by Jade Alyse
“Fine…”
“Not fine,” Asha said. “I’m staying with you tonight…”
“Abso—absolutely not…”
“Yes, I am…”
Asha began to push her way into Natalie’s bed. With a small struggle, Natalie eventually gave up, passed out seconds later, to the sensation of her friend’s arms wrapped around her. They were not Brandon’s…but they suited her just fine.
In another hazy image, Brandon returned, in his tuxedo, they are running through a crowd, tightly packed, and this time Brandon has a tight grip to her hand…
“Come on, Tallie,” he tells her. “Keep up…”
The crowd grows tighter and tighter, and she begins to hear people call his name. She looks to her left…Sophia Baldwin stands in a white gown…Natalie looks to her right…the Reina girl she met at the bar stands in a white gown as well…they shout Brandon’s name over and over, becoming louder and louder…she slowly loses her grip on his hand, the voices grow louder and louder…Brandon doesn’t look back…she begins to cry…the voices, louder and louder…she attempts to shout his name, watches the distance grow greater and greater…her voice is lost…the crowd grows tighter…she tries to call his name again…it’s muffled …Brandon begins to disappear…the crowd begins to hold her back…she can see Sophia and Reina run in his direction, their voices loud, booming…she tries to yell out his name one more time…
“Natalie, Nat, N—Natalie…wake up, girl! Nat, wake up!”
Asha was hovering above her in the darkness, shaking the frame of her body wildly. Natalie felt a strain in her throat, felt a tear on her cheek, looked up at her friend.
“Are you crazy?” her friend asked her with a nervous laugh.
“W—what?”
“You were howlin’ Brandon’s name like a buffoon…I knew he got to you!”
#
The next day, she wore her big straw hat, a pair of old cut-off shorts and a slinky white tank, and though her head throbbed, she slaved the heat as she went for a long drive. She found their field, removed herself from the car and sat in it.
Amidst the tall golden grass, she found the sun on her face, captured the breeze in her hair, her arms open wide, and saw Brandon’s eyes in the cloudless sky.
She felt clarity, felt the warmth of the sun run through her veins.
She then became only feeling.
And she reveled in unexpected delight the idea that soul mates actually existed...
By the Pond
SHE REALIZED THAT THERE was a gaping hole where her heart used to be, and it had been replaced with a series of painful, selfish, vengeful parasites that made her careless and single-minded. Or at least that’s the way she viewed herself.
She thought it best to distract Anthony with his favorite meal that night. And as she slaved over the stove, stirring a piping hot brew aimlessly, she, herself, was distracted by her plaguing dreams and her visit to the field that Brandon had taken her to that frosty night all those years ago. And as much as she knew, the dragonfly pendant had been meticulously tossed in the trash a few months ago…or at least that’s what Asha told Anthony.
Anthony startled her when he entered the apartment, calling out her name. He placed a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter and kissed her cheek.
“Baby, it’s been a long day,” he told her. “But your cooking will make it alright…”
The Reina girl that she’d seen Brandon with was only remotely pretty, so there had to have been more to her that appealed to Brandon. Maybe it was her unmatched perkiness, or the fact that they had the same hair color. Or maybe it was the fact that she seemed fun and sweet in the appropriate way, and that she didn’t give him as many problems as Natalie did.
Maybe he was actually falling for her…and maybe it was time to actually stop thinking about him…
Anthony had disappeared into her bedroom. She’d given him a drawer and enough space for his clothes in the closet. It was only a matter of time before he returned in his sweats and lounged on the couch till she got done cooking. She’d forgotten that his favorite television show came on that night – there were also a number of other things she’d forgotten about him.
But he took longer than expected, giving Natalie plenty of time to let her thoughts drift away from her coolly. And it was only a matter of time before she burned the stew that Anthony loved so much.
She turned off the burner, and just as turned around and called out his name, he stood there in the kitchen behind her. She hadn’t heard him come.
“God, you scared me,” she said, placing the pot down.
“Natalie…”
“What?”
She took notice of his face, as if he were teetering on the edge of delirium. She couldn’t decide if he was going to slap her or choke her. She instinctively took a step back anyway.
“I thought you said the dragonfly pendant was Asha’s?”
Natalie felt her heart stop, and she attempted to steady herself. She was never good at lying; especially when her emotions were being squeezed to their breaking point. She chose to remain silent. That only seemed to aggravate him further.
“You’re just not going to say anything…? You’re just going to stand there and not answer me?”
“What do you expect me to say? Shouldn’t you be asking Asha that question?”
“No,” he replied, shaking his head violently. “I’m asking the right person…”
“Where is this even coming from…?”
“You know exactly where this is coming from,” he said, his voice getting louder. He then held up the picture that Natalie had neglected to hide in a more secure spot. The close-up shot featured her and Brandon with their arms around each other, she, with her head rested on his shoulder. She couldn’t remember when and where the picture was taken – but it had become one of her favorites.
He paused for a moment; each breath he took was ridged and painfully audible. “I want the truth, Natalie…I want the truth now.”
She turned her eyes away and started to walk past him. She had no idea where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do. She only mumbled, “Don’t do this right now, Anthony…”
“No, we are,” he demanded. He grabbed her arm aggressively and pulled her back around. She shrieked with discomfort.
He visibly quieted and calmed himself, releasing her arm swiftly. “Isn’t this you,” he began quietly.
She nodded.
“Isn’t that the same pendant he said was Asha’s?”
She nodded again.
He released a long, heavy breath. “Just tell me, Natalie…tell me the truth…what does the ‘T’ stand for…?”
Her lips began to quiver and tears brimmed her eyes. “He used to call me Tallie…”
Anthony nodded. “So the note was for you…?”
She nodded slowly.
“And the pendant…?”
“It was my twentieth birthday…not Asha’s…”
A tear slid down her cheek. Recollection then crossed his face.
“And the girl that Scotty was talking about…the girl that he was so hung up on…?”
Natalie wiped the tear away and Anthony retraced a couple of steps. “It was me…”
“How long were you together…?”
“A year…”
“Why did you break up?”
“He proposed to me, but I said no…so he broke it off with me…”
Anthony paused and lowered his head.
“I’m sorry, Ant…”
Suddenly, he raised it again, ripped the picture to shreds, and threw the shards all around the room.
“Sorry? You’ve been lying to my face for weeks about this, Natalie,” he said. “As far as I know you’ve been carrying on an affair behind my back, and I’ve been stupid enough to think that we had something special and that you were being faithful…”
She wanted to assure him that she was being faithful, just so he could stop being mad at her. But she could no longer p
erpetuate a lie; she knew that Anthony could no longer trust her as fully as he’d done in the past.
He took a deep breath. “You should have just told me from the beginning,” he continued quietly.
“You wouldn’t have understood,” she replied, breathlessly.
“Maybe not,” he responded honestly, bouncing his shoulders up and down once. “But I would’ve tried really hard…now I can spend the rest of my days obsessing over the things he did right that I’m doing wrong now…all because you wouldn’t tell me. Is he the reason why you won’t move in with me…?”
She wanted to reply honestly and say yes.
Ant, we’ll never be as close as he and I were, she wanted to tell him, but I’ve sincerely tried to make it different between us…it’s just so hard to open up to you the way I did him…he knows all of my secrets…my dreams, my wants, my needs…he knows me better than anyone else…and it’s not fair…I’ve tried so hard to forget he ever existed…but he won’t leave my mind…
She only nodded childishly, watching him throw his hands up angrily and turn his back on her.
“Just tell me the truth, Nat,” he began quietly, bracing himself up against the kitchen counter. “Are you still in love with him? Is this why you kept your relationship secret from me?”
She cried harder and she felt pathetic. But the simplicity in Anthony’s essence was reading like a flashing yellow light at a four-way junction, showing her what her life could be if she didn’t choose wisely. He was beautiful, apt, brilliant and secure, and she could envision the comfortable life that they would lead: she would be a successful pediatrician alongside her husband, and they would live in a brick masterpiece in Buckhead, and she would sink into a life of complete normalcy, and she would hate herself for retreating behind the lines of the boundaries she thought she was rid of. She would love Dr. Jones, but her heart would never be fully satisfied, like only drinking half a cup of sweet tea and leaving the rest out in the sun to evaporate. And then she reminded herself of what being in love really felt like; she could no longer be afraid to embrace it or suppress it or deny it. It would never be fair to Anthony; he would never really know her true love. She had already established a considerably stronger connection with someone years ago; and she was now willing to step out on a ledge and wait for the mound of rocks to go crumbling beneath her.
Anthony turned to face her again and she knew that her moment of truth was fast approaching. She took a deep breath and braced herself, picturing the pools of Caribbean blue eyes in her head, smelling the coconut shampoo, seeing the rusted soccer cleats in the front yard beneath a UGA flag, remembering the salty breeze on Jekyll Island, envisioning the late-night conversations that lasted till breakfast at the Pancake House down the street, hearing the laughter as the result of dozens of inside jokes and random events that couldn’t be experienced with any other person.
“I love you, Anthony,” she whispered, piercing his befuddled gaze with her own. “But I can’t lie to you anymore. And I can’t…I can’t lie to myself anymore. I need to leave. Goodbye…”
It was viciously plain, blunt and simple, but that’s just the person she was. She only hoped that she didn’t regret her rationality in making her final, heartfelt decision. She would attempt to be comfortable living in the moment; and for that particular moment, she knew that she wasn’t in love with Anthony Jones.
She gathered her thoughts on the drive over. She loosened and tightened her grip on the wheel, making sure that she kept her eyes focused on the road. She didn’t want her nerves to get the best of her. She veered onto the familiar street, dampened and misty, and she could feel her entrails flip a dozen times. The green Ford Explorer was present, but the baby blue BMW wasn’t. She was confident that this would be easy. She knew that Brandon still loved her as much as she loved him. She took a deep breath and exited the car.
She traversed up the driveway, kicking aside the pair of soccer shoes, smiling to herself. She could think of no better joy than to crawl in his bed beside him and show him just how much she loved him. He would smile and tell her that he always knew she’d be back, so he washed his sheets twice for her, just so they smelled just right.
She had a little giggle about that too.
She knocked on the door slowly and methodically, as she prepared herself for her new future. She heard footsteps approach and quickly finger-combed her hair and ruffled her clothes, momentarily forgetting that Brandon had seen her at her very worst and didn’t care. That was the love and comfort that she wanted.
But Reina appeared on the other side, leaning against the frame of the open doorway in nothing more than the blue buttoned down shirt that she bought him for his birthday. Natalie only saw her hazel wolf-eyes, her full coral lips, and her long silhouette of undulating russet hair.
#
“I can’t do this,” Natalie breathed, turning to walk in the other direction.
“I knew you would come,” Reina called after her, chuckling a little. Natalie stopped herself cold.
“I found a stack of pictures hidden in his bottom drawer,” she continued. “And you were in every single last one of them…”
She wanted to rip every shred of that shirt off of her body. She wore it proudly, smugly. And she could smell him all over her. She suddenly felt nauseous.
“I guess I was praying everyday that you’d forgotten about him or he’d forgotten about you…but he called me Natalie the other night when we made love…and I found an earring that wasn’t mine in the console of his truck, as if he’d saved it…waiting for you to come back and claim it…but I knew you’d come eventually…”
Reina’s smile was lifeless.
“Where is he?” Natalie pressed.
She only shrugged in return. “He left in a huff about an hour ago…I tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail…”
Natalie was relieved that there was a glint of hope left inside of her at the sound of Reina’s reluctance to divulge that information. And she figured that storming through the house and beating Reina to a pulp wouldn’t solve much of anything.
So she pulled her cellular phone out of her pocket and dialed the familiar number, that she sadly knew better than her own, and she hesitantly held the device close to her ear: there was a clicking sound, followed by the sound of Brandon’s voice urging callers to leave him a message after the beep. So, perhaps simply asking him where he was wouldn’t help matters much…
Reina disappeared into the house and reemerged seconds later fully dressed, with a large overnight bag affixed to her shoulder.
“I should tell you to get the hell on or leave him alone,” she told Natalie. “But I would only be wasting my breath, now wouldn’t I?”
“I suppose,” Natalie replied unaffectedly.
Reina nodded sullenly and started the long trek up the narrow, tree-lined road. For a moment, Natalie thought to ask the girl if she needed a ride somewhere, but she truthfully couldn’t care less. She only had acute tunnel vision at the moment.
And then clarity clamored the length of her body, and she smiled confidently, strolling to the dead-end, through the trees, across a long expanse of mushy ground, to an opening in the grass. A large, hazy silhouette sat placidly on the dampened bank, and the breeze ruffled his clothes.
Natalie smiled wider then and she could only let the tears spring from her eyes.
“I guess some things never change,” she quietly said, walking toward him slowly.
Brandon remained still. He then picked up a large rock and hurled it into the water, creating a large plunking noise.
“What are you doing here, Natalie?” he replied, his head lowered.
“Isn’t this where it all began? Isn’t this why we make sense in the first place?”
“You’re a little late in drawing that conclusion, aren’t you?”
He got to his feet and dusted off his bottom. He then diverted his eyes away from hers and proceeded to walk past her, but she instinctively grabbed his arm
and yanked him back.
“I’m done!” he yelled into her face angrily. “What part of that don’t you understand, Tallie?”
“Then why can’t you look me in the eye and tell me that? Is that the truth, Brandon? Is that how you really feel?”
He broke free of her grip on his arm and he started to walk away from her again.
“Anthony knows about us,” she admitted. She watched him stop cold, idling his weight on one side of his body.
“I left him tonight, Brandy,” she whispered, sniffling. “I told him that I couldn’t lie to him anymore…and I couldn’t lie to myself anymore…and…he was so angry, baby…but I didn’t care…it had gone on too long, Brandy…and I couldn’t do it anymore…”
He turned to face her, but kept his distance. “What are you trying to tell me, Natalie?”
“You’re it,” she breathed. She took a few long breaths before she continued. “You’re mine…and you’ve always been mine…and…I can’t stand life…without you in it…I don’t…I don’t make any sense without you…and I’m sorry for everything that I put you through…for the confusion, the doubt, the fear, everything…I…”
She didn’t get her chance to finish. Brandon came storming toward her pressing his fingers into her face, melding his lips into hers, lifting her up off the ground, forcing her legs around his waist in the style of a pretzel. She could think of nothing else but how high she felt – not in the physical sense of course. She felt bedazzled and desired, and her small encounter with Anthony and Reina only moments ago, felt like a distant dream that she could only see faint details of.
Brandon lowered her to the ground and kissed her again.
“So, he’s gone, he’s really gone?” he asked her, rubbing her face confidently with his large hand.
She nodded and smiled. “Yes…and Reina’s gone to…I made sure of it…”
“Good, because it was only a matter of days that I would’ve been able to keep up that charade…”
He got her into his truck several minutes later, and he took her back to their field. He spread out the blanket over the grass and he knelt down with her. He sat on his bottom, and she straddled his lap boldly, grinning as she kissed his ears, then his nose, then his cheeks, the cleft in his chin, then his lips. She didn’t remark on how beautiful the stars were, but how beautiful Brandon was, and how his grasp reassured her. She then slowly pulled her hood over her head and placed it on the ground. He rubbed her shoulders, trailing her collarbone with his fingertips as he kissed her again.