by Nivia Borell
She doesn’t answer but nods and bites the inside of her cheek.
“Why, Bria? Why did you destroy us, then?” My voice cracks as pain squeezes my heart in its claws.
A few tears run down her cheek, and with my thumb, I pick one up. I have to feel how its salty taste connects with my blood vessels.
“I don’t know, Damien, and nothing I can say or do will ever change it, so end your mission of making me suffer because it won’t give us anything back.”
A heavy puff of air flees my body. I shift my posture, my head resting now against the bed frame, my arms folded over my chest, and my eyes shut. The bed shifts, and when I open my eyes, she stands before me with her face cradled in her hands.
“But do you think it is right, Bria? You left me in pieces, not even knowing why you did what you did, which was a thousand times worse than knowing there was a motive behind your action. You took everything from me, and now you expect me just to forget. What do you still want from me, Bria? Because I swear, I would give it to you because everything of worth in me was always for you.”
“I want you to be happy.”
It’s not my eyes rolling but my brain at hearing the obnoxious notion. That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
“Happy! Give me a damn good reason to be happy,” I demand and snarl.
“So life is worth living, Damien.” She makes a great gesture with her hand before dropping it on her lap.
“Yes, right, because you exude happiness. How do you make it bearable?”
“I made a promise, and this is my motivation for going on.”
Something in the back of my mind nudges me to dissect her words, but it is impossible with her grip in proximity.
“Why do you feel so right, Bria? Why do you still fit in this room, here with me, after we both know what you did?”
She crawls toward me and cages my face in her soft hands. With reassuring-filled eyes, she says, “I was made to feel right in your arms and to fit you, you used to fathom it.”
“And you gave it all away for one night, Bria.”
The hurt in our voices is thick in the air. It envelops us and creates a dark, impermeable veil around us.
“I know, but I have to live with the repercussion of it all, not you. I never intended for you to share the same path as mine but to find happiness again.”
“Well, you should have thought before betraying me because you sure made it impossible for me ever to find it again. Have you any idea what you truly caused, Bria?” I shout trying to shake some sense into her. Does she hear the nonsense she babbles? I peel her hands off me.
She sighs, tilts her head to the side, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Damien, I can’t change it. I would give my life for a different outcome.”
I clutch her face in my hands and deadpan. “You were my happiness, you idiot. I’ve lived and breathed for you, and you sliced me open, Bria. Look at me, dammit, deep into my core, and you’ll find your face as my last memory of living my happiness.”
She lodges her arms around my torso and weeps as my chest expands with my loaded groan. She says, “I loved you, Damien, with all I had in me. You have to believe me. You were my past and present and future. So many nights I fantasized another version of us who made it through to some parallel universe, who are growing old together and are still in love. How crazy is that?”
“One where they somehow found their happy ending, Bria?” Irony coating every word I utter.
She peeks at me through moist lashes and asks, “Don’t you believe in happy endings anymore?”
“I’ve lost mine because, without you, there are no more happy endings for me, just an end without the happy part.”
Bria shakes her head. “I know it’s too late for us, and still sometimes I can’t control the images in my head. The pain makes it feel real.”
“Yes, Bria, it is too late for us, and as it seems, we’re both masochists. Why didn’t we ever try BDSM, I ask myself.”
“It’s not funny, Damien.”
“No, Bria, there can’t be any fun in such a pathetic fate.”
“Do you somehow think of us? What do you see?”
“You first.”
Her elbows rest on her knees, and her head nestles in her palm as she glances at me. She whispers, “I see a lasting future, Damien, for two kids who grew up together, fell in love, and built a home together.”
My fingers scrap the spot where my heart hammers in my chest. I find her eyes and keep them locked on mine before answering, “I see a boy loving the girl with so much passion and need she was everything he ever noticed. I watch him proposing to her on her eighteenth birthday in the place where they would build their home together. I follow laughter and love and babies. I envision our children who will never experience a day of life because they will never be ours to have, Bria. Just thinking about it makes me want to put a bullet through my heart.”
“Let me have it, please, Damien. Let me buy the land from you. I’ll pay as much as you want. I’ll do anything, but please allow me to have it.”
I slam my eyes shut. I need a reprieve from the visual of her reclining next to me. It plays havoc with my mind. I am resolute in my decision but hand her an impossible loophole. “Never, Bria. That piece of ground was intended to be a gift for my future wife who should have been you, Bria, but you never will be. In honor of the girl who would have said yes on the first of May six years ago, I will keep the land. If you can bring her back, it’s yours.”
“That’s impossible, Damien, and you know it,” she whimpers, and even though the sounds tear something in me, I can’t give her what she wants, not anymore.
“And since you know your attempt is futile, you’ll never have the land. Or maybe after I’m gone.”
Whatever warped connection we have makes us shift toward the other. Just one moment of weakness as she leans in my direction and my hands go on their own accord as I uphold her and place her head on my shoulder.
She cranes her head and asks me with a trembling voice, “What are we, Damien?”
“I can tell you what we aren’t. We are not friends, we are not lovers, and we are not family.”
Her fingers draw circles on my chest as she goes on. “Why don’t you say what we are then, or are you afraid to say it out loud?”
This infuriating woman—she knows all my weaknesses and plays her cards like a pro. Just like that, her mood shifts. She is giving me a whiplash. My mouth finds her ear, and I whisper, “You know the answer, but if you want it to hear it from me, then here you go. We are nothing, Bria. We plummeted from everything to nothing, and we are at the end of our forever. Are you happy with the answer now, Bria? I’m holding you because I know the moment I let you go, what I will see in you is the woman who tore my heart apart, my nemesis.”
And with a sweet and pleading voice, she says, “Then hold me for a little while longer, Damien, please.”
I clutch her to my chest, she lets a small yelp out, and burrows herself further in my arms. “I don’t have it in me not to, Bria, at least not for now, because in this instant, I have everything I never dreamed of having again. And it’s wrong, but I am still incapable of not holding you. For the first time in years, I can breathe without a giant stepping on my bruised chest. Do you regret it, Bria?”
“Every second of my life, Damien, with every fiber of my being.”
“I wish I had it in me to forget what you did and forgive you and not see his face and you two together in bed, but I can’t, Bria. With all the love I had for you, I am incapable of removing the image from my mind.”
She caresses my cheek melting the restraints surrounding my heart. “I don’t blame you. My only wish is for you to find happiness and love again. At least promise me you’ll try.”
“Well, Bria, you lost the right to demand anything from me a while ago.”
“Still stubborn.”
Why can’t she quit stroking me? I feel her crawling into my senses.
“Still the sa
me man and at the same time different. You are fascinating and lovable, Damien. Stop trying to prove me wrong. I can’t and won’t ever believe the opposite.”
Her chaste kisses on my neck are undoing me as my fingers dig into her waist, and my breathing gallops.
“But you, Bria, you’ve changed, and I recognize nothing about you. The only familiar things are the way you still fit in my arms and your flowery spring scent, but everything else I can’t distinguish. The love of my life is a stranger, and it is the saddest part of it all.”
“Would it have been different if I were still the old me?”
No, categorically no! I shake my head.
“No, because she was mine, and I wouldn’t have survived knowing my Bria was now someone else’s, so I am rather thankful for it. Because that stranger can be with another man, but my Bria not.”
“That Bria was only yours and only for you.”
The sincerity gleaming in her eyes makes the pain inside me stretch my ribcage.
“And so, Bria, why doesn’t it seem true or right?”
“Because of one night, one mistake, and one unhappy ending.”
“I want you so bad right now I ache. I hunger to erase everything from my mind for just a little bit, so I can love and kiss you. Even now, you have all the power, and I’m still a puppet in your hands.”
My verbal diarrhea would have bothered me if I wasn’t this petrified by the desire to flip an ounce of the burden from my heart.
“Leave us in the past, Damien, where we belong when I was yours, and you were still mine, and we made love for love’s sake and not to chase after something for a while in the land of absentmindedness. Let us be beautiful like we are in our memories. Don’t corrupt the memory of us by making it dirty. If you take this away from us, what will remain, Damien?”
“Maybe this is what I long for. Don’t you owe it to me to let me have my way because of everything you deprived me of?”
I crane her chin but sensing my intention, she keeps her eyes shut. I groan at her next words. “Then take me, Damien, and doom us for good. Maybe you’re right.”
I pin her under me and nudge her to peel her eyes open. If I did it, I would have nothing left, so instead, I pause and lodge myself on top of her.
“Why do you torture yourself like this, Damien?”
“Because I am a fucking masochist, Bria, as we have both concluded, and because pain is my only way of gratifying the emptiness inside me. Does my answer suit you, my soulless queen?”
I don’t know what I expected her to do, but her hands shot to my back and caress me.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s above my understanding, Damien.”
“What are you after, Bria? Do you want to calm the storm inside me? Let me warn you first, you’ll only drown yourself in it, believe me.”
She places her warm lips on my neck, heat rushing through me, and then Bria whispers, “I could misunderstand it and take it as if you are preoccupied with my wellbeing.”
My eyes tunnel into hers. “Bria, all the love is locked away, but I swear if anything happened to you, I would not survive it. Somehow, we were linked in love and afterward fused in suffering, and if it were to break, I would have nothing else. So, yes, I care about your safety because I am a selfish bastard.”
Her fingers massage my scalp as she places a chaste kiss on my jaw and feelings long gone threaten to resurface as I shake them off.
“Do you think we’ll get another chance in another life to make things different?”
I cup her smooth and delicate face and shelter her as if she is the most precious thing I will hold, and my heart contorts into an unpleasant twitch as I force my fingers to stay still.
“I would curse the universe if it didn’t allow us to see where all the love between us would have led. But let me assure you of something, Bria, our souls are old companions, and they will find a way to be together. They will search for each other, and when we meet again, I will love you at any time, universe, or form. I will find you every time and love you more so you are never inclined to repeat what you did. But I don’t know. I loved you with everything in me. There was no more left to give, and still…” I pause. “If this is my curse, I’ll take it, Bria, every time as long as I get to feel your love for me.”
I peel my hands from her face as I stretch my neck toward the wide window. I ask myself where this confession comes from and keeps pouring out of me. I am showing her the deepest corners of my damaged soul.
With her trembling thumb, she caresses my chin as she redirects my attention to her. She then cups my clenched jaw in her small, silky hands and says in a raspy tone, “I promise you, Damien, in another life and another time, I’ll make it right for you.”
We contemplate each other with the gathering wetness in our eyes blurring our vision, making promises for another life when here we are in flesh and blood and not finding it in us to either hold on or let go.
I press my lips against her knuckles sucking in the vibration of her quivering body. I drop her hands and observe her as she leans on the bed and pats the mattress on the spot beside her. I take it as an invitation as I lay my head over her heart playing drums and ask her, “For whom does your heart beat now, Bria?”
She plays with a strand of my hair, and answers, “For no one, Damien, but it used to beat only for you.”
“Do you love him, Bria, like you used to love me?”
Can’t I make my damn mouth shut up? I slam my eyes oozing the frustration away.
“I could love no one more than I have loved you.” Her answer may be a blatant lie, but it soothes my battered heart. And yet, I can’t get past the fact she avoids answering whether she loves Alexander. But, of course, she does. What a stupid fool I am, and my body tenses up.
“No, Damien. My answer is no, not in the way you think and never in the way you imagine.”
Something erupts from my heart, and I let myself go limp in her arms and enjoy the closeness we share. Is this how you feel at peace, I muse, lost in her sweet smell, her small curves, and soft touch? In her arms, everything else can go to hell.
Her next question slices my heart open like a scalpel does in the dexterous fingers of a surgeon because I am not prepared. I believed I would never have to answer such a question, and to her of all people.
“How many women, Damien?” In her homely embrace and in the room surrounded by our past, guilt assaults me. My voice cracks, “Too many to recall, Bria. I stopped counting a while ago.”
My insides burn with shame. I don’t know what I expected. I would have coped well with every other physical reaction than her kissing the top of my head with her moist lips that gut me.
“You never were the superficial type, so why, Damien?”
“I wanted to erase you from me, to forget you, and it was what I had to offer and all I wanted to get… a quick release, a little pleasure, a warm body.”
Why is she still holding me, and why am I am incapable of darting away? Only this woman snaps my brain shut.
“You mean sex?”
“Yes, Bria. I mean sex or fucking. You know, when a guy sticks his cock in a pussy without feelings but seeking a release. I thought you knew all about it. I mean, you were the first of the two of us to experience it.”
Her hand patting my hair stalls, but then she continues, another blow to my core. Her gentleness to my harshness is not something I can deal well with. Where did her fire disappear to?
“If it helps you, Damien.”
“I’m tired, Bria.”
“Sleep then, baby.”
“Will you still be here when I wake up?”
“Well, in this particular position, it would be hard for me to move.”
“Good, then. And Bria?”
“Yes, Damien.”
“I made love only to you, and the others were just fucking around. I hope you understand the difference. It is not an apology, though, so don’t misinterpret.”
I lift my
chin, as she dips her head, and places a soft kiss on my brow, and her quivering lips pierce my chest. “Okay, Damien. Sleep well and dream of something beautiful.”
A confession escapes my mouth as I hold her gaze prisoner. “Everything I ever dream about is you with me, sharing a bed and a life, so why should I torment myself with fantasies when I’ll wake up to a nightmare, Bria, to a life where you are not mine day in and day out.”
“I’ll carry you, Damien.”
I seal my eyes and wrap my arms around her waist. “I won’t fall, Bria. I learned a long time ago how to fly all by myself. Don’t be my rescuer after being the reason for my destruction. It doesn’t seem right, don’t you agree?”
“You’re right.”
With my head plopped in her lap as she keeps caressing me and her touch undoing me, I admit, “Your body reminds me of the only home where I wish to belong, Bria, but everything else about you is cold, so cold. Why, Bria?”
“There is no warmth in numbness, Damien. You have to make sacrifices to survive.”
“What did you sacrifice, Bria?”
“My heart, Damien. My heart and myself.”
I wish to continue and request her to stop talking in riddles, but my eyelids grow heavy, and sleep overtakes me. In her warm arms and soft body, I allow myself to rest, and my world is whole again.
Just for now I repeat to myself in case some parts of me need clarification.
DAMIEN
I wake up to her sweet scent and the divine sensation of her fingers threading through my hair, and my scalp prickle with goosebumps. My hands enfold her in an unyielding grip. Is my subconscious making a statement? I shake it off and weaken my hold on her. The room is submerged in darkness now, illuminated only by the dim light provided by the lamp on the black bedside table and the moon trying to peek in. For a while, we are veiled in privacy and seclusion, cloaked from the outside. My rib cage expands with the realization she stayed. I need another confirmation as I crane my head and get lost in her scoping hazel eyes.
“Did you at least get some sleep, Bria?”
My voice is heavy with sleep, but I feel rested. I toss the thought that it’s due to her.
