Sparks Fly by Lucy Kevin

leave suburbia. I need to be a part of nature again.” Angelina finished explaining and glanced up at her friend. “Are you going to help me or just stand there looking confused?”
    “Give me the phone,” Krista said. “I’ve got some realtors to call.”

    * * *
    Will felt like his world had turned upside down. He was knee-deep in the most complex financial and legal negotiations of his career and all he could think about was Angelina. He was sure at least one of the twenty people crammed into the airless boardroom must have picked up on his unusual inattention by now.
    Worse still, he had started doodling on his yellow notepad during the endless discussions. Will hadn’t even noticed he was drawing until Jerry, his lead counsel who was seated next to him at the helm of the large oval table, leaned over and said, “Hey, that’s a pretty good likeness of Bob you’ve drawn there,” with a chuckle.
    Will snapped out of his fog and looked down at his notepad. He had drawn a comical, yet accurate caricature of the offending orator, complete with bulging nose, bushy eyebrows, and a waistline that had wolfed down one too many power lunches.
    Hastily, he turned to a fresh page and silently chewed himself out for not keeping closer tabs on his attention. The fate of his company was at stake, he reminded himself sternly. Couldn’t he put up with a few days of stale air and lifeless discussions in order to get things back on track?
    Shaking the muddled thoughts and pictures from his head, he struggled to focus on the business at hand. But he found the only way he could hold onto his sanity was by keeping his pen busy on the paper, capturing his version of the events as they unfolded.
    Will thought he had completely squashed all remaining urges to create art when he'd packed up his brushes that last year of college. He was amazed to find that suddenly, in the most unlikely of circumstances, his hands and mind wanted to create with a vengeance. After nearly twenty years away from art, he was increasingly drawn to seeing what he could come up with next, with only a pen and paper as his tools.
    While he drew and listened with one ear, he thought about how much he missed Angelina.
    During the past two weeks, he had barely found the time to call her each evening to check in for a minute or two. It was selfish of him, but he desperately needed to hear her voice each day. When things got really crazy behind closed doors, when voices were raised with threats, and brows were being mopped up at the end of the latest round, Will found that just thinking of Angelina and the short time they had spent together made it feel like less of a do-or-die situation.
    Interestingly, Will’s detachment was throwing his detractors off course. Instead of being the admitted corporate shark he had been for the past decade, he was letting his opponents flail about helplessly by not taking up arms against them. It was yet another thing that he had to thank Angelina for.
    Just as this thought crossed his mind, the negotiations escalated to a fever pitch. Excusing himself, he left the room and walked down the hallway until he was outside breathing in fresh air in the parking lot. Moving to lean against the trunk of a tree, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Angelina’s number.
    “Damn it,” he thought when he got her voice mail. He needed to talk to her, needed to hear her voice.
    He didn't know when exactly she had become so important to him. Just that she was.
    “Angelina,” he said, knowing better than to hang up without leaving a message this time, “I’m calling to let you know that I may be out of touch for another few days.” He paused trying to gather his thoughts. “Things here are at the breaking point and I’ve got to head deep into the trenches until the war is won.” He laughed softly into the phone, his only smile in days. “Sorry about the war metaphors.
    I guess they don’t call it corporate warfare for nothing.” He was