Who Needs Air

by Cassie Graham

  “I haven’t asked her,” he gulps, “yet, but…I am here to ask…to ask your permission.”

  I sputter, my arms falling limply at my sides. “My permission? Why? Why would you ask that of me?”

  He licks his lips and looks up at me through his long, brown lashes. “Because you’re the only one who matters.”

  My eyebrows furrow and we fall silent.

  Unmoving, all I can hear is his breathing, the harsh intake of air escaping from his lungs.

  “Are you the father?” I ask in a small tone, my chest aching.

  “We won’t know until she’s born.”

  A girl…

  “You’re going to marry her?”

  His jaw twitches and he finally looks up at me. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  My body runs cold. I knew this would happen. I knew it would happen and yet I held out hope that he’d at least wait until the baby was born.

  “When are you going to do it?”

  “We’re already talking about a June wedding.”

  “Right before the premiere of the movie.” That’s only a couple months away.

  August wipes his forehead.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I ask and suddenly my ability to fill my own lungs with oxygen subsides, waiting for his answer.

  I move back to the couch, feeling miserable and sad. Not just sad for me, sad for August. He’s being put in this horrible situation and he’s just trying to do right by everyone.

  Everyone but me, that is, but hopefully I’ll survive.

  I grab his hands and entwine them with my fingers. He squeezes me back like old times and I rest my head on his shoulder.

  I need him. I want him – more than anything – but if that little baby is his, she’ll need him more and that’s what’s most important. I can’t stop him from being with his family, even if it’ll kill me to see it…to watch it grow.

  “I have to do this, Belle.”

  A tear falls from the corner of my eye. “Then, I understand.”

  He lets go of my hand and wraps his arm around my shoulder, bringing me in close to his body.

  Dread rolls through me like an unyielding storm. The lightning strikes as the tornado swirls and I have no choice but to hold on to something and hope it doesn’t take me along with it. “Our story is officially over.” It comes out as a whisper and my shoulders shudder. I fall forward, my body crumpling inside itself.

  August lets me go and his hands fall to both sides of my face. He implores me to look into his eyes and I can’t stop myself from finding them. “It’s never going to be over.”

  I tilt my head. “Don’t say things like that.”

  Instead of replying with something to ease my mind, he slams his lips to mine, his hand moving from the side of my face to the back of my head. His fingers wrap themselves in my hair and I deepen the kiss. His tongue teases mine and I twist my hands in the front of his shirt, still soaking wet. I squeeze the fibers, water trickling down my fingers. It falls onto the tops of my thighs.

  I tug at his bottom lip and I let it go with a pop. August holds his breath and I do, too. Maybe it’s because we know this is the last time we’ll see each other or maybe it’s because, no matter what, that spark between us will never fade. Either way, we’re ravenous for one another.

  August smiles against my mouth and I slip my hands into his hair. His hands fall to my hips and I feel the hot skin of his hand against my stomach. My middle juts toward him.

  My reluctance flies out the window. With the taste of bourbon and the heady mix of our need, I want to live here, in this moment, forever.

  It was like we were kissing each other for every missed kiss we’d never have for the rest of our lives. My tongue tangles with his as flashes of every missed opportunity, every squandered anniversary, every birthday, every monumental occasion fill my mind. My mouth fights for him.

  So skilled and so passionate, he promises unsaid words he could never guarantee.

  His strong hands knead my skin and as I begin to lie down, he hisses through his mouth and pulls back.

  August slams to a halt, his eyebrows bent. His chest heaves as he holds himself over me, his turquoise eyes boring into mine. Attempting to lessen his erratic breaths, he lets his head fall to my forehead.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head, my lips sizzling.

  He looks up to the ceiling, his eyes misted with barely-there tears. His eyebrows furrow and he opens his mouth to say something, to put both of our minds at ease, but he stops.

  I laugh under my breath. I hate that I’m going to allow myself to say the words that are about to fall out of my mouth. I just have a huge obstacle in front of me, hurdles to jump through. As does he. “Maybe we’ll always be attracted to each other.” I’m rationalizing and it even sounds ridiculous in my own ears.

  August lowers his eyes.

  “There’ll always be a charge.” The face of his unborn child floats into my mind and I force myself to shake it away. “We need to find a way to control ourselves.”

  Avoiding eye contact, he falls back on his haunches, sitting across the couch, crossing his arms over his chest. He pulls at his face, upset with himself or me or our situation. All of them, probably. “You’re right.”

  I wipe my mouth, removing the last of August from my lips.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asks, his head swiveling toward me, his eyes full of dread.

  I attempt a smile, but it’s small and completely fake. “I’ll be okay.”

  He doesn’t buy it but he also doesn’t hesitate to accept it. “This won’t be the last time I’ll see you.”

  I scoff. “You want to be friends?” We tried that. It didn’t work.

  His eyes fall. “You don’t want to?”

  “I don’t know if I can, August.”

  “I can’t go my entire life without you, Belle. I can’t go on without seeing you. We have to find a way to make it work. What I have to do with Tomi.” He shakes his head, his posture stiffening. “I’ll need some happiness in my life.”

  “Because Tomi is so awful?”

  He squints.

  “I need time.”

  He nods, running his hands through his hair. It’s longer than I’ve seen it in a long time. It curls just below his neck and, on most men, it would look silly, but he makes it look masculine and far too handsome. “I get it, but don’t walk away. Don’t close that door.”

  I swear I’ve cried more in the past eight months than I’ve cried in the last eight years – both happy and sad – but the sad tears are starting to be an issue. The bawl that erupts from my chest breaks me in half. Don’t close that door, is the same thing I begged of him when he left for New York all those years ago. It’s the last four words of Somewhere Only We Know. It’s a dirty card to play but he knows I can’t deny him. Those words hold the entire weight of the world and they linger between us.

  I wipe under my eyes. “It’s open, August. It’ll always be open.”

  He looks down at his watch and groans. “I should get going. I gotta check in with Tomi in twenty minutes.”

  My face wrinkles. “She checks up on you?”

  He rolls his eyes and stands up, pulling his shirt down. “Yeah, and my location. Every few hours.”

  “God, she’s such an egg suckin’ dawg, August.”

  Bless her heart.

  “Well…” He trails off. There’s nothing for him to say. There’s no argument against my words. I’m right and he’s stuck.

  August moves from behind the coffee table and stands in front of me.

  I frown and bend my neck forward, rubbing the skin. “Be well, August.” I can’t look at him as I say goodbye. This is our first real goodbye. Both times – when he left in college and when he heard the news of Tomi and the baby – we never got a proper goodbye. Now that I have the opportunity to have an actual send off, it seems too real. It’ll hurt too much.

  His arms surround my body a
nd he brings me in close. I’m reluctant at first, but the more I fight myself, the angrier I’ll be when he’s gone. So, I relent and fall into him. My palms press hard against his back and I force myself to remember what it feels like to hold him. Remind myself it wasn’t always like this. We had good times – amazing, life changing times – but now they’re just…over.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he says, pulling away. His knees bend and he attempts to look me in the eye but I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t watch his lifeless eyes as he tries to figure out the question marks of his life.

  He kisses my forehead, accepting my disappointment.

  A sudden onset of nausea fans over me as he pulls away and I hold my stomach.

  He turns away for the door and places his hand on the door knob. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

  My eyes go wide and I finally look up to see his face.

  “You’re coming to the wedding, right?”

  My breath hitches. Can I watch him marry another woman? “I don’t know, August.”

  His eyes fall to the floor and he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Can you…can you try? For me?” His eyes plead with me. I wish I could block him out. “I’ll need you there.”

  I groan. “I’ll try.”

  He smiles like he’s just won the lottery, but I don’t know how that’s possible. If the lottery is Tomi, what the hell does that mean for me?

  He turns back toward the door and opens it, giving me one last smile before slipping out into the hallway and into the arms of a woman who he doesn’t want.

  She Makes My Ass Itch

  You’re cordially invited to the marriage of Tomi Laurel Hallan and August Eugene Wyatt on June seventeenth at eighteen hundred hours.

  I toss the invitation on the table. It took me a week to even open the damn thing and now I sort of wish I didn’t open it at all.

  “You’re gonna go, right?” Mama probes as she sits down on the couch. She pulls one of my travel magazines from the coffee table and flips through it.

  Grabbing the pitcher of sweet tea out of the fridge, I pour us two glasses and set them in front of Mama.

  She shakes her head and I turn away from her, getting something for us to snack on. “Do you still love him?”

  Despite my intense, never-ending hope to stop doing just that, I answer honestly. “Of course I do, Mama.” If I could stop, I would. It would make things a lot easier.

  Her dark brown hair falls in her face and she angrily swats at it, grumbling under her breath how she needs to cut it.

  Millie Potter, my gorgeous mother, inching close to sixty years old, still looks youthful. Young to me, at least. Her eyes are still vibrantly beautiful. Green and striking. Her long lashes contour them and I find myself constantly wishing I got those from her. Her skin is still clear. No age spots and the only lines on her face are the ones around her mouth and eyes. She claims she loves every line because she earned them by having a wonderful life. I smile every time she says that. I have her figure. We both have hips that don’t quit and a smaller waist. When I got old enough to be appreciative of my own curves, I thanked her for the good genes.

  “If you love him, you’ve gotta go support him. Just because you can’t be together doesn’t mean you can’t be there for him. He’s gonna need a kind face out in the pews.” She thinks for a second, stopping her eyes from reading whatever is on the page to look up at me. “He is getting married in a church, right?”

  I shake my head. “They’re getting married at The Glasshouses.”

  Mama crinkles her face. “That place doesn’t sound like August.”

  I laugh and toss some chips into a bowl. Ambling to the couch, I sit down beside her. “You know what The Glasshouses is?”

  She flips her hand in the air and rolls her eyes. “It seems pretty obvious. It’s made of glass, right?”

  I can’t recall what the inside looks like but I know it’s in Chelsea and overlooks the Hudson River and midtown. It’s gorgeous. Ridiculously expensive, but gorgeous. “Mama, it’s pretty enough.”

  “I just always imagined August getting married in a grand church with…” she trails off and cuts her eyes away, realizing what she was about to say.

  “With me.” I rub my lips together and take a chip from the bowl. “I thought so, too, but that’s not my story anymore.”

  “The ink ain’t dry on those pages yet, honey.”

  I shrug a shoulder, crunching on a chip. “I’m not going to hold my breath. There’s just so much against us.” I sigh. “Now more than ever.” I can’t compete with a baby. That’s literally the only thing I would bow out for.

  “Well,” Mama says, taking a chip from the bowl and popping it into her mouth, “life’s funny sometimes. Nothing is ever written in stone. Go to the wedding. Support your friend.”

  I sit back, laying my head against the couch. “I don’t know, Mama.”

  She shuts the magazine and tosses it back on the coffee table. “Well, you got a month to figure it out.”

  I stare at my empty hands for a few moments and then ask Mama about her local church charity event. The drama sufficiently fills the rest of her visit and I don’t have to talk about August anymore.

  Later that night, I decide to open the invitation again and as I pull it out of the soft white envelope, there’s an extra note I didn’t see before.

  It’s tightly folded and I know from the bleeding ink on the outside, it’s from August. His heavy hand always produces ink stained pages.

  My fingers tingle as I hold it. Clearing my throat, I shake out my hands and open the letter.

  Belle,

  I slipped this note in after Tomi begrudgingly filled it. Sneaky, huh? I know it’s a long shot, but I do want you at the wedding.

  I miss you.

  He signs it with his name and I clutch the note like it somehow holds some hidden secrets I can’t see.

  “Okay, got your ticket?”

  I pull it out of my purse. “Yep.”

  “And your phone charger?”

  I laugh, patting the side of my weekend bag. “Lil, yes. You’ve asked me a million times.”

  She rolls her eyes and pops a grape into her mouth. “You cannot go to New York City to see your ex get married to some she-witch and not have your phone charger. It’s against the law, trust me, I checked. What if it dies and you can’t text me with an S.O.S.?”

  Setting my bags down on the floor, I lean my arms against the counter in my kitchen. “You’re coming with me. Why would I need to send you a distress text message?”

  She waggles her eyebrows as she sips her cup of water. “Hot groomsmen. August is bound to have a couple of hot cousins or high school friends.” She shrugs. “I might be preoccupied.”

  I shake my head. “You know all of his high school friends, dummy.” I look down at my dark purple manicured fingernails, my eyes lingering on my ring finger.

  Lily must see my change in emotion because she reaches across the counter to hold my arm. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I breathe in a lungful of air. “I know.” I keep telling myself that but it’s odd. The more I repeat it in my head, the words become something different. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. The words begin to blur together making one, long word that doesn’t offer any peace.

  Lily pops the last grape off the vine. “Let’s head out, yeah? Our flight leaves in two hours.”

  The moment my foot steps off the airplane and onto the walkway leading into JFK airport, I feel heavy. Like my limbs can’t properly work and they’re moving in slow motion without consideration for me at all.

  Lily grips my hand and we walk into the airport together, prepped and ready for whatever battle may come.

  The mad rush of people overwhelms me at first but then I realize just how much I miss the hustle of the city. It takes a while to get used to and you forget when you leave, but being here is a lot like riding a bicycle. You hop right back on, peddling for de
ar life, hoping you don’t get run over.

  People brush against my shoulders and body as they scatter around the open space like ants. It brings a broad smile to my face.

  After we pick up our bags from the carousel, we make our way outside to catch a cab. Cabbie’s shout at us the moment the automatic doors open. Smiling at a kind, Asian man, he quickly takes our bags and sets them in his trunk.

  “I’m Kevin. Welcome to New York, ladies,” he says in his thick accent after he closes our door and slides into the driver’s seat.

  “Nice to meet you,” I greet and Lily waves.

  “Any sort of music you’d like to listen to?”

  I shake my head and look to Lily. She smiles back at me because we made up a game her first trip here last year and I know she wants to play it.

  “You can choose,” I say and Kevin reaches to turn up the radio. He switches the channel to something on AM radio and before long, he’s tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel as we make our thirty-minute journey into Manhattan.

  After a while, Lily speaks up, “Kevin, can you tell us what they’re saying?”

  The song is in another language, which is exactly what we were hoping for. Our little game consists of us asking our cabbie about the story behind each song. Lily and I both don’t like to drive in the city, so it tends to calm us.

  Kevin’s brown eyes find us in the rearview mirror and he smiles. His mocha skin wrinkles around his eyes. “Oh, sure.” He listens for a few seconds. “The woman is at a crossroads.”

  I lean against the seat and look out the window, the skyscrapers and polluted air surrounding my vision. Kevin’s voice is calm and the sensation of tranquility washes over me.

  “She’s never been in love, but she thinks she’s just met the man of her dreams.”

  He listens for a little while longer, honking at someone moving over into our lane. He mumbles something in his native tongue and then says, “Come to find out, he’s in love with someone else.”

  My heart lurches. Okay, so maybe this game isn’t much fun.

  “She watches him with another woman, unable to tell him her true feelings because she doesn’t want to lose him.”