A Love So Tragic

by Stevie J. Cole

  I sit, listening to everyone introduce themselves, only halfway paying attention because I keep glancing at that boy. When it's his turn, I eagerly turn around and smile.

  “Yeah, I'm Nicolas Torres.” His ‘R’s roll off his tongue with a thick, foreign accent I can't place.

  At the sound of his voice, Jen's hand reaches across the aisle and clutches my thigh.

  He sighs, evidently annoyed that he's having to talk. “Obviously. I spent my summer moving...” He slumps back down in his chair, then his eyes lock on mine in a cold stare.

  “What a lovely accent you have? Brazil?” Mrs. Pendergrass asks.

  “Argentina. My mother's American, fucked around on my dad, she got custody, and that's why I'm here.” He arches an eyebrow. “That enough information?”

  “Well, uh... Nicolas. You can't swear in my class and, um, yes, yes, that's enough information,” the teacher says, quickly taking a seat behind her desk. “Now, let's open our books to page...”

  I don't know what page we're supposed to be opening to because I keep staring at him, amused, obsessed, possessed, infatuated, all of the above. That boy has hooked me with nothing more than five minutes of his presence.

  Jen slaps the back of my head. “Desperate and pathetic, now,” she whispers, forcing my eyes back to the front of the room.

  Toward the end of class, I'm passed a note. When I unfold it, the hot sting of embarrassment all but drowns me.

  Pretty Girl,

  Desperate, maybe. Pathetic, never.

  - Nic

  I fold the note up and push it to the side of my desk as I turn in my chair. There’s a cocky smirk plastered over Nic’s face and he’s staring at me. What a dick!

  The bell rings, but I remain seated as I slowly gather my belongings. I'm purposefully trying to let the dick leave before me.

  “You coming, Peyton?” Jen's standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowed on me and flicking back to where Nic still sits.

  “Yeah.”

  I lean over to grab my purse, and then I feel a light tap on my shoulder. “You going to keep that, right?” he says before walking off.

  I crumple the note up inside my sweaty palm on my way to the door. I glance down to the trash can, but instead of chucking that note in there, I stick it in my pocket.

  I groan and slam the laptop shut because I don’t know where to go next. Do I skip ahead to the end of the year, do I go into detail about how he told me I was beautiful every single day, about how we fell asleep on the phone with each other? I could list each ridiculous teenage promise we made to each other, but I could never find words to describe the passion, the fucking way it hurt to love someone so much. Anger tightens my chest and I chuck the computer across the room because this is pointless.

  The chimes to the doorbell echo through the empty house. I glance over at the snotty tissues littering my couch, thinking I should probably pick those up, but I can't be bothered to, and besides, I’m not getting the door. I don’t want to get up. The bell dings again. I roll my eyes and sink farther down into the couch. Now whoever it is, is banging on the door. I groan and knock the tissues to the hardwood floor as I stand.

  “If someone doesn’t answer the door maybe it means they don’t want to be fucking bothered,” I mutter as I make my way through the foyer.

  Depression does this. It makes you want to tell everyone to fuck off, not to bother you because they can’t possibly understand why you can’t pull yourself out of it.

  Another loud knock, and, this time, I hear Jen shouting through the thick wooden door. “Peyton Miller. Get your ass up. I’ll find an open window and squeeze my ass through it if you don’t!”

  I unlock the door. As soon as it swings open the smile on her face fades, and the bottle of wine she’s holding up drops to her side. “P,” she gasps as she steps inside and closes the door. “You look like shit!”

  “Thanks…” I turn and make my way back to the den, plopping down on the dented couch cushion that has permanently been molded to the shape of my ass.

  Jen follows me into the living room, her gaze sweeping over the tissues tossed on the floor. “Well, this shit’s not cool with me at all.” She points to the smashed computer. “And what the hell is that about? Anger management problems?”

  “It wasn't working,” I lie as she puts the wine beside the couch and sits down.

  “I’m sorry, Peyton. I…I don’t know what to say. I have no idea what you are going through with losing her, but you’ve gotta—”

  “That’s not what this is about,” I cut her off.

  Jen's sculpted brows pinch together.

  “I mean, part of it is, but nothing I do will change the fact that she’s gone. I’ve just been thinking a lot lately, and Isaac’s just, he’s just…” I sigh. “We just never should have gotten married, you know? He’s gone more than he’s here, and…”

  “Oh, girl.” She wraps her arm around me, squeezing me. “Men are assholes sometimes. I wondered how that was gonna work out with his games and all.”

  “But it’s not like he’s an asshole. We just don’t work, Jen.”

  “Sure you do, Peyton. He married you. He’s crazy about you, he's just a fucking MLB player. It makes shit complicated.”

  I shake my head. “No. He loves me, Jen, but I'm not in love with him.”

  Hearing myself say that makes me cringe. I sound whiny. I hate whiny. It’s not that I’m miserable, it’s just that we never should have gotten married, and I know that. What do I have to look forward to over the next thirty years? I want to be that old couple shuffling through the grocery store, holding hands, and although I love Isaac, I'm not in love with him. And there’s a difference. An acquaintance is an acquaintance, a friend a friend, and you are either in love with someone or you’re not. God, I sound like a pathetic romantic.

  She stares at me, and I can tell she’s thinking. “Nicolas?” she says his name like it’s sacrilegious. “You realize that was your first love, young love, no responsibilities. That’s not how it is in real life, Peyton. Eventually, even Nic would start to feel routine to you.” She sighs. “By now you’ve probably imagined it was more perfect than it was.”

  I glare at her. She’s been my best friend since high school. She saw what I went through when I fucked things up with him, she knows better than anyone else how badly I hurt over that mistake. She knows I haven’t imagined any of it.

  “Shit.” She sighs. “I was worried seeing him like that would fuck your world up which is why I didn’t bring that entire ordeal up. I mean, that was crazy that he just showed up. I get it, but it was a shock, even to me.” She hesitates, brushing a strand of dirty hair from my face. “You two never had closure, and seeing him like that, well, it just opened you up to all those emotions again.”

  “I know.”

  She stands up, grabbing the wine from the floor. “Look, you know I love you, but I refuse to let you wallow in this any longer. You can’t just shut down, okay?”

  I nod. I know she’s right. I want to shut down, but I can’t. I shouldn’t.

  Jen disappears into my kitchen. I hear her open and close the cabinets. A drawer bangs open and then I hear the cork pop. Seconds later, she’s back in front of me shoving wine under my nose. “Drink it.”

  I take the glass and stare down at the rippling liquid.

  “Drink. It.”

  I take a sip, then another, relishing the way it burns my throat. Jen plops down next to me with her glass in hand.

  “Now,” she says. “You go through this about Nic at least once a year. Maybe you should just fucking call him.”

  Taking another, longer sip, I shake my head. “Uh, no.”

  “Why not?”

  There are a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t call him, mainly that I am married, but the only reason I verbalize is: “I don’t have his number, Jen. Jesus!”

  “Well, that can be solved,” she says with a smirk. “Facebook. Heard of it?”

  I can't count ho
w many times I've scrolled through his profile, envious of how happy he looks, wondering if he ever regrets things. He travels, he has a life and had he stayed with me he probably wouldn't have done any of those things. I glance over at Jen and she's tapping away on her phone. A pleased grin washes over her face as she holds her phone out. “Call him,” she demands.

  I stare at Nic's profile picture on the screen, at that smile that used to make me weak, at the man I thought I'd spend my life with, and my pulse pounds. I shake my head. “Uh-uh.”

  “You aren’t ever going to get over this if you don’t. The way you two ended was fucking insane. You need closure with everything, including this.” She pushes the phone in my face again. “Isaac will never know. Use my phone. Call him.”

  I swallow another mouthful of wine as I take the phone from her, glancing at the screen before I look up at her. “You're like the devil.”

  She nods approvingly at me as she tips her glass back and crosses her leg. “You gotta do something to get over this.”

  With each beat, my heart pounds harder, faster. Should I really do this? Am I ready to hear what he has to say to me? Can I really, really go down that road again? And as I ask myself these questions, my mind flips five years back.

  My stomach knots when I pull up at Jen’s duplex. It’s been a year since I’ve been in this town, a year since I’ve ran off and gotten married. The only cars at her house are her run down Jetta and Nic’s Silverado. I knock on the door, anxious when she opens it. The second I walk in, I’m peering down the hall in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him.

  “Isn’t that Nic’s car out front?” I ask.

  Jen forces a tight-lipped smile. “He came over and rode with Hil. They were going to a bar and Hil’s the DD.” She narrows her gaze on me and I can see sympathy written all over her face. “He knows you’re staying with me, he said he’d just come get his car after you leave on Sunday.” She shrugs. “You hurt him, Peyton.”

  That comment cuts me.

  Later that night, I need to go to the store, and I see his keys on the counter. I don’t say anything to Jen, I just swipe them and head toward the door. “I’ll be back in ten.”

  I click the key fob, unlocking the car. As soon as I climb in I can smell him all around me. I fight back the tears because I’m married, I can’t be crying over an ex. I put the car in reverse, and when I go to adjust the rearview mirror, my heart breaks. The little Playboy bunny I used to wear when I went to the tanning salon is still taped up on the corner of the mirror. My fingers grip the steering wheel so hard they turn white. I reach up, flip the visor down, and the picture of me on our summer trip to his beach house falls into my lap. Why the fuck does he still have this shit in his car.

  He is supposed to hate me, supposed to have moved on, but all this night does is make me believe even more that I have made a horrible mistake. One that can never be repaired, one I will suffer from for the rest of my life. One I will dream about and wake up crying from on a regular occasion.

  “Peyton? Call him!” Jen’s demand brings me back to the present, but my chest is still tight from the memory.

  I glance down at the screen once more. “I’m going outside.”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  The cold wind swirls around me when I step outside. The dried leaves skip across the porch, and my finger hovers over his phone number. I can hear my pulse hammering in my ears. Isaac would kill me…I turn to go back into the house, but stop and press the call button.

  It rings three times and just when I’m about to hang up, Nic answers. “Hello?”

  “Uh...hey…Nic, hey...”

  There's a beat of silence. “Hello?”

  My heart kicks up, thumping in my chest so hard I feel dizzy. “Hey. Um...” I swallow and clear my throat. “You know who this is, right?”

  “No, I’m sorry…who is this?” That hurts. This was a fucking mistake.

  “I…”

  “What the...Peyton?” Shock resonates in his voice.

  “Yeah. Hi. I…” What the hell do I say? I didn’t even think about what I would say to him.

  “Are you,” he pauses. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I'm all right.”

  “Okay, well…something must be wrong if you’re calling me. I mean, I didn’t know you had my number.”

  “Facebook...” Great, now I sound like a stalker. I trace my fingernail along the wooden rail, digging dirt from one of the cracks. “I just…” I swallow. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  His breath blows over the line. “Sorry for what?”

  “For what I did to you.” I feel it creeping up my throat, constricting my chest. That pain that comes anytime I think about how I ruined us starts to overwhelm me. “For being an idiot.”

  “Peyton, shit. Don’t do this.”

  “I fucked everything up. I made a mistake, and I’m…” I swallow back a sob. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know.”

  He’s quite for a moment, and I panic. “Thank you for that,” he says. “I appreciate it, and…I’m sorry too.”

  I nod, even though I know he can’t see me. I don’t feel one damn bit better. If anything, I feel worse.

  “Look, Peyton, it’s good to hear from you, and I’d love to talk and catch up, but now's not a good time.”

  “Yeah, of course. I just wanted to tell you that. Just needed to get it off my chest.”

  “I wish things had gone differently too. Take care of yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah, you too, Nic. Bye.”

  And with that, he hangs up. Any hope I’ve managed to cling to just crashed into a flaming pile of shit on my porch. Rejection slaps me in the face, followed by guilt because I had no business calling him.

  I put the phone in my back pocket and swipe my hand down my face. I lean against the rail and stare off into the woods, refusing for the first time in three months to let myself cry. I don’t know how long I’ve been out here, but Jen opens the door, which means I’ve been out here long enough for her to worry.

  She hands me my glass of wine and rubs her hand over my back. “You have to let him go now, Peyton. Just let him go.”

  The fuck it's cold! It shouldn't be this cold already.

  A gust of frigid wind howls between the buildings as I step around a homeless man sprawled out against a building. Lindsey smiles at me, squeezing my hand as we continue down 59th Street.

  “You sure you're okay? You've been quiet” she says.

  “Huh?” I narrow my gaze at her, pulling my coat closed. “Oh, yeah. It's just this thing with work. The plans for one of those big banks they’re building out in Jersey...just a little fucked up. That's all.”

  Arching a brow, she huffs, and the air instantly turns to a white cloud of fog. “You work too much.”

  “I know.”

  The crowd in front of us stops at a crosswalk, except for one person who steps out into the middle of the road. A horn blares and someone yells, that noise in and of itself signifies New York to me. We cross the street to Central Park.

  “Is it wrong that I love this place so much?” Lindsey asks. “It's just so New York, but not, you know?” She drags me through the flock of tourists, hurrying down the steps. She's talking, but not one word she's saying registers with me. It's all just a hum in the back of my head because I can't stop thinking about Peyton calling me this morning.

  “Nic!” she elbows my side. “Hot chocolate or coffee?”

  “Oh, uh, coffee.”

  She shakes her head as she walks over to a vendor. While I wait, I notice an elderly couple sitting on a bench. The woman's arm is looped through the man's arm, her wrinkled hands clutching to him tightly, and they're smiling at one another. They've lived their lives together and they're happy. They look in love, more so than most people do, and it makes me think of Peyton, not Lindsey. Fucking hell.

  I feel over my pocket. The hard box holding a two karat ring feels wrong in this moment. After Olivia's funeral, I told mys
elf I'd been too busy worrying about what I'd lost and not appreciating what I have. I told myself Peyton was Peyton, that she's my past, that as shitty as it is, she's with Isaac. I convinced myself that she is happy, and that's what made it easy.

  And then she called me.

  Even after everything that has happened between us, after how fucked up she left me, and four years of not speaking to her, I had to stop myself from saying, “I love you” when I got off the phone—I had to force myself to tell Lindsey that I love her, and I had to stop myself from saying it to Peyton this morning. As much as I want to say us ending was all Peyton's fault, it was mine too. It was mine too...

  Just as the elderly couple slowly rises from the bench, Lindsey trots over and hands a steaming Styrofoam cup to me. She glances at the empty seat. “Let's just sit here,” she says. “I love this spot,”

  “Sure.” I smile, put my arm around her, and walk to the bench. “Whatever you want.”

  Lindsey cups the hot chocolate with both hands, letting the steam swirl up around her face. She inhales and exhales, the grin plastered to her face growing deeper. “I just love it here so much,” her voice is nearly drowned out by the hustle and bustle of the city swarming around us.

  “The trees, the lake,” she says. “There's something about it that makes you feel good, you know. A little piece of heaven in the middle of madness.” She takes a sip and looks at me. “It's just...” she drifts off into her thoughts and I nod.

  My mind is not here. It's on Peyton. I'm sorry. She said she's sorry.

  Why, after all this time is she apologizing and why do I even give a shit? It makes me angry. It makes me feel pathetic. And it makes me uncertain of whether I should take this ring out of my pocket after all.

  It’s just past Thanksgiving. And I’m dreading this Christmas without her and Daddy. It’s going to feel empty not having anywhere to go, not having Momma call and sing Oh, Christmas Tree to me at six o’clock in the morning.

  I’ve gotten better about dealing with the loss though. I’ve learned to ignore it, that’s the best I can do. Their house was sold months ago, and I finally had her cell phone cut off, so now I can’t call and listen to her voice. I regret that. The thing about losing someone you love is you don’t stop loving them just because they’re gone. It’s been seven years since I said goodbye to my daddy, and I still love him just as much. Death doesn’t kill love, just the person you love.