by Nivia Borell
“Yes, exactly, because we both know how true that is. Would you have been there for her if her family hadn’t hidden it as if it were some dirty secret?”
He raises his hands in front of him, while his eyes fill with anguish.
“I don’t know, but I am sure the whole thing would have had a different outcome. These last seven years would have been different.”
His voice quivers, and his shoulders drop in response. It is the first statement on his part holding the semblance of an apology—a hidden vulnerability under layers of guilt. A beautiful sight, the bastard deserves all this and more.
“Would you have forgotten what you thought she did to you? Of course not. You gave her up as if you never loved her at all.”
His head stretches into my direction in a heartbeat. If it is possible, he would have speared me with his fierce expression. His previous appearance alters into a predatory one—he seems even bigger now as he towers over me. He runs his fingers through his hair as he inhales deeply before saying, “Stop acting like the better person, Alexander. You have no idea how much I have loved her. Don’t pretend to know our love story. Don’t claim to know me. Would you condone that the person you loved with all your heart betrayed you?”
I raise an eyebrow and state, “It’s what I have been living with for the last seven years, so my answer is yes because for her it was always you, and I still loved her. How about you, Damien? Do you still remember the number of women you screwed these last years?”
His jaw drops, while he cringes inwardly, and then he answers, “It’s none of your business.”
“And you didn’t stop there, did you? You gave the final blow by being with and planning to marry her cousin.”
Every one of my poisonous questions has been the prelude that had to lead to this one. Damien fell in my trap as his eyes dawn in recognition. He claps as to prove he understands the game I played. He bows his head as to congratulate me for my cunning way before returning to being stiff and silent.
“You don’t have to answer, Damien, because nothing can absolve you of your part in giving her more pain.”
“I didn’t know she was innocent, and I never betrayed her with my heart because she is the only one I have ever loved… and I will until I die!” He roars the last part, and the power of his voice shakes his core as his teeth clash together. The sound of his despair echoes around us. A glass crashes on the floor with a loud crack, and an angry stare from the bartender follows. Damien raises to his feet, slogs to him as he mumbles what I believe to be a half-hearted apology, snatches his wallet from his suit jacket and places some bills on the threshold as the bartender glances from the money to him with an opened mouth and widened eyes, and stuffs the bills in his pocket. Damien returns only to place his elbows on the bar with his head cradled between his hands, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
“But still, you couldn’t put it past you that she was physical with someone else. She could have said the same thing, ‘My heart is yours, and it was just my body, just one night.’”
“We weren’t together, and I would never have laid hands on another woman if she was still mine,” he roars, and his chest rises and falls with rapid breaths.
“But now, Damien, do you recognize the love of your life from my accurate description?”
“What are you trying to get at, Alexander? That my Bria was lost, and I didn’t recognize it? Or are you mad because you can’t have her at all, not even the new Bria. Because it appears I’ve had her this entire time, and in her sanity and insanity, it looks like she has been only mine. Bound by love, in the beginning and afterward, she has been mine, chained by brokenness. The only thing staying with me after your whole story is how you saw in her only one reaction, and it was because of me. So I don’t know if I believe you when you utter I can’t save her.”
“You think you can succeed where my father and I haven’t in the last seven years? Does your ego have no limits?”
Fake laughter sounds erupt from within me. As to prove something, he plunges once again into the seat next to me as he looks me straight in the eyes with a request for an understanding I don’t think I wish to accept. It is the only time he doesn’t seem to partake in a challenge. It stops the moment Bria’s wellbeing comes into the equation. I purse my lips at this realization.
“It’s not my ego talking, but neither you nor your father were the love of her life. I will make it my life’s purpose to give her back something, anything, of what she’s lost.”
I scratch my chin, and my eyes drill into his. “What could you give back to her because no one can return what she has lost, like a normal heart, the love of her life, and the baby? Not even you can give her those. Still, I wish you luck with it if you ever see her again.”
My lips turn into a sour smirk. His intentions might be good, but I know something I am too eager to share with him shortly. Whatever he notices, it irks him as his hand grasps my upper arm in a tight hold. Hmm, Damien and astuteness! I learned something new tonight.
“Damien, I’m not finished.”
I unshackle myself from his grip as his face succumbs to a jaw set in firm lines and shields his face halfway from me.
“Alexander, I expected nothing else from you.”
His bitter growl leaves me immune as I reminisce.
Seven years earlier…
Bria and I settle into a comfortable silence and wait for news of my father’s heart surgery. After a while, she leaves so she can rest, but she gives me a reassuring nod before she closes the door behind her.
A few more hours pass before Dr. Davidson comes to report everything went well. There were no complications, and he hopes for a full recovery. All this addressed in medical terminology I barely understand, but most importantly, my father would be fine, and after he wakes up, I would be allowed to see him.
Excitement rushes through me. I scamper toward her room. When I open her door, my whole body stops. She is curled up asleep on her right side with her hair covering half of her face. For someone who in the next seven years would say she can’t find her peace, all I could observe on her beautiful face is the serenity of a sleeping angel. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to continue on with her life. Perhaps she somehow knew in her sleep, everything was right, and nothing could ever reach her. In her rest, she lets everything go, and she doesn’t have to wrestle with herself anymore. And although I witnessed this, I couldn’t let her go. I clung to her and did everything in my power to keep her alive because she made everything bearable. But like everything with Bria, her slumber is also unstable. She senses my presence and stirs to a sitting position as her back rests on the bed frame.
She must have seen the relief in my eyes because she says, “I knew he would come through.”
“Thank you for being able to give my father a reason to stay alive.”
“We broken people have to stick together, you know?” She shrugs as if it’s a commonly known fact.
“Bria, honestly, you make the worst attempts at jokes.”
“I don’t even try.”
She taps her finger on that plump lower lip of hers, her brows draw together. “Maybe the problem is you don’t try. Try harder, then.”
She cranes her head, her eyes roaming.
“Why? It would be wasted energy. I’ll let you be the one with the better jokes.”
“Then we are damned.”
I lean on the doorframe as I wait for her to come to me.
She hops from the bed and passes me as we walk in silence toward the recovery room where my father is resting. His face and arms are covered with tubes. Only the constant rise and fall of his chest, and the steady beep of the machine next to him tell us he is alive. Bria brings a chair as she sits down next to him and monitors every inch of him waiting for him to open his eyes. She doesn’t shift, not even for a second. Her sole attention is focused on my father, cradling his hand in hers and caressing the surface of his palm with her thumb. After two more hours, the
light flutter of his eyes reveal he’s in the zone between sleep and awake. His pale face softens when he spots Bria as if she represents the light he has been in search of, and now he gleams as if he found the very source. She puts her hand on his forehead and gives him a genuine smile. “As promised, a true smile for a true fighter,” she says with a small crack in her voice. It is the start of hope in me which she has tried to bury ever since her slip that day.
“And still, Bria,” my father responds as he dampens his cracked lips, “I don’t see you relieved.”
She lets a muffled gasp out before looking at him through soft lashes. “You know why. There is this side of me getting a little more tired every day, but you know there’s another side of me hidden in a corner, a flicker of a warrior that keeps fighting, and it is also because of you.”
Both Dad and I grin… she is some kind of something!
Present day…
Blinking a few times after the surge of memories leaves my mind, I sway my head in Damien’s direction, and speak again. “During the next weeks, we settled into a comfortable routine, and decided to wait for her full recovery before we left and started a new chapter back in my homeland. My roots in New York called to me, and I couldn’t wait to go back home. I hated being kept in a city that would forever be etched in my mind with the long and uncertain hours of my father’s delicate situation. But to be honest, London also gifted me something I was looking forward to. Every day, I felt more drawn to Bria. She was like a force I couldn’t fight off, her pull too magnetic to escape. My father sighed sometimes realizing what was going on with me. He watched me with thick concern laced behind his heavy eyelids. Then all my pretending started, and I lost myself a little more in Bria’s numbness.
“The day her parents and her brother came was the day my heart split. They didn’t even attempt to acknowledge me. Later, I would discover why. It was because they couldn’t accept anyone who was not ‘their Damien.’ Bria scanned them chewing her lower lip and fidgeting with her blanket between her fingers. It was as if I was witness to a black and white soundless movie. No one seemed to find their words. So much unresolved and untold tension lurked behind the surface. They treated her as an already broken glass too afraid to touch it for fear it would shatter. What they didn’t understand, though, she was above it as she treated them the same in return. Her family accomplished only one thing with their attitude… they strengthened my desire to be her protector. Small talk followed about her move to America with my father and me and enrolling at the New York University. Her parents’ reaction was to nod incessantly as her brother balled his fists at his sides, pursed his lips, and said nothing. Then she introduced me as I was greeted with a frosty shake of my hand and looked down upon. I could tell they were not happy as they dismissed and turned their backs on me. It wasn’t bothered. I was there for Bria anyway. It would have taken more than a lack of approval from her folks to make me abandon my plan of being in her life.
“Family seems to me to be a mess of contradictions that meet and decide to build a home together. Deep down, something nudged me, one of those instincts telling you something is about to happen, and yet you don’t take your inner voice seriously because you think it’s absurd. Even so, I still left her sleeping in her hospital room, while outside her room, her family waited for her to wake up for another uncomfortable session. And I thought my father and my relationship was strangled. It was child’s play in comparison. Not even after she kept telling me it was nothing like this before her illness, I had trouble accepting the veracity of her words. I had not the vaguest idea how a relationship could deteriorate like this?
“I don’t intend to blame anyone because I have no proof, but something tells me she heard them talking, and it shattered her all over again. And in all this time, she wouldn’t say if I was right or wrong in my assumption her parents’ words had caused it. I suppose this is a question better left unanswered. My ears picked up a part of their discussion, but it was so harsh that every word will forever be imprinted on my brain.
“They said things like…
‘How could she do something like this? The entire family is in mayhem. Who is that person in there?’
‘I don’t recognize her. My daughter would never do such a hideous thing to the ones she loves. Does she realize she destroyed herself and Damien?’
‘My poor Damien, he’s a mess, and all because Bria had an identity crisis, or God knows what pushed her to act like this.’
‘In one night, she damaged herself, our family, and Damien, and Rebecca doesn’t know how to keep it together. She’s terrified her son will do something to himself.’
‘Are you actually letting her go? My sister is not well, and you let her move across the world with strangers?’
“They faced each other and formed a triangle. No one answered as they were all too occupied to inquire of the other. I regarded all this from my seat in the waiting area and shook my head at them.
“They halted when a thump jolted Bria’s door. She was lying motionless on the cold floor. The next thing I knew the doctors had to put her in a coma so her body could recover from the mess of her heart.
“Do you know why my heart collapsed to my stomach that day, Damien? Because my world shifted in an instant. The doctors said we had to wait. There was nothing else to do. A long and agonizing day turned into three weeks. I couldn’t even look at her folks. They kept coming and going, and with time, I could tell they had lost their hope and were wearing pale masks of destitution. They didn’t even cry anymore. In those twenty-one days, I observed the life in Bria disintegrating before my eyes, deadly white paleness spreading itself on her frame, covering the life-ensuring veins, by day. I prayed so damn hard for a miracle because I saw nothing right in the situation.
“I realized how futile life really is. We are so busy living, we don’t realize it can betray us in an instant and find a new victim in the process. How do you fight a battle you can only lose? And still, knowing the outcome, your desperation keeps you going.
“And so I prepared myself for the day when Bria would leave me for good because the only relevant question was when that day would arrive. Well, today is that day, and nothing could have prepared me to find the strength to let her go. Yet, I have because, as always, Bria does what Bria wishes to do with no concern for herself whatsoever.”
I gulp the rest of my drink as the memory has the physical force to tear my limbs apart. I crane my neck and let my words sink into his brain. Wide eyes and a slightly open mouth meet my probing eyes, as the color drains from his face with each passing second.
“Welcome to hell, Damien!”
DAMIEN
Present day continued…
His face is set in stone as he challenges me with his eyes to understand the implications of his last words. And like a curtain slips, my hand rushes to my heart as it splinters in my chest.
Pain.
An all-consuming, maddening sorrow assaults me. I keep asking myself where was I when Bria had the heart attacks and was suffering—swimming in a bottle of whiskey? And even after the years we’ve spent apart, something in the corner of my soul yells at the boy I used to be, “Charlatan!” A boy who made a sacred vow to a sweet girl, years back, to always be at her side, particularly in moments of weakness. I feel like filth, a fraud, and bitterness fills my mouth. I have loved this woman since forever, and nothing has destroyed my feelings for her. My selfishness and pain blinded maybe only one good side of me deserving of her love. There is no redemption for me.
Alex’s lips quirk up in the right corner of his mouth. He glares at me like a hawk in the chase of a scared mouse. I know his goal is to scrape at my conscience. This is why he has told me so much. Deep down, he believes when Bria heard about my suffering, her brain was no longer capable of holding herself together. As always, I am the reason for her downfall. Nothing I can do will ever wash away my guilt. Can someone be destroyer and savior at the same time? Alex stares at me, his clear disgust show
ing in his now almost onyx eyes. I want to vanish, to disappear into a past where I was whole inside and full of love and happiness, when life seemed easy, and when all that mattered was making Bria laugh. Now, we are empty shells with empty hearts dreaming of nothingness.
Something Alex said earlier caught my attention, and I have to know for sure. I try to scrub the itch as my body shivers at the incoming answer.
“What did you imply when you said today is the day?”
“In a few hours, Bria will leave, and she is never coming back.”
Knowing a thing is upsetting, but hearing it makes it an irremediable fact, and I am not prepared for her departure or for the renewed sense of loss searing me from the inside out.
“What? No. She can’t. We are in this together,” I say, my whole body carved into a fighter pose.
“You were until she couldn’t take it any longer. Her pain, although it has kept her alive, has just consumed her entirety over these years. She doesn’t have light in her anymore. Do you know when it faded, Damien? The day she received your wedding invitation.”
Alex surveys me, a forlorn expression etched on his face. Is he asking himself why it will always be me and never him when all I’ve ever done is cause her agony? I am asking myself the same question. For the first time, Alex and I are on the same page—we both antagonize me.
Just to boil my heart even more, Alex adds, “That day, I was in her office eating lunch with her, and her assistant, Emma, brought her a letter. I knew it had something to do with you because her hands trembled as she opened it and winced. To witness how you were still the one to shake her walls a little and get a reaction made me growl in agony inside. I cause no commotion in her, only you do.”
Is it something resembling hope rising inside me as I allow my strained body to slightly relax?
“She shut her eyes for maybe half a second, and when she opened them, the light vanished.