Heartache

by Danielle Allen

We hit play on the next song. It was a mid-tempo song with a nice groove to it. I didn’t know the artist or the song at all, but it had lyrics. Picking up my cell phone, I Googled the lyrics and turned the phone so Bianca could see the results.

  “The First Taste,” she said as she wrote down the name of the song. She looked over at me with her eyebrows raised. “That sounds sexual.”

  Starting the next song, I immediately recognized it after the first few chords. “Elizabeth used to sing this all the time. It’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’ by Bonnie Raitt.”

  “This is a beautiful song.”

  Not with Elizabeth singing it, I thought ruefully. The one thing Benjamin and I always found common ground about was Elizabeth’s singing. Sometimes it seemed as though she sang horrendously to make us laugh. Because no one who sounds that bad sings that often on purpose.

  “What are you smiling about?” Bianca questioned.

  Without hesitation, I explained, “Elizabeth played this song so much that I know all of the lyrics. She would sing along with the music and her voice wasn’t the best, but she didn’t care who was around. She would sing in front of any and everybody.”

  Turning onto her side, her white t-shirt shifted, exposing her belly. I only looked for a second before I moved my eyes to the clock on the wall.

  “Did she ever embarrass you in front of your friends?” she asked.

  “I’ve never had a lot of friends. I kept to myself growing up. I had Easy, but he was across the country. She did embarrass Benjamin once—.” I stopped talking and my eyes immediately met hers to see if she’d heard the slip. Backpedaling, I continued. “She never embarrassed me. Easy has known her as long as I have so nothing she did or does in front of him phases me.”

  “That’s good! Lifelong friends are few and far between. I only have one.” She waited only a moment, before she asked, “Who’s Benjamin?”

  I did this shit to myself, I thought, sitting up. I hit pause on the mp3 player as the song was coming to an end. The silence that followed was absolute.

  After a minute, she sat up too. Moving over, I felt her body heat right behind me. “Ro?”

  “Benjamin is technically my brother.”

  “You have a brother?”

  “He’s Elizabeth and William’s biological son.”

  “So he’s your brother.”

  “I guess that depends on who you ask,” I muttered, standing up and pacing.

  I felt her eyes on me, but I avoided eye contact as long as I could. When I finally looked at her, she was sitting on her knees at the edge of the bed. She just looked up at me with those big, brown eyes and her wet lips and it caught me off guard.

  I heard the frustration in her voice as she questioned me. “What does that mean, Roman?”

  “It means that Benjamin and I grew up together, but we are not brothers.”

  “Did something happen?” Grabbing my arms, she tugged me to the edge of the bed right in front of her. “Sit down, please. Talk to me.”

  Pulling again, I allowed her to pull me flush against her. I could’ve fought it, but I didn’t. I let it happen. Her chin rested just above my abdomen and as I looked down at her upturned face, I prayed she didn’t feel me hardening against the softness of her body.

  “Please talk to me.” Bianca’s whispered, wrapping her arms around me.

  I knew in that moment that I was either going to tell her whatever she wanted or I was going to kiss her and ruin our friendship for good. Looking into her eyes, I weighed both options. And as bad as I wanted to touch, to kiss her—all of her—I cared too much about her to ruin what we had.

  “Okay,” I whispered back, creating space between us. “Okay. Just give me a minute.”

  Bianca removed her arms from around me and crawled to the other side of the bed. I tried unsuccessfully not to stare at her ass as she made her way to the other side of the bed. Ripping my eyes from her body, I grabbed the remote control to the T.V. and turned it on. I tossed her the remote once she appeared to have gotten comfortable with two pillows behind her head.

  Bianca’s phone vibrated on the nightstand and she busied herself with that. Unbuttoning my shirt, I watched her fingers fly across the screen. Her eyebrows were up and her mouth was agape. I dropped my shirt on the floor. Unzipping my jeans, I pushed them down until they dropped to the floor. Standing in just boxer briefs, I grabbed the first pair of shorts I could find and pulled them on. When I looked up, Bianca was checking me out.

  I wanted to smile and say something flirty to her. I wanted to make a joke. I wanted to make light of the situation. But when my eyes met hers, the only thing I wanted to do was climb in bed with her and fuck her brains out. My dick twitched at the thought of it.

  “I’m going to brush my teeth,” I mumbled, speed walking to the bathroom.

  As soon as I closed the bathroom door behind me, I splashed cold water on my face.

  Get it together, I coached myself in the mirror. I was acting like I didn’t have control over my body and it needed to stop. She is your friend. You have been drinking. You’re not thinking straight. Get your shit together!

  Feeling like I had myself under control, I returned to the bedroom. Stealing a glance at Bianca, I noticed she was still texting furiously.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, stacking my pillows and slipping into bed beside her.

  “Amber is pregnant,” she explained, still staring at her phone. After typing a few more characters, she put the phone on the nightstand and turned toward me.

  Amber was the only other person Bianca considered a best friend. Amber lived in upstate New York so I’d never met her, but Bianca had told me enough about her that I knew a baby wasn’t what she wanted.

  “Wow.”

  “Exactly,” Bianca sighed, shaking her head. “She’s out for one of her late night walks because she can’t sleep. I told her that now that she’s pregnant, she can’t just go walking by herself armed with a flashlight, mace, and a fake badge.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She will be. We were making plans for her to come down here soon. But anyway, you were going to tell me about Ben.”

  “Benjamin,” I corrected her. “He hates to be called Ben for some reason.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He already sounds like a charmer.”

  Despite myself, I chuckled.

  “I’m sorry, go on,” she said, reaching over and scratching my beard.

  I was quiet while I enjoyed the feeling of her cold hands on my warm face until she stopped playing with the thick hair of my beard.

  “I’d been with Elizabeth and William since birth. They didn’t think they could have children apparently and adopted me. Two years later, Elizabeth got pregnant with Benjamin. We were close when we were really young, but when he was about eight or nine, he just became a really jealous kid. We weren’t treated any differently at that time, but I was allowed to do some things that he wasn’t allowed to do because of our age difference and it changed him.” I shook my head. “This dude went from a sweet little kid to an angry preteen to a fucking menace as an adult. The odd thing was he was only that way to me. And I didn’t do shit to him! Elizabeth and William always chalked it up to a sibling rivalry, but I don’t know what the fuck is going on with him to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m sorry, Ro. That sucks. And he sucks. He definitely took sibling rivalry to another level.”

  I closed my eyes. “Yeah he did,” I muttered angrily, feeling that slow ache developing in my heart.

  We were both quiet and I felt her hand on my face again. I opened my eyes and looked into hers.

  “What did he do?”

  I didn’t say anything. This is the conversation I was trying to avoid, I thought silently.

  “It’s written all over your face, Ro. What did he do?”

  “It’s all connected,” I muttered, closing my eyes.

  “What? What’s connected?”

  “It’s too much.”

  �
�Look at me. Nothing you could tell me would ever be too much, okay?”

  I rolled over so that I was flat on my back. Putting my arm over my face, I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her and answer her question.

  “It was eight years ago. I was twenty, he was eighteen. I was home for the summer break between sophomore and junior year. Our relationship had gotten bad by that point so I didn’t stay at home too often. I would’ve just stayed in Richmond with Easy and his family, but Elizabeth and William were paying for school and they wanted me in California so I went to California. Anyway, I spent most of my time out of the house. Tia had her own apartment right next to Golden State College, so I was there more than I was at home.”

  “Why didn’t she come to Virginia with you?” Bianca asked, interrupting me from my thoughts. She sounded closer than she was before.

  “She was a year younger and after she graduated from high school, she stayed to get her associate degree from Golden State before transferring to NYU. It was her dream to go to NYU and we would have been on the same coast, in the same time zone, but she didn’t get in. When I finished at VCU, I was going to move to New York with her. We had a plan.”

  “Oh okay.” I heard the surprise in her voice. “Sorry, now back to your—Benjamin.”

  “So this one night, I went home for dinner instead of eating dinner with Tia. Elizabeth and William weren’t expecting me since I’d barely been at home. Benjamin was taking two classes at Golden State since he was waitlisted for USC so he wasn’t usually home on Tuesday nights. I came in and I heard Elizabeth and William arguing. They didn’t hear me come in because they would’ve stopped if they’d heard me. It took me a few seconds to realize they were arguing about me. It took me a minute after that to realize that they were arguing about the adoption. My adoption.”

  “You didn’t know you were adopted?” Bianca gasped.

  With my eyes closed, I could see the scene playing out in front of me. My chest hurt as my heart rate increased. “No, I knew I was adopted. I was adopted from a woman who was young and couldn’t care for me. She didn’t have any family or any money and instead of raising me on her own, she gave me up. I’d known that story since I was seven or eight. What I didn’t know was that it was a lie.”

  Bianca placed her hand on my chest and I wondered if she could feel how fast my heart was beating. Even though my brain kept shouting for me to stop talking, the words kept pouring out of my mouth. Maybe it was the six-pack I’d had in a short period of time or maybe it was the fact that I had never said the story out loud before. Either way, I just kept talking.

  “William was telling her that I deserved to know the truth. Elizabeth was crying and telling him that she was scared of how I’d react knowing they’d kept it from me and then William started yelling that she’d kept it from him too.”

  “What was the truth, Ro?” Bianca murmured, moving closer to me. I felt her breath on my shoulder.

  “My biological mother was given the choice to either put me up for adoption or keep her inheritance. She chose the money. I guess her conscience got the best of her after her parents died and she started contacting Elizabeth about me. I didn’t know that at the same time I was asking questions about my birth family and where I came from, questions were being asked about me. Elizabeth never said anything to anyone, not even William.”

  “Wow… So Elizabeth was the only person who knew that your birth mother was looking for you?”

  “Apparently.”

  “And you thought your bio family was dead?”

  I nodded. “But they weren’t. Well, they weren’t dead my whole life like I was told. They were dead by time I found out about them. When I overheard William and Elizabeth arguing over the fact that a lawyer was trying to contact me about my inheritance, I remember thinking it was weird that I would have an inheritance coming to me since my biological mother didn’t have any family or money. William started yelling that Elizabeth should’ve given me the letter when it came and not waited, and that’s when I walked into the room, demanding the letter and making them tell me everything. That’s when I saw Benjamin sitting on the steps, and…”

  With my eyes closed, I felt like I was living in that moment all over again. After listening to the bullshit from Elizabeth crying and trying to explain and William waffling between being mad at Elizabeth and sympathetic to her tears, I felt my chest burning. Elizabeth apologized repeatedly, begging me to forgive her. William paced back and forth, attempting to explain why they lied from the beginning. I was frozen, the two people I trusted the most had lied and betrayed me. I kept staring at the letter in my hand.

  I had the words from a family I didn’t know in my hands and the words from a family I no longer trusted in my ears. I had never felt more lost or out of control in my life. In the midst of the madness, Benjamin walked over to me and made a smartass comment and then laughed. Everything went black and I lost it. I was seconds away from beating his ass, but William held me back. Elizabeth cried louder, William was angrier, and Benjamin just kept laughing. He was taunting me, telling me that it was about time something bad happened to me because I didn’t deserve to be happy, and he just kept laughing.

  When William let me go, I went after Benjamin again. I threw the first punch, hitting him square in his nose. He dropped immediately. Even as Elizabeth went to him at the first sign of blood, I could still hear Benjamin’s maniacal laughter as he pushed me out of the room. Angrily ripping my arm out of William’s grasp, I grabbed my keys off of the kitchen table and left. I heard Elizabeth screaming for me to come back, but I didn’t look back.

  “And what, Ro?” Bianca asked, interrupting the visions that played out in my mind.

  “Things got out of control,” I answered shortly, shaking off the memory. “So I left and went straight to Tia’s. I was so pissed that I could barely talk, so when I got there, Tia didn’t know what was going on. She assumed the worst so she started confessing.”

  “Oh no,” she mumbled under her breath, moving so that her head was resting on my chest.

  With one arm covering my face, I moved the other arm so that she could get more comfortable. As soon as she stopped moving around, she let out a little noise that sounded like a sigh. Instinctively, I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer. Her body heat was comforting. Part of me wanted to stop the story right there, but another part of me, a larger part, wanted to keep going.

  “She slept with a guy in her study group. And—”

  “She cheated on you?” Bianca interrupted incredulously. Her head lifted off of my chest and I felt her looking at me.

  “Yeah,” I answered simply.

  I pictured Tia’s face as she admitted to what she thought I already knew. I remembered how I just stood there in shock. I went to her house to tell her that the family I always wondered about was kept away from me by the family I knew and loved. I walked through the front door thinking I’d never been more betrayed in my life. But standing in front of my girlfriend of five years as she admitted her infidelity, I went completely numb.

  I didn’t talk to her about it. I listened to her cry and apologize for a while as I paced back and forth, but then her words just became a blur. Everything became a blur. But I still remembered everything about that night. I remembered packing my stuff and walking out of the apartment. I remembered how she tried to guilt me into staying by using my words against me. I remembered that she kept repeating that I was a liar because I said that we could make it through anything.

  In my defense, I was speaking of the long distance relationship, not her fucking around on me.

  The whole situation was fucked up, but I just kept hearing her voice calling me a liar and that really got under my skin. I checked into a hotel room near the airport with my phone powered off for two days. I had finally forced myself to stop questioning if I was in the wrong for how I left things with her or the rest of my family. Flying back to Virginia without seeing any of the people that had
betrayed me, I remembered feeling justified in my actions.

  “I can’t imagine anyone cheating on you,” Bianca murmured, resting her head back on my chest. “What did she say?”

  “There was really nothing to say. She did it,” I replied, bringing her closer to me. Even though Bianca’s head was on my chest, I felt like I couldn’t get her close enough. I felt tired, but the story kept pouring out of me as it was replaying in my mind.

  “I’m sorry.” She brought her arm over my stomach and gave me a little squeeze.

  I didn’t want her pity. I uncovered my eyes momentarily, but the lights were too bright so I returned my arm securely over my face. “That was a bad night. But I handled it. I stayed at a hotel for a couple of days and then I left California. I changed my number when I got to Richmond and didn’t say shit to any of them for a couple of weeks. Elizabeth called Easy’s mom to get in touch with me. I didn’t respond to the messages. Tia had my email address so she emailed, but I didn’t respond to those either.”

  We laid in silence and I stifled a yawn. I listened to her breathing, syncing mine with hers.

  “What happened next?” Bianca mumbled sleepily.

  “Usually if Easy’s mom is trying to pass along a message from Elizabeth through Easy, he’d just say it. But that day, Easy came over and he was freaking out. He kept telling me I had to call Elizabeth. His seriousness made me nervous so I called and Elizabeth told me that Tia…”

  “Tia what?” Bianca squeezed me again. “Your heart is beating so fast.”

  “Yeah…”

  I don’t think I’m ready, I thought as nerves ripped through me. It wasn’t telling her that worried me so much as her reaction to me telling her. What if it changes everything? I need to stop talking before it changes everything between us.

  “You can tell me anything, Ro.”

  Her softly spoken words pushed me to keep going even after I told myself to stop.

  “After I talked to Elizabeth, I went back and read Tia’s emails. They were sad explanations and apologies. But in one, she mentioned that she got my message from Benjamin. Since I hadn’t talked to him in weeks, I didn’t know what she was talking about.”