Mark shrugs, the sunlight catching in his eyes and making them look pretty cool. I idolize the guy. Sue me. I’ll never tell Mark I look up to him. That would take the kind of conversation we guys don’t have. Women compliment each other all day long – but we don’t. Because then we’d be girls.
He hits me on the shoulder, a knowing look in his eyes. “I wasn’t going to. You were. Come over whenever you’re ready.”
Totally sideswiped, I watch him walk off, a slow smile spreading on my lips. “You’re so fucking smart, aren’t you, Mark?” I call after him.
He raises a hand up and yells back without turning around, “You know I am!”
“Fucking guy,” I mutter to myself, feeling good, like I’m looked after, like I’ve got back up. I don’t have to do this whole getting over my ex and starting a new life thing on my own.
Back at my place, I open the door and look around with new eyes. Evidence of Sara is everywhere. She’s off with that fuckhead who stole her, and here I am with all of her things mixed in with mine like I’m some dweeb who doesn’t matter. Most of this stuff belongs to both of us and I don’t know what to do with it. Sitting on our couch, I pick up one of her stupid flower pillows, remembering the day we began our downhill trek.
Chapter Three
The Old Brendan
Summer. One year ago. Before my last year of college. San Francisco. Age: twenty-four. Living with the girl of my dreams. Making sandwiches on a Sunday. Happy as a clam before it gets yanked open for the treasure inside… that used to be only his.
I hear the door open and call out to the only person it could be, “Hey babe! I’m in the kitchen.” Sara doesn’t respond, which isn’t like her. I pause with the knife stuck in the mayonnaise jar. “Babe?”
She appears around the open refrigerator door, looking worried, her sweet brown eyes darting from me to the two plates, then back to me. Her 5’2” frame makes her always have to look up when we talk, giving her the illusion of being tiny, but my Sara isn’t tiny. She’s the type of girl other girls want to be. She’s extremely confident, really pretty and a little prone to entitlement issues. I couldn’t love her more. “I don’t want a sandwich, Bren. I just ate with Laurel.”
I look down at the ham and cheese fixings, pick up the bread that was meant for her and drop it onto my plate. “Boom. Problemo solved.” I say this with the voice I always use to make her laugh, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me with an unreadable expression. “You okay?”
Picking up her honey-colored hair, she begins to braid it while listlessly staring off. “Yeah. I’m good,” she whispers, and walks off into the living room.
Something isn’t right. I can feel it. Mentally, I review our recent conversations, as well as her schedule, searching for what could be upsetting her. I know she was talking about how summer has been boring. How she’d wanted to go away. That’s probably it. Well, I can fix that. I’ll take her for a drive down to Santa Cruz. She loves that place. An image from the last time we went there pops into my mind, of her holding my hand, the sun shining in her hair as she smiled up at me and said, “do you know how much I love you?” Then she’d popped a too-big cluster of caramel corn in my mouth and laughed when it gave me chipmunk cheeks. “You need more!” I’d let her shove more in while I made cartoon-like grunts with eyes as big as Beeker’s. Her laugh is everything I live for.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll take her back there. Help her snap out of whatever’s dulled her out.
With my sandwiches towering, swaying on the plate and fit for a giant, I join her in the living room where she sits in her long white summer dress, her legs tucked underneath her on the couch. Her eyes flit up for a half a second and take in my feast. “Be careful not to get any of that on the pillow,” she says, half-heartedly, as I move said flower pillow out of the way.
“I’m already moving it. I know how you feel about these things.” These pillows have long been a source of fun for us. She bought them when we moved in despite my begging her not to. They’re the shape of different flowers, girly and ridiculous. With over-the-top delicacy, I place it next to her. “There. Now it’s safe.” Usually my ribbing her about them gets a smile, but today, nothing. With her hair hanging in one long completed braid, she plays with the end of it, her expression still blank.
I start chowing. The TV is off and the clicker sits on the coffee table, ignored. I’m happy to just sit in silence with her. I put my bare feet on the coffee table and don’t notice as she looks at them. I’m too immersed in my massive ham and cheese… and the knowledge I’m about to make her day with my plans. So good.
Talking through a mouth full, “I know what will make you happy.”
“Taking your dirty feet off the coffee table?” she asks, staring at them.
I lift them up, “Sorry,” put them on the floor and adjust my pants to accommodate my jewels.
She looks at the thick end point on her hair, toying with it.
“Let’s go to Santa Cruz.” I wait for her inevitable happiness, but see only a flicker of recognition that even she heard me. A zombie would show more enthusiasm. From the corner of my eye, I watch her. The look on her face is telling me something is rotten, and it isn’t this ham, though I’m beginning to lose my appetite now. I muscle through bites, wondering if I should explain how Santa Cruz is awesome and she will again love it. Even scarfing down a couple potato chips does nothing but make me feel ill. She’s not looking at me. She’s not watching TV. She’s not talking about her girlfriend’s relationships. Something is definitely wrong.
“Babe?”
She looks at me like she forgot I was in the room. “Huh?”
I pick up the half of sandwich I’d made for her, just in case she was hungry. “I saved a half for you. No mustard or tomatoes.”
She looks at it like it’s the saddest thing she’s ever seen. “You’re so nice, Brendan. You’re so good to me.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
“Well, I love you.” I say with a shrug, and hand the sandwich to her. She takes it and stares at it like she’s never seen one before. “It’s a sandwich, babe.” Nothing. No smile. What the fuck is going on? I’m all ears and curious as hell.
She picks at it while I wait. “Bren, I want to go to NYU for college next year.”
I frown, confused. “New York? Isn’t it freezing in New York?”
She puts a tiny piece of whole wheat in her mouth, chewing on more than the bread. “Yeah. But the drama department there is the best.”
“Julliard’s the best. Or Yale,” I argue.
Irritated, she throws me a look. “Neither of which are SF State, by the way. And neither of which did I get accepted to, either.”
I scoff. “Yeah, but you didn’t get accepted to NYU either. I mean, you’d have to apply…” I stop talking. “Wait a minute. Did you apply to move all the way across the country, and not tell me?”
Her brows crisscross. “I didn’t want to tell you unless there was something to tell.”
I stare at her, mouth gaping big enough to fit a flying saucer. Jumping off the couch, I blow up. Completely lose my shit, pacing. “What??!! You applied to move and you didn’t even tell me you were thinking about it?” Stopping cold, I turn to her. “We tell each other everything. You wanted that! So why did you think keeping this one to yourself, something that affects both of us, was the way to go?”
She sighs. She mother fucking sighs. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Didn’t you think I would support you?”
“I didn’t know…”
Something inside me doesn’t believe that’s the reason at all. And that ‘something,’ I will ignore for a whole year, including right now. I walk to her and pick her up off the couch, put her on my lap. Her arms slide around my neck like they always do when we sit like this and she looks at me with open love, a love I’ve come to rely on, thinking it will always be here. Just like her. This is the girl I plan to marry. She’s the reason I don’t mess around
with other girls. Why have a burger when you can have steak? I kiss her. “Sara… Of course I’ll support you. It’s amazing you got in. I’m proud of you.”
The first smile since she came home washes over her face. “Really? You’re proud? Oh my God, that’s such a relief!” She hugs me and I squeeze her back.
I look into the future and see us on the other side of the U.S. It’s not a terrible idea. As long as we’re together, it could be great. I’ll miss my friends, but I can make new ones. New York isn’t lacking people to get to know. Plus, she and I are each other’s best friends. We hang out with each other more than with anyone else. She’s all I really need. I smile and admit to her, “I never thought I’d live in New York, but I’m a city guy. I’ll probably love it. I might have to come in the second semester, though. I don’t know when you applied but it sure wasn’t tomorrow. I’m sure it’s all filled up.”
Distressed, she interrupts my planning. “Oh, but I’m a year behind you so it’s okay to switch with two to go, but… do you really think you should change schools this close to finishing?”
I chuckle, give her lips a peck. “Nah. It’s no big deal. Communications and marketing? I can do that anywhere. Who gives a shit where I… Wait.” Someone steps on my heart with a steel-toed boot. “Don’t you want me to go with you?”
She pauses, smiles, and rolls her eyes. “Don’t be crazy. Of course I want you to come. I just want what’s best for you, too.”
“Oh.” I’m trying to believe her, but the look I just saw in her eyes was disturbing. A terrible instinct is bitching at me from my gut. I can’t help but wonder why she never told me. How it would have taken asking people for letters of recommendation, and so much preparation, all of which she must have done behind my back. Why she waited until a Sunday when I know the mail doesn’t come on Sunday. Why she isn’t begging me to go with her.
She must see the worry on my face, because she says, “Brendan, hey. I’m not gone yet.”
I kiss her hard on the mouth, holding her cheeks. I whisper against her lips, emotions building up in my chest, my heart aching. “I can’t even think about it. I’ll miss you so much.”
She nods. “It’ll be terrible. What are we gonna do?”
A knot tightens in my throat and I can’t speak, so I kiss her again. My hands search for solace beneath the soft cotton of her dress. I press my fingers into her thighs, running them slowly up to the part of her that makes me throb every time I think of it. I love this girl. But long distance relationships never work. Do they? The knot grows hard and I try to gulp it down. We grope and ache for each other, kissing hungrily. Unzipping my pants, she shifts her skirt so that nothing is between us. Her hands wrap around and pull on my cock, making me groan with painful pleasure as tears threaten to drip down my cheeks. My fingers penetrate her, searching and exploring. She’s always so wet. Today isn’t any different except that today is the day I will remember every day for the next year of my life. I’ll remember her kissing my chest, pressing me into her, enveloping me into the silky wetness of her sweet, tight pussy. Her braid bouncing up and down. Her breasts pushing out of the dress, my mouth traveling across them as though it will be the last time. Hard and full, my moving fast inside her, pumping hard just to hear her moans grow loud, while desperation pounds my own senses to obliteration. Staring at her, my heart squeezed with pain, her eyelids fluttering closed, losing herself to the pulsing. Her looking like a Pagan princess with lips-moistened nipples and white dress-straps hanging down from her shoulders, her mouth open and beautiful. Thinking she can never leave me. Feeling that she needs to be forever and always mine.
Over the next month and a half before she leaves, I will try to convince her to leave college altogether and study at The American Conservatory Theater here in San Francisco. I will – even on the day I put her on the plane – suggest that I can quit school and go with her, if she’d just say the word. I will call her every day after she leaves. I will mope around school and remain faithful to her while sitting in classes I never remember. I will pay the rent on this apartment all on my own, convinced she’ll be coming back for the summer, and that we’ll move there together then, for her last year. I will cry, sob like a two year old when, a year later, she tells me about Steve, the jock she will meet at NYU who she becomes engaged to without telling me that we’d even broken up. I will have a ring, too, but she will never know it.
But today, with her riding me like this and crying out my name, I think I have won, and there is no way she’ll really leave. I hold her tight and tell her, “I love you so much, Sara Brighton. You know that? I really, really love you.”
She sighs into my chest, and reaches her chin up to ask silently for a kiss I’m more than happy to give. “I really, really love you too, Brendan Clark. You’re so good to me.” She smiles and nuzzles into me again. “So good.”
“Not as good as you are to me,” I say, smiling and feeling safe again.
What a fucking moron.
Chapter Four
The New Brendan
The day Mark invites me to move in. Two weeks after being dumped. Staring at that stupid fucking flower pillow.
Sara was everything to me. She made my days brighter. She made me want to get up in the morning. She made me happy. And then between two of her pretty little fingers, she cracked my fucking heart in half like a used up toothpick.
Holding the flower pillows, I walk to the kitchen and open up a drawer to find the scissors. Slowly and methodically, I slice both pillows into peach and green shards, white stuffing and murdered fabric falling in chunks around my feet. With one last inch-wide jagged pillow-sliver dangling in my hand, I open another drawer to find an envelope. Within less than two minutes, I’ve addressed and stamped a letter to the New York address I’ve had a year to memorize: Sara, I always hated these fucking pillows. I’m sure Steve probably hates your stupid pillows, too. Fuck you, now and forever, Brendan. I shove the pillow DNA in, lick the envelope and toss it on the counter. I’ll savor mailing this to her. Who says I have to be mature?
Love does nothing but kill you. I’m done with love. Totally and completely and forever done.
Chapter Five
Brendan
My first party as a single man. Freshly showered. Heart: pumping hard with excitement and a little anxiety. The world is whatever I make it. So why am I nervous?
Mark and I had a couple beers at Tommy’s place before the three of us got here. They laughed when I told them I chucked a bunch of her shit out the third floor window. Most of it has already been swiped up by scavengers who are aware of who Marc Jacobs is. Neither Mark nor Tommy would fall into that category. I’m trying to forget, myself.
Walking up the stairs to a pink and blue Victorian duplex off Mission Street, exactly the kind of funky-colored building this city is known for, I succumb to curiosity and ask them, “You guys have probably banged half of State, am I right?” I’m trying to sound tough, like I know what I’m asking is obviously true and I’m just making conversation. I’m hoping I don’t sound as out of the loop and inexperienced as I think I do. For all four years during college, I’ve been on the outside. Sara and I were enmeshed. We were at each other’s sides all the time. I rarely went out with ‘just the guys’ because she accurately believed Mark to be a womanizer. And Tommy? Tommy, she despised. That may be why he’s not my favorite person. She made me see things I would normally not have given two shits about. We guys forgive a lot in each other. It’s only when a girl we love opens our eyes by showing us what she sees, do we see the truth of our friend’s behavior. And once you see it? You can’t unsee it. She’s right about him. Tommy doesn’t show women a modicum of respect when they’re not around.
Mark laughs at my question. He’s enjoying my newbie-ness with far too much amusement. I’m sure I seem like a total dork, but I’m doing my best. Tommy throws me a secret grin as he puts his hand on the doorknob and turns it. “Can’t even remember their names.”
“That’s b
ecause you’re a dick, Tommy.” Mark says, flicking him on the back of the head. He looks at me with the self-confidence of five men. “I remember all of them. Every single naked, sweet tasting, sweet-smelling one of them. Memorizing the details is part of the fun.”
Tommy laughs and plugs his nose. “Except for Hilde. Yowza. We both hit that. And we’re both sorry for it, hey Mark?”
Mark says nothing, not even with his face. He just ignores Tommy and looks around the party like he didn’t hear him, which I respect him for. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Mark bad-mouth anyone, certainly not a woman. But still, my eyebrows go up as I watch their backs paving the way through the crowd. Tommy smiles and whispers into a chick’s ear as he passes her. I can’t be sure if they know each other, or if he just planted the seed for later conversation. Staring at him, I wonder, how can you forget a girl’s name once you’ve slept with her? The idea is about as foreign to me as giving up red meat. But unlike veganism, I’ll give it a try. I’m looking forward to becoming that emancipated from my heart that all the sex becomes a blur. Sounds like heaven. I’m in. I’ve signed the contract and I can’t wait to play the game.
Mark sees the booze-table in a far away corner. He gestures to us with a chin-jerk to follow him. We nod and work our way toward it while Tommy looks over his shoulder and says, “Mark tells me you went away on your own last weekend when we were in Hawaii.” He knows I was supposed to be in New York with Sara – that’s why I didn’t go to the islands. He’s doing me a solid by not mentioning her.
Lying Hearts (Hearts Series Book 1) Page 2