Life's A Cappella

by Smith, Yessi

  “Give me a hint. Are you a person? An animal? Can you speak? Or do you growl?” I fired the questions at her so fast she didn’t have time to respond, so she laughed instead. I loved hearing her laugh. It was easily my favorite song.

  “Oh, look!” Shayna clapped, pointing her finger to something behind me.

  I turned around and felt my stomach plummet to the ground. Trent stood behind me, not yet having seen me, with a girl about my age wearing nothing but a bikini. I wanted to hate her as I saw him put his hands on the small of her back. I wanted to rip at her brown long hair, perfectly done in a braid. Or gauge her pretty brown eyes, made up with makeup that was done with experienced hands. I wanted to permanently mammogram her boobs so they’d hang down to her knees rather than stand up so perkily.

  “Trent!” Shayna danced in her seat, obviously unaware of the pandemonium that lived within me.

  I felt him move closer to us, rather than actually see him. My whole body was acutely mindful of Trent, and I knew when he stood right beside me. I smelled his cologne and immediately my body became riddled with goose bumps. I tried to calm the abnormality of my breathing, and I shot a smile at Trent and his female friend (I would not call her his girlfriend) that was too strained, too forceful.

  “Shay,” Trent greeted my sister, bending down in front of her to give her a big hug before acknowledging me. I didn’t know what to do, where to go, so I plastered a smile on my face, not wanting him to know how crushed I really felt. And I had no right to feel that way, I knew. He had done nothing wrong, while I had time and time again been the colossal failure in our relationship. Welcome to my screwed up little brain.

  Trent looked at me warmly, with his no barrier smile, and I felt my heart trip over itself and land neatly in his hands. Oh, this man.

  “This is Melissa,” he introduced us to the girl he was with and I found myself staring at their joined hands. She smiled at us, shaking our hands with her unoccupied hand, and I had to restrain myself from punching her perfect Chiclet teeth.

  “Thank you for what you did with Vanessa,” I told him, but feeling myself blush, I turned my face away from him. I felt my eyes well up with tears but pushed them back. Just because I felt too much didn’t mean I had to put on a show for him and his new girlfriend. There, I said it. His girlfriend. I didn’t have to make our chance encounter awkward so I’d do my damnest not cry or rage in front of them.

  “She’s a good kid,” he told me, watching me, observing me.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, not knowing what else to say.

  “Her foster parents are great. Melissa,” he nodded his head towards his companion, “is her social worker.”

  Oh great, I thought, still smiling. Not only did I push Trent away, I also brought him and the brown haired Barbie together. I was going to throw myself one helluva pity part when I got home. Complete with a sad chick flick and sappy songs about love gone wrong. And chocolate.

  “Do you think we can talk a minute?” he asked, grabbing my hand, not giving me a chance to answer. “We’ll be right over here, Shayna,” he told her, pointing at an empty table a few feet away from her so that I could still keep an eye on her.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked me, and I stared at him.

  What’s wrong? Really? “You moved on pretty quickly,” I retorted, trying to sound aloof, hating the agony that was so evident in my voice.

  “Moved on?” Trent almost laughed but caught himself. “I haven’t moved on, Erin. I don’t think there is a moving on.”

  I purposely looked at Melissa, this time not able to disguise my misery when I looked back at Trent.

  “I’m sorry for the things I said about your mom,” I told him, my mind a jumbled mess of regrets. “I was wrong. Leah’s a fantastic woman, and you’re lucky to have her as your mom.”

  “I’m glad you’re talking to her,” he said, lifting my chin up so I had to look at him. His eyes shone with sincerity and an unwaveringness that was all Trent.

  “I wish I had spoken to you instead,” I told him, taking hold of his hand, hoping it would anchor me.

  “Yeah, me too,” he told me, and I held on to his hand, holding my breath, expecting, hoping for the best. “I’m always here for you, Erin,” he said, and I felt the jolt of disappointment throughout my whole body.

  He may not have moved on, but I was too late. Unless I wasn’t.

  “Can’t we try again?” I asked, not caring how desperate I sounded. “You and me? We can make us work. I can make you happy.”

  “You always made me happy, Erin,” he told me, pressing his hands into his temple and I winced when I saw his pained expression. “The problem was me. I couldn’t make you happy or be what you needed.”

  “No, Trent.” I shook my head at him, nauseated by his words. Could he actually believe what he said was true? He was everything I’d been too scared to hope for. And when it was mine for the taking, I balked.

  I knew the only chance I had of winning Trent back was to be honest with him. Completely open, leaving myself vulnerable. So I took a deep breath, grabbed his hands and told him. I told him how much I needed him. How much I had taken for granted. How happy I was when I was with him. How I knew I could count on him because he’d been there for me. I didn’t deserve him, but still I pushed forward and, for the second time in my life, I told someone I loved them.

  I didn’t realize I was crying until Trent brushed my tears away with his hand. Me, crying? Whatever cosmic force had just fixed my tear ducts, I was grateful. Maybe my tears could speak better than my clumsy words.

  “But do you trust me?” he asked, looking at me, and without hesitating I told him that I did. “I want to believe you, Erin.” He kissed both my eye lids when I closed my eyes, not able to take any more in, and held me close until I finished crying.

  I regained my self-control before I went back to Shayna who was playing on Melissa’s phone. Melissa looked at me sadly, probably knowing what I had lost. I just hoped she’d be to him what I couldn’t; be someone he deserved, who loved him without conditions or limitations.

  That night, after our AA meeting, Leah walked me to my car. I hadn’t told her about Trent, nor did I have to. She had seen him before she left her house to go to the meeting. Although he hadn’t told her what had happened, she had correctly assumed his foul mood was linked to me. Standing next to my car, she gave me the best piece of advice I had ever been given. “Fight for him,” she told me. “You’ve got a lot of fight in you and my boy is worth the fight.”

  So that was what I’d do. I’d take Leah and Trent’s long ago advice and I’d fight like Hell, until I had nothing left in me to fight.

  That night I laid down next to my sleeping sister, listening to Common’s The Light as I made plans on how to win Trent back.

  Chapter 31

  Erin

  With Trent on my mind, I took Shayna to Sofia’s for her ballet day camp, but skipped work, pretending to be sick so I could work on my plan. Once I got home, I went to my computer and burned a CD with songs that made me think of Trent, including Bob Marley’s Ten Commandments of Love and Travis Tritt’s Can I Trust You With My Heart. Did people still burn CDs, I wondered, but pushed the thought aside, thinking a CD was far more romantic than a thumb drive. And that was what I was aiming for. I wanted to be romantic, memorable.

  I then went through my apartment, picking up mementos we had collected together. The first memento I was going to give him was a wine cork. On it, I carefully wrote a quote from H. Jackson Brown, Jr., which read, “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” I wrapped the cork with a post-it note, explaining that the cork came from the first bottle of wine he had bought me. I had kept the cork as a reminder. Of him, of our night, of how special he was to me. I added a shirt I had stolen from him and pinned a note on it letting him know that I wore that shirt almost every night so that I could hold on to a little piece of him. With my heart playing a fast paced drum solo in my chest, I then placed the CD I had bu
rned into the package and wrote another quote, this one by Judy Garland, “For it was not in my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” Finally I reached for a piece of lined paper, purposely steadied my hands, and I wrote my first love letter.

  Trent,

  There are so many ways that I have been wrong that I honestly don’t know where to start. Maybe I’ll just start by stating the obvious: I’m a certifiable asshole. You have shown me what it means to be loved and I have thrown, shoved, and kicked that love until there wasn’t much of anything left. I broke what we have. I have never been sorrier for anything else in my life.

  I don’t deserve you. You deserve so much more. Even knowing that, I can’t stop myself from writing these words and hoping they’ll reach not just you, but your heart. I am grasping to the hope that if it reaches your heart, you will forgive me because I know logically there is no forgiveness for the things I have said and done. The heart doesn’t see reason though. And that is where you live, Trent, in my heart. It is my heart, not my head, that is guiding me, which is why I am no longer afraid.

  I trust you, Trent. I always trusted you. It was my fear of my own inadequacies that made me hold back. The only real fear I feel now is losing you. Please, believe me when I say I’m no longer afraid of trusting you. I’m no longer scared of being vulnerable. Right now, I’m at my most vulnerable. I will get down on my hands and knees if that is what it takes.

  I know I broke your trust by not trusting you. You gave me your trust and I threw it back in your face. Again, I was wrong. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being so close-minded, for not taking your thoughts and your feelings into consideration. I’m sorry for being so self-centered, so selfish, that only my feelings and my well-being mattered. I’m sorry for not realizing sooner that the only real life to preserve is the one in which you are a part of.

  I can’t promise you I’m no longer going to be a self-centered asshole. But I can promise you I will let you in on my thoughts and my self-importance. I know now isn’t the time to make jokes, but I’m hoping that last lit bit made you smile. Because I love your smile. I love that you don’t suppress your smile and that when you’re really happy, your smile takes over all of your features I miss your smile and your words. And because I am selfish, I miss how wonderful I felt when I was with you. You’re my warmth. Even when I lost Camilla, I clung to you because you brought me warmth.

  I love you, Trent. I will love you always.

  Erin

  I neatly arranged Trent’s package in a basket I found at a local arts and crafts store and called Sofia before heading to Trent’s house with his basket of goodies to make sure she didn’t mind Shayna staying the night. Because whatever happened, I’d need a night to myself. But I didn’t let myself think about it negatively. This had to work. The ever present beating of my heart demanded that it work.

  I thought about waiting for Trent at his doorstep, but couldn’t muster up the courage. Instead, I left the package by his door and waited for him in my car, hoping no one would steal what I had put together for him. I listened to music while I waited for him. I texted Sofia. I checked his Facebook page. And Melissa’s. Because, remember? I’ve already established that I’m crazy. I read a book I had bought months before on my phone. I processed nothing from the activities I had done to keep my mind from straying to the dark side.

  And because my body was more in tune with his than my own, I knew exactly when he drove up to the parking lot. I watched him walk away from his car and towards his apartment, stopping briefly as if he was looking for something. He couldn’t possibly know I was there, but still I hunched over, hoping he hadn’t seen me.

  I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to massage the knots out of my shoulders, as I waited until I was certain he had had enough time to look through his package and listen to most of the CD. Shifting, unable to get comfortable, I decided to draw down the car’s mirror to look at myself before leaving what was left of my sanity behind. No need to bring my crazy with me, she’d probably wait for me in the driver’s seat any way. My cheeks were too pale, I noted, my eyes too wide. I pinched my cheeks, trying to draw out a bit of redness and squinted my eyes the way I had seen Camilla do in the past.

  After a quick sigh, I opened my car door and walked towards Trent’s apartment. It was do or die time, I thought, and, with my chest closing in on itself, I hoped my dreams wouldn’t die in Trent’s apartment. Minutes, hours, mere seconds passed by too soon, not quickly enough, and I was standing in front of Trent’s door. Through it I could hear the CD I had made for him playing in the background and felt my body sag in relief. If he was listening to it, maybe he’d listen to me, giving us a fighting chance.

  With as much determination I could muster, I knocked on Trent’s door and was greeted by Trent’s arms wrapped around me. He hadn’t taken a shower yet and smelled of the day’s work. I breathed him in, a familiar scent that was forever embedded in my senses. This man, this wonderful man that I could no longer claim as my own comforted me, and I sought to comfort him back. I murmured his name over and over, smoothing his disheveled hair back, rubbing my hands along his back, kissing his face.

  Trent led me into his apartment, but I couldn’t let go of him so I held his hand, grasping onto him like the lifeline that he was.

  “You know,” he said, taking a step back from me, our hands still connected, “I think I remember you saying you’d get on your hands and knees,”

  I laughed, but laughing with Trent had somehow become foreign to me, and I found myself fumbling with my shirt so as to calm the instability I felt inside me. I hated it. I missed our banter and how effortlessly our relationship had become familiar. It no longer mattered that it was my fault. All that mattered was that I fix it.

  Not wanting to show my discomfort, I threw myself on my knees and playfully begged for mercy. He joined me on his own knees and kissed my lips, a slow gentle tug that I hoped would last longer than it did. And while simple interactions such as talking or laughing made me uncomfortable, kissing came as natural to me as breathing.

  But in order for us to have a future, we needed to be able to communicate, and that was where I had fallen short. I wasn’t going to hurt or disappoint him again though.

  I put my hands on his face, forcing us to make direct eye contact. “I love you, Trent,” I told him. “With every fiber of my being, I love you.”

  Still on our knees, Trent put his face in the crevice of my neck, hugging me tightly to his chest. I kissed the side of his head and again smoothed his hair as we held each other, neither of us wanting to break contact.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him, and he shook his head at me, not wanting me to go on. But I had to. I had to make things right. “I am. I’m sorry I was too stupid to see what I have with you. I’m sorry I let my past and my insecurities hurt you. I won’t do it again, Trent. I swear it. You’re too important to me.”

  Trent sat down on the floor we had been kneeling on and I crawled into his lap where he kissed me on the top of my head. “I think you also mentioned being an asshole,” he told me, and I laughed, an unguarded laugh that caught me by surprise.

  “I also said I was self-centered.”

  “And self-important,” he added, and I snuggled myself as close to him as I possibly could.

  “I also said I’d tell you about all my self-important thoughts,” I said more seriously. “So which do you want to know first?”

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said, but I shook my head at him. I did.

  “Ask me,” I pleaded with him.

  Trent was reluctant at first, not knowing what questions to ask, probably scared of crossing some imaginary line he thought I had already placed. But I didn’t know how else to get pass the barriers I had set up, and I needed Trent so badly that it hurt. Very physically hurt.

  “Nate gave me a pretty good idea why you left Alabama, but why did you change your name?” he asked his first question.

&nb
sp; “I hate Jordyn,” I told him honestly, but didn’t stop. “She was weak, unsure about everything, and she was shy to the point of it being debilitating. She rarely spoke her mind and didn’t have the guts to amount to anything.”

  Not able to sit still, I pulled myself up and paced in Trent’s apartment.

  “When I changed my name, I changed who I was. Once I became Erin, I wanted Jordyn to die so I could become who I wanted to be. I still carry Jordyn around with me though. I didn’t realize it until I found out about my mother. I just have to keep shutting her up so I can keep being Erin.”

  “I think,” he said, getting up slowly, and speaking just as slowly, his way of gauging how I would react to his words, “the strongest part of Erin is Jordyn. Erin wouldn’t know how to be strong if Jordyn hadn’t lived through what she lived through. We all have our insecurities, Erin, it’s what drives us forward or holds us back. Jordyn drives you forward.”

  “Your mom said the same thing to me,” I told him.

  “We’re pretty smart people.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And you’re pretty great too,” I added and braced myself for his next question.

  “Favorite number?”

  An easy question, I thought and felt myself relax. “Five. You?” I asked, genuinely curious what his answer would be, because shouldn’t couples know each other’s favorite numbers or colors or whatever?

  “Thirteen.” He winked. “What is it about music that you love so much?”

  I hesitated, trying to remember it exactly as it had happened. “When I was a little girl there was a boy who was really obnoxious and mean to me,” I said, wrinkling my nose, “until one day, he saw me go to school with bruises on my arms. He went to my house that day and gave me a CD player with a CD already in it so I wouldn’t hear him and my mom fighting about her hitting me. She stopped yelling and trying to grab at him when he threatened her with his dad’s kitchen knife. I was too scared to see what would happen next, so I ran into a closet and put the music on. It was an old rock band, probably Jethro Tull,” I told him with a shy smile, remembering how much Trent loved the band. “And, I dunno, I got lost in it. The outside world quit existing. I was no longer a scared child in a closet. It was just me and the music.”