by Anthology
The slap of my cheap pink flip-flops echoes in the corridor as I head for the stairwell. All my freshman darlings must be busy studying in their rooms like scholarly little angels. That’s what I am choosing to assume right now. I’ll keep my head down because I don’t want anyone proving me wrong.
Once I’m up on the third floor, however, things take a turn for the tawdry. Two strapping male specimens are in the middle of the hallway, their backs saddled with skinny blondes who are squealing and arm wrestling in good old fashioned chicken-fight style. They are about two centimeters from smacking heads against the low ceiling. One of them is Dorritt. Meanwhile, I have to sidestep a wasted-looking couple who are wildly making out, complete with grunting noises of passion and a dose of frenzied crotch-cupping.
There are a few bystanders hanging around, drinking from red cups that I choose to believe are filled with apple juice. A petite dark-haired girl stands a little apart from everyone and looks wistfully at the chicken fight crowd. She turns around when I tap her shoulder.
“Excuse me, can you tell me which room is Bran’s?”
“Bran?” She’s thinking, scrunching her pert little nose. “I don’t think we have a guy named Bran on this floor.”
“Constance!” Dorritt calls to me in a laughing voice but doesn’t hop down from her muscular ride. “Who are you looking for?”
“Bran!” I have to shout because there’s music blasting out of an open door and threatening everyone with hearing loss.
Dorritt slaps at her opponent. “I don’t know anyone named Bran!”
My doubts start to congeal, leaving me feeling cold. Was he lying to me about living here? Did he even go to school? Or maybe this is like one of those horror movies, a sick plot twist. “He’s only existed in her head… all along.”
But a pleasant ache still radiates from between my legs, reminding me that’s impossible. There is nothing fictional about what happened this afternoon.
I try to get Dorritt’s attention one last time. “There’s no Matthew Branson here?”
“Oh, Matt!” she says and the other girls hanging around instantly stare at me. “Yeah sure, Matt’s here. He’s in room 310. We tried to get him to come hang out but he says he’s hitting the books. Kind of a serious guy, isn’t he?”
‘Serious’ is not a word I would use to describe Matthew Branson. But that’s not a discussion that should happen here. I wave and head down the hall.
Most of the doors are vividly decorated with all kinds of pennants and crap but Bran’s is bare. I knock on the door and wait six painful eternities for something to happen.
From inside the room there is a growling series of curses and then a few seconds later a shadow crosses the peephole. I wave. Slowly, the door opens.
“Hi, Matt.”
He changed his clothes. He’s wearing gym shorts and a crisp white t-shirt. He looks positively mouth watering.
“Hi, Constance.”
There’s no expression in his blue eyes, no emotion in his voice. It’s like we’re two strangers addressing each other, which I suppose we are, names and all.
An ear splitting shriek rips through the hall as Dorritt’s opponent is knocked from her male pedestal. The girl rolls around on the dirty carpet and shrieks like a stuck pig. Bran leans out the door, takes a look at the action and rolls his eyes, shaking his head.
I clear my throat and try to stop my fingers from twisting nervously together. “You want to go for a walk or something?”
Bran raises an eyebrow. He pushes open the door the rest of the way. “Mark, my roommate, is off at the library. Engineering major so he’s kind of always there. You could come in if you want.”
I stand rooted to the spot. “No. I mean, why don’t you come out here?”
Bran sucks his bottom lip in and looks away. “All right. Let me just get my shoes.”
Once we’re outside it feels so strange, walking beside him as if we’re just normal people enjoying the evening. Bran looks at the ground and idly twirls his keys as we head in the general direction of the Memorial Union and I try to figure out what to say.
“It’s quiet tonight.”
He looks around. Here and there lone figures go their separate ways in the darkness. “It is quiet,” he agrees.
“You go by Matt now?”
Slowly, he nods. “Matt, Matthew, whatever. I was Bran the Man in high school, I was Sergeant Branson in the Army. Now just seemed like a great time to be who I started out as, you know? Yeah, of course you know.”
He seems so earnest, so far removed from the hot, haughty asshole who visited my room a few hours ago. He gestures to an empty bench and brushes my elbow, leading me to it. We sit down and avoid eye contact with each other. It’s a very lonely task.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says. He breathes in and then out, balling his large hands into twin fists and resting them on his knees. “I feel like I’ll be saying that to you forever and it’ll never be enough. What went down between us today was a hell of a good time but it shouldn’t have happened. I really didn’t come here to mess you up, Cricket.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him why the hell he did come. Hallie’s right; there are thousands of other places he could have chosen to go to school, places that would have given him a fresh start as simply Matthew, a sexy Army vet with a mysterious past. Girls would fall all over that shit. He doesn’t need to be here. There’s only one thing here that he can’t find somewhere else.
I think of the words but I don’t have it in me to lay it all out on the table. It just seems like a little too much truth for us right here, right now.
“So, the Army,” I finally say.
Bran shoots me a curious look. “What about it?”
“What was it like? You were in for…”
“Six years.” He shrugs but relaxes a little, settling his back against the bench and opening his fists. “Yeah, the Army. It’s busy sometimes, tedious most of the time. Solitary, yet filled with people. That about sums up life in the Army.”
“I can’t picture it, you in the Army.”
He blurts out a short laugh. “Well, I can’t picture you in Pittsburgh.”
“Oh.” I’m surprised. “You knew I was in Pittsburgh for a while?”
“Come on, Hickey has GPS sensors on all its wayward sons and daughters. I asked, so someone told me.”
A strange feeling crawls through my belly, knowing that he’d been asking about me. Of course, we’d once been married for crying out loud. It might be odder if he’d never asked.
“I was there for a few years, living in a basement apartment and working my ass off at three jobs.”
Bran moves one hand to the back of his neck. “Sounds bleak.”
“It was all right. I was able to grab credits at a junior college now and then. I’ve got a partial scholarship here. Still need student loans, but who doesn’t. At least room and board is free with the RA position.”
Bran soaks in every word. He watches me with a kind of intense scrutiny that’s the opposite of his earlier brash attitude. Right now when I meet his eyes I know I’m looking right at the real him; the man he’s become, not the cocky jerk he pretended to be.
He opens up then, starts talking freely. The GI bill covers a chunk of his tuition but the rest he has to work for. His dad is rather sore about the fact that he refused to return to Hickey and take the reins at the lumberyard. In the weeks since he arrived on campus he’s found a part time job, unloading inventory at the mall up the road three nights a week. He sold his old Chevy pickup when he got out of the service and bought a used motorcycle to save on gas. When I picture him riding a gleaming black bike around town all tough and insanely hot – and believe me, I can picture it quite well – my heartbeat accelerates a bit.
When he starts talking about how he wants to be a high school math teacher, I find myself wishing rather hard that we were just meeting for the first time. I think I could fall for this guy. I could fall for him hard. But you
can’t just toss away the baggage that is strapped to your heart. It just doesn’t work.
A vague whisper of autumn is in the air. I cross my arms over my chest and check my watch. Bran watches me as I rise from the bench. I swear I see something deaden slightly in his eyes when he realizes I’m leaving but I don’t know what else to do.
“I should get home,” I say. “I’ve got a paper to finish up before I can turn in for the night.”
Bran leans forward, his hands returned to fists. “Right.” He lowers his head and notices my feet. That causes him to flash a brief grin, pointing. “Flip-flops.”
“Flip-flops,” I confirm, smiling, because flip-flops are a running joke in Hickey. Flip-flops made the town and when flip-flops were gone life was thrown into a tailspin. It is kind of funny when you think about it. How a piece of foam with a plastic toe piece can make or break an entire populace.
I jerk my head toward the darkness we’d come from. “You walking back to Agave?”
He peers into that darkness. “Nah, not right now. I’m in the mood for a run.”
“All right. Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Bran. Sorry, Matt.”
The haziest of smiles crosses his face. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other now and then. Hey, I don’t want you to get bothered by any drunk weirdoes lurking in the dark so I’ll stick around for a minute. You can head back when you’re ready. I’ll watch you go.”
“Okay. Good night.”
I walk the short distance back to Agave as quickly as my flip-flopped feet will allow. The slap of the shoes against my heels sound loud enough to be gunshots. For every self-conscious step I’m aware that his eyes are trained right on my back.
As I pass a couple intertwined by the front door of Agave Hall, Hallie’s earlier words come back to haunt me.
“Can you forgive him?”
The answer, unfortunately, is immediate and resolute.
No. No, I can’t.
Chapter Six
Would it be surprising to hear that we were absurdly happy? For a little while, anyway.
I kept my job at Garcia’s while Bran worked alongside his father during the day. At night he came home to me, to a tiny, poorly insulated apartment above his father’s garage that seemed like our own slice of heaven.
Bran’s father was kind of a stern character who’d lost his wife to ovarian cancer far too young and then was tasked with the raising of a wild son all on his own. He worked all the time, leaving for the lumberyard long before the sun rose, and was never home before the ten o’clock news. To this day I’ve never met anyone who works as hard as Robert Branson.
He always went out of his way to be nice to me though, greeting me with a tired smile on the rare occasions we bumped into each other, arranging for me to have the use of a battered but functional Corolla he’d picked up from a used car lot in Marlboro. I got the feeling he was relieved that Bran had chosen a nice local girl and was behaving himself. Or maybe he was just pleased that his son seemed happy in the wake of so much bitter disappointment. He was kind of tough to read and despite the fact that they spent all day every day together, Bran didn’t talk about him much.
As for my mother, she only asked me once if I was sure about Bran. When I stubbornly answered that I’d never been more certain of anything, she left the subject alone. She was busy anyway, just trying to keep her head above water and stop my younger brother from getting too involved with the troubled middle school stoner crowd.
My brother Gavin worshipped Bran so when Bran took an interest in him, inviting him to hang out at the park to toss a few balls and other male bonding exercises, I was tremendously grateful. I knew Bran was doing it for my sake but that was just another reason for me to be even more in love with him than I already was.
Bran needed a lot of sex so it was a good thing I really really enjoyed it. First thing in the morning, last thing before passing out at night, afternoon lunch hour delight in the supply closet at Garcia’s, we went at it like someone ordered us to fuck steady in order to keep breathing.
“Crick,” Bran moaned, his hands all wound up in my hair after I’d just finished sucking him off on my knees behind the bleachers of our old high school. (And yeah, that was my idea.)
His dick was still hanging out of his pants and I was still putting my tits back in my bra when he bent down and picked me up beneath my arms. I wrapped my whole body around his, my legs tight around his waist, my arms around his neck.
“Love you so much,” he breathed in my ear. “I’ll never get tired of you, never get over this.”
Later, it would occur to me to wonder if we hadn’t made the old, tired error of mistaking lust for love. Or maybe if we were just trying to fill the empty holes of life-altering disappointments with each other. Either way, things had already started to go a little sour before the end came.
It didn’t take all that long for the close quarters of our apartment to become very close indeed. I’d get annoyed when he would spill milk all over the narrow counter and forget to wipe it up. He’d complain when his razor was dull because I’d used it to shave my legs. Those may sound like small things, but small things have a way of adding up. I don’t blame Bran for that part. I’d given about half a split second of thought to what being married would mean, what living with a guy would be like.
Pretty soon I lost my optimism. Thoughts of the future started weighing on me heavily. When I thought about it, I pictured us advancing in a heartbeat to age thirty-five and still living above Bran’s father’s garage with some bratty kids running around, wiping their noses on the shabby furniture. I started staring at Bran as he snored the night away and wondering whether I really even wanted to be there.
That was not something I talked about. In the daylight I didn’t even let it cross my mind.
But we were two aimless idiots playing house. Of course it had to end.
Winter brought mountains of snow, roads full of ice and invasions of former classmates home for the holidays.
“I don’t know them,” I complained, searching for something to wear to the party Bran was determined to drag me to.
He stood in front of me with his shirt off, brushing his teeth and rolling his eyes. Five minutes earlier we’d finished having sex. It was the first time in the history of any Bran-commanded sex ritual that I didn’t come. I was all spread out underneath him and he was doing everything right. I just couldn’t get there. I told myself I was tired, distracted, cold, possibly suffering from seasonal affective disorder. I faked it anyway, even though it felt like the same thing as lying.
Bran spit a mouthful of toothpaste out and hiked up his sagging boxers. “Come on, Cricket. They’re just friends from our class.”
“Your friends.”
“Yours too now.”
“Bran, how long until party season is over? Keg stands and gossiping about high school crap isn’t an ideal way to fill the time.”
Bran sighed. “What is, babe? Sitting around with your nose in a book, pretending there’s nothing going on in the world that’s worth seeing? Or spending your paycheck on art supplies that you can’t bring yourself to do anything with?”
My face grew hot. “As a matter of fact, yes. Just like you visit your old football field of glory every chance you get and stand there for a half hour listening to roar of the imaginary crowd.”
He scowled and pointed his dripping toothbrush at me. “Look, will you do me one favor? Just don’t stand there in a corner like a fucking cranky outcast the way you did last week at Foster’s New Year’s party. All right? Try and at least act like you don’t believe everyone is beneath you.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled and stomped off to the bathroom. Too many of our conversations were ending that way lately.
It was just like I thought it would be. Hallie hadn’t been able to come home for the holidays and the handful of other friends I’d had in high school weren’t the sort of ‘Woo hoo, fucking party, dude!’ types. A few people offered me semi-friendly
smiles but mostly they congregated in tight groups I didn’t feel comfortable joining. Plus several of the girls, including Kayla, the cuntosaurous-ex herself, were in the habit of glaring at me amid hissing whispers. Even if Bran was damaged goods, he was still BRAN for god’s sake and it didn’t seem right that he’d chosen a wide-hipped mousy art freak to shack up with.
At one point when I was nursing a handful of goldfish crackers and trying to look busy as I chewed them one at a time, Kayla Swenson sauntered up to me with ice in her eyes and her teeth showing.
“Cricket!” she beamed, tossing her gleaming red tresses over one thin shoulder. “God, it’s so good to see you. I’ve been meaning to stop by and say hi but I’ve just been crazy busy since I got back. How the hell are you?”
“I’m good,” I answered warily.
She smiled wider. “Bran and I were talking yesterday about how wild it is the way everything works out. Life is like that, you just never know what surprises are around the corner. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess.” I’m hoping if I don’t really participate in the conversation she’ll leave. I was tired of her the second she flashed that pointed-chin grin my way. And what’s this ‘Bran and I were talking yesterday’ bullshit? Bran had assured me he’d barely said two words to the psycho since she swept back into town, having flunked out of State after half a semester following a week in the hospital from alcohol poisoning.
Kayla sized me up with a sweeping glance over my staid, knee-length navy blue skirt and white blouse. It was what I had worn to my admissions interview in Chicago. That seemed like a thousand years ago already. Kayla smirked and ran her hands pointedly down a slim torso swathed in a shimmering blue dress that looked like it might have cost more than my car.
“Well, I’d love to stick around and chat some more but I swear I’ve got like a million people to deal with. But we’ll catch up soon, right? Promise me we will.”