by Lindy Zart
If he knew about the crap I get from people, he would try to end it. I know him well enough to know that, though sometimes I wonder how well I really did know him. I miss the boy I used to consider my best friend. I miss his smiles, his scent, his warmth, the way he looked at me. But he is gone now, and I helped push him away.
“Your patient just got here,” Regina says. “He’s new, filling out paperwork.”
I nod absently, wanting this day over.
“He’s really cute. Look. Look.” She jabs a finger toward the reception area.
I crane my head around the corner and spot a short, wiry guy with dark hair. His head is lowered as his hand jerks across the paper with a pen in hurried, impatient strokes.
“I can’t see his face. And he’s wearing a mint green and pink striped shirt.”
“I know. He is so confident to wear a shirt like that. I love guys with such self-assurance.”
“Maybe he’s just clueless.”
The man looks up and zeroes in on me, like he somehow heard what I said. I freeze with recognition, blowing out a noisy breath when a gleam enters his eyes and a smile curves his lips.
“Hi, Ben,” I greet weakly.
“Lily!” he exclaims, jumping to his feet. Expensive cologne wraps around me at the same times his arms do, squeezing me hard once before releasing. “I heard you worked here, but I wasn’t sure. How’ve you been?”
I hate this question, especially from him. Does he really, truly want to know how I’ve been? I have lots of responses to that question, all pathetic—honest—but pathetic answers. I could even offer him multiple choice answers. I don’t think people should be allowed to ask this question unless they want all the sad, sorry, gritty details. He knows me; he knows Grayson. How does he think I’ve been?
The silence has drawn out too long and he’s watching me with a quizzical expression on his tanned features. Regina is too, widening and narrowing her eyes at me from behind him. Judging by the repeated head twitching she is also doing in his direction, I think maybe she wants me to introduce them.
“Oh, you know.”
He waits for me to say more and when it is apparent I am not going to, he frowns slightly, but quickly covers it up with another smile. “Yep. I know. So, you’re a hygienist? I wouldn’t have pictured you doing that. I thought you were going to be a shrink or something.”
“Guidance counselor,” I correct. “I changed my mind. I'm at the front desk mainly, working on insurances and patient information, but once in a while I have to assist—”
“Whoa.” Ben holds up his hands, palms out. “I don’t need all the details. Just tell me where to go and what to do so we can get this over with. I really hope I don't have any cavities. You know how I am about needles.” He shudders.
Although rude and signature Ben, I’m glad he stopped me, because otherwise, I would have continued to blabber on indefinitely. I do that when I’m nervous and I am exceptionally nervous at the moment. What is he doing here? He moved to California not long after Grayson. Ben draws up the cover art for Thrush’s CDs and other promotional stuff, so he is probably around my ex-boyfriend on a fairly regular basis.
I snatch the clipboard from him and quickly scan it. “Did you fill everything out?”
“I think so.”
I hand it back. “Great. I’ll come get you in a minute.”
The smile falters. “All right.”
“This is Regina. Regina, this is Ben. She can double check your information and help you if you have any questions about anything.” I leave the pair, ignoring the curious expression on Ben’s face and the simpering one on Regina’s.
I feel a little bad about my brusque manner, but not enough to rescue Ben from Regina. He and I have a shared history; a history I do not want to think about. Just seeing him spun me back about two years to the happiest and most horrible time of my life. It’s funny how the two extremes can coincide, but in me, they do.
Two years ago I had a perfect love—not a perfect relationship, but a perfect love. I would give anything to have it back. Maybe then the aching hole inside my chest would heal.
I AM IN THE PROCESS of getting a fruit salad ready for supper when the opening chords of a song I have yet to hear catches my attention. I recognize the sound of the band even before I look at the television screen. The apple drops from my hand and rolls across the kitchen floor, stopping when it reaches the beige carpet of the living room. My breathing turns shallow and nausea swims in my stomach. It really is pitiful how much I am still affected by Grayson. I try to tell myself that it is less sad because I am aware of it, but that only helps—okay, so that never helps.
I stand enthralled with my eyes locked on the television screen. The music video is in black and white and shows the band members of Thrush as they get ready to perform. A flash of knuckles that have personally trailed down my cheek, stomach, and other regions of my being fill the screen, just long enough to make my knees go weak. I stare unseeingly as Grayson’s voice fills the room. There were four letters tattooed on his knuckles, four letters that could be a flower, or a name.
L I L Y
He tattooed my name on his knuckles. Dizziness hits me and I place a hand against the wall. Maybe it was pen and it isn’t even real. Maybe he decided he really does love that particular flower. Maybe he is dating someone who just happens to have the same name as I do. Heat courses through my veins like flames of regret. I tense, waiting for it to pass, as the lyrics finally reach my brain.
Cut me. Make me bleed. Cut me up, so I lose you. I want you gone, bled from my soul, bled from my heart, bled from me.
So cut me up, remove yourself from me.
I keep telling myself the pain will go away. I keep telling myself one day the wounds will heal. I keep telling myself I will forget you in time. Cut the clock. Remove the seconds, minutes, hours, remove it all. Unmeet me.
Remove you, remove you from me.
Just cut me up, cut yourself out of me. You’re in my veins, you’ve fused yourself to me, and I can’t remove you. Please just take it away, take you away from me. Every breath is yours, every look already designed for you. Everything I do, I do because of you. And I can’t cut you from me. I am not that strong.
So you have to, you have to take the blade and you have to slice me open, you have to cut yourself out of me.
I am a shadow. I am mourning. I am weak. I am half of who I used to be, because you have cut yourself from me.
I am dying, I am failing, I am lost without you. You have been cut from me, but I can’t be stitched back up. Because I still can’t cut you from me.
Each song I hear of his is a knife to my heart, because I know they are all about the pain I caused him when I said goodbye to our love. Even so, I am proud of him and when I hear his voice on the radio, it is like a microscopic piece of nirvana is mine to have for however long the song lasts. Letting him go was the absolute hardest decision I have yet to make. I did it for him, not that he saw it that way. I did it so he had a chance to get away from the life he couldn’t keep living.
I can never regret that he went after his dreams, or even that he left, but I regret that I lost him. I was devastated, truly heartbroken. Months went by and I made it through them by sheer numbness alone. It encased my eyes, my mind, my heart. Everything. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to endure the emptiness. It was black and suffocating and endless. So many times I wanted to call him, to jump on a plane California-bound, or even get in my car and just drive, but I never did.
Because I was scared.
After high school graduation, I wanted to go to him, even though by then it was clear he no longer cared to know me. The photos of countless women hanging on his arm were proof of that. He so obviously dated women that bore no resemblance to me that it was almost like he was trying too hard to show the world, or maybe only me, that he was over me. Unless I was being delusional in thinking he even thought of me at all, which could certainly be true. But I know Grayson and I
know the way he thinks. Even when he was destructive toward himself or me, I always knew why he was saying or doing the things he was. I always understood him.
Once, I let the longing overtake logic and saw him perform. It was his first real concert. I only stayed for the opening song. It was all I would allow myself. A pain goes through me and I swallow thickly.
I never got over him. I’m pretty sure I never will.
I look at the screen with burning eyes. The last scene of the video is Grayson waving at the camera, a half-smirk on his lips, my name staring back at me as he turns away mid-wave. Even his image on the television screen mocks me, along with my name on the fingers of his hand.
My cell phone starts to ring, playing Thrush’s first hit: Incomplete. Grabbing the phone from the dining room table, I look down with a frown. I don’t recognize the number. Part of me, that annoying part of me I can’t remove or even pretend doesn’t exist, wonders if it’s him, just like I always do when my cell phone rings and an unknown number shows up on the screen. It’s really stupid, especially since he doesn’t even know my cell phone number—nor has he ever wanted it, as far as I know.
“Hello?”
“She followed me home,” a male voice complains.
I look at the phone to make sure I don’t know the number before resetting it against my ear. “Who is this?”
“Ben,” he impatiently informs me. “That whack job you work with followed me home.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? That’s all you have to say? Oh? It was bad enough that I couldn’t even piss at the office without her watching me enter and leave the bathroom—she probably listened at the door too—but then I get home and there she is two minutes later. Isn’t there a law against that?”
“A law against what?” I have to say, I am enjoying this, just a little.
“Following a patient home!”
“I don’t know. I suppose you could call the police and ask them.”
“Are you laughing? This is not funny. I’m kind of creeped out here. Like, I need my mom to hold me or something creeped out. Can you tell her to back off?”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m scared to talk to her. She’ll probably get the wrong idea and think I’m flirting with her.”
“We’re talking about Regina, right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Blonde hair, brown eyes, cute.”
“Hmm. So you don’t want her interested in you and you are not interested in her, is that what you’re saying?”
“Right.”
“But you think she’s cute and you remember she has blonde hair and brown eyes?”
“She also had a nice rack. Doesn’t mean I want to marry her. I have enough woman problems without getting any more. So will you?”
“Yeah, I’ll say something.” I pause, a framed family photograph holding my gaze across the room. “How did you get my number?”
It is silent for a telling amount of time.
“No idea,” Ben finally says.
He is lying. You don’t just get a cell phone number and not know how you got it. Maybe if he’d said he didn’t remember, it would have been more plausible, but even that would have been stretching it. I didn’t have this phone number the last time Ben was in the area and he doesn’t talk to anyone I hang around, so how did he get it?
“Cell phone fairy must have saved it in your contacts list while you slept.”
“Must have. Anyway, I gotta go. Thanks.”
“Ben.”
There is a sigh and then, “Yeah?”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“I’m actually a damn good one. See ya.”
Frowning, I set the phone back on the table. I search for the apple I earlier dropped and take it back to the small, compact kitchen. The unfinished fruit salad stares at me from a purple bowl on the counter. No longer hungry, I slowly finish making the salad, stirring cool whip mixed with vanilla pudding into it as the final touch. I put it in the refrigerator, thoughts still on how my number got into Ben’s hands.
There really is only one explanation: Grayson.
“I HEARD BEN’S BACK.”
I glance up from the menu as Mia slides into the booth opposite me at the Red Rooster Diner, the scent of her apple body spray colliding with the greasy food and coffee scent of the restaurant—not a great combination. Her red hair is pulled away from her freckle-dusted face in a low ponytail and a pale pink sundress molds to her voluptuous figure. The teal shirt and white shorts I am wearing seem underdressed in comparison, but the yellow and white-striped wedge sandals adorning my feet make up for it, in my estimation.
“I know.”
Mia’s brown eyes narrow and she pulls the menu from my hands, her gaze very obviously set on the pamphlet before her and not me. “How do you know?” Her tone implies a scandalous meeting between Ben and me full of duplicity, lies, hot sex, and ultimately the betrayal of Mia’s friendship.
Biting my lip to keep from saying something snotty, but totally deserved, I inwardly count to five, and then say, “I saw him.”
“Where?”
“Can’t tell you.” I am not being flippant; I really can't tell her due to healthcare laws in medical fields protecting patient identities.
“Oh. Work, huh?” I don’t answer, like she knows I won’t—silent confirmation that she is correct—and her lips purse. “What is he doing back in town? I can’t believe I dated that loser. I am so glad I broke up with him. I thank myself every day.”
This time I can’t hold the words in. “If you thank yourself every day for breaking up with him, why are you bringing him up? And he’s not a loser. He’s actually a gifted artist, which you know, and I can believe you dated him, because you always date guys you shouldn’t.”
The menu slaps to the red and white-checkered vinyl tablecloth. “Which guys are those?”
“Mentally unavailable ones.”
Mia huffs, but doesn’t deny it. Her dating history is well-known to all who know her, and even those that don’t. “Did he get fat? Or bald? Maybe lose a tooth or two?”
I laugh. “No. Sorry. He looks the same—black hair, brown eyes, tan, fit.”
“Damn it.” With a head toss; a signal it is time to move on from the subject of Ben, she locks her gaze on me. “What are you getting?”
“Chicken strips and fries.”
“Same as always. You need to try something new once in a while.” The waitress, a high school girl with short black hair, stops to take our order. Mia waits until she leaves to say, “Ugh. Did you see her hairstyle? Talk about two decades ago.”
I choke on my water, looking up to make sure the girl isn’t within hearing distance. I can't believe she said that. Or rather, I can. I shoot Mia an annoyed look, but she isn’t paying attention, studying her silver nails instead.
“What are your plans tonight?” She glances up before returning her gaze back to her manicure. “I heard a band is playing downtown for the firemen’s street dance. There’s supposed to be some surprise guest or something. You want to go?”
“Surprise guest?” I smile. “Is it Charlie Brown?”
Mia snorts. “Most likely. Shouldn’t he be dead by now? He has to be in his eighties.”
“Fifties.”
“Whatever. He’s old, that’s all I know.”
Charlie Brown, and yes, that is his real name, is the local talent. Well, the local talent that stayed local. Mid-fifties with a paunch and permanent cigar smell to him, he plays the banjo and sings folk music—which isn’t to say he isn’t good. He is. But his fan base is more of the older crowd and he has been known to put people to sleep while performing with his raspy, quiet drawl. He has played cards with my parents once a week since I was a toddler and used to sing me to sleep when I was younger. I don’t know if it was intentional on his part, but that was the result.
Mia continues, “Bethany is going to try to make it home too. The three of us haven’t done anything together in months.”
<
br /> “Lily!” Taylor Mohn, a former classmate of ours, grabs my upper arm and squeezes. “Have you heard Thrush’s new song? I just heard it the other day. Oh my goodness, I love it!” Blue eyes shining, she shoves into the space beside me, practically on top of me until I scoot over, looking from Mia to me. “Did you see Grayson’s hand?”
Our food arrives and I direct my attention to my plate so I don’t have to address that. Are people really so clueless? Or are they just callous? Any breakup is hard, and true, it’s been over two years since ours, but that love I had for Grayson—it never went away. I feel like I should marker on my forehead with a black Sharpie: Don’t talk about Grayson Lee to me.
“Hey, did you know Jason—Jason as in your ex-boyfriend—asked me out last weekend?” Mia asks in a too-cheerful voice.
Taylor deflates, sinking into the seat. “What?”
She leans forward with a coy smirk on her lips. “Yep. I think he just wanted to get lucky, but since I was horny, I figured what the hell.” One shoulder rises and lowers. “A free meal and a movie and I was good to go. And that little mole on his left butt cheek? So adorable.”
Her face pales. Jason Martin and Taylor dated all four years of high school and only recently broke up. Six years they dated; way longer than Grayson and I did, not that that means their feelings for one another were any more intense than ours, but hearing Mia’s words have got to be painful. I feel bad for her and give Mia a chastising look. She shrugs, her expression clearly stating Taylor asked for it.
“I have to…go,” Taylor whispers, stiffly sliding from the booth and walking with careful precision toward the door and out it.
I throw a French fry at her. “That was cruel.”
She munches on the fry. “Don’t care. She of all people should know better than to bring up an ex.”
My friend may be shallow, self-centered, and rude, but she is loyal, and in her own way, she is generous. She will not bring up the topic of Grayson, not ever, not unless I bring him up first, and for that, I love her. And anyone that does bring him up shuts up fast about it in her presence. Just now was a perfect example. Her way of going about it may have been unorthodox, but it was certainly effective. She redeems her selfish nature in little ways that may not be noticeable to those that don’t pay attention.
