by J. C. Cliff
She slowly covers her mouth with her hand, a deep V forming between her brows as she sits down next to me on the ground.
“What’s the matter, Val?” She flicks her eyes to mine and there’s a mixture of emotion behind them. “Val?” I ask again.
“It’s just so beautiful,” she whispers behind her fingertips. There’s more to it than just its beauty. She looks deeply affected by it, but it’s just a damn insect. I’ll never figure women out. I shrug my shoulders and close the lid on my laptop, forcing the dragonfly to move on its way. “Why’d you do that?” she asks, almost affronted.
“Why do you care?” I ask, forcing the subject.
“They’re special to me.”
I wave my hand around, and tell her, “Should’ve been here twenty minutes ago. There was a swarm of them. I’ve been harassed by them nonstop for the past two days, so they can’t be all that special if they’re everywhere.”
She looks at me as if I told her I just fucked her best friend. “They’ve been bothering you?” she asks incredulously.
“More like stalking me. Seems like every time I turn around, I’m either running into a swarm or they get in my space. It’s like they’re doing it on purpose.” She looks even more troubled by what I just told her, which irritates me, so I cut to the chase. “What the hell is up with you? You’re acting all weird about it.”
She sits up on her knees and faces me, looking truly distressed about something. “Stryker, I don’t know what to say. All I know is last year when I was here, the same thing happened to me. That’s when I found out the news my husband and son died in an accident.”
I almost grin at her scientific analysis. She’s far too serious about this. “Could it be that this is their season, sweetheart? We are in the rainy season, after all, and they congregate toward water and marshes.”
“No,” she says earnestly, shaking her head, “there’s a real connection between seeing dragonflies and someone you love passing away.”
I raise both brows and wonder when the fuck she went so crazy. “You’re seriously not going to sit here and tell me there is a correlation between the two?”
“There is a link, and throughout history, they, along with butterflies, have been very symbolic. There’s a spiritual and mythological significance that cannot be explained.”
I burst out with laughter. “When did you turn so philosophical and full of retrospect?” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she sounds like one of those ‘one-eight-hundred call for your horoscope’ type quacks, but I don’t. She’s serious as shit about this, and she’d take my jab too literal. “Of course you can’t explain the phenomenon, because it doesn’t exist,” I say, breaking the news to her gently. She frowns, her face losing all previous excitement. “Insects and death are not interrelated, sweetheart. I hate to be the one to break it to you.”
She chews on her lower lip, but it’s not in thought. It’s obvious I’m starting to upset her, even though I tried not to. The thing is, I’m a realist, not a dreamer, so I refuse to entertain her, or anyone, with the possibility I’m even remotely interested in listening to all that bullshit.
“Some things are called a mystery, because that’s exactly what they are, a mystery. They can’t be explained by your precious science, Stryker,” she says with sudden bitterness. “You easily dismiss what you cannot explain or comprehend, and therefore you pass those things off as absurdity.”
“Fine, baby, I’ll give you that,” I tell her, only to avoid an argument, because I feel one coming on. We’re due for a full-blown, knock-down-drag-out fight, especially if her sudden demeanor continues down this road. She’s fiercely protecting her shallow beliefs.
Pick your battles, Stryker. This ain’t one of them.
“You know what? Come to think of it, you always did laugh at me and my beliefs when they didn’t align with yours.” Her voice has turned icy, and immediately, my hackles go up. “Your opinions were always the right ones, and everyone else’s be damned.”
“That statement is such bullshit and unjustly called for,” I tell her heatedly. “I always supported you and your endeavors.”
“Only when they fell in line with your greater plans,” she snaps back. “It was always your way or the highway.”
I narrow my eyes on hers, getting more pissed off by the second. “Are you looking for a fight?” I hiss. “Are you really prepared to dredge up all the shit and bring it to the surface?” If that’s what she wants, it’s game on. I’m so pissed off I can’t even think about the mission at hand and how I’m supposed to behave. Why? Because Stryker doesn’t take shit up the ass, then swallow it back down, then kiss ass just to get along. I’ve been very amenable up until this point, but she’s pushed me too far. So now, I’m giving her the option to either back off, or put on her gloves.
She hesitates for a moment, realizing she’s awakened a beast, but then she stiffens her spine and confronts me head-on. “How many other women did you cheat on besides me, Stryker?” And here we go. It’s all coming to a head now. This is the million-dollar question that’s been eating her alive for years.
“I didn’t sleep with her.” I clench my jaw, preparing myself for the imminent battle, because I know she won’t believe me.
She scoffs in my face. “Of course you didn’t,” she says, unconvinced. I didn’t expect her to take my word for it. I glare at her in silence, which winds up getting under her skin and she reacts.
“Oh my God, you really have nothing to say for yourself? You’re really going to sit here and lie to me?” Her upper lip curls, her voice full of intense force. “It was plain as day, Stryker. You had another woman pressed up against the wall in a swanky downtown bar after you told me to stay at home like a good little girl. Do you always like to sleep around with trash? Do you still live a double life?” When I don’t answer she then yells, “I asked you a question!” She pokes her finger into my chest, adding, “How many, Stryker?”
I capture her finger and hold it tight. My voice is low and menacing, “When I told you in so many words to back off that night, that we would discuss what you were seeing at a later time, it wasn’t a good enough explanation. You wanted to drag all that shit out in the open, in front of everyone to see. My back was to the wall, and you forced me to react.”
She narrows her eyes, and spews, “Your back was against the wall? You poor baby.” She’s too pissed to read between the lines. If she was paying attention, believed my every word, and asked the right questions to my answer, she could possibly figure out I was undercover, but she’s too busy seeing red.
“Afterwards, you wouldn’t answer your door, your phone, nothing! You weren’t fucking home, and I fucking couldn’t find you to explain shit to you. And why is that?” I ask, barreling over her initial question with fury. “I’ll tell you why. Because you were too fucking busy planning a wedding to a man you had just met. Or maybe you’d known him all along and I was your back-up plan in case you couldn’t hook him.”
Her head jolts back as if I slapped her. “You cheated on me,” she croakily whispers, offended, as if she had just cause for marrying herself off so quickly.
“No I did not, but I don’t owe you that explanation now, because you ran off to marry a man with deeper pockets.” I pause then let her hand go, adding, “Or maybe you were just using me for the sex, since he couldn’t satisfy you in bed.”
A resounding slap echoes through my ears, and soon after, the sting on my cheek. Fucking hell, she slapped me again! I grab her wrist and twist it away from me, and she winces, but I don’t care. Barely restrained fury seeps from my pores as I lean into her space, and speak through clenched teeth, “If you ever slap me again in a fit of anger, we’re done,” I growl. “I will wash my hands of you so fast it’ll make your head spin. I was brought up to never raise a hand to your significant other, no matter what. It’s a mutual respect thing, and it goes both ways, and I’m over you crossing that line.” I roughly let go of her wrist in disgust.
I hastily zip up my backpack, and just as I get ready to stand up to leave, her small hand wraps around my forearm. She tugs at me to sit back down. My eyes give off a glare that has her shrinking back, but she doesn’t let go of me. She’s most likely never seen me this furious before.
“I’m sorry. Don’t leave,” she says timidly. “I’ll never do that again, I promise.”
I’m pissed, full of unspent rage over her disrespect. I ball my hands into fists, trying to regain some composure. I’m not sure I’m capable of calming down this quickly, but she sure as fuck gives it her best shot. “I want to work through this, Stryker,” she tells me softly, full of trepidation, unsure as to how I’m going to react next.
She’s not willing to give me any answers, and I’m not willing to share mine. We’re at an impasse. I shake my head and expel an exasperated breath. “Do you honestly think you can, Val?” I ask, my voice laced with enmity. “I’m not sure you’re capable of working through a wet paper bag, let alone us. It’s obvious you’ve already bought into the lie that your entire life is just one big tragedy now. You’ve been living with ghosts for so long you’ve forgotten how to walk among the living.”
I’ve hit a touchy subject, because huge tears begin welling up in her eyes, and before I can blink, they’re already spilling over onto her cheeks in silent misery. She had been a master at crying without expressing a single sound, and apparently still is. Seeing her this way always twisted my gut, just like it’s doing right now.
“Don’t cry,” I gruffly tell her, frustrated with my inability to push her away when she’s this way. “I hate seeing you cry like that,” I add, still keeping my distance from her, because I don’t want anything to do with her at the moment.
“I’m trying not to,” she snivels, sucking in ragged breaths as if she’s truly trying to keep her shit together. “It seems the past year has been spent with me trying to figure out what to hold on to and what to let go of.” She sniffs then swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, and I take note she’s shaking. “I don’t think I could bear losing you again,” she whisper-cries, looking at me with huge, watery eyes. “I don’t believe I’d survive it this time.”
“Fucking hell,” I murmur. She’s managed to twist at my heart and wring it dry. This right here is the very reason why nations have been known to fall. I let out an exasperated sigh and cave. “Dammit,” I sigh. “C’mere, darlin’.” I don’t really give her time to respond before I scoop her into my arms and hold her tightly against me. Women are such complex creatures. I’ll never begin to understand how they’re able to switch emotional gears from one extreme to the other with no in-between.
Her arms wrap around my waist as she buries her face into the side of neck. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. “I don’t know what comes over me when you get under my skin like that.”
“Stop,” I softly tell her, “just calm down.” I close my eyes, resting my chin on the top of her head. We hold each other like this in silence until her shaking stops and her rigid body goes lax. Once I feel we can talk calmly, I ask, “How about we address one subject at a time and quietly talk through our answers without getting upset?” When she doesn’t respond, I prompt her, my voice soothing yet firm. “I asked you a question. You think we can do that, Val?”
Her head still cradled in the crook of my neck, she nods. I can feel the wetness from her tears seeping into the fabric of my shirt. “I don’t want to talk about our past anymore,” she whispers, her voice scratchy.
“Fair enough.” We both have taken a big step today in communicating, admitting to each other how our unresolved past is still fucking with our heads. I’ll give her some time to digest and accept the fact we’ll eventually have to address these issues head-on, and provide explanations.
“I should’ve just turned around and gone back home when I had the chance,” she says sadly. This is the second time she’s said this, which has me thinking, in her mind, she’s simply on a mission trip and nothing more. She couldn’t be any more sincere in expressing her desire to go back home. If someone were up to no good, they wouldn’t be talking like that. At this point, I’m led to believe she has no idea what danger is going on around her.
“Well, you didn’t turn around and take off for home. You’re here, in my arms, and I’m thinking it’s because you want to be,” I tell her, willing myself to simmer down. “If neither of us are going to address our cryptic past any time soon, I at least need to know if you ever held an ounce of true love for me.”
Her head pops up off my shoulder, her eyes wide and shock evident on her face. Her lips tremble and her eyes refill with water. “Oh my God, yes!” she says with heartrending sincerity. “I loved you with my entire soul, Stryker. To this very day, I have never loved another man more than I loved you.”
“Then why did you marry him?” I quietly ask, hoping she’ll answer me. “I’m very much confused here.”
She unwraps her arms from around my waist then cradles my scruffy cheeks in her palms as if searching my eyes for something. “If I could take it all back, I would. If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve never married him.” Her tone couldn’t be more genuine. “You have to believe me, but please, for now, let this be enough.” It’s not enough. I want the truth.
“I came to your door later that night, and damn near every night thereafter. You know that, right?”
She bites a huge chunk of her lower lip, her eyelids squeezing tightly together as if she can’t stand hearing me. “I’m so sorry, Stryker. I don’t believe I ever went back there. Too much of you was in that apartment, and I had wound up staying with some friends.”
“But you knew I had tried to stop by. Surely your neighbors told you,” I press, because I have a hard time believing someone didn’t make my knocking at her door gossip.
She strokes the stubble along my jaw with her thumbs, the pitch of her voice a pained whisper as she pleads with her eyes, “I didn’t find out until a couple weeks later. You have to understand I was beyond repair by that point. You humiliated me in public, crushed me in front of everyone in ways I never thought possible. I never would’ve imagined you were capable of such behavior, but you proved me wrong.” She drops her hands from my face and frowns.
“I don’t think you can fully comprehend, even now, what it was like for me to experience your rejection without having the opportunity to explain myself.” She lifts her chin, making sure our eyes are locked on each others.
“Oh, I think I do,” she counters. “The type of rejection I had experienced had become the ultimate betrayal—to have given all of myself to a man I loved unconditionally, all to have my soul shattered in the end. There’s nothing quite like that feeling.”
“Touché,” I tell her, “we both suffered greatly. We were young, and we both fucked-up.”
Her jaw muscles clench, set firmly in challenge. “If you say you didn’t sleep with her, didn’t love her, then why? Why did you say the things you said to me? Why did you tell me to stay at home that night, when you were out in a bar with another woman?”
I lean my forehead against hers, my heart constricting, hating that both of us are in such anguish. “I know what it looked like, and I know it sounds cliché, but looks can be deceiving.” I pause, thinking about all the vile remarks I doused her with so long ago, and the pain rips through me as if it just happened yesterday. “All those things I said to you that night were blatant lies. I need you to know that. I know you felt played, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. What we had was real, Val.”
“I can still feel it,” she interjects in a low, throaty voice, “deep down on the inside. I can still feel the burn, and every time I see you, every minute we spend toget
her, I replay your words in my head. Then the unanswered questions swirl around in my mind until I think I’m going to go crazy.”
“I know, baby. It’s the exact same way I feel when I think about you marrying right after our breakup.” She closes her eyes and nods, understanding we both need some blind faith in each other in order to get over this hump. “I promise to eventually give you those answers, but for now, I’m asking that you trust me. Let that be enough for now, okay?” I ask her in the same way she asked me to put our past on the backburner for the moment.
“Was I ever enough for you?” she asks solemnly. Her question shouldn’t take me by surprise, but it does.
“I’m not gonna lie, Val. You were always more than enough for me. I wanted you to be my forever. Every woman that was ever before or after you could never compare.” I pause for a second, letting her digest my words, before I add, “I never stopped wanting you. Hell, I still want you. It appears we’ve come full circle, and I have to believe it’s Father Time who’s putting things back where they belong. I know we belong together, but I don’t ever want to feel like I’m your stepping stone again. Just like you never want to feel like you’re being cheated on. I don’t want to turn around and find out I was so easily replaced within a month’s time, because I have to tell you, that fuckin’ burned me.”
“No, Stryker,” she whispers, deep sincerity lining her shaky voice as she runs her thumb over my bottom lip. “You were never a stepping stone. I swear I never used you.” A single tear escapes from her glassy eyes. “You were always my rock, and then you became a boulder lodged in my heart, one so big it never stopped weighing me down.”