by Cora Brent
I stayed at the bar for a while and learned that the bartender’s name was Tom. Tom was pleased to answer my sudden flood of questions about his home state and as he talked, everything seemed to crystallize.
Cecily’s name was never far from my thoughts and her face never stayed out of my dreams for very long. Letting her go was the most unselfish thing I ever did and it was also my worst mistake. We were just kids, eighteen-year-old kids barely out of high school and playing adult games. We’d seen our dreams crushed and when you’re that young such things seem final. If only I’d known that I’d never get over her.
I had a few choices. I could take a job I didn’t want in a city that had no claim on my heart and live a solitary existence working for a paycheck and nothing else.
Or I could turn west, like Tom suggested, and take a gamble in more ways than one.
I couldn’t guarantee that any of the ideas racing through my head would work out or if the Jack Daniels effect was making me bolder than I had a right to be. At that point all I could promise was I wasn’t going to let another year pass by, thinking about everything that could have been if only I’d had the guts to fight for it.
And so a week later I drove over the Arizona state line with nothing but a pickup truck, a vague plan and a job lead written on a paper napkin, courtesy of Tom the bartender. His brother managed a golf resort and they were always looking for security staff. I also had an appointment with an academic adviser at Central Arizona University. The school I knew Cecily was attending.
It seemed like I ought to have more to go on but I convinced myself I was taking a leap of faith. I just had to find a way to connect with Cecily and convince her to leap with me.
The eruption of a nearby ambulance siren shook me out of my reverie and I started to walk briskly back to campus. I didn’t know what time it was but I didn’t care enough to pull out my phone and check.
Back at Yucca Hall, I paused on the first floor and looked in the direction of Cess’s room. She probably wouldn’t have believed me if I told her, but I only signed up to live in freshmen housing as a temporary arrangement, not because I was trying to maximize my stalker skills.
I just neglected to mention that on the drive out here, as I crossed through state after lonely state, her face was the only thing on my mind.
A few times I wondered if our first encounter would be one of those movie moments that somehow ended up with our mouths glued together and our hands all over each other. That was a dumb idea and I knew that as soon as I caught a glimpse of her six days ago.
Cess had always been a pretty girl; full of gentle curves, soft hair lost in the valley between blonde and brunette, and pensive eyes that were a pretty shade of hazel. No one would have called her a supermodel but she was sweet and shy and I had liked looking at her ever since I found out girls were worth looking at.
But the second I saw her confidently addressing a room of newly minted freshmen in a business suit, I knew I wasn’t seeing the girl I remembered. This Cecily was all woman, full of self-assurance as she pointed to some writing on an absurdly large white board. It seemed that she sensed that she was being watched from the doorway but when she glanced over I ducked back. That wasn’t a good time for her to see me, while she was in a room full of teenagers, handing out a pep talk about time management.
I’d knocked on her door several times but there was never an answer and I didn’t want to just collide with her on campus somewhere so I tried to stay out of sight. I wished our first meeting after all this time had gone differently, but hell, it had to happen sometime. Once Cecily had a little time to process the idea that I was back in her life I’d explain a few things to her.
When I entered my room I saw that my roommate Kevin wasn’t around, which was a relief. He was a good kid but he talked a fucking blue streak about video games and girls. Sometimes being in Kevin’s company got a little exhausting. I didn’t plan on staying in this place for long anyway, one semester tops. Living in the barracks when I wasn’t deployed had allowed me to sock away enough cash for a solid down payment on a piece of real estate and I was already working with an agent who was searching for something. I’d been a damn nomad for too long and I was determined to put down some roots now.
As I kicked an empty bag of Cheetos back to Kevin’s side of the room I sighed and sank down on the edge of my narrow bed to think. My roommate’s Playboy poster collection leered at me from the wall.
Then Kevin himself busted into the room, panting like a chainsaw murderer was on his heels.
“Fuck me, you’re here!” he exclaimed when he saw me.
“I’m here,” I said wearily. “But I’m not fucking you, Kevin.”
Kevin stood over me and peered down, his unruly mop of brown curls falling in his face. “I texted you, man. You didn’t answer so I figured you were working tonight.”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Not tonight. Good thing, because I had to take a girl to the hospital.”
“Oh,” he said absently and I could tell he wasn’t interested in hearing the story. “Hey, can I borrow twenty bucks?”
I scowled. “Did you eat up all your allowance in pizza already?”
He glanced anxiously at the door he’d left half open. “What can I say, I’ve got expenses. Anyhow, my dad shut off my debit card until next month. Said I need to learn to live within a budget or some shit.”
“You could get a job,” I suggested.
“Come on, Bran,” Kevin whined. “I swear I’ll pay you back.”
“How?” I demanded.
He frowned, then shrugged. “My dad’s bound to unfreeze the cash flow sooner or later.”
I already knew I’d give it to him but I didn’t reach for my wallet yet. “What do you need it for, Kev?”
The kid blushed, jammed his hands in his pockets and mumbled something.
I put a hand to my ear. “What’s that?”
“Condoms,” he hissed. “Hurry up, I’ve gotta run down to the market. They’re closing in twenty minutes.”
I laughed, pinched a twenty out of my wallet, and held it just out of his reach. “Wishful thinking or you have someone special in mind?”
He snatched at the money. “I met a girl,” he said and then smiled. “She seems pretty cool.”
“You just met her tonight?”
“Yeah. So?”
I snorted. “Must be true love if you’re looking to cap off your first date with prophylactics.”
He looked offended. “No, I was going to walk her down to McD’s and buy her a hamburger or something too.”
I took another twenty out of my wallet and flung it his way. “Now you can afford something a little better.”
Kevin beamed and for a second I was afraid he’d hug me. “Damn, thanks Bran. I’ll catch you later.”
As I watched Kevin bounce away I felt slightly envious and protective all at once. I hadn’t given much thought to what life would be like to be among these kids. The Army had been full of people Kevin’s age but they grew up fast. There was a kind of carefree yet bewildered quality to these college types that I wasn’t used to seeing. I couldn’t look at them without remembering what it was like to be that strange age; legally an adult, but far from fully established.
I wondered if these things occurred to Cess, if she remembered everything as clearly as I did. She must. That was why all the color drained from her face when she saw me.
“Soon, baby,” I said to the empty room. Then I pulled my shirt off and switched the light off even though I had some Shakespeare paper to start on for English Lit. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
Tonight my head was too full of Cecily. I thought about her in her room two floors below, perhaps sliding off those black pants she’d been strutting around in and then stretching out on her own mattress.
Since I had no idea what was going on inside her head, my only recourse was to fantasize about her naked body. I pushed my pants down and closed my hand around my dick, picturing her
mouth, the curve of her hips, the way she used to cry out and shake when I made her come.
“Fuck,” I moaned, hard as steel and hoping Kevin didn’t bust in here and get an eyeful of me jerking off in my bed. Then the image of Cecily’s tits flashed through my mind and I didn’t give a shit about anything but getting off.
Sliding off the bed, I spit on my palm, kneeled on the floor and pumped away into my own hand while I pictured bending her over, spreading her open and hammering away until we were both so spent we couldn’t stand up.
Just like we used to.
I wanted her as bad as ever. No one else had ever held a candle to her. No one ever would.
Yet as I crouched beside my bed, panting after acting out my own private porno, I remembered the things Cecily had said to me at the hospital. She’d said seeing me again was too much, that too many years and passed.
She was right in a way. So much time had gone by and now we were mysteries to each other. In practical terms we were closer than we’d been in a very long time. But yet we were still awfully far apart.
CHAPTER FOUR
Cecily
My mother named me after a soap opera character. She’d been married to my father for six years when I showed up and no siblings followed. They didn’t fight a lot but they didn’t talk to each other very often either. From the time I was small I would wonder about the difference between our family and our next door neighbors, the Poldarsky family. There were eight kids in that house and there was a constant pulse of shouting and noise that was nearly savage. Yet I envied them.
Ever since moving into Yucca Hall I found myself thinking about the Poldarskys for the first time in years, probably because the din of the dormitory reminded me of the clamor and chaos next door.
The Poldarsky kids had all looked alike with their almost nonexistent upper lips and flyaway hair the color of dishwater. They were all notoriously rotten students and the youngest was a year older than me. One of the middle boys had been friend’s with Caden Hickey, Bran’s older brother. He worked at a gas station on the edge of town and most of the alcohol that was consumed at a party the night of Caden’s death was purchased on his shift. He might have faced some legal consequences for that if he’d stuck around but he skipped town and no one knew where he went.
As for the rest of the family, when I was a sophomore in high school the bank foreclosed on the Poldarskys’ house so they stuffed all their faded belongings in a yellow moving van and drove to Texas. Then they became just another one of the past tense families who once lived in Hickeyville. Their narrow row house was boarded up and remained empty, like so many others.
Two uneventful days had passed since the shocking Bran encounter and I still didn’t know what to make of it. Yesterday I visited Saffron in the morning, then hibernated in the library for the rest of the day. Whenever I was out and about I kept my head down, both trying to avoid seeing the guy who’d once broken my heart and paradoxically hoping he’d tap me on the shoulder.
At any rate, I didn’t catch a single glimpse of him. I knew Bran and I would need to have a more detailed conversation sooner or later. Seven years was a long time to let a wound fester but I wasn’t the same clueless girl I’d been and hopefully Bran wasn’t the same callous jerk. It still seemed pretty unnatural knowing that Bran was here in the same state at the same school and sleeping in the same damn building. I felt like I was living in one of those ridiculous soap operas my mother used to obsess over. Suddenly the fact that I was named for a daytime television heroine seemed very fitting and I could picture my fateful reunion with Bran as if it had been scripted:
RETURN OF THE EX
Evening on an unremarkable college campus.
Cecily enters the picture and gasps.
Dramatic music loudly crashes in the background.
Cecily (still gasping): Bran! I-I wasn’t expecting to see you again so suddenly after seven years. I mean, you crushed my heart like a wad of tin foil and then ran away to the Army. Yet now you’re here in Arizona, valiantly rescuing an injured girl with two broken feet and looking like an unshaven action hero! How can this be?
Bran (in a booming, macho voice): Yes, Cecily. I am here! I have fought long and hard for our nation’s freedom and now I have arrived on your doorstep for reasons I won’t adequately explain right now. But first let’s take this wounded girl to the hospital and continue this awkward encounter there.
Another burst of dramatic music.
Cut to commercial break featuring laundry detergent and feminine hygiene products.
“AHHHH!” I groaned and tore a sheet of notebook paper in half. It was covered with recently sketched footballs. I had sat down at my desk to review my academic plan but my mind had wandered and took my fingers with it.
When I was a kid, every piece of paper that came my way was treated as a canvas, whether it was an algebra test or a cafeteria menu. In middle school I received an English quiz with a big red D on it because my answers to questions about The Great Gatsby were in cartoon format. I wasn’t kind to Daisy Buchanan, who seemed to me like a spoiled idiot. So I drew her with vacant cow eyes, a rosebud mouth and a balloon above her head that said, “I’m a silly jerk who runs people over and then drives away.” Bran happened to be sitting at the desk to my right and while I frowned over my D, he leaned over and peered at my drawings. He laughed out loud.
“Why are you always there?” I muttered irritably as I crumpled the paper in a ball and threw it toward the mesh wastebasket. I missed and it rolled under the bed.
Bran was inseparable from my childhood, my adolescence and the evolution of my heart. That wasn’t easy to change. I’d been trying for an awful long time.
I snatched my phone and called the one person who would understand the gravity of the statement, “Branson Hickey lives upstairs.”
There was a long pause on the other end. Then my best friend Antha said, “What?”
“Branson Hickey lives upstairs.”
“Cecily, are you drunk?”
“Antha, you know I don’t drink.”
“I know you don’t live with Branson Hickey either.”
“I didn’t mean I was living with him,” I explained, feeling helpless. “I meant that he’s here in my building.”
Antha was unconvinced. “You’re not making any sense. What’s going on?”
“I just told you. Bran is here.”
“Hmmm.” I could almost hear Antha weighing my mental health. “Why don’t you come by?”
“That’s a good idea,” I said, because in truth I needed some support right now while I sorted through some particulars about my ex.
Antha and her husband owned a little retro-style bakery in the old section of Scottsdale. It took me half an hour to drive down there and by the time I opened the door I felt somewhat composed.
Antha was waiting for me in her red and white striped apron. She smiled when I walked in and called something to her husband, Dhaval, who poked his head out of the kitchen, waved at me, and then took over Antha’s position at the register.
“You look out of sorts,” Antha commented in a maternal voice as she hugged me.
“You look like a candy cane,” I told her and gratefully allowed myself to be guided to a chair.
My oldest and best friend waited for me to get settled rather than peppering me with questions immediately. Her warm brown eyes regarded me with concern and she clasped her hands together on the mosaic tabletop.
We’d been friends for fifteen years, ever since she arrived as a new student on the first day of fifth grade and smiled at me shyly when I complimented her silver hoop earrings. Her parents had bought a struggling local gas station. They struggled to make a go of it but that was tough to do in a place that soon started hemorrhaging residents. They threw in the towel about a year after we graduated from high school and now they operated two ice cream parlors in Flagstaff.
“You okay?” Antha asked gently.
“I don’t know,” I said and then
I told her the rest.
Antha knew the backstory of course so I didn’t have to remind her. I watched as the frown between her brows deepened and I didn’t know if that was because of me or because Antha had reasons to be distressed over any reminders of high school. Antha had always been bullied terribly in school. Maybe because she was naturally shy or slightly overweight or because she hadn’t lived in Hickeyville since birth or because her parents spoke with distinct foreign accents, our classmates didn’t give her much of a chance. She’d been an outcast from the moment she set foot in that classroom and I’d never been powerful enough to save her from that.
As I kept talking though, her expression changed to sympathy and I knew she wasn’t thinking of herself. She was worried about me.
“He gave you no warning?” she asked gently.
I shook my head. “None. I figured he was still in the Army. I honestly never expected to see him again, Antha.”
Antha chewed a corner of her lip. “Is that what you wanted, Cecily? To never see him again?”
Luckily I didn’t have to answer that right away because Dhaval arrived with two cups of green tea and lemon scones.
“Thanks, hon,” Antha said and he smiled at her before turning his attention to me.
“Good to see you, Cecily,” Dhaval said cheerfully.
I managed to smile at Antha’s husband. “Good to see you too. How are things?”
Dhaval said his mother was finally moving out from Michigan, as they’d been trying to get her to do for years. We laughed about whether there was going to be anyone left in the Midwest. Sometimes it seemed like Arizona had opened up its desert maw and swallowed a large slice of the population from the middle of the country.
Antha winked. “Yeah, it’s getting crowded here. Maybe that’s why Dhav’s cousins moved to Houston instead.”
“They don’t like the heat,” Dhav offered.
I raised an eyebrow. “So they moved to Houston?”
He thought about it. “Maybe it’s the dry heat they’re not crazy about. So how are things going at school?”