Quiet Lies

by R. L. Griffin

  “Y’all going to introduce me to your friend or did you lose all your manners?”

  “Shit,” Samantha mutters and sits back in her booth, keeping her hands in her lap.

  I turn slightly, straightening in my seat and look him dead in the eyes. “I guess they just figured you’d remember me Seaver.” My words are darts and I’ve pinned him to the board.

  My insides churn when his face falls. He takes a step back from the table, his left hand rubbing over his beard. “Rebecca?” His voice is an octave higher.

  I always loved the way he said my name with the lowcountry twang that used to make my heart sing.

  “You…” He starts and I lean forward to hear what he is going to say. I haven’t seen him since my wedding day.

  “Excuse me Bry.” The server is back with our drinks and my fries.

  He steps back again and turns to walk to the door. I pull a fry out from under the mound of chili, cheese, sour cream and chives and pop it in my mouth. The crunch of the fry with the gooey goodness of the cheese brings me pleasure that I usually don’t allow myself. My stomach flips and twists.

  “Well, talk about losing manners,” Jessica comments.

  I don’t know if she’s talking about Seaver or me eating before she got her food, I don’t give a shit either way.

  Seaver and I leave the market, he’s bombarding me with information about his family’s cookout tomorrow. With the windows down and the music loud, his dark curls blow straight up and dance around to the rhythm. He’s yelling over the music about something I’m not really paying attention to because my hand is outstretched grabbing for my life as we drive along. He pulls into one of the many plantations his family owns. When he stops the car he looks at me with an intensity that terrifies me and excites me at the same time. He leans in and places both hands on my jaw line. He kisses me gently with such love it scorches me to the bone, turning my bones into ashes. In an instant, he’s out of the car and opening my door.

  He pushes me up against the car and our tongues tangle. His hand goes down the back of my dress and I burn everywhere he touches me. I open my eyes and watch him as we kiss. I always want to have this, have him. I want to burn for him, I’d willingly turn to ash for his kisses.

  He pulls away from me, giving me a chaste kiss on the forehead. He takes my hand and we head down a secluded dirt road on one of his family’s properties. When we spot a gorgeous live oak tree, Spanish moss draped across its limbs, I pull him to it. It calls to me. He hesitates.

  “Come this way,” I pull on Seaver’s hand harder and he relents. We almost skip to the trunk. I lay the blanket down covering the dirt and grass. He pops champagne that I didn’t know he had. We are celebrating my birthday. He had taken a year off to bum around the area learning the real estate business before going to the College of Charleston. His desire to be a teacher long forgotten.

  I pull his shirt over his head and I kiss his chest. I’ve memorized it, his chest. It’s lean with muscle from working on his boat with a smattering of freckles and chest hair. What eighteen year old has his own boat? I’m unbuttoning his pants when he bats my hands away.

  “Let’s have a drink first,” he says through a grin. Seaver’s hair is shaggy and curls around his ears. I twirl it with my fingertips. He backs away from my grip and pours two glasses.

  “To our future. May it be wild and free, just like the sea.” We clink glasses and I wonder if that means he wants to be free of me. “Stop.” His hand smoothes over the furrow in my brow. “I want you to be wild and free with me, always.” He can always read my mind.

  “Always,” I agree. I tilt my head back in pleasure as he kisses my neck, allowing warm champagne from his mouth to trickle down my neck. Then he laps it up with his tongue and I sigh.

  He pulls the straps off my sundress and slides the dress down my body exposing that I’m only wearing underwear. His mouth clamps on a nipple and my gut clenches in need for him.

  “Seaver,” I breathe, barely audible.

  “I love you,” he murmurs into my skin, warming it with his breath.

  “Oh my...love...for you always,” I agree, not quite making sense.

  He chuckles and then drags his finger on the outer edge of my lace panties. My hips move on their own accord and we sink to the blanket spilling champagne and not caring. The birds chirping and sounds of nature, the music to our lovemaking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Push Me Out to Sea

  Another message is waiting for me when I secretly turn my phone on four days after we left Portland. It’s like there is an urge in me I can’t help, some pull that Sebastian will always have on me and I fight it every second. Sometimes I lose. Bash told me not to turn it on, but I did. There’s the icon of a voicemail and I couldn’t help myself, I want it to be someone other than Sebastian. I should have known better. I put the phone close to my ear, but not right on it in an attempt to protect myself from what is on the message.

  “YOU CUNT. YOU ARE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH THIS. I’VE ALREADY FOUND YOU.” His voice is murderous and I feel the threat in my heart, it seizes and I drop the phone and this time I stomp on it.

  He’s found me.

  I should’ve known this would happen.

  I’m stupid.

  I’m trapped.

  I know better.

  Black surrounds me. No, not now, I think. Little scenes of how my life could’ve gone if I would’ve fallen in love with someone capable of loving me surge behind my eyelids and my body lets my mind go. I fall on the floor of my newly rented house on the little island I want to cure me. He may have found me, but I’m not going to make it easy. He doesn’t know about this place. I never told him everything.

  Sobs leap from my mouth like people on fire jumping into the sea. My cries echo against the trees. The knees of my jeans are soaked with mud and my hair is plastered against my head as rain pelts me. I don’t care, I don’t even feel it. I don’t hear the truck pull up and park off the dirt road next to the golf cart I borrowed. I’m blindsided when Seaver wraps his arms around me trying to calm me.

  I’m mourning the loss of something I wasn’t sure I even wanted and it hurts worse than anything in my life. Pain wraps around my heart and locks into place. I know I will never be the same.

  My fears for the last three months were resolved today in the worst possible way and I hate it. Is there a stronger feeling than hate, because that is how I feel right now. My body betrayed me in a way that I can’t fathom. We have to bury a baby that never had a chance.

  “I’m sorry,” I try to scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth.

  It pummels me like waves that won’t stop. I can’t get back up, even if I try, and I’m pulled under by the force of it. My head is driven into the sand, my nose and mouth gulping and spitting at the same time. Water, shells and sand fill my mouth and I have to decide. To spit or swallow...that’s right, push out what threatens to drown me or consume it whole and sink into a somewhat welcome end to my inner war. Before I can decide, I’m dragged from the water in strong arms.

  “STOP!” I gasp, sputter and spit as I’m thrown over a shoulder. I look longingly back into the ocean that will solve my problems. I sigh in utter disgust that my decision was ripped from me again. Why can’t I make my own fucking decisions?

  I’m placed on the sand, a swarm of people circling the spectacle. I swipe my hair from my eyes and see Seaver. Concern etched on his features, he examines me. There’s something else in his eyes, it’s like he knows. He knows what I would have decided. I look to the muddy looking sand where he’d laid me carefully and drape my arm over my eyes.

  “Rebecca, what happened to you?” he asks sincerely. His voice is husky in a way, but also so melodic with the syrup of his southern drawl. I want to cover myself in it, in him, but I know I can’t. I know I won’t. I don’t trust him.

  “Everything,” I answer, my voice barely audible. “Everything happened to me.” I don’t know why he’s here. I don’t k
now how he found me and it pisses me off he saved me because I don’t deserve to be saved. I should’ve ended this life a long time ago.

  We both gaze into the calm of the ocean, no waves in sight.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The Truth is Suffocating

  We sit silent for hours, until the sun goes down. It’s dipping into the ocean and it looks as if it is bleeding out into the water. The sand is chilly and I pull a blanket around my shoulders. I’m not sure where the blanket came from. Seaver nudges my side with his elbow and offers me a can of nuts.

  “I’ll wait for days if you need me to Becs,” Seaver’s long naturally ombre hair is in a bun, like at the diner. His beard is overgrown and his skin has taken on a leathery look over the years. He looks older than his thirty-eight years.

  “Let’s talk about something other than my emotional breakdown.”

  “You’re having a breakdown.” He states it like he’s trying it out.

  “I have a thirteen year old.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m leaving Sebastian.”

  Silence.

  My fingers dig in the sand, grains fill them and that’s all I have, grains of sand.

  Then his hand finds mine. I don’t feel comfort, but I don’t feel alone. I’ve been alone for so long I weep. That’s the only word I can use for the sounds and tears that are falling out of me. I weep. Through all of this, all thirteen years where I’d questioned my sanity, my will, my loyalty, I’d never let it all out. It comes out so fast and so hard I cough, spit and choke. Just his hand makes me cry. Like there is a way I could get through this. I don’t want it to be his hand.

  Suffocating on the truth.

  I want to ignore it, but I’m drowning. It’s not easy to ignore anymore. Now comes the hard part, the planning part, the part where I have to face everything I once put out of my mind and pretended everything was like it seemed to be, like I pretended it was.

  I became a master manipulator of my own reality. I don’t know if I can face everything that is headed my way. I don’t know if I can stay strong. Maybe I just don’t go back.

  “I need your help,” I whisper.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Plunging Into Love

  It’s late when we start the drive to Jessica’s from the beach and my mind pulls away from the drive while I follow the GPS. I allow in memories of sliding into love with Sebastian. They present themselves to me and I flinch at every one of them because the truth was, he never loved me, he can’t love anyone.

  When I was younger, I wondered why people called it falling in love, now I know why. I wasn’t lucky in my love. I didn’t get the exhilaration that you could feel during a free fall. I felt every fucking bruise, bump, ridge I hit on my way to the bottom of the pit where I currently live struggling to breathe. The cliff I readily dove off of looked inviting and beautiful, but was an illusion, a false reality created by Sebastian and I lapped it up like a dehydrated dog.

  When I fell, my bones broke apart.

  When my feet lost their footing my mind shifted.

  I screamed as I tumbled from everything I knew to be true. I left all of these things in an effort to start a life with a man I barely knew even though I’d been dating him for four years.

  I didn’t know that he had no conscience. He didn’t allow me to see who he really was until our wedding day and by then it was too late and I was too far gone. I was invested in us. With hearts in my eyes I couldn’t see the lack of emotion or soul that was Sebastian. He sold me land that was never there. He ripped the carpet out from under me while I was still wearing my wedding dress.

  My smile is plastered on my face in a permanent way. I’d just married the man of my dreams I’d never allowed myself to really believe I’d ever have. I wave at a ghost from my past, Samantha, who’d driven to the wedding with some other former friends from Charleston. I squint to see if I recognize her date, my smile drops from my face instantly before I could grab it. My ex-boyfriend looks at me with interest. His brown hair a little longer, it curls around his ears and neck, the way it did when I loved him. He is wearing a navy suit, silky blue tie with his pale yellow checked shirt and looks quite dapper. I step back because I can’t believe he actually came to my wedding. Then I swoop my smile back from the floor and throw it on my face because it doesn’t matter that he broke my heart in high school. I’m Mrs. Sebastian Pryor. I wave and walk up to the group.

  “Sam, you should’ve told me you were bringing Seaver.” My voice is light and airy. My makeup and hair is perfect, I’m prettier than I’ve ever been.

  “Becs, you look gorgeous, but so different. When did you go blonde?” she asks avoiding my comment.

  “Last year.” I miss my old hair, I don’t quite feel like myself. “I needed a change,” I lie and let my hand skate over my up do.

  “Congratulations Rebecca.” Seaver leans in and hugs me. He smells the same, like the ocean after a storm. It actually hurts to smell that. No it doesn’t. He can’t hurt me.

  “Thanks,” I return, my voice harder.

  “Where did you get your dress it looks crazy amazing or maybe it’s just you? You’re glowing,” Sam squeals.

  “Isn’t that what they say about a bride the day of her wedding?” My smile reappears and I forget about Seaver.

  “Well, it’s definitely true about you,” she comments. “Where’s Jessica?”

  “I haven’t seen Jessica in a while.”

  “I love their dresses, you know they’ll wear them again.” Samantha’s voice shakes a bit when she mentions the bridesmaid dresses. I blink realizing she thought she should be a bridesmaid, but we’ve really lost touch. Her hair is piled on top of her head with a braid at the top. It looks careless, but immaculate. She was always so phenomenal at doing hair and I almost acknowledge I should’ve asked her to do my hair, but I don’t. Something stops me because we’re so far apart now. I want to hug her and tell her I’m sorry.

  “I’m glad they looked so good on them.” Shopping for dresses had been so fun, we’d gone down to Atlanta where Sebastian was living now, me and Jessica. The dress shop was the one of a reality television show and they had everything. We picked slinky black mini-dresses with spaghetti straps and square necks. They’re hot and will look good for any date.

  “Listen, I have to run to the bathroom really quick and then see where my groom has gotten off to.” I wave as I walk to the only bathroom that is just one room. There is no way I’m going to try to fit my dress into a stall of the regular bathroom.

  “Thank you for inviting me.” I hear Samantha say, but I don’t turn and acknowledge it.

  I turn the knob for the bathroom, but it won’t open. I try again and am only able to open it a crack. What I see stops my heart.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Delusions Are All I Have

  I sit in front of Jessica’s house, my rental car on the street. I stare at the tree lined road that screams normal. I close my eyes and see a baby that I should’ve had with a man I loved. I see Laney. I see Seaver. I see a brother and a sister walking down the road holding hands. I see lies.

  I feel a hand on my back and I flinch away. I wipe the spit off my perfectly colored lips. The color is Ruby Woo by Mac and it’s perfect for my complexion, or at least that’s what the salesperson told me. When I look up, Seaver is analyzing me with concern. I swore I wouldn’t even spit on him if he was on fire and here he is at my wedding in my face when I’ve just had the second biggest shock of my life.

  “Are you okay?” he asks gently, taking a step back from me and holding his hands in front of him like he’d do with a scared animal.

  I’m silent. I don’t know the answer to his question. No, I do and the answer is a resounding no, but there is no way in hell I’m telling him this. I clear my throat. “Oh sure, I just think I had one too many shots.” The lie slips off my tongue and mocks me.

  His head cocks to the side like he can see my lie mocking me. I swipe at it wit
h my hand.

  “Could you do me a favor and tell my husband to get the car ready? I need to go.” I use the word “husband” on purpose and for Seaver’s benefit, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

  “Of course,” he agrees, throwing down his cigarette butt. He gives me one last look over his shoulder before he disappears around the corner.

  The crickets and cicadas are humming together and they are telling me it’s going to be alright. The night air is cool without a hint of humidity, the perfect May wedding. We’d picked the exact week we wanted to be married because of the splendid weather. It was a week after graduation from Clemson and the future was limitless. Our honeymoon is going to be in St. Thomas. Our bags are packed and in the trunk of Sebastian’s car, ready for us to head to Atlanta for our flight in the morning. We’re staying at the Ritz Carlton tonight, I felt like a princess all day until about ten minutes ago. The details of everything were taken care of long in advance of my entire world tilting on its axis.

  The illusion of truth seduces me and wills me to go back to twenty minutes before.

  I hear footsteps in the gravel then silence, which lets me know that someone is making their way to the side of the building.

  “Babe, what’s wrong? Why are you out here?” Sebastian’s gorgeous hair was tousled and his shirt was unbuttoned. Walking sex and lust and just about everything I’ve ever wanted.

  “I felt sick and I couldn’t get in the bathroom with this dress so I came out here.”

  Look at us. We look immaculate standing here as bride and groom, even with the stench of vomit and sex.

  “I want to leave.”

  He blinks his cat-like eyes and sighs. “Of course baby, I’m so sorry you got sick and I didn’t know.”

  My stomach twists at his words and I’m lured to believe I can pretend. He steps close intending to touch me. I step back.