by C D Cain
She faced me and wiped a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t realized had fallen.
“Falling in love with you made me realize I wanted more than sex, more than one-night stands. I want it all. I want love and sacrifice and commitment. I want the woman who loves me to fight against all consequences of what it means to do so. Maybe if you hadn’t changed that in me then I could be what you’re asking of me. But I can’t. I can’t wait on the sidelines or hide in the closet loving you in secret while you pretend we’re only friends. Even if it isn’t about just Grant. You’re not ready to live in anything but secret. I’m sorry. I want the fairy tale. But the truth is, the fairy tale is mine to make. To me, it’s all about timing. We weren’t ready for one another. We still aren’t.” She stood, ran her fingertips underneath her eyes, and brushed the bench dust from her jeans. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I will always love you.”
“So, this is goodbye again?” I could hardly get the words out as I was desperately holding back a volcano of sobs.
“I hope not.” She turned and walked away. The silhouette of her in the darkness all but disappeared until I saw it change direction. She stopped walking as she passed under a sidewalk lamp. She leaned her back against the pole and stood still for several moments. I thought I saw her head turn back in my direction but I wasn’t sure. I sat on the bench, hoping she would start walking back for me. I ached for her words to not be truth and for her to run back to me filled with regret for saying them. She didn’t. I never dreamed it possible to hurt as much as I did the night she left me after Grant’s proposal.
No. This time, I wouldn’t sit waiting for her to come back to me. This time, I would go to her. I stood from the bench and began sprinting toward her. For a moment, I believed she was waiting for me at the light. But then she raised her hand in the air for me to stop, pushed her back off the post and hurried out of the park. She didn’t look back again.
“Mo, you were slamming tonight. I mean slamming.” A brown-headed girl who looked to be all of twenty-one stumbled over to our table.
A friend of hers followed closely behind and pulled at her arm as she tried to rein her back to their table. The drunken girl braced herself by grabbing the edge of our tabletop.
“I danced my fucking ass off,” she said far too loudly and with a bit too much slur to be appropriate in the IHOP diner.
Mo’s eyes widened before she placed her hand on top of the girl’s. “Thanks. Glad you had a good time.” She waved to the waitress as she walked by a table closest to us. “Will you bring them a pot of strong coffee and put it on my tab?”
“Yes, ma’am. I sure will.”
“I’m so sorry,” the soberer of the two said as she reached the table. “It slipped up on her tonight.” She wrapped her arms around the other girl and motioned her to come back with her to their table.
“What? Huh? Where we going?” she slurred as she tumbled into the girl’s arms.
“No worries.” Mo smiled.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said as she pulled her friend back.
“Anytime. Get her home safely.”
“Will do.”
Mo removed the newsboy cap, tossed it into the seat next to her, and shook her hair out with her fingers. The long locks tumbled over her shoulders.
“New addition?” I pointed to the streak of blue-dyed hair that was about two inches wide and ran from the root of her scalp down to the tip of her hair.
I hadn’t noticed it before when we were dancing. Had I really noticed anything other than her piercing stare as her body molded into mine? It was hard to think about anything, especially our dancing, with the sadness of watching Sam walk away weighing so heavy in my thoughts.
The bass clef tattoo disappeared into her tresses as she ran her fingers through the blue-colored streak. “Yeah, pretty new.” She leaned over the white Formica table. “Don’t change the subject.”
I sat back surprised. I knew my attention was half-assed but I didn’t realize I had changed any subject or even that there was a subject to change. “I didn’t think we had a subject.”
“Your eyes say differently.”
What did my eyes tell her? I knew the thoughts behind them. I felt the sting of tears I’d been forcing back ever since my time with Sam in the park. The dance club had kept them shadowed but here under the bright fluorescent lighting, I suppose they were visible for all to see…particularly the woman sitting across from me.
I shifted in my seat until I could see over Mo’s shoulder to Jazlyn who was standing outside talking to Violet. She had called right before we sat at our table.
“Is it because we danced or is there something else?”
Mo held concern and worry on her face as she looked at me. “It’s not because of the dance.”
Relief washed over her expression. “You had me worried. Thought I’d stepped out of line and made you uncomfortable.”
“No, it wasn’t you.”
“I don’t care about that, you know?”
I looked up to see her eyes on the ring finger of my left hand. I felt the restaurant around me fade to black as I focused only on the sparkle of the diamond against the harsh lighting. I clinched my hand into a fist.
This damn ring.
Instead of her next words to me, I heard only the sounds of ceramic cups as they struck against ceramic saucers, the scrape of cheap metal forks across plates, and voices carried in conversations. Maybe it was easier for me to focus on the noise than to hear clearly the words spoken mere inches from me.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at anything but the prism of reflected light on my finger.
“I said, I don’t care about that ring on your finger. I wonder if you study it this way when I’m not around. But like I said before, that piece of jewelry doesn’t define you to me. So why don’t we let it be what it is when you’re around me?”
“I don’t know if I can right now.”
“Why?”
“I’m engaged. I said yes to a man who asked me to marry him.” The plates, the cups, the chatter were all so loud. I felt the chaos in my head and fought the urge to escape. Fought the need to run out into the night and far away from the noise of everything in my life. Far away from Sam’s words in my head when she told me she needed me to choose her. Not only choose her, but also be open about that choice. Had she really told me I had to do it all at once? Accept who I am? Accept who we are and in a moment’s breath tell the whole world about it? If I had heard it right, it didn’t seem like she was giving me much of a chance to be the woman she needed.
Mo reached across the table and buried her hand underneath mine. “And that means what?” she asked. “Does it tell me who you are? Does it tell me the woman inside of you?”
I stared at the bass clef at her wrist. The noises around me began to still and slightly diminish.
“Rayne?”
I was startled at the clarity of which she said my name. She didn’t have a nickname for me like Sam did. I’d missed being called Stormy. I’d missed the way it made me feel when Sam used it. But Mo called me by my given name and it elicited similar feelings the nickname had once given me. I looked up into her eyes.
Her eyes were searching mine like no time I had ever seen before. She squeezed my hand gently. “If it doesn’t define who you are or the woman you have become, then it doesn’t matter to me. I couldn’t care less about that piece of jewelry on your finger. All of that is for you to figure out on your own. Now…” She paused. I hadn’t realized my eyes had drifted from her until she stopped talking. “The two charms on your necklace may be a whole different story.” Nor had I realized I’d grasped the charms between my fingers. “Something tells me those,” she pointed to the necklace, “little doodads may very well define the woman sitting across from me. The woman I want to get to know b
etter.”
I felt my hand flinch and try to recoil from hers. She held it still with a stronger grasp.
“Damn, did my girl ever have a bad night of call. It’s three a.m. and she’s just now crawling into bed.” Jazlyn stopped and looked at us.
Mo released my hand and slid over for Jazlyn to sit down. “That sucks, dude. Was she beat?”
Jazlyn gave Mo a sideways glare. “That’s an understatement.” She gazed at me. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No, not at all.” I motioned the waitress over to our table and hoped she would be brisk enough to change the conversation.
A steady fall of rain fell on the top of Jazlyn’s Range Rover as she drove us back to Birmingham. My lids became heavy as I watched her hands change positions around the steering wheel. Her long, slender fingers wrapped easily around the wide wheel. They changed positions multiple times as we traveled with nothing more than the sounds of raindrop splatters and light acoustic music from the radio. I felt entranced as I watched both her and the blurring white lines as we sped along the interstate.
“Do you want to talk?”
Her voice sprang the fatigue from my eyes. “Huh?”
“I asked if you wanted to talk but maybe what I should’ve said was can we talk?”
“Sure. We can talk. What do you want to talk about?”
“How about you and Mo?”
I shifted nervously in my seat. “Okay.”
“You’re a grown woman. Both of you are. And it’s probably none of my business but you’re both my friends so I think I should tell you some things about Mo.” She ran her hands over the steering wheel before adjusting the volume control with her thumb. “I may be way out of line here. It’s just you two seemed…I don’t know…close. Like that dance and then walking up on you in the restaurant. She was holding your hand.” She ran her hand through her hair.
“It’s okay. You can tell me what’s on your mind.” I hated seeing her nervous to talk to me about anything. I didn’t want that in our friendship. “You’re my best friend, Jaz. I don’t know what I would do without you. You can talk to me about anything…especially if it’s on your mind this much.”
She gave me an appreciative smile. “Thanks. I value our friendship more than you know and I don’t want to see you hurt anymore. Mo is like my sister. I love her dearly. She’s a wonderful person and a true friend. Not once did we ever have an attraction between us. We were friends straight away without that ever interfering.” She adjusted the defrost on the dashboard as the temperature change from the rain had given the windshield a nice opaque covering. “I wanted you to find what I had found in her so many years ago, but after watching you two tonight, I’m afraid that isn’t going to be possible. You both have the attraction part to deal with.” She peeked at me. “Or am I wrong and it’s just her?”
That last part caught me off guard. “Why do you ask that?”
“Well, you ran off after you two danced. I figure it made you uncomfortable so you jetted.”
“No, that wasn’t it.”
“Then what was it?”
I rubbed at my nose. The faint smell of old cardboard filled the interior of Jazlyn’s SUV. I suppose she would have to use it to cart boxes needed for her club. I wasn’t sure if the smell was the cause or if the tears that lurked in the shadows of my mind brought the tickle to the tip of my nose. When would I ever not feel this with the thought of Sam? Would I ever not feel it?
“Sam.” I sighed deeply. “Sam was there.”
“What? She was there?” Her voice was raised. “I didn’t see her.”
“Neither did I until she grabbed me and took me outside.”
Jazlyn glanced at me as if encouraging me to go on.
“We walked over to a park and talked.” Nope, it was the impending tears as they now freely flowed down my cheeks. Damnit all to hell. When would I stop doing this? I angrily wiped them from my face.
“I take it things didn’t go so well.”
“Not the way I wanted. No.” The trees along the road were nearly hidden behind a sheet of rain. “Gawd, I love her so much.”
“But?”
I clenched my fist tightly until I could feel the ring cutting into my skin. “It’s not enough. I hurt her. She doesn’t want any part of me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see the way she looked at me. It was like she hated me.”
“She doesn’t hate you, Rayne. The woman I know could never hate you. Was she hurt and heartbroken? Yes. But hate? No.” She touched my hand as it rested on my thigh. “But I’m thinking that hurt is a two-way street. Hmmmm? I’ve not been around you a day that your eyes haven’t shown the same kind of pain hers did.”
I wiped more tears from my cheeks.
“So, where did you leave it?”
I felt the words stick in my throat unable to pass. Unable to speak. I gripped my jeans with my free hand and squeezed hard. “It’s over. Done. She’s not a part of my life anymore. Not a consideration when I think of the future. Before, I guess I hoped she would be. Hoped we would find a way to be together. She would come back and we would tackle all of it together. But looks like anything I do from here, I do alone.”
She held my hand tighter. “No, not alone. Never alone.” She pushed the blinker on her steering column up and slowed her speed. “I need gas and this one is covered. I’m not in the mood to become a drowned rat.” Her laughter eased the tension.
“I can tell Mo’s attracted to you,” she said as she climbed back into the SUV. “Where she’ll take that I have no idea. I asked her to leave you be.”
“Yes, I heard.”
“You did?”
“The night at the beach. I overheard you two talking.”
She pulled her knee up into the seat as she turned to face me straight on. “It was nothing against either of you. Nothing at all. I think both of you are incredible women. It’s just…” She tapped her finger on the gear shift that sat between us. “Mo is a wonderful woman and friend. As long as you care for her for who she is and not what you want her to be, it will be fine. She lives life by her own rules. I may talk to her for a month solid and then bam, she’s gone. It may be a month or two before I hear from her again. With women she is interested in, I’ve seen her show them attention to where they feel like they are on a pedestal. And well, they are. Her feelings for them are real in that moment. But it’s just in that moment. Once the moment is gone, so is she. She won’t want to hurt you but if at any moment you start to let yourself believe it is more, then you will be. I didn’t want her messing with you because it will be hard to keep yourself in check with a mending heart when someone is making you feel like you’re her every desire.”
“I get it.”
She straightened in her seat, turned the ignition on, but then turned back to me. “She’s not girlfriend material, Rayne. God knows I love her. I do. But she isn’t girlfriend material. She changes women more than I change my underwear.” She tried to force a laugh. “I don’t see her changing. She’s happy with who she is. Free to live. Free to love. I doubt she’ll ever live in one place long enough to set down roots.” She looked out the windshield and shifted the SUV into drive. “I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
Her concern for me with her true friendship made me smile. She was protecting me. There it was. The rainbow of happiness shining through the grayest of rain clouds. I breathed in the scent of old cardboard. For the first time, a scent of sand, surf, and sunscreen lingered behind it. How had I missed her air freshener until now?
“Thanks.” I patted her thigh. “Thanks for being my friend. No worries. It was only a dance.”
The words brought a swift reminder of the sensation a blue jean-clad thigh pressed between mine had caused.
“Son of a fucking bitch!” Grant screamed
from the bathroom.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I burst through the door, agitated with his vulgarity.
To be honest, I had been struggling to keep from being agitated with everything about him. I’d hardly slept a wink the night before. The mere sound of his breaths as he slept kept me from finding my own sleep. It wasn’t his fault and I knew he didn’t understand why I had been so short-tempered with him. I was trying to be more patient and attentive to him but I was failing miserably. The timing of his acceptance to go to New York couldn’t have been better. I needed to be alone.
I realized I was standing in rising water as it filled the bathroom floor and spilled out into the hallway.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” He frantically fought to reach the water shut off valve behind the commode. The picture of his naked butt as he bent over was not the sight I wanted to see before my first cup of coffee.
“I don’t have time for this shit this morning.” He stood up to face me.
I believe I may have winced as I held a towel out in front of me. “What happened?”
“Do I look like a plumber to you?”
“No, actually right now you look like an asshole to me.”
He snatched the towel from my hand and wrapped it around his waist. “Nice, Rayne. Very nice.” He sloshed pass me. “My plane leaves in three hours. I’m going to my place to get dressed.”
“Are you serious? You’re leaving me like this?”
He turned in the hallway. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Hey, I don’t know. Here’s a novel thought. Why don’t you act like a boyfriend and stay to help me get my plumbing taken care of?”
“Maybe if you acted like a girlfriend sometime, I would feel more impelled to act like a boyfriend.” He walked into the bedroom but stepped back to peer around the doorjamb. “Or, hey, better yet since were fucking engaged, maybe you could act like a fiancé sometime. Wouldn’t that be a grand idea?” He shed his towel and jerked his clothes on over his body.