by April Fire
“I’m sorry,” I replied, feeling impotent. “I just…maybe in another life, you know?”
I looked at him- Darius, still the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on, even when he was glowering at me as he was at that second. I wanted to reach out and caress him, to run my fingers down his cheek one last time.
Why was I doing this, again? Because he wasn’t the kind of guy you dated, he was a bit of fun, a man with a dangerous lifestyle that could easily have ended up consuming everything around him. It didn’t matter how much he liked me, because I was the one calling this.
Those little flickers of doubt were nothing more than a diversion from what was really important. Even as I found myself second-guessing my decision, I kept firm. I needed to prove to myself that I could do this- that I could walk away from bad news when I saw it. He ran his hands over his head and grabbed his phone from the side of the couch.
“Well, if I was nothing more than some fuck to you, I guess I should be on my way,” he announced, his voice filled with incredulity- I could tell that some part of him was waiting for me to call him back, to admit that I’d made a mistake and that I wanted him to stay and please, couldn’t we just go to bed?
Or maybe that was my mind filling in the blanks where there were none, hoping there was still a glimmer of hope for the two of us. He went to the door and grabbed the handle, pausing for a moment before he turned back to me. Our eyes met, and I had to fight the urge to run towards him, wrap my arms around his neck, and beg him not to go. I clenched my fists and waited for him to deliver whatever final blow he had waiting for me.
“I might be doing something you don’t approve of, but I would never have let it affect you,” he murmured, his voice suddenly soft and stripped of all the anger that had been bubbling in him only moments before. “You missed out on something good here, Emilia.”
And with that, he opened the door, stepped out into the hallway, and was out of my apartment and, apparently, my life. I clapped my hand over my mouth as the seriousness of what had happened finally sunk in. I climbed into bed, spending the night wondering endlessly if I had made the right decision or if I had just let a man I was meant to be with walk out of my life for good.
Chapter Five
Emily
“And so, you guys are broken up now?” Nina’s eyes widened at me as I finished recounting the story of the night before, and I nodded. My head felt heavy, as though it was filled with rocks- I hadn’t got a lot of sleep the night before, and my eyes were still bleary. I had woken up wondering if everything that had gone down was some kind of bad dream, but I knew that it wasn’t.
“Oh, honey,” she reached over the table to squeeze my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“We weren’t even dating,” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Yeah, the look on your face is telling me a different story right now,” she raised her eyebrows. “You liked him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we were meant to be together or some shit,” I shrugged. “It doesn’t work like that. He’s hot, but he boxes illegally for a fucking living. I mean, that’s not the kind of shit I want in my life on a regular basis.”
“I bet he would have stopped for you,” Nina murmured, her eyes suddenly getting that faraway, dreamy look in them that I usually only saw when she was talking about a dude. “It seems like he was really into you.”
“I think he was,” I admitted. “I mean, he turned up to the show, after all.”
“Are you sure you made the right decision?” She leaned across the table towards me. I rolled my eyes. This wasn’t exactly the kind of support I needed from her at that moment in time.
“No, I’m really not,” I sighed. “But I think it’s just hormones getting in the way of my logical thinking. I liked him, but not enough to overlook all of that stuff, you know?”
“You weren’t even willing to give it a try?” She prompted, and I reached for my cup, ignoring everything that she was implying.
“You couldn’t be a little more supportive about this?” I snapped. “I think I made the right decision. I’ll let you know if that changes. Okay?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Nina replied defensively, but then her face softened as she seemed to realize the error of her ways. “I know it sucks. But you’re right- you couldn’t fit that into your life, it’s too dangerous. You might have been arrested or something, just for knowing about it.”
“How are things going with your man?” I waved over the waitress so we could get our bill. “You haven’t spoken about him in a while.
“Yeah, well, that’s because we stopped seeing each other,” she shrugged.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied, furrowing my brow at her. “You don’t seem very cut up about it…?”
“Turns out he was married,” she explained casually. I pulled my head back in surprise.
“Married?”
“Yup,” she shook her head. “I can’t believe it. It sucks so hard. His wife doesn’t even know that he coaches on the side. I think he does it just so he can pick up unsuspecting chicks somewhere his wife will never find out about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, and I smiled at her wanly. “Look at the two of us. This is why you never get to choose where we go on a night out, okay?”
“I’m am one-hundred-percent okay with that,” she nodded with a small smile. The shadow that had passed across her face at the thought of her ex-beau flitted away and she reached for her tea to drain the cup.
“So, when are we going out again?” She asked. “I could do with something to take my mind off everything, to be honest.
“Well, my next show is this weekend,” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Maybe we could meet up afterwards and go out to a club or something?”
“Yes, please,” she nodded enthusiastically. “Like in college?”
“Well, that depends, are we going to wear too much blue eyeshadow and make out with someone on the football team?”
“I think that’s pretty much a given,” she rolled her eyes teasingly. “I can’t wait. And I get to see you play again!”
“More fool you,” I replied, and held up my cup to her to clink. “To new starts.”
“New starts,” she replied, and I took a sip of my drink. For a moment, everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours had been pushed from my mind- but in that second of silence, I was reminded that Darius wouldn’t be there to watch me play like last time, that I wouldn’t be able to look out into the crowd and see his face looking back. And just like that, I sagged down into my seat again, feeling defeated, and wondering if I hadn’t made a huge mistake of dumping him so soon.
I was due in for a shift at work later that day, and hurried home to get changed and make myself look presentable- I had taken all the Sunday shifts for as long as I could, as it meant I could have Saturday night off to play with the band while they did their next set of shows. I prayed Darius wouldn’t be in today- but, knowing my luck, we’d probably be the only two on shift. When I got in to Dino’s, my heart sank as I came face-to-face with the last person I wanted to see.
“Hey,” Darius greeted me awkwardly, and I raised a hand in acknowledgement of his existence. I kept my head down and did my best to ignore him, but it was hard -- we kept having to step around each other in the kitchen, and every time our bodies came into contact, it was like someone had sent this jolt of an electric shock across my system.
I focused in on getting the place set up for the evening rush, and avoided Darius’s gaze as best I could. Despite my best efforts, we caught each other staring a couple of times. Any other shift, we might have sneaked off to the staffroom where there were no video cameras and gone to town on each other. Now, the chemistry crackled and fizzled out between us uselessly, never to be consummated.
I went about the rest of the day on autopilot, grateful when the rest of the staff came trailing in to the restaurant and filled the place with chatter about their Saturday night
s. The more people I could put between Darius and I, the better. I found that every time I looked at him, I felt this sharp stab of regret that seemed to flicker painfully across my mind and leave me immobilized for a moment. I couldn’t stop thinking about the last thing he’d said to me, that he never would have let his boxing put me in danger, but none of that mattered now. I’d hurt him, more than I’d probably hurt anyone before in my life, and it wasn’t like I could just go back on that now that it was all out there.
Before I knew it, the shift was over, and I was gratefully making my way home. I was barely out of the door when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned around to find myself looking at the man who’d been haunting me since the night before.
“Uh, I just wanted to give you this,” he muttered, and handed me a plastic grocery bag- I opened it, and found it stuffed full of stuff I’d left at his place while we’d been seeing each other. My heart had picked up with excitement as soon as I’d laid eyes on him again, but the clamor in my chest faded away to nothing as soon as I realized that he wasn’t coming here to talk reconciliations.
“Thanks,” I closed the back and smiled at him tightly, mustering the most convincing grin I could manage given the situation. He looked at me for a moment longer, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something, but instead, he turned back around and made his way back inside the bar, leaving me out on that quiet street alone once again. I felt tears prick my eyes, and started the trudge back to my apartment. God, if I could go back to a time when the only problems we had were kissing outside of work and hoping that no-one had seen us…
I went over it in my head a hundred times before I made it back to my place, and a hundred times more as I fixed myself some dinner and got ready for bed. I had to remind myself why I had done it, why I had cut Darius out of my life as brutally as that. I had to prove to myself that I could make decisions that made sense for me -- that I could be trusted with my own safety, my own happiness, my own heart.
I had spent so long pursuing assholes that when I encountered the kind of guy who was almost guaranteed to be one, I put up my barriers to keep us apart, convincing myself I was making the smart choice. That, for once, I was making good decisions for my future happiness. But then…when Darius had turned up to that gig, he proved to me that he saw us as something more than I did.
Or maybe he had just accepted it sooner. Maybe he’d come to terms with the fact that we were meant to be together, that we had the kind of chemistry that you didn’t just walk away from if things were getting tough or weird or scary. He cared for me, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. Maybe I was just scared of throwing myself into something again only to get shot down.
As I lay in bed, I couldn’t help comparing it, in my head, to my experience with playing music. How many times had I been knocked back with that? A dozen, two dozen, more? Certainly, the rejections piled up in my head till they were too many to count. And now, I found myself looking down the barrel of some tangible success. Yeah, The White Roses weren’t exactly the kind of band I saw myself playing with, but they were popular and talented and people actually came out to their shows.
I got to play in front of crowds who screamed for more, instead of a handful of uninterested drinkers at the bar of an open-mic night. I hadn’t given up on that, even though the universe had been telling me that I should for years and years and years. And who was I to listen to the universe, anyway?
If it hadn’t wanted Darius and I together, then it wouldn’t have dumped him at my feet, wouldn’t have given him that job at Dino’s, wouldn’t have had us meet each other in the first place. It would have made sure that Nina never looked twice at the asshole who coached for his opponent, and would have sent me out to a club with my best friend to help her get over her break-up.
But it didn’t- and here we were. All of those things had happened, and there was no escaping from the fact that what we had was…something. Whether or not it was forever, I didn’t know, but I could be damn sure that at the very least, we had something that I didn’t want to let go of quite that easily.
I fell into a fitful sleep, and dreamed dreams of Darius and me. It was as though my brain was determined to torture me with my bad decision even when I didn’t have the wherewithal to keep my eyes open.
That weekend, I was getting ready to play once again at a different venue all the way across town. The only thing that remained the same this time around was my sense of nervousness.
“You did great last time, don’t worry,” Nina soothed me, and I rolled my eyes at her playfully.
“You weren’t even there!” I pointed out, and before I knew it, Taylor had sidled up next to us to offer Nina a drink.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “If you’d have been there, I’d have remembered it.”
Nina took the beer from him, cracked it, and took a swig. She offered him a quick smile --one that said “trust me, we’re going to come back to this later” and and then turned her attentions back to me.
I knew she must have been showing a superhuman amount of restraint not to go for it there and then, because Taylor was the literal definition of her type I appreciated the fact that she was focusing all her attention on making sure that I felt like an actual human being before I stepped out there again.
“I know, but I’ve seen you play before,” she reminded me. “You’re going to be great, I know it.”
“We have to get on,” Joy motioned towards the door and I lifted my head. For some reason, I was even more nervous than I had been the last time. Maybe it was because I knew just how many people were going to be out there? Before, I had no idea how many people I’d be facing, but now, as the roar of the crowd grew even stronger, there was no denying it. I sucked in a deep breath and grabbed my bass, following the rest of the group on to the stage. Nina squeezed my arm.
“I’ll be out in the crowd,” she promised me, and flashed me a warm smile as she disappeared behind the curtain and out into the bar area. I managed another deep breath, and finally stepped out on to the stage once again.
The crowd was bigger than last time, and for a moment, panic seized me completely-but as soon as the music kicked into action, I was able to relax. I focused on the movement of my fingers on the frets, the feeling of the bass pulsing through the speakers right next to me as I played. Before I knew it, I was moving around the stage like I owned the place, confident and cocky and in-control. I felt awesome,
and those couple of beers I’d had before hitting the stage really helped. The gig flew by, and before I knew it, we were closing out with that big hit once again. I caught sight of Nina in the crowd, and she pulled a face at me- I pulled one back, and theatrically lifted the bass up a little to show off to her. She grinned and cheered, and I couldn’t help but smile back. She was always supportive of my music, and there was no-one I’d rather have here than her.
As soon as we were done, we made our way backstage again and I cracked another beer in the dressing room. We clinked our bottles together, and I waited for Nina to find her way to us once again. Taylor was already glancing around for her by the time she arrived but, to my surprise, she didn’t pay him a jot of attention, instead focusing in on me and pulling me into a corner as soon as she came through the door.
Her eyes were wide, as though she’d seen a ghost, and I narrowed my mine at her as I tried to figure out exactly what could have happened to excite her as much as this. She looked as though she had the gossip of a lifetime.
“Darius was here,” she murmured to me urgently- and my stomach dropped to my shoes.
“What the fuck?” I demanded, more to myself than to her. I was loud enough that the rest of the group turned to look at me, and I lowered my voice once again. None of them knew about what was going on in my personal life -- it just didn’t seem relevant to the kind of relationship we were going to have, and I didn’t want to burden them with it. But it looked like they were going to get a clue, at least, as Nina continued to talk.
“He
saw me, but I don’t think he recognized me,” she continued. “He was standing at the back so you wouldn’t see him, I think, and he was with one of his friends.”
“Did he say anything? Do anything?” I asked. He could have just been there to support his friend-of-a-friend’s band, I reminded myself, and it could have nothing to do with me whatsoever. I could be acting like an entitled brat, assuming that every single little thing he did revolved around me now.
Or…or he could have been there to watch me play again. Even after everything that happened, it seemed like such a Darius thing to do. He was a man of his word, and when he said that he would support my music, he meant it, no matter what.
“I got close enough that I could hear what they were talking about,” she went on. I wondered just how close she had gotten, considering how loud the music had been- I had a sudden, comical image of Nina sneaking up behind them and trying to nonchalantly catch some of their conversation, and tried not to giggle. Or maybe I was just excited at the prospect that Darius had come here to see me once again.
“And?” I prompted her, and she hesitated before she spoke again, seemingly sure that whatever she had to tell me next was going to be a kick in the teeth.
“He said he had to leave early, because he had a fight that evening,” she replied, screwing her face up. “He left before the gig was over. But he couldn’t take his eyes off of you the entire time. It was crazy. He was definitely there to see you, I can tell you that much.”
“Fuck,” I muttered to myself, and put my beer down- I was going to need a clear head to figure out what I was meant to do next with any clarity.
“So, what are you going to do?” Nina asked, and I could see her eyes shining with excitement. “This is so romantic.”
“I’m going to go after him,” I announced suddenly, taking another swig of my beer and going to grab my stuff. I turned to the rest of the group, and pulled an apologetic face.
