Broken Halo

by Dayo Benson

  "There's no excuse for what I did," I concede quietly. "I'm sorry."

  Colby's hard expression doesn't soften at my apology. "You're apologizing to the wrong man. I'm not your fiancé. However, I've never been 'the other man'. I've only ever been the fool being cheated on. So, I'm interested. Why aren't you in love with him? And why should I believe that you don't love him? I saw him with my own two eyes. He seems like the kind of guy any girl would want."

  "Do you have all day?" I ask wearily.

  "No, but I have the next hour."

  "Okay. Well, he's…too 'perfect'—"

  "How can someone be too perfect?"

  "He's a pastor. I know there are lots of down-to-earth, normal pastors, but Timothy isn't one of them. He judges everyone and everything. He's really uptight about everything. He has all these notions about what is an appropriate job for a woman. Godly, respectable woman can only be nurses, secretaries, or things like that. He forces his opinion on me. He's critical and judgmental."

  "What you've just described isn't 'perfection'," Colby says.

  "Colby, you have no idea. Timothy nitpicks over every single thing and is always trying to straighten everyone out. But my mom and nana think he's the best thing since free Wi-Fi."

  Colby's expression softens slightly.

  I sigh. "They love him. They think he's perfect."

  "He sounds like a nightmare," Colby says. His tone has softened. "I don't think you're rejecting perfection. There's nothing negative about perfection. You're rejecting his judgmental attitude."

  I'm glad he now believes me when I say I'm not in love with Timothy. I'm not just some heartbreaker who wants to see two guys at the same time and enjoy the best of both worlds.

  "I've never liked him," I continue. "Not in a romantic way. He's way too old for me, anyway. He's six years older."

  Colby gives me a look. "So am I."

  I remember that he is indeed. Oops. "It doesn't seem to matter with you," I mumble.

  Colby shrugs. "My brother is married to a girl seven years younger. From what I've seen, she's crazy about him. I guess if you don't love someone, everything seems like a big issue. But if you do love someone, even big issues fade into insignificance. The issue is you don't love this guy."

  "I ended things with him yesterday."

  Colby lifts his dark brows.

  "I don't want you to feel any kind of pressure over that," I rush to add. "I didn't ditch him for you. I already wanted to ditch him, but didn't have the strength before now. I'm glad yesterday happened. I'm glad I didn't have to go home this weekend to do it. I'm not glad about hurting you, though. I'm not happy about that part."

  "I'll survive," Colby says. His tone is slightly sarcastic.

  I rake a hand through my hair. Colby really isn't letting me off easy. I guess I deserve it.

  "So that's it?" Colby asks. "It's over? You're done? There'll be no going back to him? He isn't going to try to make you change your mind?"

  I don't know whether Timothy will try to change my mind. He's a pretty proud person. I can't imagine him begging for a second chance. Especially not when he believes he speaks for God when he says I should stop acting.

  Colby lifts his brows.

  "There'll be no going back," I say.

  "Took you a while to say so."

  "I'll be honest with you, Colby. I don't know if I've made the right decision. You have to love the person you marry. Right?"

  "Uh, yeah?"

  I shake my head. "Maybe that's not true. Maybe I just have to obey God and marry whoever He says I should."

  Colby looks like he's considering it. "I can agree with that. But why would God tell you to marry someone you don't love? He's the one who made love exciting. Why would He then turn around and deny you of that?"

  I blow out a breath and look out the window beside us. Rush hour traffic is building up and it's not even seven o'clock yet. "Maybe I'm just resisting God's will."

  "I'm getting confused now," Colby says. "You don't love this guy, you've ended your engagement to him, but you think God wants you to marry him?"

  I say nothing.

  "Seriously? You think God wants you to marry him?"

  "Well, he's a serious Christian."

  "That doesn't mean God wants you to marry him."

  I drag my gaze from the window and look at Colby. "Mom and Nana think he's perfect."

  "Your mom and your nana aren't the ones who are going to be married to him, having to live with someone they don't love, having to sleep with someone they don't love. Have you thought about that? You're going to be sleeping with whoever you marry. You'd better make sure you love him."

  "But what if he is perfect and I just don't see it?

  Colby shakes his head. "You've made 'perfect' almost into a negative word because you're associating it with a negative person." He pauses. "You are perfect, and there isn't a single thing negative about you." Colby leans back in his seat. "But I'm not here to talk you out of returning to your fiancé if that's what you want to do."

  "That's not what I want to do."

  "Then why all this 'I don't know if I've made the right choice'? 'What if he's God's will for me'?"

  He just mimicked me perfectly.

  Colby is good at acting and mimicking.

  "My mom ruined her life," I tell him. "I don't want to do the same thing. Mom wants me to marry Timothy so that I'll have a better life than she did."

  "How did she ruin her life?"

  "She had me."

  Colby looks at me like he's waiting for me to say more.

  "Out of wedlock," I add. "She was eighteen."

  "That's how she ruined her life?" His tone is incredulous. "She had a child? What about people who've been to jail?"

  "No other man wanted her after she had me."

  "So life is all about whether a man wants you? And if no men want you, you're ruined? What century do you and your mom live in?"

  He doesn't understand. I don't know why I expected him to.

  "So, let's backtrack. Your mom tells you that you ruined her life?"

  "No, that she ruined her own life by having me."

  "I don't see the difference," Colby replies.

  I stare at the menu between us. I realize we haven't ordered any drinks. It's a wonder we haven't been kicked out yet.

  "You are a miracle, Chloe."

  My gaze snaps to Colby. His eyes are dead serious.

  "You're amazing and beautiful. She might see you as a mistake, the child she should never have had. But Jesus doesn't. If you're here, it's because you're supposed to be here. And God gave you a brain rather than making you share Mom's and Nana's brain because He wants you to think for yourself and make decisions for yourself once you're old enough. However you came, and no matter the circumstances surrounding your birth, you are a deliberate creation of God."

  I've never felt like a deliberate creation of God. I've always felt like an accident, even though I know intellectually that God made me on purpose.

  I feel the need to defend Mom. "My mom just wants better for me. She couldn't get married because nobody wanted a single mom. She wants me to marry a good man. Someone who isn't like my father who abandoned us."

  "I'll bet your mom thinks her inability to get married after having you is God's punishment. I'll bet she's forcing what she thinks is a good man on you as a way to prove her own worth. Her life didn't turn out how she wanted, but she must not be that bad because she's raised her daughter well and gotten her married off to the kind of man she couldn't get for herself."

  He's probably right. But it doesn't make my mom a bad person.

  "Your mom needs to know that God exalts mercy above justice. Maybe she couldn't get married because of her own guilty conscience and her own notions of what people think of her for being a single mom. Maybe she got that message from her own mom, your grandmother."

  "You're right, Colby. But they're not going to change, so it doesn't matter."

  Colby looks
out the window beside us. "This is messed up." He drums his fingers on the table and I'm reminded of how angry Gina gets over things like this.

  Colby is a lot more eloquent than Gina, though. His assertions have punched all kinds of holes in all the things I've believed from a young age about Mom and about myself.

  I shouldn't be sitting here having him help me work through this when I've hurt him. But it's awesome that he's not so mad at me that he's refusing to talk to me.

  "I'm terrified of getting this wrong," I tell him. "I want a nice Christian man who won't leave like my dad did. I know Timothy would never leave. But I don't love him."

  Colby is hot, but I wonder whether he's someone I can seriously consider marrying.

  Getting into a relationship with him would be like walking into a volcano. I'd be completely engulfed, burned alive. Consumed.

  Colby frowns at me. "You keep calling him Timothy."

  "That's his name. What else would I call him?"

  "How about 'Tim'? Saying his full name seems kind of formal, especially when the dude was your fiancé."

  "He doesn't like to be called Tim. He demands all three syllables of his name."

  Colby says nothing. I know what he's thinking. That Timothy is an uptight punk. He's right.

  "Would you make your woman give up her dream for you?" I ask him.

  "Her dream of becoming an actress?"

  I nod.

  "Timothy is against you becoming an actress?"

  "Yes. He'd rather I become a nurse. On Monday, he said I have to obey him and quit acting because, when I become his wife, I'll have to obey him and I might as well start practicing."

  Colby gives me a darkly potent smile that throws my insides into turmoil. "Did you tell him that all he needs to do is love you real good and you'll do anything he wants?"

  "No. I didn't tell him that."

  "You're a great girl. I think you would do anything for a guy who you knew really loved you."

  I shake my head. "I wouldn't give up acting. At least, not willingly."

  "I would give up anything for love."

  "Even having one of your screenplays optioned to be made into a movie? Even becoming a top writer and director?"

  "Yes," Colby says, not missing a beat. "If it was a choice between any of those things and real love—not flaky romance—I would choose love. But I would rather have both."

  I consider his words. I realize that becoming an actress will mean nothing if I have nobody to celebrate it with. But I can't give it up for Timothy because I didn't love him.

  Like Colby, I would like both. But if I can't have both, maybe a heart connection with somebody I truly love and who loves me in return would have the edge over being an academy award-winning actress and America's darling.

  I smile at Colby. "You should be a shrink."

  He looks at his watch.

  "I should buy you a drink. I'm sorry, once again, for yesterday."

  "Don't be sorry. I think I already knew."

  I frown.

  "I think you might have been wearing an engagement ring the day we met, but after you chased the thief down, it was gone. I figured you'd removed it so that the thief wouldn't take it. I also chose to believe it wasn't on your ring finger. I should have asked you instead of burying my head in the sand.

  "Maybe the fact that you might be taken was the only reason I asked you on a date. Maybe I was subconsciously hoping that our relationship couldn't go anywhere so that I would never have to commit."

  I don't understand the words coming out of his mouth.

  "I'm not the kind of man you want, Chloe."

  "Are you ever going to explain what you mean by that?"

  "There are things I haven't told you."

  "The two secrets?" I ask. "Tell me. Tell me now and get it out there."

  Colby is quiet.

  I'm quiet too. I want to give him space to work up to his confessions.

  Instead, he rises to his feet. "You and I, together, is not a good idea. We need to stop now and cut our losses."

  I frown. What about getting to know each other by attending art and culture events together for the next twelve months? What about his 'I like you' admission. What about letting me drive his car?

  "I'm not going to replace your fiancé," Colby tells me. "I'm never going to ask you to marry me."

  Then he's gone.

  Chapter 19

  I don't want to be the first to text Colby, but I still have his blasted car. After what happened yesterday and this morning, I don't feel good driving it.

  College finishes at noon because of a canceled class. I text Colby to come and get his car from me outside my college campus. He shows up forty-five minutes later, his eyes even redder than this morning. He must not have slept very well last night either.

  "How are you getting home?" he mumbles."

  I wish Gina or Leah was still around so that I could go with one of them, but they've gone.

  "I'll find my way."

  "Get in. I'll give you a ride."

  It sounds like an order and that annoys me. But I think of my money situation. I could use a free ride rather than wasting money on public transport.

  I get into the passenger's side and Colby drives. The traffic is crazy, so it takes us twice the normal amount of time to get home.

  "I'm sorry if I've hurt you," he says when I'm about to thank him for the ride and then get myself out of the uncomfortable silence.

  I don't even know how I feel right now. My emotions are a mess. All day I've been thinking of Mom, Nana, and Colby simultaneously. I'm not thinking of Timothy much, which tells me I made the right decision.

  Picking up the pieces after the decision is not so easy, though.

  "You'll find out soon enough that it's best you forget about me," Colby says.

  "I don't know what you're talking about. But you're not going to explain, so whatever."

  "I'm damaged." Colby gives me a bleak smile. "You know how your mom thinks she's damaged goods? Well, I really am damaged goods."

  "Are you going to explain what you mean by that, or not?"

  "You'll find out soon enough." Colby looks out the windshield, his eyes squinting and his lips a firm line. "The whole country will find out soon enough."

  "Find out what?"

  He looks at me. His eyes still make me come undone. Even when they look tortured.

  "Will you still like me when you find out?" he asks.

  "Find out what?"

  Colby switches off the car. "I think you'll still like me."

  I try to imagine what he could be talking about. If he's done something terrible in the past it couldn't have been on purpose. Not if it's making him feel so guilty like this.

  "Whatever it is, Colby, I'll still…like you."

  Colby looks at me. The intensity in his eyes steals my breath.

  I wonder why the wrong man is the one who is willing to marry me. And the man I want is the one who's so afraid of commitment he would run away and bargain with God and then still turn around and tell me he'll never marry me.

  Well, I guess it's only been seven days anyway. It's much too early to be thinking about marriage.

  But why do people think love has to take time?

  Love can do whatever it wants.

  "I think I love you."

  The minute the words leave my mouth I wonder whether I really said them out loud.

  Beside me, Colby is stock still and he suddenly looks deathly pale.

  Yup. I said them out loud.

  I'm stupid. Beyond stupid. I don't know the word to describe what I am.

  "I think you'll still like me when the whole country finds out," Colby says, totally ignoring my stupidity. "Because you're a nice person. But you'll no longer be interested in me romantically. If you are, I might marry you." He closes his eyes briefly. "No. I won't. You deserve better."

  "I just told you I love you." There goes my stupidity again.

  I should be grateful that he
decided to ignore my stupid words. Instead, I'm bringing them up again rather than just letting them be a white elephant in the car that we both ignore.

  "You shouldn't have. You have a fiancé."

  "I told you I broke up with him."

  "You're thinking of going back to him. He might be a jerk, but he won't break your heart like I will."

  If it was still socially acceptable to rend your garments like it was in Biblical times, I would do that right now. But that might not be wise because I'd just be exposing myself to a man who doesn't even want me.

  I reach for the door handle and pause when I feel Colby's hand on my knee. I turn to look at him and his lips crush over mine.

  I shouldn't welcome a kiss from such a confused, commitment-phobic man, but I'm helpless.

  Nobody is ever truly helpless, Mom would say.

  This kiss is a choice. I'm making a choice right now to be foolish.

  But foolish never felt this good.

  I make sure I'm the one who breaks the kiss. "Stop kissing me if you don't want me."

  I want to sound firm, but I'm breathless. More than breathless. I'm practically gasping for air.

  "I want you, Chloe. But I know you don't have enough information about me to make a rational decision about whether you want me. I know that letting you go is the right thing to do."

  I sigh. "Whatever your confessions are, they'd better be bad enough to be worth all this."

  Colby kisses me again.

  We kiss until the windows are slightly steamy and I can't breathe.

  I have to pull away.

  Colby isn't struggling for air like I am, but his eyes are all intense like he doesn't know where he is or what he's doing.

  I like that I'm the one who has put that look in his eyes.

  Shivers are running through my heart like the aftershocks of an earthquake. I feel like I'm lost in the right direction. I don't know where I am, but I think I'm on the right path.

  God, remember last week, when I asked you to send me the right man, and then I met Colby? Is he the answer to that prayer?

  Colby is battling some things that I know nothing about. That much is clear.

  Give me some kind of sign, God.

  Colby lifts his hand to my cheek. He's looking at me like he feels for me everything I feel for him.