by Kat Ransom
Naive girl.
Still, I’ve paced my flat half the day, run the data, and there’s no excuse I can feed myself for not taking this job. Further, I’m not going to run away anymore or stay hidden in my own little world. He doesn’t get to win.
Sick of this shit.
So very, very sick of it.
I am better than this. He doesn’t get to ruin the next six years of my life, too. He is the one who left me. He can hide from me if anything.
I pick up my cell and dial Mom to tell her the news. If I tell her, then I can’t back out of the job at the last minute. It will become real, and there won’t be any going back. I need to take control.
“Hi, honey,” I can feel Mom smiling through the phone at me the second she answers.
“Hi, Mom.”
I stall for the next ten minutes or so, chatting about the London weather and trivial nonsense. She tells me about their latest move to Delaware to the Dover Air Force Base
I’ve lost track of the number of moves at this point. Even if I wanted to return to the States, it’s not like I have a home there. My old bedroom was packed up and discarded half a dozen transfers ago.
I often wonder why Mom puts up with the military life. Once upon a time, she was going to be a chemist. It was her who made me fall in love with the sciences as a little girl. But instead, Mom opted for the life of a military wife, supported the Major General, and raised me.
Finally, I force myself to concentrate on the task at hand and bite the bullet if, for no other reason, then to move past the growing pit in my stomach.
“So, I got a job offer.”
“You did? And here we’ve been wasting time talking about your boring old parents. Tell me all about it? What company has snatched you up?”
“Imperium,” I blurt out without hesitation.
Take that, bandage. Ripped you right off. I mean business.
“Imp… you mean…?” Mom pauses.
“Yes, Imperium. The F1 team.”
“Oh,” there’s a long, uncomfortable pause where my mother smartly chooses her next words, “that’s wonderful, honey. What position were you offered?”
“Tire and Performance Engineer,” I proudly state. If I fake my confidence long enough, perhaps I will even start believing it myself.
I tell mom about the position and the laboratory, and all the things that I remind myself are exciting about this job, but I know she’s politely ignoring the elephant in the room.
Eventually, there is a silent pause that I refuse to fill, and Mom is forced to spit it out, “And… will you be okay with Cole being there?”
“Yep,” I lie. “I saw him before the interview, in fact.”
“You did? How did it go? What did he say?” There’s panic or pity in her voice, hard to tell which because both are warranted.
I’m certainly not going to tell her I was both incredibly turned on and then later dry heaved in the parking lot. Because I can’t even explain how my body pulled that hat trick.
How do you explain when someone sucks away all the air in the room, turns your brain into mush, both excites and terrifies you? Why is a part of my body willing to cast aside the years of torment and still gravitate toward him like fire sucking in the oxygen it needs to burn?
“It was fine, Mom. It was a long time ago, and it’s time to move on. He’s certainly over it, he said we were just kids having fun.”
“I see,” I can hear her swallow. I’m sure she does not want to have to pick up my broken pieces again if this goes south.
“I met his teammate,” I switch gears.
“Oh, Dante Renzo? He’s a looker.”
Part of me hates that Mom keeps up with Cole’s career enough that she knows his teammate’s name and knows that Dante is a classic tall, dark, handsome type with a swoon-worthy Italian accent.
“He was nice,” I say, even though I could have sworn I saw Cole tense up when Dante kissed my hand. I was trying not to look at him too hard, though, so I can’t be sure.
“You haven’t heard from the Ballentine’s, have you, honey?”
“Hell no. Why?”
Technically, I’ve never spoken to Kristy, Cole’s mother. I only saw her in person a few times and in photos. She was hauntingly beautiful and gave Cole his stunning turquoise eyes. Stan, on the other hand, only spoke to me when I’d run into him at Cole’s house. I wasn’t worth his misplaced rage, he saved that all up for Cole.
“Oh, no reason. I saw Kristy not long before we moved and wondered, is all.”
“Really? What was she doing?”
This is weird, Cole’s mother was never around for long when we were teenagers. She was forever flitting in and out of his life, leaving a trail of destruction behind.
His dad had plenty of other women coming and going, but his mom was mostly absent. As far as I know, the last time she was spotted, was around the time Cole left for Europe.
“Just shopping at the grocery.”
I wonder what’s going on with that mess, but that brings me to another point we need to address. “What is Dad going to say about this?” Mom may love Cole, but Dad… does not.
“Oh, you leave the Major General to me, honey,” she reassures me.
“He’s going to lose his shit,” I reply.
My father made it abundantly clear what a disappointment I was to him when he finally found out about Cole. He wanted to believe it was Cole who talked me into having sex when it was quite the opposite, and we were both consenting adults.
Little did he know how consenting I actually was. It was me who had to convince Cole to finally take my V-Card. One does not share those sorts of details with their military father, though.
Still, he stormed into the Ballentine household to talk ‘man-to-man’ with Stanley about controlling his bad-influence son. I wish it was just the one time, but they went at it time and again. Because that's what the Major General does. He treats everyone like a cadet who needs to obey and get in line.
Yes sir, Major General, sir.
When Cole moved to Europe, I didn’t just lose him. It was the final straw that severed any warm feelings I had for my father, too. At the lowest moments of my life, Dad regularly threw it in my face that he warned me this would happen.
He was right, I was wrong. He’d ask me if Cole called that day. I’d admit no, and Dad would literally say, ‘Good. I told you so.’
I never felt like daddy’s little girl, but rubbing salt in my gaping wounds was more cruelty than I’ve ever formally forgiven him for.
And then there were the fights about Cole between him and Mom, which just added more stress to the worst time in my life. Out in the garage, yelling at all hours of the night about it. Cole was like a nuclear explosion that leveled the whole damn neighborhood.
“Your father just wants you to be happy, honey,” Mom says for the billionth time in my life.
“Well, then he should support this decision and not give me shit because this is an amazing opportunity, and I’m taking the job.”
Look at me, growing a backbone today. I hang up with Mom feeling like a proper adult.
I’m reading the bottle of the magic hair product Klara has lent me while I finish preening in the bathroom. Whatever is in this stuff, my hair is on point. It has full, beachy waves and swirls around my shoulders like whitecaps inside a tide pool. It smells like bottled sin.
No more straight, dull, brown.
Don’t analyze the ingredients on the bottle. This is a new you.
Much to Klara’s shock and delight, we’re going out tonight.
It is Saturday night, and she thinks we’re celebrating the job offer that I informed her I would be accepting. Not only will I have a job, but this is a celebration for Klara, too. She’s inevitably going to get fired from the cafe with her propensity for swearing at small children. I’ll be making enough at Imperium to cover our rent when that happens so my Swedish friend can finish up her masters stress-free.
Then we can both
get on with our lives.
In my new self-imposed and improved mind space, though, we’re mostly celebrating my determination to turn over a new leaf. I’m not going to be held hostage emotionally anymore with romantic fantasies of unrequited love and memories from half a decade ago.
I have to face this head-on, take control back.
I’ve told Makenna, my mother (who has undoubtedly told the Major General by now, as well,) and I’ve emailed Professor Tillman that I will be accepting the job. All I need to do is call Imperium on Monday and formally accept the offer.
There’s no going back now. There’s only going forward, and that’s what tonight is about.
I’m wearing the new heels I bought for my interview and a green, form-fitting off the shoulder v-neck dress with sleeves and little bunches around my waist. It hits mid-thigh, and it’s scandalous. Not just scandalous for Emily Walker—it’s naughty. Klara calls it a “fuck me dress,” and I bought it months ago, the last time I thought I was going to get over Cole Ballentine.
I never wore it then, it’s way outside of my comfort zone, but I’m rocking it tonight.
Just kids having fun, eh? It’s high time this kid had fun, then.
“This one,” Klara hands me a tube of lipstick from her impressive collection. It’s called ‘Vengeance,’ and it is blood red.
“Perfect,” I smooth it over my lips and smack them together, fluff my hair one more time, and then take the first step out of my flat door toward the new me.
Seven
“Sitting alone tonight, waiting for the sunshine. Sometimes I kneel and pray, hoping someday that you’ll be mine. But she’s so many miles away, I’ve got so many things to say. And all of the games we’d play don’t matter anyway.” - Everlast - This Kind of Lonely
Cole
A couple dozen people dance and grind on each other in my living room to a bastardized remix of Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.
It’s not an unusual Saturday night, per se, I just find myself in no mood for it. I don’t even invite these people over most nights, they just show up. I recognize some guys from the team, but I’ve never seen the majority of these people before.
I don’t know them, they don’t know me.
I’m avoiding them all, brooding outside on my terrace overlooking the River Thames. The Battersea Bridge lights cast a haunting glow onto the water below, and the sprawling mass of city twinkles in the distance.
It took me a long time to get used to living in London. It’s a city that’s both very hard to love and very hard to hate. It’s filled with extremes, and there’s no escaping it. It pulsates at all hours of the day and night, and I’ve gotten so used to the clouds that I start to resent the sun when it makes a rare appearance.
I spent the day wracking my brain about Emily and still have no answers. The only thing I know is that I don’t want her to leave London even though I’m more miserable with her here. When she was at home, in the States, there was distance and an artificial separation I could rationalize.
She never left my mind, but she wasn’t breathing the same air as I am. She wasn’t close enough for me to drive an hour and watch her turn her bedroom light off at night before going to sleep. I didn’t look for her face on every street corner or in every car I passed on the road.
And every once in awhile, if I tried hard enough, I could distract myself from her memory. I never allowed myself to believe I could have her back.
But now, and for the past ten months, she’s everywhere around me. No amount of distraction gives me even a moment of peace. My head is filled with what-if’s. Her coming to London was her siren summonsing possibilities I’d long since written off as plausible. Now, she’s here but she’s graduated, and she could leave again, so I’m forced to deal with that reality.
She was in school for the better part of the last six years, and I had reasons for not contacting her, then. Now, if I’m frank with myself, I question if those reasons are still good enough. And that’s what’s eating me alive.
We aren’t kids anymore. She should be able to make her own decisions, make up her own mind. Granted, that means I would have to give her all the information so she can do exactly that.
That may kill me, but I can’t live inside this stagnant holding pattern forever. Emily either needs to be in my life, or I need to find a way to get past her. I can’t lie to myself and make excuses anymore. She can’t leave London without me knowing for sure, one way or the other.
I push myself off the metal deck railing overlooking the river and flop onto the stiff outdoor sofa. There’s a small propane fire burning in the middle of the deck table, and I turn the switch off before one of the drunk mystery people inside burns my apartment down, next.
The giant sliding glass door opens, and a wave of music rushes out when Dante and two women draped over him pass through and invade my outdoor area.
“There you are,” Dante bellows and splashes his cocktail onto the deck. He’s shitfaced, I can tell already.
He takes a seat on the matching sofa across from me, and one of the girls following him slides in next to him, one bare leg thrown over his thigh. She’s licking his neck, and he’s paying absolutely no attention to her. The second chick darts to the deck railing to take selfies against the river backdrop.
“Did she take the job?” Dante asks me.
I shake my head, “Not yet.”
At least not as of a couple of hours ago when I texted Edmund, and he reiterated that he would let me know as soon as he hears from her, either way.
“Damn. Bella,” he calls to the selfie chick and waves her over. “My friend here has a broken heart, can you believe it?”
On cue, Selfie Sally struts over and I give Dante a death glare as she plants herself in my lap and puts her arm around my neck. “That’s terrible, who would do such a thing?” She coos and runs her hand over my face.
“A brown-eyed American girl,” Dante answers her on my behalf.
“Oh, are you American, too?” Sally asks, her hands running up and down my chest. She sounds like she’s from Manchester, and by the looks of these two, Dante has picked up another couple of models, or wanna-be models, from somewhere.
“Yep.” I’m entirely too sober for this shit tonight.
“Buy me dinner, and I’ll make you forget all about her,” Sally squeaks.
The very suggestion that this girl could make me forget Emily offends me, even though I have attempted her theory several times over in the past. It doesn’t work. “For what? You’d only pretend to eat it anyway.”
Sally pouts at me.
“Dude, don’t be rude,” Dante scolds me and slurs his speech.
I look around Sally’s rack to Dante, “You don’t find this tiresome at all?”
“You’re mad! Find what tiresome?”
I look at Sally and take her chin between my fingers to prove my point, “Sweetheart, what’s my name?”
“Mmmmm,” she thinks, or she tries to, “Captain America!”
“Uh-huh, and what’s his name?” I point to Dante, whose girl is still wrapped around him and oblivious to the conversation.
“Whatever you want it to be?” Sally asks.
“Damn fine answer!” Dante bellows.
I lean back into the couch and run my fingers over my eyebrows.
“What’s your problem, man?” Dante grows serious and taps the vampire latched onto his neck to scoot off so he can lean forward on his couch.
“No problem,” I lie. There are a million problems.
“Bullshit. You see her once, and you’re a total soft cock now.”
I grab Sally’s hips and drag her off my lap, depositing her on the couch next to me. She pouts for a millisecond before scampering to the railing for more selfies with her friend.
Dante is right, not about the soft cock, but about my bullshit. A week ago, Sally, or whoever, would have been bent over the deck railing she’s so fond of.
Then I had to go and poke the s
leeping bear.
“Lock the place up when you’re done, will you?” I stand up to head inside.
“Where you going?”
“To talk to her.”
Cambridge is about an hour away, so I have a fair amount of time to consider what I want to say to Emily. How I want to say it.
She has every right to be pissed at me, but maybe she will understand why I left. Maybe she will understand why I stayed away, though I don’t want to hurt her more. I definitely will if I tell her everything, and some truths are not mine to tell.
Either way, I am an adult, and she is an adult, and both of us should be free to make our own educated decisions.
Given how sassy she was at work the other day, I’m pretty sure she will tell me to piss off, but I chased Emily down once and made her listen to me. I can do it again.
Pulling up to her block that’s lined with old brick buildings housing off-campus students, I can see from the street that her flat lights are still on. I assume she’s home because, well, Emily is always home on Saturday night. She’s still a good girl, unlike the path I’ve gone down.
It’s all the more reason I should stay away from her if I were a better man.
Finding a parking spot on the street, I back my car into the space and remember the first time I found myself here. I didn’t mean to turn up, it was like I was compelled here. She had just started at the university, and I was quickly reminded that Emily was better off without me. But there was something inside me that just had to see it for myself, to know for sure.
So, every now and again, when the pull became too strong, I’d come see for myself. Check on her. And, sure enough, Emily was alive and well. She had friends and a roommate and would sit inside a cafe nearby reading on her Kindle for hours. She studied, she tutored other students, she was doing what she came here to do.
She wouldn’t be doing that if I were in her life. So, I stayed away.
Once in a while, some guy would pick her up at her front door or walk her home. It was then that I had to fight myself to stay in the car. Because they were all the kind of guys that Emily should probably be with. Post-grad guys who wore suits and could talk about physics or engineering with her. Guys who would be gentle and treat her right.