by Anne Leigh
Not in the teasing, funny way that Rikko Chamberlane did it.
“Hey.” I stood up from the couch, stretching my legs in the fitted jeans I’d grabbed from my drawer at the last minute.
Big, bulky arms wrapped around me and it wasn’t hard to believe that he was a football player.
“Hug me back, beauty,” Rikko ordered and my whole body was imprisoned in his muscled arms, the tight fitted black material he wore as a shirt was slammed into my face.
“Jesus, leave her alone, dumbass.” A voice commanded from behind Rikko.
I was engulfed in the arms of the behemoth who radiated warmth and friendship without any malice, but it wasn’t the reason why my chest started to constrict.
The air around me felt like it was being sucked away by a vacuum.
I’d been around attractive men.
Breathed the same air as guys who were the faces and bodies of Vogue.
But none of them gave me the chills –
The tingly feeling of want that the man who was now standing in front of me elicited from my otherwise dormant hypothalamus, the region of the brain that affected desire, lust, attraction.
His eyes reminded me of the foliage in Montreal when they turned green after a long winter.
His brows were furrowed, but it did nothing to redact from the beauty of his sculpted jaw and the slightly crooked nose that I’d heard had been broken when he was tackled by a giant defender from Alabama.
He was the man who could put all of my mother’s male models to shame, and yet the way his dark blonde hair was ruffled around his head made me think that he could care less about how he looked.
Rikko was saying something, but no words came out of my mouth.
And I tried. I couldn’t even use my history of stuttering as an excuse because it would be a total fallacy.
The truth was, Scott Strauss, SDU’s quarterback, soon-to-be number one draftee in the NFL, if the emcee at the College Sports’ event was to be believed, my brother’s frat brother and former enemy, held the unique power –
Of stealing my breath away.
Scott
My ex-girlfriend, Kara, was still cheering on the field when, Rikko, my best friend and Kara’s brother, asked us if we could go.
We drove to our frat house with me silent, which was almost ninety percent of the time and with Rikko yapping away about his escapades with the cheerleaders.
I loved my best friend, but sometimes I wished he would shut his mouth.
For a full minute.
“Kiki said we gotta get there before Bishop does,” he yammered away, his tight shirt bunching against his shoulders.
Since Under Armour made tight shirts hip, Rikko hadn’t stopped wearing them. Most of the time, I wondered what would happen if his shirt caught a nail and he’d be plastered against the wall or whatever the nail was attached to, and he’d have the hardest time disengaging himself from it.
“Right,” I nodded as I maneuvered my Audi to make the left turn.
“You know how Kiki gets excited for the dumbest shit,” he stated but there wasn’t a hint of annoyance in his voice. Both of us hadn’t gotten over calling Kara “Kiki.” She’d been Kiki to me since my family moved to Southlake and Rikko became my best friend after he joined me during lunch when no one wanted to have lunch with the new kid in school.
Kara. The thought of her still brought a sharp slice inside my chest.
I’d loved her for so long and just because she’d said she didn’t love me anymore, not in the way I wanted her to, didn’t make the pain go away.
“She wants to make it special for her rugby star,” Rikko said and I shook my head and focused on the road ahead.
I used to be the star in Kara’s life.
I used to be the guy she prepared these parties for.
But that was then.
This was now.
I’d seen the way Kara’s blue eyes lit up whenever she was with Bishop, and I almost always had to look away.
She watched him as if he could solve all the equations in the world for her.
I’d heard Cordello was a genius. Maybe he was, he always helped our frat brothers who had a hard time in their classes. It was easy to like the guy and I liked him.
Before he took my girlfriend away.
When Kara broke up with me I thought she was kidding at first.
Then I saw the resolution in her eyes, and in that moment, I knew that I had messed up. Big time.
I’d asked for time apart between us before. Most of the time it was so I could focus on football and having a girlfriend was a distraction.
For the most part, Kara wasn’t a drama queen, but I did feel guilty when I missed a lot of her calls and couldn’t Facetime with her because I wanted to watch film.
I tried to get back with her, but even if I wasn’t a genius like Cordello, I knew when the gig was up. My father’s act of blackmailing Kara from being expelled from SDU because she’d defended Hanna, her BFF, was the last straw that broke me.
I loved her, but I couldn’t keep her.
Not anymore.
I had to let her go.
I made the right decision, but it was still hard to swallow because when Kara and Bishop were hanging out in the living room of our frat house, I still found myself wanting to lift the couch, toppling them over. It was quite sickening, the way they were all over each other. As if they couldn’t keep an inch of space between them.
When I was with her, she kept a healthy distance from me and it was cool. She gave me space and I gave her hers.
But maybe that’s where our relationship went wrong.
We gave each other too much space and we found out that we were happier without each other.
“Empty space. Cool.” Rikko pointed out the space behind his Nissan GT-R and it broke me out of reminiscing memories of my relationship with his sister. Rikko, for all his antics, was the best friend a guy could have. He had an issue when I asked his sister to prom when she was 17, but didn’t say much when I dated her two years later.
Much could be said for the guy who sat in my car and didn’t let the drama between Bishop, me, and his sister taint our friendship. He let his sister decide who she wanted to be with.
And when she decided that she wanted to be with Bishop, Rikko had asked me to yield for her sake, and because Cordello was the one who made her happy.
I turned off the engine and as we walked to the door, I reached inside myself and breathed in.
As much as I loved being in college, I couldn’t wait for the challenges that awaited me in the NFL. The distance away from Kara and Bishop would be good for me. It would heal the broken heart that I was still nursing and I couldn’t wait to play football on the grand stage.
It was what I’d been waiting for…all my life.
My frat brothers were on their best behavior.
Some of them were huddled in the corner and there wasn’t a lot of arguing going on.
Meaning there was a girl around.
A girl that they respected. Or had to show respect.
All women had to be shown respect, but the oddity of the scene in front of me made me think that one of our frat brothers’ sisters were around.
Sisters were placed in a different category, for the very reason that they were related to the frat brothers.
I didn’t have a sister, but I knew that if I had one, I’d want her to be treated well.
Two plastic chairs that were haphazardly blown over by the wind caught my eye, so I placed them on top of each other and carried them inside.
I heard Rikko call someone Beauty. He called everyone different nicknames depending on his mood.
If my brothers weren’t acting all weird, I wouldn’t think anything was out of the ordinary.
Then I heard Takei say to Quan as they walked away from where Rikko was standing, “Damn, Bishop’s sister is hot. With a capital H.”
Quan sniggered and agreed before they both turned their hands up and gave me h
igh fives low in the air as a greeting.
It was then that my eyes lasered in on the small figure that was probably suffocating inside Rikko’s hug.
I heard a small grunt. Yep, she needed help.
“Jesus, leave her alone, dumbass,” I said as I slapped Rikko on the back.
I saw the top of her head emerge from the beast engulfing her since she was tiny, reminding me of those Disney fairies that Kara used to watch when she was younger.
Her hazel eyes met mine and they looked amused, almost smiling.
Her nose was sloped so gracefully, complimenting her full lips.
Lips that were stretched into a grin.
I’d met Bridgette Cordello.
Once.
It was at the American Express’ College Sports Awards.
Her brother and I weren’t speaking at that time, and Kara was within my arm’s reach.
But I couldn’t negate the pull that she had over me.
She looked me over, smiled, and dismissed me as if I was nothing but a speck of dust in her world.
She wasn’t rude or anything.
It was just the way she brushed me off.
Women often looked longer than a second at me.
But not Bridgette.
And the way she did it, in an almost non-obtrusive manner, nagged at me.
I couldn’t agree with Takei’s assessment of Bridgette.
She wasn’t HOT.
Her face was arresting; it made a man like me want to look more and want to find out what she was hiding beneath those mysterious hazel eyes.
The way her long dark brown hair framed her face…
No, I would definitely not call her hot.
It was too blasé, too simplistic of a word to describe her.
She was beautiful.
And when she finally smiled, twin dimples appeared between her cheeks…
Stunning.
And completely off limits.
“The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.”
Vince Lombardi
Present Day
Bridgette
“Am I doing this right?” Kaycee asked, her tiny brows etched in concentration.
I looked at the colorful rendition of “The Porkies” against the white watercolor paper and appraised it with a critical eye.
“There’s no right or wrong, Kaycee,” I said in a tender voice. She was a perfectionist. She wanted to do everything right on the first try. It was a good trait to have, but I wanted her to find it in herself to let go and unleash her artistic soul, where there were no lines for right or wrong. Art was like that. There were no boundaries and if you kept yourself contained within a box, you wouldn’t see the soul inside.
“But Miss B…I think I put too much of the green and I messed up the blue.” At the young age of seven, she’d already mastered the fine art of critiquing herself.
I gently patted her forehead. “Kaycee, embrace the imperfections. Your technique is great; you meshed the colors very well. I love it.”
Her scrunched up face didn’t look like she believed me.
“Where is this place?” I asked, knowing that the Porcupine Mountains were the long-kept secret of Michigan’s own. I’d never been there, but it was featured in Nature and Art, one of the magazines I subscribed to and I was awed by the backdrop of the vivid yellow, red, and orange against the green hardwoods. Add in the picturesque view of the Lake of the Clouds and I was a sold tourist. One day, I’d visit it…among many others.
“It’s where my daddy’s from.” She said in a small voice, “We hiked the trails there and I loved every second of it.”
“You miss your daddy, Cee-Cee?” Christopher, the eight year-old who always sat by Kaycee, asked.
Kaycee’s blue eyes slowly welled up in tears and I opened my shoulders so I could give her comfort.
Kaycee’s father passed away from a long battle with bone cancer five months ago. Two months ago, her mother enrolled her in my class after they’d moved from Michigan to be closer to her mother’s side of the family. I’d been a witness to her grief, to several of these kids’ grief whether it be the loss of a loved one or the loss of a perceived ability to do something.
It wasn’t the crying that tore at my heart as it was the way she held herself back when an activity evoked a memory of her father. She’d sit so still and wouldn’t say a word for at least ten minutes, and when she finally did, she acted as if nothing was wrong.
It tugged at my core because maybe I saw glimpses of me in her. The pretense that everything was fine when the truth was that everything was falling apart. The hopeless feeling that gnawed and never fully left.
Seven children of varying ages between seven to nine surrounded Kaycee and gave her a hug.
Some kids didn’t want hugs.
Kaycee wasn’t one of those kids.
She embraced hugs as if they were her lifelines.
Mary, dressed up from head to toe in her favorite color purple and her hair up in pigtails, remarked, “My Nampa says that we all go to heaven.”
Kaycee wiped the tears from her face. She seldom cried and it was good to see her cry, to know that she was able to let it out and channel her emotions through her tears. Eyes wet with sadness, she looked up at me and said, “Is heaven a good place, Ms. B?”
When I took on this job, I didn’t know what it was going to bring me.
I applied because it was close to school, and the hours that they needed me for didn’t conflict with my other job. The ten to fifteen hours I was here every week recharged me enough to face the drilling tasks of classwork and reality.
The 580-square foot room became my niche, and in it I allowed myself to be the person that I wasn’t expected to be.
Not the Bridgette that my mother wanted.
Not the Bridgette that my brother thought I was.
Not the Bridgette that my classmates, co-workers, and friends saw me as.
In here, the paintings and the art lessons that I provided under the supervision of Ms. Eggers, the full-time teacher, opened me up to feel and unravel the emotions I’d bottled up throughout my childhood.
When I watched a child paint their joy and pain through oil, watercolor, pastel, or acrylic, I felt grateful that they got to share that with someone, whether it be me or someone else.
Everyone’s brain was wired differently.
My brother could see an equation and he could determine the answer in an instant. It was the same way when he played hockey, or rugby, or any sport he put his mind to.
Me?
I remembered the tiniest details of everything I saw. From the lint in the carpet to the yellow stain on Nanny Tilda’s wall from the mustard on the turkey sandwich she made me when I was five.
Language was another thing that came easy for me. Chinese was the first language I mastered. Then came French, Latin, and Italian. I excelled at knowing the nuances of the languages, but I failed at the part where I had to talk to people.
Painting was my outlet.
It allowed me to speak when I had no voice.
I saw Kaycee missing her dad through the mix of blues and greens outlined with grey and black shadows. I could picture Christopher’s love for his new puppy, Cookie, after he’d lost his beagle, Marty, through the yellows and oranges he splattered on the blank sheet of paper.
Joey’s misery at having a new brother was evident in the muted colors of brown and black. And Josiah’s anger at being put on timeout for ruining his sister’s Doc Mcstuffins toy was all over the different shades of red he’d shown me.
Kaycee was waiting on me to answer her and I looked at the expectant cherubic faces that surrounded me, “Heaven is a good place. It’s where the best people go. Every time something makes you feel sad, close your eyes, think of the people and things that you love. Make them form a circle just like we’re doing right now. And that…that’s heaven.”
I was going to miss my tiny partners in crime for another week, but that was the way li
fe went.
It wasn’t for the weary.
Bishop texted me earlier asking if we could do brunch before he left for Germany for an exhibition game. Brunches were our thing. He’d asked if he could bring his girlfriend, Kara, to some of them and of course I said yes.
I liked Kara.
She was the perfect match to my brother’s intense personality.
“Bridge, what time are you off tonight?” My roommate, Rianna, asked from her bedroom door. She was probably working on her marketing presentation. It was a big part of her grade. Getting a C would not bode well for her post grad studies.
We met at an art store in Westwood, and after a dinner and a subsequent lunch, she told me that she was looking for a roommate. My lease at my first apartment wasn’t up at that time, but we stayed in touch and once my lease was up, we moved into a two bedroom apartment within walking distance from our school.
She was a nice girl. Shy at first like me, but once I got to know her, she had a potty mouth that could rival a sailor on a bad day.
“Eleven. I’m closing,” I said in a loud voice, trying to locate my work outfit.
“Okay, text me when you get in. Not sure if I can spend another day holed up with this thing…I might go out for a drink with Evan.” Evan was her classmate. He was extremely handsome and extremely gay. They became friends over a design project and bonded over their love for swear words.
“Tell him I said hi. Maybe we could hang out next week,” I sounded out. I was making an empty promise because next week was as hectic as this week but who knew. “I have one day off and I can manage nachos and sangria.”
“Cool.” Her voice drifted off and I knew that she was going to be knee deep in her world of fashion so I took this time to grab my clothes and get in the shower.
It was only two in the afternoon, but it felt like ten o’clock at night already.
As I stood under the warm spray of water, I thought of all the things my mother said the last time she talked to me. My mother loved to talk…about her plans for me. About herself. About all the things she should have done.
