It Goes Without Saying

by Taylor Danae Colbert

  “So, how is school going?” he asked, obviously preoccupied with finding Karly.

  “It’s school. Classes are alright. Parties are better,” she said, hoping to muster up some more interest from him.

  “Good, good,” he said, standing on his tip-toes now to look over the people next to them. Finally, out of the clearing, stood Karly. The crowd seemed to part for her like the freaking Red Sea, and Bria couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Shit like this never happened for her. She’d be the one lost behind the masses, quietly muttering “excuse mes” and “oops, sorries” until the end of freaking time. But not Karly. Apparently the universe was more in-tune with Karly. And she guessed, so was Knox.

  “Hey, you,” Knox said, wrapping Karly in a weirdly long hug. It wasn’t the same kind of hug he normally gave to Bria. It was more. . . intense.

  “Hey, yourself,” she said, her sing-song voice reverberating through Bria’s temples.

  “You remember Bria?” Knox said, holding his hand out toward his friend when he finally remembered that she was there.

  “Of course,” Karly said, reaching out to give Bria an unexpected hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

  “Oh, hey, you too!” Fake Bria said. “Knox says you’ve been killing it in soccer this season.”

  Karly visibly blushed. “Oh, he’s too kind,” she said, reaching out and stroking his arm.

  As the parade started, Bria couldn’t help but notice how many times Knox took the opportunity to touch Karly, placing his hand on the small of her back, holding her hand. And when Knox offered to grab them ice cream, and snuck a lick of Karly’s before giving it to her, Bria felt her heart crunch up like a leaf on the sidewalk.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bleach-blonde figure making its way across the street, and it was calling out, no, screaming out Knox’s name. Courtney Blake and her band of followers. This should be interesting, Bria thought, as she watched Karly stand up in heightened awareness.

  “Knox!” Courtney called again, dramatically draping herself around his neck. Bria watched as Karly cleared her throat, finishing off her ice cream cone. The other girls took turns hugging Knox and kissing his cheeks. For a second, Bria actually felt sorry for Karly. Lord knew that Bria knew just what it felt like to fall to the background of Knox’s love life.

  “Hey,” Knox said. And as Bria braced herself for him to get distracted, losing himself in their embraces, Knox took a step back, un-hooking Courtney’s arm from his. “You guys remember Karly, right?”

  Without missing a beat, Knox hooked his arm around Karly’s waist and pulled her in to him. She looked up at him and smiled, nodding to Courtney. Of course they knew each other; they had played soccer together all through high school, and there was a definite rivalry between them. Courtney sunk back on her hip, looking them up and down.

  “Oh. Yeah, hey, Karly,” she said.

  “We’re just here with Bria, watching the parade,” Knox said. It sort of made Bria cringe. It made it seem like she was the third-wheel. Which, apparently, she was. She’d never seen Knox turn down any sort of female attention before. And as much as she had wished for Knox to blow off Courtney in high school, in this particular situation, Bria didn’t think she liked it. As he pulled Karly in again, this time, leaning down for what she could only assume to be the wettest kiss in history, Bria texted her mom.

  You and dad still here? I might ride home with you.

  Yup, getting ready to leave. Meet us in the pharmacy parking lot.

  “Hey, guys, I’m gonna head out and meet up with my parents,” she said. Knox turned to her.

  “You sure?”

  “Yup, I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” he said, with an ounce of concern in his eyes, “but we’re still on for tonight, right?” Jesus, did he really still need her? She sighed to herself.

  “Yeah, still on for tonight.”

  As the sun started to descend that evening, Bria found herself a bit uncomfortable thinking about the night ahead. She wasn’t exactly sure how to act. She and Karly had been friendly, but didn’t know each other all that well. And she knew Teddy would likely be there. After high school, Teddy was living it up as the sole member left in Knox’s posse. And he was constantly hanging on Bria, as if she and Teddy were as close as she and Knox were. But she resolved to deal with it for one night, for Knox.

  When she got to Knox’s house, Karly hadn’t arrived yet. Bria made herself comfortable on the basement couch next to Teddy, asking him about his community college classes. Knox paced around the basement nervously, tidying up the bar, checking the back door. An hour passed.

  “Think you’ve been stiffed, dude,” Teddy said, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Nah, nah, she’s coming. Just said she was running a little late.”

  Finally, after two hours, Karly knocked on the back door. Knox practically flew from the couch to open it.

  “Hey!” he said, leaning in for a kiss.

  “Hey,” she said, offering him a quick peck. “Hey, Teddy, hey, Bria.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  For a few hours, Bria sat with Teddy on the couch, laughing at the TV and picking through a bowl of Chex Mix. She watched as Knox and Karly sat on the other couch, his arm around her. He would whisper in her ear, and she’d smile. But Bria couldn’t help but notice how distant Karly seemed. After a little while longer, Karly stepped outside to take a call. Bria waited a few minutes, then snuck out back, too, hoping to have a quick word with little Miss Shepherd.

  Karly quickly ended the call when she saw Bria.

  “Hey,” Bria said. “Everything okay?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, just fine.”

  “Cool. Listen, I know things are getting pretty serious with you and Knox.”

  Karly looked down at her phone, flipping it around in her hands. Bria continued her speech.

  “I just wanted to talk to you, okay? As his best friend. . . you just have to know that sometimes he has these moments, and—”

  “I actually need to talk to him.” Karly cut her off. Suddenly, Bria felt the nerves come alive in every inch of her being.

  “Wha-about what?”

  Karly shook her head. “I just don’t think this is going to work.” She looked back down at the ground again before slipping back in through the back door. Bria knew just where this was going and her stomach turned. She would have expected to feel somewhat happy; God knows there was a part of her selfishly hoping Knox would stay single forever.

  But right now, her heart was aching. Because she knew that his was about to be broken. So Bria followed Karly back into the basement, preparing herself to pick up the pieces.

  “Hey, listen,” Karly said to him, with a stern look on her face, her voice barely above a whisper, “can we, um, talk outside for a minute?” Knox’s face dropped.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, leaning over to grab his coat off of one of the barstools.

  Bria sat back on the couch with Teddy while she waited anxiously for the back door to open again. Finally, after eight minutes, Knox came back in. He didn’t say anything, just shut the back door and walked down the hallway to his bedroom. Bria and Teddy looked at each other.

  “Damn,” Teddy said. “Doesn’t sound like that went well.”

  Bria got up and walked down the hall. She tapped lightly on the bedroom door.

  “Knox?” No answer. She tapped again.

  “Now’s not a great time, Bria. I’m sorry.”

  She could practically hear the heartbreak in his voice. Nope. She wasn’t leaving him like this. She pushed the door open to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands. She sat down next to him.

  “You were right, okay?” he said. “I was the rebound. She and Tony are already back together. She said I’m not ‘exactly the boyfriend type.’”

  Fucking Karly. Stupid, perfect Karly.

  “Oh Knox, I’m so sorry. Ugh. I just had a bad feeling from the start—“

&nbs
p; “Yeah, I know, you said. Guess I’m not as good as picking them as you are.” He seemed more than a little irritated.

  “Well, I’m really sorry it’s not working out. But Knox, you need to know something. She’s an idiot, okay? She is. She has no idea what she’s losing out on by choosing someone else over you.”

  He scoffed. “No one does. Because there’s nothing to offer.”

  Her heart broke for him again into tiny little pieces. Knox had been such a crowd-pleaser in high school. He was popular, he had no shortage of female companions, he was well-liked by all his teachers and coaches. But she knew there was one thing missing, and that was the fact that he didn’t actually like himself. And to Bria, that was unfathomable.

  “Benjamin Knoxville,” she said, lifting his chin with her finger, “I hope you don’t mean that. I hope you know that when I’ve been at my lowest, you are the person I want. You are the person I need around. You make my life better. Even if you never touched another person again, you’ve touched me. You have so much to offer. Screw her if she can’t see that.”

  He flashed her the saddest, yet the most sincere smile, and she could have sworn she saw a tear twinkling in his eye.

  He reached out and hugged her. And when he let go, he held her face in his hands for a moment, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he whispered, “but I hope I never screw it up.”

  She remembered the very first time he had said that to her, after his accident. She had tried to take it as a friend-to-friend comment. He was still delirious from his medications; there’s no way he meant anything more by it. But this time, she almost forgot to breathe. This conversation, what they were saying to each other, or at least what she was saying to him, this was heavy. Part of her worried she had said too much, and the other part worried she had said too little.

  The truth was, she’d be lying if she didn’t say she thought about Knox often, especially since she’d been away at college. She hadn’t made a lot of friends yet, and she certainly hadn’t met any other guys of interest. Throughout their whole friendship, whenever she pictured a future with any of the guys she had been with—yes, during her most naive times, she even thought she’d marry Brett Balkner—Knox was always a part of her future. She just wasn’t sure how, exactly, he fit. He was always there, but he was always separate from the love story being written at the time. It was like she pictured a double-life, where she could live in perpetual teen bliss with Knox, but also have the family and future she always wanted. Knox wasn’t her future. He was always her “now.” She turned back to him. She had to know.

  “Knox?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What. . . what are we?” She felt his whole body stiffen uncomfortably.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What is this? What. . . what am I, to you?” She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.

  “You’re Bria. I’m Knox. You’re my best friend. And you’re probably the only person in the world who really gives a damn about me.”

  She felt her body grow heavy. This didn’t quite go along with the reel that played in her head so many times, and that was the moment she realized what had happened.

  She had finally fallen for the charm of Benjamin Knoxville. She lasted longer than any other girl had, but she still fell for it. Even after everything they had been through. Even after all the times he was her shoulder to cry on. Even after she pulled him from the car. They were still just Bria and Knox.

  Never again. Never again would she fantasize of some romantic revelation where he confessed that he always wanted more. She wished so desperately she could go back in time thirty-five seconds and un-ask the damn question. She didn’t want to know the answer. But it was too late. She had asked it. She so badly wanted to go back to him being her person, and she being his. No strings attached, no saying anything out loud; just him and her. Just letting everything go without saying. But she knew after tonight, she lost something. And Bria and Knox as she knew it, was no more.

  She left his house with a smile plastered on her face, pretending his answer didn’t crush her to her soul. She had said, “see ya soon,” as she got into her car, knowing that it was probably a lie.

  She drove back to UMD in complete and utter silence. Normally, she’d take advantage of an empty car by dance-driving to some Pitbull song, or belting out “My Heart Will Go On” while no one was there to hear it. But not today. When she finally found a parking spot on campus, she grabbed her big duffle bag from the backseat, along with the trays of food her mother had sent back with her. She piled them on top of the bag, and as she made her way to the dorm, she realized she didn’t have her key card out. Shit. She fumbled around, shifting the trays to one arm and swinging her bag over the other. But the weight of the bag sent the trays—and her—flying to the ground. Mortified, she hopped to her feet. But the evidence—her mom’s homemade spaghetti—was all over the sidewalk, and all over her.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” she heard a voice say. She looked up to see a dazzling man leaning down to help her collect whatever was salvageable of the food.

  “Thank you,” she said, breathless. He was tall and trim, but with strong, defined shoulders. His blonde hair was trimmed into a neat cut, and he had striking blue eyes that smiled with his mouth. “I’m such a klutz,” she added, with a nervous laugh. He smiled, amused by her statement of the obvious.

  “Do you need help getting all that up?” he asked.

  “Oh, no, I should be fine. Thank you so much for stopping to help, though,” she said. Her heart was racing. He was gorgeous, and apparently, sweet as pie.

  “Are you a freshman?” he asked, apparently not ready for their conversation to end.

  “Yeah, I am. How about you?” she asked, still fumbling to get her stupid key card out of her purse.

  “I’m actually a med student at the Baltimore campus. I’m just here catching a lecture.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling dumb. Of course he wasn’t a freshman. Or even an undergrad. “Impressive.”

  He smiled again, and her knees went weak.

  “How are you liking Maryland?”

  “I’m still getting used to how huge it is, but I love it, honestly. Plus, it’s close to home,” she said, trying desperately not to show just how difficult it was to hold up the increasingly heavy trays of spaghetti.

  “So you’re from around here?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Dalesville. It’s about forty-five minutes or so away. What about you?”

  “Yeah, I grew up in Alexandria. So not too far,” he said. “I like being close to my family.”

  Bria nodded, not wanting to stop looking at his beautiful blue eyes, but also feeling awkward as she balanced piles of food in her shaky arm. Apparently noticing, he cut to the chase.

  “Listen, I know this is a bit pushy, seeing as how we just met and I don’t even know your name,” he said.

  “It’s Bria.”

  “Bria,” he said with a smile, “I’m Drew. Would you like to go out sometime?”

  She smiled back at him, blissfully forgetting the smeared spaghetti sauce all over the front of her shirt.

  “Yeah, I’d like that.” They exchanged numbers, and afterward, she changed her tune and let him help her get her things upstairs. She felt a bit childish letting him into her dorm, seeing as he was an older, sophisticated med student, but she reminded herself that at some point, he had been and undergrad with a dorm room.

  They set a date for the following Friday, and as soon as he left, Bria started freaking out.

  “Mari, I have nothing to wear,” Bria told her a few days later.

  “That’s not true,” Mari said, audibly eating something crunchy on the other end of the line. “I gave you that little black dress like two years ago. I know you still have it. You put a picture up on Facebook of you in it like three weeks ago.”

  Oh, bless her! Mari always had the answer.

 
“Oh, yeah! You’re right. Okay. What shoes?”

  “Those black strappy ones. Not the ones with the high heel. We don’t need you breaking an ankle in front of this guy on your first date.”

  Bria laughed. Mari knew her so well.

  “Hey, by the way,” Mari said, still chomping, “have you heard from Knox lately?”

  No, Bria hadn’t, actually. And she hadn’t thought about him much since she met Drew.

  “Not since last week,” Bria answered. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, he randomly texted me the other day asking me if I knew which building you lived in on campus. I thought it was weird that he didn’t just ask you himself. Has he not been there yet?”

  Bria sat on her bed, puzzled. That was weird.

  “No, actually, he hasn’t. I saw him last weekend when I went home. Haven’t talked since.”

  “Oh, did something. . .happen?”

  “Something? Like what?”

  “I don’t know, I just had this weird feeling when he texted me.”

  “Oh, nope. Nothing. Just same old Knox.”

  “Got it. Wonder if he will ever get his shit together. Well, I have to go, love. But don’t forget to call me immediately after you get home tonight and tell me everything!”

  “You know it. Love you!”

  Mari was a junior now at UCLA, but she and Bria hadn’t skipped a beat since high school, despite the 3,000 miles between them.

  Bria took one final look at herself in the mirror before she headed down to the lobby. She had told Drew to meet her in the parking lot, since there wasn’t anywhere near her building to park. As she made her way across campus, she couldn’t help but feel like she was killing it. She hadn’t put this much effort into her looks in a while, but she felt amazing. Just as she reached the parking lot, she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Knox, walking across the lot, headed directly toward her.

  “Knox?” she said.

  “Hey, baby cakes,” he said, pulling her in for a hug.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, feeling herself pull away from him faster than normal.

  “Well, first of all, where are you going dressed like that?”