Just Breathe

by Mataya, Tamara

  “Nick!” Kennedy and I exclaim at the same time.

  “What? I’m serious. Maybe I should have a talk with the guy—see where his priorities lie.”

  “Yeah, that’s so not going to happen,” Kennedy declares. “Dominic is a good guy. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “What, you know him? You’ve talked to him more?” Nick flicks the lighter and holds it to the joint.

  “We talked on the phone before he asked Elle out, but other than that, no. I just have a really good feeling about this one. And he’s hot.”

  “Oh, is he? So that’s all it takes? A little sweet talking from a cutie and you two just fall all over yourselves?”

  I’m pretty sure Nick’s teasing, but I keep it serious. “He’s been nothing but a gentleman.” He could have ravaged me on the hood of his car at the zoo and I’d have happily gotten arrested for public indecency, but he stopped us. “And I can handle myself. Even if you don’t trust him, you should trust my judgment.”

  “I suppose.” He passes the joint to Kennedy.

  Headlights swipe the living room wall, and I look out the window. “It’s him!”

  Nick peeks outside, squinting to see through the darkness. “Holy fuck. Is that a Maserati?”

  “Yes.”

  Nick flops back to the couch. “Goddamn. So he’s loaded, which means he’s probably pretentious, but I can’t fault his taste.”

  With Nick suddenly playing the part of overprotective brother, I decide to get out to the car rather than have Dominic come to the house for an interrogation.

  Slinging my purse over my shoulder I pull the door open. “See you later. Don’t wait up!”

  “We won’t,” Kennedy trills. “Have fun.”

  I’m sure going to try.

  Dominic is just at the passenger side of the car. “Hey.” He opens the door for me and catches my hand to spin me around like we’re dancing. “You look great.”

  “Thanks. So do you.” Good enough to eat. He’s in a thick, forest green cable knit sweater, and dark jeans, and I want to climb him like a tree. Oh my gawd, I need to settle down. He leans in for a quick hug, and I feel the tension in his body. At least he’s as keyed up as I am. We get into the car and pull away from the curb.

  “Any hints?”

  “You might figure it out as soon as you see where we’re going.”

  “No hints then.” I’m secretly pleased that he keeps going to all this trouble. I know it’s going to end sometime, so I enjoy it while I can.

  “Oh! I finished Syrup by Maxx Barry.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  “I really liked it. I’m not sure how much of it is actually accurate to marketing and advertizing but I enjoyed it. That whole controversy over the doughnuts was hilarious.”

  “Awesome!” I sit back, feeling happy and smug, like I did something right and was validated in my recommendations for him.

  “You really love recommending books, don’t you?”

  “I do. I love it way too much for it to be healthy. I’ll have to ask Marie about its accuracy.” When she gets back. In a year. Sigh.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You just left the car for a minute there.”

  “Marie is my best friend, and she’s this advertizing guru, but she’s taken a promotion.”

  “That’s good. Promotions are good.”

  “Yeah. Except this one means she’ll be living in Spain for a year. And she leaves in like, a week.”

  “That’s rough,” he says sympathetically.

  “I’m really going to miss her.”

  “Maybe you can go and visit. Have a vacation and see her?”

  “Not on my salary.” I’m starting to feel like I’m bringing the mood down, so I poke around at his stereo. “Do you have any tunes in this car?”

  “Did you bring any music?”

  “I did. Just in case.”

  “That’s perfect. We’ve got about a forty-five minute drive.”

  I plug in my Esthero CD. Her album, Breath From Another, is perfect for driving late at night. What are we doing tonight? If it takes about forty-five minutes to get there, that means we’ll arrive around midnight. He told me to dress warmly, so we’ll be outside?

  The already sparse traffic thins to nothing as we head out of the city completely. Now I really have no idea. Bush parties don’t seem like Dominic’s style. Moonlit stroll in the countryside? Going fishing?

  Dominic breaks the silence. “I like your music.”

  I like you. Jason never let me play my mix CD’s, saying they were lame and weird and he’d rather drive in silence if we couldn’t listen to his music. “Thanks. I’ve had to discover through trial and error which artists are safe and which aren’t.”

  “I bet that was super fun,” he says drily.

  “Yeah, it was pretty brutal. But luckily for me, if I like an artist, I like them forever. If I love a song, I can replay it over and over, and never get sick of it.”

  “Same here.”

  “I once listened to Time Of The Season by The Zombies for five hours on a road trip. Over and over. I wanted to crawl around and live inside it for a while.”

  “Wow. I can’t say that I’ve played a song that many times in a row, but I do like that song.”

  “Yeah. The bad songs suck, but like I said—the good stuff is really good. Sometimes too good. A guitar riff or voice can completely captivate me.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Singers only, or people’s voices too?” His voice has subtly changed.

  “Speaking voices too,” I admit.

  “Anyone we know?” He grins.

  “Shut up and drive the car!” I’m glad in the dark he can’t see how deeply I blush.

  A little while later, he turns down a well-kept but small dirt road, and we follow it for twenty minutes or so. There was a sign, but I only caught the back of it in the rear-view mirror, too busy sneaking looks at Dominic.

  We pull up to a building the size of a house, except for a large deck on the roof and a tower with a rounded top. One entire side, including the ceiling, is clear—glass or Plexiglas.

  “We’re at an observatory.” I state the obvious.

  “We are.”

  “We’re going to look at the stars?” Aww that’s pretty. You can barely see them in the city with all the light pollution.

  “Well, yes. But there happens to be a meteor shower tonight. I thought you might like to see it.”

  “You thought right! That’s so cool!” I make for the door handle as soon as he parks and throw the door open. My breath leaves in a whoosh as I try and fail to get out of the car, instead I’m pulled back against the seat. Forgot to remove my seatbelt in all the excitement. Hopefully he didn’t see.

  As I get out of the car, I notice the emptiness of the parking lot. “Shouldn’t there be other people here watching as well? Oh. It says it’s closed.” Disappointment floods my limbs, weighing them down. “I guess we’ll have to sit in the car instead.”

  Dominic’s grabbed a large sleeping bag from the trunk and pulls a key out of his pocket with a flourish. He opens the observatory door and I follow him in, surprised there’s no alarm. But he switches on the lights and I realise there’s not much to steal. It’s pretty spartan.

  “How? Why do you have a key to an observatory?”

  “Bit of a science nerd. I worked out here for a while starting when I was a teenager.”

  “That’s a pretty sweet job. Better than working at a fast food joint.”

  “I know. I loved it out here away from everything.” He locks the door behind us and leads me up to the deck. A slight breeze stirs the air. It’s not that cold, but I see why he told me to dress warmly. “The shower should start pretty soon.”

  “Have you taken many women out here?” I suddenly regret asking. It’s none of my business and I don’t really want to know the answer.

  “No. You’re t
he only one.”

  “Oh.” Pleasure and warmth gently tangle around inside my chest.

  He spreads out the blanket and motions for me to lie down beside him. I’m hyper aware of every place our bodies gently touch, my right side, his left. I want to press my front to his, explore every inch of him, but I lie still. He sits up and frees his hair. It springs forward, barely brushing the collar of his sweater, framing his face, and I long to run my hands through the silky looking strands, but I keep my hands to myself.

  “That right there isn’t actually a star.” He lies back down and points at a bright spot in the sky.

  “It’s Venus.” I can smell his shampoo. I want to taste his lips.

  “Yes!”

  My peripherals catch him look at me and smile, but I keep my eyes on the skies. “I’m a bit of a space geek myself.”

  “You are full of surprises, Elle.”

  “I know. And that one,” I point to nothing in particular, “is Gallifrey.”

  “At the risk of sounding like a total cliché, how is a woman like you still single? Do you just prefer the pleasure of your own company?”

  “No. I, uh...” My voice trails off. What should I say? My normal response is something glib and meaningless, but I don’t want to keep up the act anymore. I’m tired of carrying the weight of my last relationship on my shoulders, but I don’t think Dominic is the one to unload it on. Discussing an ex on a date is never a good idea, especially this soon into a relationship. Is it even a relationship? We’ve only technically been on three dates.

  “How about this.” Dominic bumps my foot with his own. “You don’t have to say anything, and I’ll be fine with that. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. I’ll accept it, but what I really want is to know you, Elle. We’ve already broken the rules by being direct with each other and not playing games. I’d like for us to continue with that. Our pasts are what made us who we are, but they aren’t who we are now. I’d be interested in hearing whatever parts of your journey you’d like to share with me. How’s that sound?”

  He really wants to know about me, I can feel the sincerity in his voice. Jason’s eyes used to glaze over when I’d talk about stories that happened before we dated. “I like that. As long as you tell me yours, if I share mine.”

  “Deal. You want me to go first?”

  “God, yes.” The words leave me in a relieved rush of breath.

  His laugher fades as he focuses on the past. “Kay and I were together for seven months when she started to change. I should have put it together, but love is blind, or at least, wilfully ignorant.”

  I shift to my side, tracing his profile with my eyes, waiting for him to continue.

  “She started acting out of character, becoming flakier. Showing up late when we were supposed to meet—when she bothered to show up at all. And she started getting paranoid, moody. I could smile at her, and she’d snap at me, ‘What’s that smile for?’ As though it was weird to smile at my girlfriend.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. It was tense. I noticed some money and things had gone missing from my place, but didn’t think much about it—hoping I’d just misplaced them, or remembered incorrectly. You don’t want to believe your partner is stealing from you. This went on for about a month until a party one night at a mutual acquaintance’s, where I walked into one of the rooms and saw her snorting coke. I lost it, we left the party in a big fight, and she said she’d only tried it a couple times. She swore up and down that she’d never do it again, not after she saw how I’d reacted.”

  “Was it the fact she was doing it that bothered you, or was there another reason?”

  “Her doing it would have been bad enough, that shit ruins lives.” His voice is flat. “But no. My best friend, who was like a brother to me, OD’d a few years ago. Seizured out and choked on his own vomit.” He closes his eyes. “I was the one who found him, but it was too late.”

  No wonder he freaked out. I have no words, so I just take his hand and press a kiss to it. He relaxes beside me, breathes a bit deeper.

  “I really wanted her to kick it, and I did everything in my power to help her. I’m not sure if she tried to quit at all, or just tried harder not to get caught. But one day she was driving us to her place, and it was like she forgot it was me in the car with her. She stopped at a friend’s, came back to the car, and we drove off again. Around the block, she pulled over, said, ‘I need a pick me up,’ and did a line of coke right in front of me, on the console in the car.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah. She went to drive on like she’d done nothing. I broke up with her right there and then, got out of the car, and didn’t look back. I was so disgusted that she could repeatedly lie to me like that. That was five months ago. I saw her a month later. She’d lost more weight, looked even worse. Sometimes I wonder if I could have helped her, if I’d been more vigilant—”

  “Dominic, she made a choice. You did all you could. We can’t live people’s lives for them. If they’re determined to throw them away, all we’re doing is prolonging the inevitable. You can’t make someone want to live.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Besides,” I continue, “if you do that, you stop living your own life as well. Then it’s two lives claimed by an addiction.” Never mind that I’m a recently former pothead.

  He kisses my hand. “Part of what draws me to you is your directness. It’s refreshing, makes me feel like I can relax with you. With some people you’re waiting for them to let you down. I don’t get that with you.”

  I blush and feel a bit sick. Not so long ago I routinely smoked enough weed to give an elephant emphysema. But pot’s definitely not in the same class as cocaine. Surely he wouldn’t freak out over some weed?

  “What about you? What happened with your ex?”

  I shift onto my back so I’m not making eye contact for this story I’ve never told anyone. Insecurity gathers, and I feel like it’s going to burst through my chest and crawl all over me like a waterfall of spiders, but I have to push through it. Taking a deep breath, I begin, relieved to not bring up pot. For now. “Just over three months ago, I was in a relationship. It seemed to be going perfectly. We never fought, we liked most of the same things. Looking back, I guess it was fairly shallow. We didn’t really talk about anything deep. But at the time, he was my world. I couldn’t believe someone like him wanted to be with someone like me.” The admission is something I’ve never told anyone and burns my face with embarrassment. I sound like such a dumbass.

  But Dominic gently squeezes my hand, giving me a little boost to continue.

  “But it’s the ending that matters for this conversation. Though in our case—there wasn’t one.”

  “Wait, are you still together?” He stiffens.

  “No! No, nothing like that. He was going out of town on business for a couple days. We hung out, then he dropped me off at my apartment.” Funny, that day, I remember kissing him on the street, knowing people were watching, but not caring. I kissed him like it was the last thing I’d ever do. Full-on ass grabbing make-out session standing on the street. And I turned to leave, and he got in his truck. But I looked back, and saw him bowing his head, shaking it, dazed. It made me feel powerful as a woman, as a lover, that I’d done that to him with just a kiss.

  I didn’t realize until later that that was our last kiss. Had he known then that he was leaving me, or was he still planning on returning at that point?

  “Anyways,” I continue, shaking the memory off. “He called me a few days later, said work was taking a bit longer than he’d anticipated, and he’d call me in a couple days. A couple days later he phoned, said he’d be a few more days. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “What? Is he okay?”

  The laugh that forces its way out of me is mirthless and ugly. “Yeah. My roommates and I moved, and I called his roommates to invite them to our housewarming party. I talked to one of them, Skeet, for a few minutes. He acted like I knew the score. He thou
ght I did. And he slipped in, ‘It’s crazy how Jason just moved there, hey? Crazy kid.’ My delusions crumbled at my feet. The lies I’d told myself—that he was just crazy busy at work. That he’d lost his phone. That he was planning a big reunion and would turn up on my doorstep any day. All the lies were levelled with Skeet’s seven careless words. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was over a couple weeks after he left when he wasn’t returning my calls or texts. But that phone call confirmed it. It killed the hope I’d carried with me while waiting for him.”

  Dominic squeezes my hand. “Hope can be the most beautifully masochistic thing in the world. I can’t believe he did that to you. No wonder your friends are protective. Kennedy grilled me pretty hard that day I called her. I don’t blame her for going hard on me. I can understand after that.”

  Oh boy. “There’s more.” The weird part of my story. I close my eyes and brace myself. “No one knows about the situation of the break up. A week, then two went by with no word from Jason. Kennedy and Nick noticed I hadn’t gone to his place for a while, and asked where he was. I told the truth – that he was at work. It was what I knew. More time went by, and they asked again. I told them we’d decided to part ways, that long distance doesn’t work, and we didn’t know when he’d be back from working. Kennedy’s just protective as a rule. But she doesn’t know that Jason left me without breaking up with me. No one else knows it wasn’t mutual. You’re the only one I’ve told.” I open my eyes, but can’t look into his.

  “Holy shit.” He props himself up on his elbow and looks down at me. “You went through that whole thing by yourself? You didn’t talk to anyone about it?”

  “If I had it to do over again, I’d definitely do it differently.” I sigh. “It sucked. All the pretending it was mutual, so I couldn’t be sad about it. Holding everything in. God, I hate faking things, but I didn’t know what to say. And then enough time went by, that it would have been weird to bring it up.”

  “It wouldn’t have been weird. People deal with pain in their own ways. But what he did to you was cowardly, wrong, and selfish. You didn’t deserve that.”

  His words stop my heart. I want them to be true, even though the tiniest, darkest corner of my mind still hides the self-doubt, keeping it safe to come out and torture myself with when I’m alone. The part of me that thinks maybe I did do something to drive him away. “Yeah.” I’m beginning to regret opening up about Jason. Dominic’s got to think I’m a loser now, just saying it wasn’t my fault to be polite.