by C. M. Lally
We sit in silence, both of us mulling over my last words. She’ll never understand what a huge statement that is about my life and how much I’ve let her in. It may not seem like a lot, but to me and how I’ve lived for the past two decades, it’s like crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, fucking scary as hell.
“I guess you got my letter?” she asks quietly breaking the silence that hangs between us.
“I did,” nodding absentmindedly. “Two weeks too late I think, but I got it.”
“Why did it take that long?” she asks bewildered. Her eyebrows are knitted in confusion.
“Bella, you will probably find this hard to believe, but I never go in that room,” I explain. “It’s a death trap of memories for me. Once I go in, I get sucked into the vortex of anger and regret, thrusting me back down into the pit of my life that I try my best to crawl out of every day. And once I’m down, I’m down for a while. I’m not an easy man to deal with when I’m in the pit.”
“You’re not an easy man to deal with living here in the now with a ghost of a past love,” she boldly announces. “It’s choking you, and I can’t set you free from the hold it has on you.”
“The past love isn’t killing me,” I insist, banging my fist on the table once, “it’s the guilt.” Such a simple sentence for so powerful a feeling.
I stand and walk to the bar feeling a need for a powerful drink. I know I can’t get hammered like I want, but maybe it will help this conversation flow. I order her a White Wine Spritzer and two fingers of Jameson for myself, offering him a fifty dollar bill to pour two drinks and then go find something else to do, giving us some privacy. My anxiety level is riding high tonight.
After a little too long of a wait, I slide her drink to her as I sit. The look on her face is relief, but for what. Relief that I came back? Relief that I brought her a drink? Doesn’t matter, either one is acceptable tonight.
She takes a few sips of her wine and her shoulders finally begin to relax. “Are you ever going to tell me about her?” she asks, her voice is loaded with tension. I’m sure it took a lot of courage to ask that in this moment.
I swallow my whiskey hard and almost choke on her question. I feel the burn of the Jameson all the way down to my soul. Her question stings just as bad, so it’s a double torture for me. She doesn’t know of the hell she just asked me. Talking about Olivia as an “us” will open up my closet of demons, and I’m pretty damn sure I dead-bolted that motherfucker closed and braced it with steel rods. Some sins are just meant to be left alone to rot.
I swallow hard again before asking, “What would you like to know?” My fingertips are white from gripping my drink too hard. I ease up on the pressure I hold it with, and take a deep breath, waiting for her response.
“How did you meet?” she blurts out. She’s going to start with the easy stuff before we have to pull out the tissues.
“Actually, she was Aran’s mother’s best friend, and one of my neighbor’s growing up,” I concede, feeling less nervous after that question. I pray to God they’re all that easy, but somehow I doubt it. Nothing ever is.
“You were childhood sweethearts,” she says. It’s not a question, but I feel the need to respond.
“We were friends first, that fell into an easy and comfortable relationship until we both realized we couldn’t function without the other,” I add. “I’m not sure childhood sweethearts explains our relationship. She became my voice of reason and the calm in the storms of my racing life. I became her strength in a life riddled with social and economic issues. Her parents were planters and pickers at one of the local farms. It wasn’t an easy life. I promised to take her away from all of that.”
“And did you?” she asks, finishing off her wine and pushing the glass to the edge of the table. The few couples that were by the ledge taking in the view have left, and we are finally alone. I worry about her job duties. Surely the party is almost over, but she doesn’t seem worried; she’s still firing questions at me full throttle.
“Physically yes,” I reply with a quick half-answer. “Mentally, no. She had battle scars that were too deep to heal. They bled continuously because her family wouldn’t let her forget where she came from, but I tried my best to. I fucking swear I did. Most days we lived without a thought of it, wrapped up in whatever twilight zone that encased us that made whole days pass without noticing them. But then her parents would call and triple load the guilt of not helping them. She’d run away to escape into her music. I just had to wait for her return. It’s a special kind of torture waiting for someone to return when they’re right there in front of you.”
I look over at Bella, and she’s lost in her own thoughts. I don’t even know when I lost her. I snap my fingers, and she refocuses on me. “Sorry,” she whispers.
“When we were intimate last weekend, did I really call you Olivia?” I ask, raising my eyebrow in question. It’s not that I don’t believe her, but I don’t recall saying her name. I need to bring it up before this evening gets away from me.
“Yes, you did,” she replies in a low voice. “You were nuzzling and kissing my neck. Then you leaned in to smell my hair, and whispered in my ear.” She swallows hard, and looks down at the table, fidgeting with her bar napkin. I feel her sadness and heartbreak in her hollow words. She can’t even repeat the exact words I said to her that night.
“Bella, I’m sorry. Please forgive me?” I beg. I reach across the table to take her hands in mine, but she jerks them back like my touch burns her. Fuck, maybe it will. If anything, I will taint her with my fucked up past.
I don’t see a clear way to love again. It’s a fucking obstacle course with no easy way to win, and it’s not something I can cheat or scam my way to the winner’s circle. It has to be clean and honest— that’s the part that will kill me. She’ll walk away from the honest truth of it. I’m a murderer.
“Tell me how I remind you of her?” she asks. She looks me directly in the eye, challenging me for the hard truth. Her courage is escalating, and the questions are getting stronger while I’m feeling weaker.
“Alright,” I say, blowing out the breath I was holding.”At first, I didn’t like you. I thought you were a snobby bitch. In fact, that was your nickname when you came into the bar. Much like Olivia at first, except we were twelve and she was just a pest.”
“I think I would have preferred pest, as well,” she laughs a little and gives me a quick smile.
“On her stronger days, Olivia refused to be put into a box. Anything that defined her was limiting and she didn’t like that,” I inform her. “She was going to try to rule the world on her terms. Sound familiar?”
Bella nods her head, lost for words. She’s twirling her napkin around in circles while holding one corner steady. Her nerves are working overtime again fidgeting with the corners of the napkin until it starts to shred.
“But your scent is what draws me to you. Olivia loved honeysuckle and wore it in every form it came in: perfume, body spray, lotion, even shampoo. She would burn candles with its scent, and bring in bouquets to decorate our table with when they were in bloom,” I explain. “It’s what draws me to you.”
She sits in quiet stillness taking in my words. I have no idea what thoughts are rolling through her mind. She’s either taking it all in to form one opinion of it all, or she’s numb.
“You probably aren’t going to believe me, but I promise you this,” I beg, “when we made love the other night, it was you on my mind. It was you I was pleasuring. It was your moans and body turning me on. I never once thought about her. I never once thought about holding back because of her. It was all you in my mind and in my arms. I hope that’s enough to accept my apology.”
She burrows down further into the leather seating of the bench, and I hear her shoes drop to the concrete tiles. She’s fidgeting with her worn napkin again. It’s tattered from the condensation from her wine glass and her constant twirling of it.
The breeze picks up from the bay and blows a stray
piece of her hair across her face. I want to reach out and tuck it back in, but I’m transfixed by her nervousness and the napkin twirling. She absently catches it and twists it behind her ear, and my heart hurts at the missed opportunity to touch her.
“Tell me how Olivia died,” she commands softly. My stomach twists in knots as her words leave her mouth.
“That will be a difficult conversation that I really don’t want to have here or now,” I confess. “I just can’t do it tonight.” There may never be a time and place for that conversation. I hate to be so callous and cold-hearted, but why does she need to know exactly what happened?
That’s something I need to work through and leave it in my past before I can share it with my future.
Chapter 21 – Isabella
I feel nauseous. This whole conversation has me tied up in knots. It’s those questions you need to know in a new relationship, but are afraid that knowing will ruin it before it has a chance to blossom. I’m sick with anxiety and am glad I didn’t eat tonight or I may have lost it all when I asked him my first question.
I’m trying really hard to be an adult and listen objectively. I’m trying to take it all in and form an intelligent opinion. Googling him is not an option. That would be an injustice to the truth, and the news can be so biased at times. I don’t want to play games with him. He’s a human being and deserves my focused attention and honest feelings.
The look in his eyes when he confessed that it was me on his mind when we made love, tore me up. I want to believe him with every fiber of my being. I think the smell of my shampoo and perfume might have overwhelmed him and brought her to his mind. I won’t change my scent though. It’s too great of a childhood memory for me, and apparently him too. We’re simply going to have to figure out how to get past it.
I honestly don’t want him to forget her, but damn it...I want to be his first thought at any moment in the future to be of me. Maybe that’s selfish, but I think any woman wants to be the first thought of their love.
I must be crazy for wanting to know all of this, but he’s opening up to me and for that I am grateful.
“I wear honeysuckle because it reminds me of my grandmother and her garden,” I explain, blurting out my thoughts so that he’ll understand I don’t torture him on purpose. He takes a final sip of his whiskey and I know he understands.
“Will there ever be an appropriate time and place for you to tell me how she died?” I ask. He runs his finger around the rim of his empty tumbler, probably praying for the bar to reopen.
“I killed her. That is enough to know,” he seethes under his breath. His anger is rising.
“Frank, I’m an intelligent woman. You probably think I don’t pay enough attention to the real world, being caught up in love details and wedding lace, but even I know that had you killed her— you’d be in prison. So tell me what happened? Don’t make me Google it.”
His face raises to mine in surprise. “It happened too long ago for that,” he insists.
“The media archives their files on the Internet, Frank,” I explain. “No news is too old for the cloud.”
He pulls out his phone and starts typing in the search box. I can’t make out what he’s searching for, but the look on this face is crushing the minute he gets his results. He closes the browser and blacks out his screen. Tears form in his eyes and his shoulders slump in defeat.
“There is practically nothing you can run from nowadays,” I inform him. “I know you live in a small community where everybody knows your business from the time it happens, but the Internet isn’t biased itself. It doesn’t forgive and it doesn’t forget. You might as well tell me what happened. I want to hear your version and not some tainted story skewed by opinion.”
“What’s going to change if you know?” he asks.
I shrug in quick defense for I simply don’t know how to respond. Will it change how I feel about him? If I trust him? How I respond to him, physically and mentally? I can’t say until I know.
“I honestly don’t know,” I reply, ”but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not going to be negative like you think it is.” He drops his head in defeat, shaking it almost violently.
“Bella, it’s like a piece of jewelry that is very special to you,” he says solemnly, taking a deep breath. “It’s beautiful and brings you joy to have and look at, and you take care not to break it or get it dirty. Until daily wear causes it to tarnish and it becomes ugly. It’s been a part of you for so long you’re pretty damn sure you need it to function, so you continue to wear it, wondering what you could have done differently to stop the tarnish. But you’d also be happy as fuck without the weight of it dragging you down or people staring at you wondering why you keep such an ugly thing so close. You finally give in and take it off. You try to leave it behind until time passes and you realize you’re lost without it. So you pull it back out and try like hell to shine it back up with daily rituals and special things to bring out its rich luster. It starts to shine again, but just a little bit, and so you keep at it. Holding onto it, remembering those feelings and you realize that you’ve found a small amount of joy again. But you’re so fucking afraid of the tarnish coming back you run and hide, not wanting anything to hurt it. I’m simply afraid.”
“Frank, please let me in,” I beg. “I’m not going to hurt you.” I grab his hands and squeeze them tight inside mine. His tears splash down on the table and the sound of silence between us makes my heart beat wildly. I feel his panic rising up. He won’t give in, but I won’t give up. “Damn you, let her go.”
“Famous last words,” he whispers. “I simply can’t.”
“God damn it, Frank,” I cry, slapping my palms on the table and making our glasses rattle. “You aren’t even trying. I want to love you. I want to fall into you with everything that I have. I’ve never felt this way about anyone and I’ve seen love on a daily basis. This feeling has to be it for it’s strong and it’s overwhelming. When we fall, it’s going to be beautiful, but you have to let it happen. Tear down your walls or let me climb them. Or stop dragging your feet in the dirt, and step towards me. Take an actual step. Fucking run if you have to, but move.”
“I wasn’t paying attention and she died,” he sobs, taking in deep breaths and sniffling his nose. He wipes his face on his shirt sleeve, not even bothered or embarrassed by his feelings on display. I grab his hands and hold them when I see them shaking.
“What were you doing, Frank?” I ask. “Tell me. It’s like ripping off a band-aid. The quicker the better, Frank.”
His hands tremor violently inside mine, but I’m holding him tight. My thumbs caress the tops of his knuckles slowly and steadily. We sit in silence for a long moment as he collects himself and I figure out how to get this man to understand I want to love him deeply.
“We were coming from my tuxedo fitting,” he shudders, taking in a ragged breath. He wipes his eyes that are now bloodshot and red-rimmed with overwhelming emotions. Instead of holding my hands again, he shoves them under this thighs beneath the table. “She was teasing me about putting sponsor stickers on my vest, just like my race car.” He laughs at the memory and I smile. I’m sure I would have enjoyed that conversation in hearing it. She sounds delightful.
He suddenly flinches and I know he’s picturing the scene in his mind. “Stop it, Frank. Don’t picture it,” I say emphatically. “Just erase the images and use words.”
“You started this roller coaster ride, Bella,” he says. “You can’t slam the brakes on now that we’re coming up the hill. This is the ride you asked to be on.”
“Alright. I’m listening,” I say.
“We were laughing and teasing each other,” he says again, smiling at the good memory. “You know, making up funny bumper stickers for the back of her wedding dress. If I was going to be sponsored for marriage, so was she. We were laughing so hard, we both had tears in our eyes. I know my light was green. I know it like I know my own fucking name. I’m a professional driver, and I don’t fuck up on
lights.” He says soberly. His smile is gone and he sits up straighter in his seat, squaring his shoulders to finish the story.
“Bright headlights slam into her side of the car, and I slam on the breaks. I’m helpless because the car won’t stop. We’re being pushed and I have absolutely no fucking control, and we finally end up against a tree. My side is forced against the trunk of the tree, and I can’t get out. The car that hit us is tangled up against her side. He drove us right into the tree,” he describes the scene in horror. “The acrid smell of burnt rubber, hot brakes, and sweet coolant filled the air.”
“Take a break, Frank,” I beg. “Just take a moment to take a damn breath. You’re shaking like a leaf.” Droplets of sweat form on his face and the veins in his forehead are starting to pop as his anger rises at the driver.
“My whole fucking world was gone in less than ten seconds,” he whispers. “A fucking drunk driver who was dying a slow death of liver cancer wanted to go out on his own terms...and slammed into us.”
“Frank, you didn’t kill her. He did,” I plead with him to understand what I’m saying.
“No, Bella,” he murmurs, shaking his head violently again. “I killed her.”
“No! You didn’t,” I scream at him.
“We lay there broken and bruised,” he says. “I couldn’t move my legs. I was so woozy with a concussion and broken ribs, I was seeing double. I undid both of our seat belts and she slumped forward. I pushed her back, calling her name, but she wasn’t responding. I could see her chest moving and I pulled her wrist to my chest feeling for a pulse. It was weak, but her heart was still beating.”
I get up from the opposite side of the table and move to sit next to him. I wrap my arms around him and lean into him, giving him what little warmth I have left. His chilling words have left me cold and haunted.
“We were left out there for God knows how long. I think the police report said forty minutes since he pushed us onto private property and no one saw the wreck actually happen,” he says. “I must have passed out, because the next thing I know, the car is being pushed backward to free my door from the tree. His car had already been pulled free. Lights from the tow truck and fire trucks and ambulances were all around, blinding me. I reached for Olivia, to keep her steady while the car was moving, but I couldn’t hold her. I heard her neck crack, and I screamed. I.killed.her. I should have left her fucking seat belt on.”