather than impolite. “You are a perfect subject.”

      Erika smiled at the conviction in his voice. Ren was thoroughly besotted.

      “I, however,” he added, “could never be an angel of any sort, fallen or otherwise.”

      “Well, I’m not sculpting just angels. I’m sculpting whatever strikes me. And you two did.” Erika snapped another shot for good measure. “Maybe I want to capture true love. Or soul mates.”

      Ren smiled broadly at that, the curl of his lips giving him a slightly naughty and utterly charming look. “Well, I can accept that description.”

      He stole another kiss from Maggie.

      Erika breathed a sigh, masking the sound of discontent by setting her camera on the coffee table. She’d never doubted that one day, after already accumulating an abundance of frogs, she’d meet her prince. But lately, maybe because of a dry spell, even from the frogs, she was beginning to wonder.

      “Okay,” Ren said suddenly. “Are you ready to go?”

      Maggie smiled and shrugged. “As ready as I can be, given that I have no idea where I’m going. But then, I figured I didn’t need to pack much.”

      “You, darlin’, have a one track mind,” Ren said, shaking his head in feigned dismay. He looked at Erika. “I think you should have warned me about her.”

      Erika shrugged, taking no responsibility for his choices. Although she did feel a little responsible for Maggie taking the initiative to go after him.

      “You love it,” Maggie said, and Ren kissed her.

      “I love you,” he muttered, his voice rough with emotion.

      Another pang of longing pulsed in Erika’s chest. The scene could have easily struck her as nauseating, but between her happiness for Maggie and her own desire for those same emotions, Erika just…wanted. Big time.

      “Okay,” Ren said, linking his fingers with Maggie’s. “We’ll see you on Wednesday.”

      “Have fun,” Erika said as she walked them to the door. She remained at the window, watching them gather their luggage and cross the courtyard toward the door that led to the street. They really were the image of newly wedded bliss. Of real happiness.

      Erika didn’t bother to disguise her sigh this time, there was no one to hear it but her new roommate, a big black cat she’d named Boris. And he wasn’t paying any attention, curled in his usual spot on the back of her overstuffed chair, looking sullen. His usual expression. His only expression, really. Even in his sleep.

      She gazed out into the shadowy courtyard for a few moments longer, then turned back to her apartment. Aside from the lopsided sculpture and the necessary mess of wet clay and bits of polymer and caked tools, the place was neat. Well, organized chaos anyway.

      She, on the other hand, was another story. Her jeans were smeared with clay, her fingernails caked, her hair knotted back in an untidy and clay-spattered ponytail.

      “And I wonder why I only have you for male companionship,” she said, moving to stroke Boris’s black fur. He opened one golden eye, then shut it again, obviously unmoved.

      She supposed she should try to fix her sculpture, but she’d been working on this angel for nearly five days, and the poor thing was getting worse with each progressive attempt. Maggie was right. They both needed a rest.

      “Although this is what you should be stressing about,” she muttered to herself, inspecting the sculpture again. “Not your lack of a love life.”

      Erika knew that. Intellectually, she did. But emotionally, she craved what Maggie had found in Ren. And for some reason, she couldn’t shake that longing, even with all the exciting changes in her life. Maybe because she was seeing her friend’s happiness on a daily basis. Or maybe because so many other things had fallen into place lately. Wasn’t it time for love to join in?

      “Does life always have to be one thing or another?” she wondered to the bored Boris. “A trade-off. My career is going well, so now I have to go without a love life?”

      Erika pushed that train of thought aside. It sounded like her father’s reasoning. Her father was a big subscriber to Murphy’s Law. She, on the other hand, believed in positive thoughts creating positive outcomes.

      And the positive thoughts she needed to work on now were about her art show.

      “Focus on the now and the rest will fall into place.”

      Her mother had once said that to her in a letter, and Erika had tried to live by it. She was her mother’s daughter, after all.

      “So I think now what is required is a nice, long shower and a glass of wine.”

      She glanced back at the sculpture that looked more like a Picasso than an Erika Todd.

      Maybe she just needed to start over. She wandered to her fridge, and poured a glass of wine. And maybe a nice, long bath and two glasses of wine was the way to go.

      Something woke her.

      Erika struggled upright, blinking around, trying to get her bearings. She was in the living room on her brocade sofa. Brushing the tangle of hair from her face, she fell back against the cushy, body-warmed pillows.

      She must have dozed off as she’d been studying her work, analyzing, again, what might fix it. She glanced at the coffee table, where her second glass of pinot noir sat, half-empty.

      Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to drift. Sleep was often as much a creativity sparker as work. Or at least she was going with that theory for now. The warm, enveloping couch felt lovely.

      Then she heard it. A distinct bang directly above her head. Her eyes popped open, and she stared at the ceiling she’d painted sky blue when she’d moved in. She remained still, listening.

      Just when she’d decided that she must have imagined the loud clunk, another noise echoed from above her head. The scrape of something being dragged across the floor.

      She glanced over to her cat. Even Boris stared intently up at the sound. His ear twitched.

      For once the grumpy cat was giving a definite reaction, but of course it was when she’d much rather have seen his usual bored or apathetic demeanor. She sat up, her eyes still locked on the ceiling as if someone was going to suddenly manifest from the floor above.

      There was an apartment over