by Nivia Borell
Sophia’s mouth gapes open, but I crane my head to the door. Her lips press into a thin line, remembering the pact we made. She bows her head as her hands push herself off the frame. When she grasps the door handle, she adds as she tilts halfway toward me. “Thank you. I am sorry, Bria… for everything.”
Her words mean nothing, but still... left alone to pick myself up as the night’s just begun, I’m not so sure I will survive it. Silent tears roll down ruining not only my soul, but my makeup, and perhaps washing some of the walls away. In the darkness, the monsters are powerful because they play tricks with your mind, and you’re in their territory. In the light, they’re weak, their roar just a distant echo. I’m not accustomed to being outside my cave.
I plod toward the couch and grab my shirt. I let my body sink into the plush material as the silence penetrates me. My head slumps on the frame, and I exhale in perfect synchrony with the ticking of my watch.
DAMIEN
From my spot in the farthest and shadow-casted corner of the bar, I entertain a glass of whiskey letting the burn ease the unsettled feeling inside me. I cock my head and observe the scene behind me as a bystander with my right hand clutching a glass—laughter mingling with the beats, undulating bodies and scanning eyes for a mating contest—a preview to a night of release. One year ago, I would have been in the middle of the scene. Hell, by now I would have taken someone to bed and be done partaking in my kind of pleasant time passing activities.
But now with tension crippling me and paranoia flooding my brain, I’m not inclined to catch up. If it’s the mask, my back, or my constant snarl tattooed on my face, I have no idea, but I am left alone and excused from the social mingling. My eyes bore on the door my sister and Bria disappeared through too long ago for my liking. And then the restroom door reveals my sister, and my fingers freeze on the glass. She plods along, her upper body supported by the hand she trails on the wall. Her mask does little to hide the anguish behind her teary eyes and sagging shoulders. I have no clue as to what happened in the restroom, but I’ve never seen my sister in such a state of mind. I gulp the rest of the fine alcohol and place the glass on the bar. I vacate my secluded spot and stride toward Sophia. I snatch her arm and scoot her to the first floor.
“Soph, what happened?” I ask.
“I have to go. I…” She stumbles, but I catch her. “I can’t, Damien. I have to get out of here.”
I pin her shoulders and shake her. “What’s wrong? Dammit, tell me.”
“I got some answers, and Bria was right. I should have left it in the past.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, I know it must have something to do with what I overheard.
Her head shakes, and her face scrunches up with turmoil.
“I’ve held so much rage and hatred toward her for so long without realizing Bria was the one who lost everything,” Sophia mouths, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“She made her own bed, Sophia. Are you taking her side, now? She cheated on me with some drunken bloke who just left her there. She destroyed our future and nearly the whole family. What’s wrong with you?” My nostrils flare as I tower over her.
“Don’t be stupid. I know what she caused, but when I think of how much she loved you…” she pauses and continues, “… do you think she could really cheat on you? You were the only man she ever saw. I would catch her daydreaming about you when you were not there. Her eyes sparkled when she talked with and about you. Could such a girl give up everything for one night with someone else? What I saw and heard… no one deserves it. And the way she takes it with such ease and finality, just showed me that, on the same day, you both went to a place of agony, hollowness, and hurt never to resurface. You were never the same again. What a tragic way to end an epic love.”
“What are you talking about?” My heart hammers into my chest as sadness clouds her features. My muscles tighten in my body as I run my fingers through my hair. I knew it was a bad idea to come here, but I never expected it to be a fucking nightmare. I am redirected seven years back to the last time my heart galloped like this in my chest.
Seven years earlier…
I remember the joy that burst in my core on the first of May. It was Bria’s birthday. She was eighteen, and I could finally propose. Everything was planned. I would pick her up and take her to our green place of earthly heaven. I had bought the land surrounding the lake and our spot because, first, I would ask her to marry me, and afterward, we could make plans for the house.
I loved her with all my heart and being, never understanding the force of such love. I wanted to live it and show her every day for the rest of our lives how much I adored her. That was until I swaggered into her hotel room and stalled. Bria peered at me through long lashes as she beckoned me and patted the spot in front of her. Before my eyes stood a blonde angel wrapped half in a white sheet with her wayward hair covering her silky breasts. It would have been the perfect image of beauty, but in me arose this storm that would drown my heart into the depths of suffering and betrayal. Her brows rose, and a thin line appeared on her forehead, her eyes focused on my hands balled in fists beside me. She realized then that something else held my attention and halted me from going to her. She tilted her head in the direction of my gaze and froze.
Bria said nothing.
She didn’t even blink.
Her gaze hovered between the two of us as her hand flew and covered her mouth.
I couldn’t move, my feet were glued to the floor. The sleazy scumbag awoke with a yawn, rubbed the sleep away from his murky eyes and let out a satisfied groan. The corner of his mouth turned up as he kissed her forehead and had the audacity to thank her for the best night of his life. Since he was naked, I assumed he was talking about having sex with my future wife. And then, he hopped off the bed, stretched his lanky limbs, got dressed, and even winked before he slid out.
Time stood still. Bria’s mouth widened and sealed repeatedly, and it reminded me of a fish on the shore desperate to inhale oxygen. The same with her eyes which brewed so much conflict, eyeing the ruffled spot beside her and the semi-ajar door. Following these two reactions, she put her head in her hands and rocked herself. I was rendered immobile. Somehow, when my mouth decided it could function again, I asked this stupid question. It’s a question no one ever really wants to know the answer to because, in this particular situation, the question should not have existed.
“Bria, why?” My cracking voice startled me as I took one step toward her only to halt at the recollection of why I didn’t go to her in the first place. I teetered until my back knocked against the wall. Only her whimpers and my heart pummeling penetrated the silence. The answer never came. I lingered, I don’t know for how long, for half an eternity maybe. I had to get out of there, but not before I said what was for me goodbye to the love of my life, the same one who shattered not only my being and heart but also our love.
“I would have given you the world and more, the way I always have. But now, Bria, I leave my promise of a forever in eternity here with you, in this room, where it all crashed down, where the beginning of our forever ended.”
The door rattled behind me, and not even her weeping, which once would have made me fly to her in a heartbeat, reined me in. I stumbled to my black Aston Martin as the keys jingled in my hand. I plummeted into my seat and slammed my fists into the wheel. The tears kept pouring down, and my heart yelled and split at once.
When I arrived at one of our stores, I bought not one, but four bottles of Lagavulin 12.
For the next six months, I’ve known only numbness, emptiness, hollowness, and fine alcohol until the day I drowned the last piece of love for her and drank away the final memory of the last eighteen years. I was reborn. Bria ceased to be the reason for my new existence because she buried who I was in that nightmare of a hotel room. That part belonged to her, and so I left it with her.
Present day…
After all this time, this one memory still has the power to bring me to my kn
ees, and I didn’t realize my hands are wrapped into fists until my sister frees my fingers and brings me back to the here and now.
“Damien, why are you here?” my sister asks placating.
Well, that’s not a question I want to hear. Fuck me if I have the answer, so I keep my mouth shut and press it in a tight line.
“Don’t you think it is odd that after seven years she decides to throw a party? Look around you, Damien, and tell me what you see. Everything screams this is her goodbye, and it kills me all over again because this time it looks so final. And it’s perfect timing with our parents away. We may not know her anymore, but… she might… I don’t even want to say it out loud.”
When I heard about the party, to say I was shocked is an understatement. And, of course, I didn’t get an invitation as if the lack of it would ever have deterred me. And even though I gave her up seven years ago and convinced myself that this stupid thing which still connects me with her can go to hell, I still came.
Now, though, as I peer around me, I recognize the truth in what my sister has said. Yes, leave it to Bria to throw a party and then leave. But if I don’t give a damn anymore, why is my heart screaming in pain all over again? A thin layer of sweat covers my body.
I focus on my sister again, but like me, she seems lost down memory lane and trudges away, leaving me there cemented to the floor and thinking of her. She’s probably in a private room as some things never change like her obsession with privacy and her taste in wine. She drinks only Château Mouton Rothschild and always enjoys not being recognized. I grow even more impatient with myself as I still remember her preferences. Torn between leaving and finding her, I demand my senses to detect her, and as if on autopilot, I stride to find her.
I slide through the door as ample and dark paneled walls enclose me. Like everywhere here, the room is suffused into yellow, faint light, which is fine by me. In Bria’s absence from my life, darkness is my friend and companion. She doesn’t detect me from her place at the polished bar where Alexander is right beside her looking like a lost puppy, a fool in love as his dilated eyes drink her in. Been there, done that. In the beginning, I felt a grudging compassion for him, but now, if he is that stupid, he deserves what the ice queen throws at him. I call to mind they never were together—but what the fuck do I care? I shake my head in frustration as I take a seat at the opposite end of the bar and order a glass of the Macallan Rare Cask scotch, thinking of the last time I drowned my pain in it because of her destructive presence. Well, this is my second glass for the evening, and it won’t be the last. One year ago, I soaked my tastebuds in the same luxurious taste and didn’t stop until the last drop hit my throat and anesthetized me.
My fingers turn white as I grasp the whiskey glass and drink the thought of how fucking beautiful she is down my throat. Her head dips down, and her long golden-brown hair surrounds her like a halo. Bria chews on her plump bottom lip, and just for a moment, I wished it is my tongue tasting her sweetness. She taps her finger on her crossed legs, and I salivate at the thought of them wrapped around me. I toss this thought as I realize she looks rather vulnerable, the contrast to how sexy she appears with her clothes hugging her slim curves and those slender but toned legs as saliva gathers in my mouth. I grunt in frustration and adjust my slacks. She clutches that damn microphone in her hands as if it has the power to hold her together and fidgets on the black leather barstool. Meanwhile, I leer at her as she nibbles on her full lips, and the desire to do it myself makes me want to bash my head against something. I question if I have ever had an ounce of self-preservation when it comes to her. I should have stayed away. I haven’t seen her in twelve months, and still, all it takes is one peek at her, and I’m screwed once again. A muffled grunt exits my throat at the unfairness of it all.
BRIA
Present day continued…
After the whole Sophia fiasco, I shake off my bewildered state of mind, jostle my strained muscles into action, and mosey toward the private area in search of Alex. Its timeless ambience of rich black leather, golden lights, and intricate dark paneled walls surround him as he sits at the opulent bar with his usual glass of cognac and a glass of wine ready for me. He babbles about showing and telling me something as if we haven’t talked for days, but I dismiss him with a hand gesture. Something simmers in me, and I can’t grasp what. It’s not helping that his eyes are clouded in dots of uncertainty as his left leg bounces, and instead of savoring the amber liquid, he swallows it as if it were water.
I must admit this side of Alex makes me squirm. I clasp the microphone and hold it to my chest. One of the staff gives a thumb up, and the five-minute video of my life in photos flashes on the screen. I wish them to memorialize me as I used to be, and everyone here tonight is in the photos, my way of saying thank you and goodbye. A pant quakes my body as my eyes bore into the screen.
“Hello, dear friends, and welcome to my party,” I begin. “From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you all for joining me tonight.” I want to punch Alex in the face when he leans in and mouths the words, ‘What heart, sweetie?’
Leave it to him to find the best moments for being… well, himself. And here I thought something is out of place with him. I guess my senses are dulled tonight.
“As I’m sure everyone assumes, we’re here to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday party, but tonight is not only about my birthday or me. Tonight is about all of us.
“The theme of the party is Oblivion. I’m sure everyone has something he or she wants to change, forget, or erase. Well, we all know life doesn’t always unfold as we would wish, so we do what we are most capable of doing… we adapt, even though we are torn, lost, and want to give up. But tonight, my friends, for a few hours, I ask you all to allow yourselves to take a break. This is my birthday gift, for you to pause our best friend, time, and breathe and drink and let yourselves dive into… oblivion!”
I pause and end my speech with, “The moment the video ends, party as if there is no tomorrow, for we can never be sure.” Some of the guests are about to applaud, but I’m not fond of such acts of recognition, so I promptly nod to signal for the video to commence. Everything hushes as my life in pictures emerges, and I peek through the tainted window to the ballroom.
It’s strange to see myself in this video. People hold their breath as they recognize themselves. These are memories of happier times before I lost everything. There are giggles and claps. At least I give my peers something to be happy about, to enjoy. I haven’t seen the video myself until now, so much for being a control freak. I trusted Sarah with it. We met in Barcelona in a coffee shop when she knocked into me and made my white shirt a brown, iced coffee mess. I am sure she didn’t see me as I had to tilt my head to notice two widened eyes gazing at me and a blush covering her round cheeks.
It was perhaps two weeks after I left the hospital on a trip Quinn, Alex, and I took. It was not the apologies she offered me but the determination to make up for her ‘idiotic clumsiness,’ her words not mine. And so I had to accept her offer to drink a coffee with her the next day. I could tell she detected something was off with me as I caught her probing stare more than once, but I tried my best to act normal. I smiled when she cracked a joke, and her heart-shaped face beamed in response. I mirrored her pose and nodded my head at what she said. She beamed when telling me her plans to start a catering business. I could tell by the way she held herself dressed in casual jeans and an elegant white jacket, a perfectly styled auburn bun on top of her head, pointed-up small nose, raised chin with a little bump in it, high shoulders, a focused stare, and a proud and fierce resolve set in her green-brown eyes that she would achieve everything she set her mind on. Sarah said she didn’t believe in coincidences, and the fact we were both from the same city made it hard not to give in and start a rather on and off camaraderie, both being busy women trying to demonstrate our worth. Let’s say we didn’t have much time to delve into something more than acquaintances.
She also owns the catering firm
that organized everything, Sarah beamed when I came up with the idea of the video. It was my only wish as she enjoys brainstorming with her clients over a hot cup of coffee. And when the darkness doesn’t overwhelm me, I seek her company out.
She adores my mother, Rebecca, and Soph’s demands and challenges. I introduced them when I came back from the states, and since then, she’s always on board for one event or the other. With her talent, determination, and hard work, she has succeeded in establishing a name for herself. I am proud of her. She has been here for me in the only way that matters to me, she let me be me—private. After years, I’m sure she settled and accepted the idea I am different in both my professional and private life.
Over the years, Sarah must have overheard one story or another about me, the woman in the corner always in the company of Alex, with a smile smeared on my lips resembling more the one of a Joker. Tidbits of information had to slip about how my personality split into the now curt and attentive one with an aloof manner and an arm’s length distance even with my family. I make sure I am as remote as possible from one person—the bane of my heart—who made a show of his almost manwhore-like antics and proud stance. Sarah must have witnessed at least one uncomfortable situation when Damien and I were in the same space, and everyone tried too hard to overplay it behind faux laughing sounds and loudly clinking crystal champagne glasses, not overlooking the few times when people trapped us to congratulate us for our monumental achievements of one after another thriving store.
