Soul Mates by Thomas Melo Page A

Lilith up, but backed off quickly when Ray informed his wife that it was just a “guy thing.”
    “They want their privacy, I’m sure,” Ray explained. “I promise, if we get to the restaurant and they’re not there behind us in fifteen minutes, I’ll go searching vacant parking lots for his rocking car. Deal?”
    Cindy elbowed her husband’s ribs with a chortle and a click of her tongue. When they arrived at the restaurant, Ty was already there with Lilith. They waited out front for his parents to arrive. The first thing Cindy thought when she saw Lilith standing next to her son was that she was subtly brazen in her choice of outfit. It certainly was not street-walker-brazen, but it was there. 
    Lilith wore tight blue jeans, which really pronounced her rear-end, and a tight black girl’s tee, which had three dark red butterflies on it the size of softballs. They were more like film negatives of a butterfly in their appearance. There was one near her right shoulder, one around her left midsection, and one at the bottom of the shirt. But these weren’t regular looking butterflies. There was something about how they teased the senses. The feeling was again, understated, just like their owner’s unabashed overall appearance that night, but all who looked upon these maniacal butterflies knew they were looking at harbingers of disease, or insanity, or infection, or  some  horrible thing. 
    At the same time, the shirt was very stimulating indeed. Ty noticed it, and Ray  certainly  noticed it as well. Cindy needed only to look at her husband’s puerile face to realize that, which put Cindy in a lovely mood right from the beginning of the evening.
    “Fuck giving her the benefit of the doubt; I’ve already seen enough,” Cindy almost said under her breath, but was able to yank the reigns of restraint at the last second… that  was close. Lilith could sense the hostility from her boyfriend’s mother right away before Cindy even said a word. Countenance, with the invaluable assistance of the eyes, tells astonishingly silver-tongued stories which make words almost obsolete. 
    Tyler lifted his hand into the air so that his parents could see them, even though he knew they already did. Not quite subconsciously, he supposed he waved in hopes that Lilith would take this as the proverbial starter-gun to begin exhibiting her best behavior for his parents. He didn’t care very much about her behavior when they were alone, which was at times, questionable. She  trained  him not to care, (oh, yes she did) but at the same time, he was still aware enough to know that she had to put on a manner-fueled show when it came to his parents. 
    Tyler was not one for conflict or confrontation, which will become the most ironic caveat heard in this story further down the road (let’s go Yankees.) It gave him mild anxiety. Not just physical confrontations or conflicts like when he was living his tormented existence in elementary and middle school at the hands of pre-pubescent little “fuckers,” but even arguing was enough to make him want to flip the merciful switch that would render him invisible to the world into the ON position. Especially when he was a witness to an argument between two people he cared for.
    Ray and Cindy would lock horns at times, as  all  married couple do at one point or another. That is a constant, not a variable. The  frequency  of those knock-down-drag-outs is the variable and what actually define a marriage. Tyler was happy that for the most part, the clashes he had to witness growing up, and even now, were kept to a minimum. The other school of thought may be that if he  were  subject to a lot of arguing that, by this point, he would think nothing of it. You know: run-of-the-mill, just another day in the life and such. But the people close to him enjoyed solid relationships for the most part and chose not to make arguing a staple, so arguments didn’t lose their bitter flavor when they actually