by Jade Alyse
There was a back display room where they’d placed the regular artwork, and she dawdled there with no way out. Seconds later, there he stood.
“What could you possibly have to say to me? Huh?” she told him. He only stared at her.
“Stop running from me,” he replied quietly.
“Stop chasing me…”
“There you are! Do you know how many galleries I went into looking for you?”
She didn’t know how Anthony found her, but she didn’t care. All she could feel was relief.
“Come on, baby, they’re going to play our song…”
She honestly didn’t know they had one…
She danced with Anthony as if they were alone; she wasn’t embarrassed, and she attempted not to notice Brandon staring at her as he danced with Asha. But as she snuck a glance in his direction, she was glad that Asha actually managed to make him smile, if only temporarily. She was glad to see her closest friends together again, and part of her wished she and Brandon had never taken that leap. They could’ve been just as happy as friends – maybe happier than they were as lovers. She then thought that maybe they were only meant to stay in a platonic state, and maybe after some time had elapsed, her stronger feelings would drift away as easily as they’d come and she could lean on him the way that she used to.
But the wishful thinking made her anxious…
In that moment, she remembered how fun it was dancing with Anthony. They moved together in impeccable rhythmic harmony and she loved feeling her reservations fall by the wayside. It reminded her of how alike and gentle and attentive he was. If he had won a challenge by dating her, then maybe she had too. She could see the finish line up ahead – perhaps it was possible to overcome her aching pain. Perhaps it was actually possible to move on – even when her past was ogling her from across a vacant parking lot.
The band started a slow tempo number, and Scotty offered to cut in, after dancing with a series of nameless, faceless females. Anthony obliged and stood off to the side after planting a sweet wet kiss on her cheek.
Scotty wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close.
“Ah, I missed this,” he told her, chuckling a little.
“I did too,” she replied. “Until you almost embarrassed me…”
“Oh, Nat, live a little,” he said rolling his eyes. “We probably won’t ever see your boyfriend again after tonight…though I see why you’d date him. He seems like a pretty alright guy…”
“Thanks…I guess…”
“Needless to say, I’m biased…but…”
“I catch your drift,” she replied. “Just don’t do any dumb stuff like that again. You and Asha shouldn’t have subjected him to that. I don’t know what I would do if I had to sit at dinner with his new girlfriend…I’d be sick…”
“Well, I’m staying out of it from now on,” he replied, sighing. “But it sucks, though…”
“What does?”
“Out of all the girls he’s dated in the past, you’re the only one I actually really liked. You’re the only one that I really wanted him to stick with…”
She leaned in and kissed Scotty’s cheek gingerly. “Thanks, Scott…but Brandy did what he wanted to do…and I’m going to do the same…I can’t make a person a priority if they can’t do the same for me…”
Scotty pulled away from her slowly, and Anthony arrived by her side promptly.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him.
“They need me to sit in on this emergency surgery…there was an accident on Plymouth…something like a five-car pileup. I have to go as soon as possible…”
Asha approached them then.
“Asha, do you mind taking Natalie home? I have to go back to the hospital…”
“I would but, I rode with Scotty…”
“I’ll take Natalie home,” Scotty began. “If she asks nicely…”
“Scotty…”
“Yes, I can take you home…”
She sat on the sidewalk while her friends danced a little longer, and she was glad that Brandon kept his distance. Then an unforeseen rainfall shattered the party, and dozens of people were scrambling to get to their cars as the clock approached midnight. And she and Asha held hands as they trailed behind the boys, and she attempted to search through dim lighting for Scotty’s SUV. Instead, they stopped just before a green Explorer with the familiar license plate and the familiar scratch on the back bumper where he’d accidentally hit a tree when they went on a picnic a couple of summers ago.
“Scotty, I thought you said that you drove?”
“Well…technically, yea, I did…Brandon wanted to finish a sandwich he’d made before we left the house so I told him I’d drive…”
But it was Brandon who now silently made his way to the driver’s side of the truck. She hesitantly climbed into the backseat, soaking wet.
She focused on remaining as stubbornly quiet as possible, but it only livened her other senses, that made her notice the things she’d forgotten about or stifled: the smell of his car, the way it squeaked when he turned the corner, the way he always forgot to turn on the defroster whenever it rained, the way he always played something haunting and acoustic whenever he had something weighing down on him. She expected Scotty to comment on its melancholic tone, but he never said anything.
Part of her wished he’d stop at her apartment first. She desperately wanted to separate herself from the situation as soon as possible. But she knew that her wishful thinking would get her soon enough…
He pulled into the driveway of the house on Trent road and was relieved when she didn’t see the baby blue BMW parked outside. Maybe the mysterious brunette had been a disheartening delusion she’d concocted in her head so that she wouldn’t have to get out of the car…or maybe she was just as real as Asha had said. Scotty proceeded to get out of the car, but Asha remained seated. She innately grabbed her friend’s hand, startling her.
“Ash, you promised we’d played spades when we got back, remember?” Scotty reminded her. Asha hesitated for a moment, then caught wind of what he was talking about. She hated when they treated her as though she were a fool.
“I’m coming too,” Natalie offered as she started to open her door.
“No,” Asha shot back, surprising her, “You should go home…Anthony will be there in no time…Scotty will drive me back when we’re done playing…”
She wanted to protest more, but she didn’t feel like causing more drama than necessary. This was one of hundreds of times that she’d been in Brandon’s car, and the ten minute ride home wouldn’t kill her – she just hoped it was the last time she had to do so.
She lingered in the backseat, but realized that Brandon hadn’t moved, even after Scotty and Asha had gone into the house. And she caught him eyeing her from the rearview mirror.
“What?”
“I’m not a chauffeur, Natalie,” he said bluntly. “Get your ass in the front seat.”
She purposely hesitated, until his eyes widened. The rain grew more menacing, and a crackle of thunder resonated the length of the sky. She climbed in the passenger seat beside him, and trembled when the thunder snarled again.
He chuckled hollowly, as he backed out of the driveway. “I remember when you used to be so scared of thunderstorms. The first time you screamed, you were so embarrassed. Each time after that you begged me to hold you until it was over…”
“Yes, and then you proceeded to yell at me for waking you up, and then you’d roll back over and go back to sleep…I remember that perfectly…”
She watched as he pursed his lips, and murmured, “I’ve grown quite used to you leaving me hanging, though...considering it a second skin…”
“That’s all you ever did, Tallie,” he heckled, shaking his head. “You criticized me; you pointed out the negative parts of our relationship…you never focused on how great it really was…how close we really were…”
“Don’t make me the bad guy in this scenario, Brandon,” she replied.
/>
“How can I not? Nothing I ever did was good enough for you. Loving you wasn’t enough…always being there wasn’t enough…”
She shook her head violently. She could feel the muscles in her throat begin to constrict.
“Don’t make me the enemy,” she replied, quietly. Suddenly, she was winded.
“I wasn’t the one that left,” she continued. “I wasn’t the one who gave up on our relationship…if you were having problems with me you should’ve told me…you should’ve told me like you always told me…don’t you dare sit there and say it’s my fault that you left. You left me in the middle of the night, while I was passed out drunk. If you cared about me at all, you would’ve talked to me about it. We would’ve worked it out. We would have been fine today. It wasn’t over for me…”
She realized that his agitation was progressing; he was accelerating much more than he should have on that dark, narrow road.
“And now I’m over it…now I’ve moved on…and you can’t stand it…you can’t stand it at all…”
“If you’ve moved on, what was that on the beach in Clearwater, Tal, huh? Why did we kiss? Why did you come and meet me at all?”
She couldn’t think of an answer that could satisfy him; because she didn’t know why she did it. At that moment, she only went off of what she felt – seeing Brandon in the cascading silhouette, smelling his cologne, reveling in the magnitude of his strength, as the self-conscious, anxious side of herself drifted into the sea.
She rolled her eyes closed. That moment was surreal, and should only exist on a plane where her imaginative side would always long for Brandon to set her burdensome mind free.
“I don’t know,” she babbled earnestly. “I don’t know what I feel anymore…I’m hollow, I’m misplaced…you’re all that I…you’re all that I ever wanted to feel…you’re all that I ever needed…”
He pulled into a space in front of her apartment building and killed the engine. The rain knocked zealously against the windows.
“Tal,” he whispered. “You can’t keep punishing me…I’ve told you countless times how sorry I am…I made a fool out of you and out of myself…and you’re trying to alienate yourself from me…and it’s killing me, baby…it’s killing me that I can’t…I can’t…”
His voice trailed off, and his directed his eyes toward his window.
“I’m the one that’s been punished, Brandy,” she whispered. She could feel the tears climb her throat now. “I’ll never know what it feels like to love again. Because I’ll never be able to love any man as much as I loved you. No feeling will ever come close. And you’ll always haunt me, and as long as I’m with Anthony it’ll never be fair to him. I’ll never be capable of giving him my whole self…because [she began to stammer through her words as the first tear fell]…because you will always have all of me [she pauses for a moment to let the initial cry roll through her, and then she continues]. I didn’t know how to love, but I did the best I could. And I wanted to give you everything of me…my mind, my heart, my soul, my body…and you couldn’t wait for me…”
They sit in silence for a few moments, and Natalie wipes the tears from her eyes. Brandon avoids her eyes.
“I’d thought about it for weeks,” she whispered, sniffling gently. “I wanted it to be a surprise [she begins to laugh]. But I couldn’t decide if I wanted to tell you or if I would just pounce on you and take it from there…”
“What are you talking about, Natalie?’
“I was ready that night, Brandy,” she whispered, the sob, lingering in her voice. “I was ready to kiss my virginity goodbye that night. I was so…I was so in love with you, Brandy…I’d never felt something so real and tangible in my life...and I was ready to love you in every possible way I could...you'd waited so long for me and you deserved me…you never pressured me…you never…damn it…”
“I didn’t know, Tal…”
“You just had to up the ante, didn’t you? You couldn’t take it a step at a time, could you?”
She then shook her head vigorously, sloppily wiping the remainder of her tears away. “Well, it’s done with now...it's over…I’m over it…I have to go…”
“Let me walk you up…”
“No…”
“It’s after midnight…”
“I’ve gone almost two years without you…I think I can last twenty seconds…”
And she stormed out of the car.
#
Natalie furiously raced up the stairs to the third floor and fumbled for her keys. The rain on her face muddled the tear drops, sitting complacently on her cheeks.
She entered the dark, quiet apartment and turned her back to the door. She desperately attempted to catch her breath as the thunder clapped against the windows. But her mind had trapped her body in a bizarre way, and had constricted it's basic functions. And she could only dawdle in the shadows, as the carvings in the door evanesced with her taut back.
And then there was a quiet knock on the door seconds later, startling her, numbing the disquieting calm she’d previously felt mantle her. She turned around unhurriedly and gingerly turned the knob. Brandon stood behind it, his head lowered, drenched, sloppily pressed into the doorjamb. Weakness enthralled his eyes.
She felt her insides dissolve.
“Brandy…don’t…just go…please…I can’t fight you anymore…”
But as he lunged at her and grabbed her face, she didn’t stop him. She was numb to consequence and thought; she could only sense and feel and breathe Brandon as he fervently pressed his lips into hers and hiked her up, hooking her legs around his narrow waist.
He kicked the door closed behind him, and pressed her back against the corridor wall as the thunder clapped again, as he ravenously claimed her thighs with his hands, as he pushed his pelvis into the space between her knees. She pulled her wet chignon loose, and buried her fingers in his nebulous hair, pulling and pinching and caressing.
And she parted from him, as her stringy hair dangled in her face. She pinched at his cheek, tilting it upward, studying him, eyeing him gravely.
“Tell me that you love me,” she murmured, moving her lips close to his.
“God, I love you, baby,” he whispered distraughtly in reply.
“Then make love to me, please…”
He hiked her up once more, and carried her down that corridor. His eyes never left her face. She melted like putty in his custody. He kicked open her bedroom door, and dropped her on the soft mattress. He lifted her legs up and removed her flip-flops, one by one. And he dropped them to the floor, and he individualized each of her ten toes, kissing them as if each one of them mattered in their own special way. She giggled a little.
The lids of his eyes were heavy, and he often licked his lips as his eyes traveled the length of her body.
He returned her legs and reached at the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it over his head swiftly.
Every part of her body trembled, but everything part of it felt right. She chose not to think about tomorrow or hearing from Anthony or seeing what the real world would feel like again. She only wanted Brandon to make her feel whole again.
He tugged at his belt and loosened it easily, and she watched as his jeans dropped to the floor quickly. She then stood to her feet and pushed her romper down her body, kicking it off as it settled on the floor. Brandon was smiling down at her as the tips of her fingers traced the lines in his pectoral muscles, his abs, stalling on the strip of black curly hair attached to his abdomen. He sucked in his breath as he grabbed her chin and kissed her again, heavier and deeper this time, gracefully lowering down on her back. They both crawl toward the headboard and lay flat, and he settles easily between her. Her nerves are low and he makes her feel comfortable. She hooks her arms around his neck, and he smiles down at her again. Her delicate fingers crawl down his sides and begin to push his boxers downward as his lips find a gentle curve in her neck.
The sound of her cellular phone ring scares her initially but she chooses to i
gnore it. When it rings again, Brandon grows distracted and rolls off of her with frustration, pounding his fists into the mattress.
“It’s him,” he mumbles through clenched teeth. She slides off the bed and goes into the living room to answer it, shutting the door behind her.
“Yes?”
“Babe, are you awake?”
“Barely…”
“I’m done earlier than I thought. The surgery was a success. There were no fatalities.”
She always loved hearing Anthony get excited about saving lives. It made him seem more human in a way.
“That’s good, darling…”
“I won’t disturb you tonight. I just wanted to tell you goodnight. How about I pick you up for breakfast tomorrow morning?”
“That sounds good…”
“Ok, goodnight, Natalie, I love you…”
“I love you too, Ant…”
She replaces her phone and turns around, eager to return to the bedroom and continue. But Brandon is looming in the eerie shadow, fully dressed. He appears weakened in some way, and she can’t shake the feeling she gets just by looking at him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving,” he sighs. “I can’t do this. I can’t be that guy…”
“What guy?”
“He’ll always know you better than me…he’ll always have the upper hand, because he’s spent time with your family, he’s seen where you come from. You two will always share something biological that I’ll never be able to understand or compete with. I think deep down, you were always waiting for that person you could take home to your family, who you wouldn’t be ashamed of. And even if you don’t agree with me now, you’ll always know that you made the right choice by being with him instead of me, because you’re constantly seeking comfort. You’ll eventually have sex with him, and you’ll eventually marry him, and I always be the guy you kept secret from everyone. I’ll always come in second place. And I’ll never be able to deal with not being with you the right way. You’ll sleep with me tonight, and you’ll run back to him tomorrow and that’ll be the end of us. I’d never hide you; I’d never feel ashamed of you. I loved you just that much…”