Strange Magic by Gord Rollo

the silver Honda Civic’s front fender, still trying to stifle her laughter.
    “Listen, Susan,” Wilson pleaded. “I know what a screwup I am, and how I keep hurting you, but please don’t humiliate me. I don’t care if others laugh behind my back but I just can’t take it when it comes from you. Besides, this is hardly a laughing matter. I’ve been charged this time. I could end up in jail.”
    Susan stood up, her jovial mood gone. An understanding smile spread across her thin face as she took a couple of steps closer until they were only a few feet apart.
    “Oh Wilson,” she sighed, wiping a solitary tear from the corner of her eye. “I wasn’t laughing at you…honest. You know me better than that. I don’t understand why you sometimes act the way you do, but believe me I’d never make fun of you.”
    Susan moved even closer, tenderly stroking his scratched cheek before pulling away. It had been like this since the breakup. She wanted to hold him, to comfort him, but she couldn’t succumb to her feelings. Not yet, anyway. He had to help himself before she could allow herself to give in to her lonely, aching heart. No one ever said loving an alcoholic was easy.
    Right from day one, people had been trying to tell her Wilson was no good, or that she could do much better. This was even before he’d lost his job and the drinkinghad gotten way out of hand. Her own mother had practically begged her to reconsider and marry some local boy—any local boy probably—one with a big reputable family who lived nearby. A big happy family was everything to Doris Summers, and the fact that Wilson had no relatives nearby and they’d seen neither hide nor hair of the family he claimed lived in rural Ohio made him a bad egg in her books. She didn’t trust Wilson and probably never would. Susan didn’t think like her mother though, and it never bothered her what anyone said about her man.
    They hadn’t been there with them on their first date, the day Wilson had taken her to Villa Roma, the fanciest and most expensive restaurant in Billington. He’d been so nervous all night, bless him, and when he’d finally worked up the nerve to reach over the table to hold her hand, he’d accidentally spilled her water glass onto the tablecloth and all over the front of her black dress. Nine times out of ten, maybe even ninety-nine times out of a hundred, something like that would have spelled disaster and ruined any chance a guy would have of continuing their relationship, but something in the pleading, honest way Wilson looked at her that night had made Susan just freeze. Instead of getting angry or storming out of the room, she just sat still for a moment, looking into Wilson’s tender eyes and waited to see what would happen next. Without a word Wilson reached out, grabbed his own full water glass, and dumped it right in his own lap. Susan had burst into laughter and soon they were both smiling and killing themselves laughing as the waiter scurried around their table trying to wipe them both dry.
    Probably not a textbook first date and definitely not a storybook romance, but that was just the way it was with Wilson. He was clumsy, he was a bit strange, and he was chaos on two legs, but beneath it all he was a kind, caring, wonderful man. In her heart, Susan knew he deeply loved her and even with all his faults—and he certainly had many—she would love Wilson until the day she died. Overly romantic? Perhaps. Stupid? Maybe, but that was just the way it was. She was in this for the long haul.
    “Don’t worry about the charges,” she said. “That was why I was late. I stopped over at the Morris house and managed to smooth things out. He’s going to drop the charges on Monday. The chief said he’s going to let this go too, so you’re off the hook.”
    His wife was an absolute saint. Wilson couldn’t begin to tell her how grateful he was for all she’d done. She saw it in his tear-filled eyes, however, and simply returned