Graphite

by Anne Leigh

  “Oh brother.” My sister sighed in exasperation and I was relieved to see our server carrying our order and placed them on our table.

  After thanking him, Bridge dug into her eggs and mumbled, “These are good – they remind me of Sarabeth’s.”

  Sarabeth’s was our favorite Midtown breakfast/brunch place in New York. It was the place where my sister and I spent an hour or two chatting about life. We’d ask Lincoln, our family driver, also our best friend, to drop us off when we got picked up from school on the weekends. Mom didn’t even have the time to come with Lincoln and pick us up. She was too busy managing her beauty empire.

  “Sometimes I miss New York,” I voiced out, I loved the city, but I didn’t like what it stood for. To others, it was the symbol of freedom and opportunities. To me, it was where life became too suffocating and I felt caged in. “But mostly I missed it because you were still there. I wish I could have done something sooner.”

  My sister’s eyes filled with unshed tears, “Bishop, stop. It’s not your fault. We were kids.”

  “You were.” I said, trying to dislodge the frustration building up in my chest, “I wish you didn’t have to go through that, Bridge.”

  A big fat tear fell on the tissue she’d held to her eyes, “It’s okay…I’m better now.”

  I nodded, not wanting to dredge up the past, but also hating the fact that she had to go through what she did.

  “I’m not the only one, Bishop.” She eyed me somberly. “You also suffered.”

  I shook my head, “Not as much as you, Bridge.”

  We were quiet for a beat and then she said, “So, who’s the girl?”

  She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was changing the topic but I didn’t object.

  “What girl?” I smirked, biting into the tasty concoction of eggs, beans, chilies, and avocado. Bridge was right, whoever the chef was knew how to make food taste good. When Bridge suggested Wilde at Westwood for brunch, I just went with it. I didn’t even complain about the drive from San Diego to here because any time I could hang out with my sister was a great time.

  “Is she kind?” Bridge pressed, wiping the side of her face with a napkin. She’d lost some weight since she’d arrived in L.A. She’d said it was because of her classes, but knowing Bridge, it was because of the pressure that she was putting on herself which meant less time for food and all the time for school. Giving my sister a lecture never worked for either one of us so I had started sending her weekly deliveries of ready-to-eat meals to which she’d sent me a huge “THANK YOU” and a happy face emoji.

  “Who’s kind?” Still trying to evade her question.

  “The girl you like?” Her face looked funny, as if she was trying to guess if she was right and at the same time, knew that she was right on the mark with me. “Is she kind?”

  Bridge never cared for physical beauty. Mom had taught her that. In a reverse psychology kind of way. Our mother was beautiful. She’d been in the top ten of People’s Most Beautiful Women in the World for six years. Bridge and I weren’t born yet when she’d garnered those titles, but she often reminded us when we were kids, and just in case we missed it, the massive framed pictures around our house served as big reminders of her glory days.

  But what People Magazine never featured was how our mother treated other people, including us. To her, Bridge and I were inconveniences and our household staff were nothing but low-class, hired workers. From an early age, Bridge and I learned that our nannies had our best interests. After all, they were the ones who hugged us and wiped our tears when our parents screamed at us. Linc was the one who drove me to hockey practices and he was also the one who told me to hold my head up high after my father shouted at me inside the car after a grueling day.

  “She’s kind.” I answered, taking a gulp of the tall glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice I’d paired with my order, “She walks dogs for seniors who are unable to walk their dogs. She doesn’t seem stuck up and she doesn’t look down on people.”

  I’d seen Kara walk around the halls of the Science Building and she always greeted everyone with a smile. She’d been unaware, but I saw how she interacted with our classmates and I got the impression that at first, people judged her for her looks and thought she was snobbish, but she never acted like she was better than anyone else. In Quantum, she often sat in the front with Colton who looked like a fourteen-year-old geek, and I’d often hear them laugh at something during in-class exercises.

  One time, Rikko had mentioned that Kara’s roommate was a Muslim girl to which Rikko had smiled and shook his head with a, “Only my sister could room with a girl from another planet and make her the new BFF.”

  “I think you’ll relate well with her,” I said, Bridge still had problems meeting new people but only because she didn’t have a lot of public exposure. And often people judged Bridge on her looks and her introvert tendencies that made others not give her a chance.

  “You have a picture of her?” Bridge asked, her demeanor completely fascinated by my non-existent love life. It was nice to see that even with our parents’ messed up lives, my sister still held that happy-ever-after outlook.

  “I don’t,” I replied, it was true because I didn’t have the opportunity to take pics of Kara. The fact that she wasn’t mine was the big X that made everything blurry. “She’s got a boyfriend.”

  Bridge’s eyes widened, “Bishop!”

  “No. She’s not cheating with me.” I wouldn’t allow it. When Kara fired off the flirty text that one time, I knew I was going to put an end to it. I wasn’t going to be a poster boy for cheaters and from what I knew of her, she wasn’t going to go down that path either.

  We were friends.

  That was it.

  And as long as she or Scott didn’t know about the feelings I harbored for her, I was safe. We were safe. In less than a year, I’d be done with college and maybe after, we’d still be friends. As attracted as I was to Kara, there was a limit that my morals would stretch – fantasizing about her was enough.

  Cheating was not an option.

  “You like her well enough to like her even though she has a boyfriend?” Bridge put in into words for me.

  I burrowed my eyes behind the baseball cap that I was wearing, I couldn’t lie to my sister. “Yeah.”

  “Oh brother, you’re in trouble.” She let out a big sigh and sipped on the iced chai that I’d also ordered for her. Bridge loved iced chai and iced coffee.

  I didn’t answer because she was right, hiding my attraction to Kara was creating havoc in my head and my insides. Every time I saw Scott, I felt the dueling urge to get away from the room and at the same time, hug the dude. He had the girl I wanted yet he didn’t seem to take care of her. I’d heard him talking to her in the living room and the whole time, he was watching football on his laptop. I couldn’t hear Kara’s voice, but I saw his irritated expression on his face, and his answers were curt and distant.

  Again, I was no judge of their relationship, but I hadn’t seen Kara come by our frat house.

  Usually, our frat brothers brought their girlfriends or hookups to spend the night, but I never saw Kara at our house.

  “Is she on social media?” Bridge asked, her tone curious. I’d never really liked a girl enough to discuss it with my sister. Okay, there was this one time I talked to her about Lane, a girl I’d crushed on after meeting her at one of my hockey games, she was cute and I’d asked her out a few times. We never went as far as dating because her family moved to Rhode Island.

  “Yeah.”

  Bridge grabbed her phone from her purse and asked, “Her name?”

  “Kara Chamberlane,” I said, her name bringing life to my insides.

  Bridge punched in her name and within a few seconds, “Whoa. She’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded my head, she was even prettier in real life because she hardly wore makeup, but her cheeks held that natural, dewy glow and her lips were pinker, which made her more alive, more breathtaking.<
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  “She’s got a boyfriend?” Bridge asked then without waiting for my answer followed up with, “How long have they been together?” As if that was going to make a difference.

  “A long time,” I said, the hollowness in my chest becoming wider now. Kara and I would, could never be more. I had to be content with keeping everything to myself, just like I always had.

  Bridge looked at me reflectively, “Sometimes…a long time doesn’t mean anything. I know you’d never do anything with her if she’s involved with someone else.”

  “Yep.” I couldn’t forgive myself if I did. I wouldn’t want anyone to do the same thing to me.

  “You’re a great guy, Bishop,” Bridge said, somewhat encouragingly. “One day the right girl will be there for you.”

  I smiled because my sister still believed in fairy tales. “Bridge, are you watching Disney movies again?”

  “Puh-leeaze. I’ve moved on from Disney.” Her brown eyes laughed as she returned, “Now I watch Hallmark movies. On repeat.”

  Laughter boomed from my chest, seeing the smile on my sister’s face made life worth it. I knew that one day she’d date and I would make that asshole’s life a living hell. Come to think of it, my sister never mentioned any of the guys she was interested in…

  “Bridge, are you dating someone?” I asked in retrospect. I needed to know that she wasn’t being hustled and hassled by college guys.

  “What? Me? No. No,” she said in defense. “I don’t even have time to eat, which by the way, thank you for sending me grub all the time.”

  I nodded, “No problem. You know you can order your own food? And you can buy groceries.”

  “Meh. Takes too much time.” She shrugged her shoulders, Bridge always forgot to eat when she was in the middle of doing something that took up all of her concentration.

  She held that intensity and determination that I had for sports to her academics.

  She got quiet and then in a soft voice, she said, “One day, you’ll find your princess too, Bishop.”

  I laughed again, “I thought you stopped watching Disney.”

  “Hallmark Channel has princesses, too.” She scrunched up her nose. “But I’m serious, Bishop. One day, the right one will come along for you and she won’t belong to anyone else. She’ll just be yours.”

  I deadpanned because I wasn’t going to launch into fairy-tale, happy-ever-after’s or romance plots with my sister whose stomach was just full of Eggs Benedict.

  But her words rang through my ears and my psyche wanted to contradict it.

  What if the right one had already come along…?

  But she belonged to someone else.

  I pushed the empty plate to the side and asked Bridge, “Enough of this mushy, sappy crap…What do you wanna do for the rest of the day?”

  Her eyes lit up and she replied, “I could show you around my school, and later we can have dinner at the pier.”

  I flagged the server as I said, “Sounds good, Bridge. Sounds good.”

  Kara

  “I’m tired, Han,” I confessed.

  She was the only one I could divulge everything to and not worry whether she judged me or not. Distance might keep us apart, but our bi-weekly chats renewed my spirits.

  Just not tonight.

  Tonight, I was feeling downright depressed. Even the long walks with Pugs and Otis, George’s long time pals who’d needed exercise since their owner was in the hospital because he had another dizzy spell, lightened my mood for two hours and then after that, I was back to being annoyed at Scott. He’d canceled for the third time this month.

  “About school?” Her voice was blanketed with empathy. I couldn’t see her face because we were on a phone call instead of Facetime.

  I inhaled a long breath and my lungs swooshed out, letting the gigantic weight I’d been carrying inside. “Scott.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute and I felt that her silence spoke for itself.

  She liked Scott. He and Hanna got along. We’d all hung out together in high school before Scott moved to San Diego for college. But she’d always held reservations about him, that he always put something else before me.

  To Hanna, what Scott and I had looked like a one-sided relationship.

  The balance beam leaning low on my side because I always tried to put him first.

  “I’ll always love him, Han, but I’m ready to let go,” I proclaimed, still not hearing a word come from her end. Hanna had always been a great listener and I valued her opinions above everyone else’s.

  When Scott and I decided to rekindle our romance, I expected it to be different this time around. I knew that football would always come first, and I never once complained about being a close second. However, the last few times we’d talked, I heard the exasperation in his voice. As if I were a chore. That talking to me became a duty. We hadn’t even been intimate for a while and the few times I tried, he felt different…bland.

  “I came here because of what happened back there, but also because I really wanted to give me and him a chance, but I can’t continue doing this. I can’t keep trying for him. There’s a difference between being in love and being stupid and right now, if you asked me, I can honestly tell you that I don’t know which one I am.” My long-winded statement only touched the surface of what I’d been feeling since I moved here.

  “Does Scott know?” Hanna finally said, her silence unnerved me, but I knew that she was letting me think through it.

  “Not yet.” I was lying on my bed and hugged my small blue pillow tighter, ensuring that every time I moved I didn’t cover the speaker so Hanna wouldn’t hear dead silence.

  “What do you think?” She wasn’t going to influence my decision, but I wanted to hear what she really thought of me breaking things off with Scott.

  After seconds-long of being quiet, she asked. “Why now?”

  There it was.

  After three years of dating on and off, it was always Scott who asked for a break and I always gave him the space.

  Now it was me and I knew that this time, it was over.

  “I just feel like it’s the right time…” I replied, watching the fan rotate on the ceiling. It was now the middle of fall, but San Diego’s weather was confused, it still felt like a hot summer day. I was glad I didn’t bring boots and winter clothing with me or they’d be useless.

  “Really, girlfriend?” One thing about Hanna was that she called bullshit in its face. “After all these years, after all this time of being tossed around and being second-rate to his football legacy, you’re telling me that you’ve finally decided to stand up for yourself and break it off with him?”

  Astuteness was one of her greatest qualities.

  “I just don’t feel right about being with him anymore. Like I said, I will always be here for him. He’ll always be my first love, but I’m ready to let go of my future with him because I don’t see a future with him anymore.” My voice cracked because admitting it aloud meant crashing into defeat. My childhood was filled with memories of him. He held my hand when Mom embarrassed me in front of her friends by saying that I wasn’t the daughter she’d wished for. He’d stood up for me when the girls at school became mean to me the minute he tagged me as his girlfriend on social media. I had no qualms of standing up for myself, but it was nice to have him stand by me.

  “Oh honey…” Hanna soothed, as much as she didn’t agree with Scott’s treatment of me in recent years, she also knew how much he meant to me. “I wish I could be there to hug your right now.”

  “Why does it hurt, Hanna?” The tears I hadn’t been wanting to shed fell on my pillow anyways. I’d thought about this for the past two weeks and today had not been easier than yesterday.

  “Because admitting when you’re not in love with your long-time boyfriend is painful. No matter which way you slice it.” Hanna has had a few boyfriends in the past but unlike me, they only lasted six to seven months and she was ready to let go. “There’s a lot of love there and a t
on of memories, but I think you’re doing yourself and Scott a huge favor by being honest about it.”

  I hung on to her words as I sniffed between tears. Scott Strauss was every woman’s dream. Aside from his physical beauty, he had a good heart and has always been a reliable shoulder for me to cry onto when life became too much.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Going through what I went through this past summer, I’d learned how to choose who stayed in my life and who I needed to let go.

  Part of why I chose SDU was because of Scott.

  But he was no longer the reason why I wanted to stay.

  “I’m attracted to another guy.” It was meant to be a whisper but I knew Hanna heard it clearly. “I feel wrong about being with Scott and wanting to be with Bishop at the same time.”

  I’d mentioned Bishop once or twice to Hanna, along the context of being my classmate and my brother’s friend.

  “You’re telling me you’re giving up Scott to be with Bishop?” Her voice was neutral; it was difficult to delineate if she thought that what I was about to do was wrong or right.

  “I don’t know.” My emotions were a wreck and confusion abounded my thoughts. In all the years I’d been with Scott, I’d never felt the pull that Bishop had on me.

  I didn’t even know the guy that well, but in the few times I’d been in his presence, I felt like the opposite end of a magnet. Polarized. Charged.

  Completely helpless of the attraction between us.

  “Oh honey, it’s okay.” Her voice dawned with understanding, void of condemnation. “It’s alright to be human like the rest of us.”

  I couldn’t utter another word because before I was sniffling, and now I was outright sobbing. I was upset that I was using Scott’s absence and inability to fully commit to me as an excuse to get out of our relationship, especially when this was a time when he needed me most.

  “You’re allowed to be attracted to another person. You’re allowed to give yourself a chance to love somebody else other than the boy you grew up with. You’re allowed to let him go because you don’t want to be selfish and string Scott along, when you know that you want someone else. It’s okay, Kiki.” Her words cloaked my broken heart in a compassionate balm, giving me the courage to move forward with my decision.