by Jade Alyse
She feels the anger swell up in her again and she refuses to let it subside as he walks past her, towards the door.
“Brandon David Greene, if you leave here…this will be the last time I forgive you…”
She begins to tear up and she’s sure that he can see it clearly. But he turns the knob and walks out anyway…
After meeting Anthony for a quick breakfast the following morning, she returned to her apartment to find Asha sitting on the couch waiting for her.
She patted the space next to her gently.
“I take it you’re just getting in,” Natalie suspected, placing her bottom next to her friend’s. She didn’t get much sleep the night before, and the coffee at breakfast didn’t help either. She could think of nothing more than crawling in her bed and going back to sleep in an attempt to forget yesterday.
“Yes, I left right as Brandon was pulling into the driveway this morning,” she replied, smiling. “I figured I’d give you guys plenty of time to work things out. Scotty was skeptical but I knew all along that Brandon wouldn’t come right back from dropping you off. It’s not like him.”
“Apparently he went elsewhere to ‘work things out’ after he left here…he didn’t spend the night…”
“Well what the hell happened then?”
“Do I really have to talk about it?” Natalie groaned, laying the length of the couch with exasperation.
“Yes, it’s better if you do,” Asha reminded her. “You can’t keep these things bottled up inside of you forever…”
Natalie shook her head and paused before she spoke. “We had it out in the car not too long after we left the house…”
“Yea, and…?”
“And he tried to blame me for him leaving,” she replied slowly. “And I told him…I told him that I’d never love anyone as much as I loved him…”
“Aw, that’s sweet…”
Natalie kicked her lightly.
“And I told him that I wanted to give him my virginity the night that he left me…and that I’ve essentially been screwed up ever since…”
“And that was it?”
“No…he wanted to walk me upstairs, but I refused him, and I told him that I didn’t need him. But he followed me upstairs anyway…”
“That’s my Brandon…” Asha jeered.
“And I told him to leave…of course he didn’t listen…and he proceeded to kiss me…”
“Go on, go on…”
“I got so excited that I forgot about how angry I was at him…I just wanted him…because I knew that he wanted me just as much…do I really have to finish…?”
“Yes…go on, please…”
“And I begged him to…I begged him to…oh my God this is embarrassing…”
“Begged him to what, Nat?”
“I literally begged him to make love to me…and we started to…we got so hot and heavy and we were almost at the point of penetration…I wasn’t nervous, I was so comfortable…and he looked so happy…and then…then my phone rings and it’s Anthony…I leave the bedroom to answer it and when I get done, he’s standing in the living room with his clothes on, saying that he can’t do it. Saying that he refuses to come in second place…and then he leaves…”
“Wow…you should call him…”
“He probably doesn’t want anything to do with me…and I told him that if he left I wouldn’t forgive him again…we’re done, Ash…we’re really done…”
The following week, she took a double shift at the hospital and came home late. She told Anthony to stay at his place that night; she needed just a tinge of space. She’d stopped by the store on the way home and grabbed another couple of bottles of wine. She chose the grocery store nearest to Trent road; his truck was parked outside and so was the baby blue BMW. She sped off and returned home swiftly. She was alone again. Asha had gone out of town to visit her family for the weekend, and she decided to take a bath. She poured a glass of wine and sunk into the tub, leaving the bottle beside it. Her body is still but her mind is alive, and she obsessively mulls over a series of scenarios in her head:
Maybe she’s a distant cousin, visiting for the summer…maybe she’s a coworker that’s helping him out on a major project…maybe she’s with Scotty…and he’s given her the key…maybe it’s just sex…maybe it’s not real…maybe he doesn’t care about her at all…
She’s gone through her fourth glass of wine, and her skin is severely pruned. And for reasons unknown to her, she began to sob, and she can feel it in every inch of her body. She placed the glass down, climbed out of the tub, and headed into her bedroom, wrapping a towel around her as she reached for her phone. She returned, stumbling into the room, slumping down beside the bathtub. She dialed a series of numbers, but only heard a series of droning rings and then voicemail…
She cried harder then into the receiver, and murmured his name over and over again, beating her head with the palm of her hand.
“I was stupid,” she said. “I was so stupid…I’m being stupid now…I still love you…I still love you…I really do…I…I always will…just come back…just come back, please…”
#
But she heard nothing else from him for days, and she realized that she’d yet to admit that it was over to herself, even if she chanted it aloud for the entire world to hear. She stopped making spontaneous stops by the house on Trent road. She had sufficiently embarrassed herself.
But Anthony seemed completely oblivious to the changes that were going on with her. He only talked about how great his job was, and how he’d gotten in real well with the administration. She was glad that he’d put the proposal of moving in together on the back-burner for the time being.
She was distracted enough at work to the point where the nurses questioned her daily. She couldn’t for the life of her, come up with a better answer that would make her seem less affected. She was zombie, walking in the place of a person who once used to have every facet of herself together. Now what had she become?
She and Anthony were in her bedroom watching a movie when they heard a peculiar knock on the door. It was well past eleven, and while she had to get up in the morning to take on a full day of research in the hospital library, he had to work a full day, then catch a flight to Charleston for a pediatric conference.
“I wonder who that could be?” she asked, sitting up.
“Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll go see…”
She watched Anthony disappear into the living room, but she couldn’t hear a thing. She prayed that it wasn’t a crazed lunatic who had nothing better to do than to terrorize young unsuspecting people. But he returned a few moments later, shutting the door behind him, climbing into bed.
“Who was that?”
He looked confused, but clarity illuminated his face quickly thereafter. “It was that Brandon guy…he said that Asha forgot something at his house the other night, and he thought he would return it.”
“Really…?”
“Yea, it was a strange exchange,” he continued. “He seemed really put off by the fact that I opened the door. And I think he may have been a little drunk…”
Natalie took a deep breath. “What did Asha leave?”
“Some kind of dragonfly necklace,” he replied. “Apparently it’s been over there for quite some time and he got up enough courage to finally bring it over. He said that she’d know what to do with it…”
“Strange…”
“I’d say so,” he sighed. “I just left it on the kitchen counter. I think he might have a thing for Asha…”
The Letter
SHE WATCHED ANT walk through the gate of the Atlanta airport, small duffel tossed over his shoulder, glancing back at her only once, to smile and to wink at her.
He was going out of town for a week to a pediatric conference in Charleston. He had offered an invitation for her to come along, but she declined, of course, opting to stay in Athens. She wanted to enjoy the peace, hoping that it was just long enough for her to breathe, long enough to m
iss him, and love him more when he was away, actually need him.
For that moment, she tried not to remember the note that had been attached to the dragonfly pendant that Brandon had returned to Asha. She tried not to remember the conversation that occurred in the kitchen once Anthony had alerted her of what Brandon had done.
She'd looked at him so curiously, arching her eyebrow as she sat at the round kitchen table.
Anthony explained the situation in the best way he knew how.
"He just showed up," he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee.
Why wouldn't he have taken an earlier flight? Natalie hovered over the stove, tossing eggs with a spatula. She slyly and frequently glanced over at the pendant, ogling it from the countertop. She felt she couldn't breathe.
"He was drunk but he knew exactly what he was doing," he continued. "'Give this to Asha,' he said, 'She'll know exactly what to do with it'..."
Asha cleared her throat. "And what was it again?"
"A dragonfly necklace...it's a real gaudy sort of thing... he said you left it over there quite some time ago and he just got the courage to bring it back over..."
"Hmmm," Asha returned. "I don't recall a dragonfly necklace of any kind..."
When Anthony turned his back toward them, she then took the opportunity to shoot her eyes in Natalie's direction and widen them a little. Natalie only shook her head as quickly and as vigorously as she could.
"Sure you do, Ash," Natalie returned quickly. "You remember when Brandon bought that pendant for your twentieth birthday? You remember? We went to Lake Hartwell and stayed in that cabin for the weekend?"
Asha pursed her lips. "I remember going to the lake...but I'm not sure..."
"You remember, crazy, because you told me it freaked you out that he bought you something like that so soon...remember I told you I could tell he really cared about you?"
"Sure..."
"There's a note, Ash," Anthony said, picking up the folded piece of paper. "Why don't you read that...maybe that'll jog your memory..."
Asha sighed heavily as she slowly unfolded the paper, clearing her throat before she read it aloud:
T. -
We don't chose who we love. It just kind of happens. We can blame fate or whatever, but something up above is pointing us toward each other and our feelings just go along with it. I have no regrets about my feelings toward you - I only regret how I handled it. Take this, and if we never see each other again, don't ever forget what we shared.
Brandy
She felt her throat burn, and she attempted to quickly stifle the emotion as Asha glared at her.
"Well, it's good to finally know how he feels," she said nonchalantly, tossing the paper aside. "Well that's done..."
"Asha, the man poured his heart out to you," Anthony said. "How can you be so cold? And who is 'T'?"
Asha bounced her shoulders up and down. "It's all about choices, Ant," she said. "Making good ones and bad ones...he was saying goodbye...and I made the choice to accept this...no matter how much I love him...I made a bad choice not to love Brandon. Oh! And Taylor is my middle name...who else?"
Natalie swallowed thickly as Anthony came toward her.
"Well, good thing I don't have to worry about that," he said, pressing his lips into the side of her face. "What we have is solid...isn't that right, baby?"
#
That night, it rained, hard against the window of her bedroom, and she lay on her bed, body cast in darkness, a bundle of candles lit around the room; the sound of the pellets beating against the glass, soothing her ears.
She’d just gotten off the phone with Anthony, had just enjoyed the calm in his voice, the way he said that he loved her. But knew somewhere in the back of her mind, on instance, that staying with him made sense, that somewhere deep down inside of her would allow her to love him as much as he loved her one day. She decided then that she had a choice to make, and fast.
She knew that staying with Anthony posed stability, a life of security, a promise of the future, though, luckily enough for her heart and her mental state, they had not discussed a solid future together, as if Ant sensed her fears, as if Ant, who luckily had no clue of Brandon’s significance, knew that a piece of her heart still lingered elsewhere.
Brandon’s presence bred fantasy, idealism, instability…though she romanticized his strength, his intelligence, them as an item made less sense (no sense!), was the birthplace of all of her fears.
But oh, there was something about Brandon, yes? There would always be something about Brandon. There was life, there was breath, there was connection...but then there were the differences…yes, the subtle ones that were just enough to make her look at him differently…just enough.
She reached for her cellular phone, conveniently placed by her side, dialed the first number of his that came to her mind.
The line connected, a low voice answered on the other end. Natalie swallowed her pride down hard in the sound of the rain, and whispered, “Brandon, I need to see you…”
#
She was nervous and she had every right to be.
She sat at a small round table at a café across from Lennox Square, and all she could think about was how much Brandon used to like the pancakes there or the fact that she’d purposely screened three out of the five calls that Anthony had delivered, as she anxiously waited on the green Explorer to pull up. She didn’t need any distractions what she wanted to do in this situation. She wanted it to be painless and sweet – but she figured that neither one of those would occur.
She ordered water with lemon and he, a sweet tea, as the familiar image of his truck pulled up along the curb. Every nerve in her hands rattled at the sight of him, pulling his shades away from his eyes and plugging them into the collar of his crisp grey t-shirt. He said down across from her, and placed his keys on the ground. She avoided his eye contact, but she could feel his eyes ardently placed on hers.
She internally admitted that she’d forgotten how handsome he could be in his simplicity, and every other part of her, besides her burdensome mind, wanted to reach across the table and envelop him in her arms. But she resisted the urge and took another long sip of water.
He picked up his own drink. “I guess there are some things you never forget,” he murmured, pressing his lips against the glass.
“Stop it, Brandy,” she replied.
“Why are you so nervous?” he asked her. “Aren’t you the one who asked me to lunch? Shouldn’t I be the one that’s nervous?”
“You’re never nervous,” she reminded him. “When’s the last you were nervous about something…”
“I can think of a couple of times,” he admitted. “But this meeting isn’t about me…so I’ll let you continue…”
“I don’t know where to begin…”
“Let’s start with why you called me up in the first place,” he said. “Or why you drunkenly called me the other night? Or why…”
“It’s probably the same reason why you returned that pendant, or you wrote that note attached with it…”
He pursed his lips and remained silent.
“Exactly,” she sighed. “I thought my reasoning for asking you to meet with me should go without saying…”
“Maybe I just wanted a semblance of closure,” he responded bluntly. “Which you have yet to give me…”
“And I…? What about me? Don’t I deserve some closure…?”
“Is that what this meeting is about, Tal? If so, then let’s get it over with,” he told her. She flinched at the flicker of frostiness that was glazed across his expression.
“You were the one who said you’d never forgive me,” he reminded her quietly, taking a cue from her silence. “You were the one that said you’d never speak to me again. You never wanted to see me again. Shouldn’t you be glad that I’ve finally managed to return the sentiment? We’ve dragged this thing on long enough…tell me what you have to tell me so that we can finally fucking move on with our lives…I’ve stopped
thinking about you, I’ve stopped caring about you…so why haven’t you done the same…?”
She couldn’t stop the formation of feeling from brimming her eyes as she watched him arrogantly flop back in his seat with lackadaisical ease. He looked so unaffected and it bothered her. She caught her fallen tear with her finger, slapped her napkin down on the tabletop and removed herself, mumbling, “You asshole,” as she stormed away from the restaurant.
She fumbled in her purse for her keys as she moved across the street in the direction of her car, but she’d forgotten where she’d parked, and she couldn’t remember if she’d even put her keys in her purse at all or if she’d even tipped the waitress for the water. She was only conveniently attempting to shove the dozens of memories that she and Brandon had had at that restaurant out of her head as she simultaneously attempted to shove the visualization of Brandon’s dispassionate eyes out of her head. And as she finally caught hold to her keys, she begin to imagine herself as the new Sophia, a woman who’d been used by Brandon and shoveled aside with the rest of the trash.
Another tear fell as she reached her car, and she fought for breath as her head became light. And just as she began to open the car door, a hand caught her arm and swung her around.
Brandon pulled her into him, forcing an embrace around her.
“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “I swear to God, baby, I didn’t mean it…”
She wriggled out of his grasp, sniffling as she turned away from him.
“Well, you said it,” she reminded him. He pressed himself up against her, grabbing at her arms to steady her.
“I’m just as frustrated as you are,” he whispered against her cheek. He squeezed her arms a little tighter; she tried her hardest not to become putty in his grapple.
“I look at you, and I’m fucking pissed, Tallie,” he continued. “I’m pissed because I want you so badly…and I can’t have you…I can’t have all of you the way I want…”
