The Reality of Wright and Wrong

by Leddy Harper

  I set the mug down and flung the covers off my legs. “You’re not getting it, Stella. It doesn’t matter what led them to meet up or why she was there. The problem is…she’s Jessica. The one he and his buddies have always referred to as the one who got away. And if there’s any chance of them working things out, I’d rather know that now instead of way on down the road when I have far more invested in the relationship.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that you left to give them a chance to work things out?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “There’s more?”

  After slipping off the bed, I went to my backpack and pulled out a piece of paper. “When I woke up yesterday morning, I decided to do a little investigating. Basically, I cyberstalked Jordan until I found a picture on Instagram of him in a shirt just like the one he’d left at my house. The same one I saw him wearing the night I showed up to surprise him. You know…his whole reason why it couldn’t have possibly been him with that girl.”

  “I don’t understand. Why does it matter? I thought you already had confirmation that you were right. Why look for proof? And what the hell does this have to do with you leaving Brogan?”

  This was the problem with being so emotional that I’d ended up giving Stella pieces of the whole story in no particular order, fully expecting to fill her in once I’d gotten to her apartment.

  “I wanted to confront him—Jordan—but I knew I’d have to have evidence of some kind. So I found it. Then I called and gave him one last chance to come clean, which he didn’t. While I had him on the phone, I sent him the picture I found, and after a lot of back and forth, he finally came clean. About everything.”

  I had her undivided attention now.

  Emotions ate at me as I tried to explain. Anger burned in my chest while the pain of his betrayal stabbed the backs of my eyes.

  “That girl wasn’t the first one. Hell, I still don’t know how many there were or when exactly it started. And the reason he has two identical shirts is because he couldn’t remember what he did with the one I gave him. He thought he might’ve let someone wear it and never got it back, so he bought another one to keep me from asking where it was. I’m the one who told him he’d left it at my place, but before that, he thought some chick might’ve worn it home.”

  “Oh, Mercy…” Sympathy laced her eyes, which helped me pull myself together.

  “Anyway, after I got off the phone with him, I went through Brogan’s nightstand to get a tissue and found this.” I handed her the notecard and then settled back against the headboard. I didn’t need to read it, as I’d already memorized the lyrics. They crooned in my head with the sound of Brogan’s voice.

  Intensity builds,

  The rolling thunder of ecstasy,

  The pulsing cadence of fury,

  The aching heartbeat of desire,

  The roaring beat of lust,

  Twisting, writhing in the lovers’ dance

  As I bared my all to Mercy

  Stella finished reading the words—probably a few times with as long as it took her to put the paper down—and then lifted her gaze to my face. “I don’t know what this means, Mercy. You gave it to me as if it’s somehow supposed to explain why you ran off like a coward. From what I can tell, it’s a love note. Not a Dear John letter.”

  “Listen to what he’s saying. Ecstasy, desire, lust. He doesn’t love me. It’s clearly all about sex to him, and if that part of our relationship slows down or gets boring, who’s to say I won’t find him on a dance floor with another woman? Or worse…find them in bed together. We’ll never last if we don’t have real love for one another—a solid foundation to build a life on.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I wiped a lone tear from my cheek, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the flood of my heartache followed. “Yes. I’ve thought it for so long that I don’t remember ever not loving him. It’s like it was there the moment we met. Except, I haven’t been able to admit it because he refuses to. It’s like his avoidance of it has made me question if it’s real, or if it’s lust disguised as love.”

  “If you love him, why not just tell him? Maybe he feels the same as you, and he can’t admit it for fear you’re not there yet. Have you thought about that?” Stella had always been my go-to person in a crisis because she had a way of lightening any dark situation—albeit, she usually did so with humor rather than seriousness.

  Damn her.

  “Did you not read the card? What about those words gave you the impression he’s in love with me but can’t admit it out of fear of being rejected? He pretty much wrote a poetic porn scene.” I wanted to swallow those words whole and pretend they had never been uttered. The thought of saying anything remotely negative about his lyrics made me feel like the biggest piece of shit on Earth, even if he never heard it.

  “It’s all about the interpretation, Best Friend. The one thing I know for sure is you can’t expect to know how he feels if you aren’t willing to give him the same.”

  “I can’t say it first.”

  She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Are you twelve?”

  “No. I’m in survival mode.” I didn’t know where that came from, but it was powerful enough to make me stop and think about it before offering more of an explanation. “Not only have I never felt this way about anyone before, I never imagined it was possible to. He scares me in ways that hurt to think about. But at the same time, he makes me so unbelievably happy—which terrifies me because that means he has the power to annihilate my heart. On one hand, the way I feel about him is the thing every girl searches for, and I’ve found. And on the other, it seems unhealthy in a very co-dependent way.”

  Stella put her hand on my knee and waited until I lifted my blurry vision to see her face. As she lovingly tried to clear the rivers of pain that drenched my cheeks, she said, “You left because you’re scared he’ll leave you first, and you know you wouldn’t survive that. So, you pulled the plug before he could. I get it, Mercy. Trust me, I do. But if you love him even half as much as you say you do, then you owe it to yourself to talk to him.”

  She then grabbed my cell off the bedside table and handed it to me. Right before she left me alone in the room to do what I already knew I needed to, she offered a supportive hug and whispered encouragement. Then suddenly, I was alone.

  And the loneliness was suffocating.

  I tapped on his name and brought the phone to my ear while it rang. After several seconds, the line went silent. No more ringing. I wasn’t sure if the call had been disconnected or if he’d picked up without saying anything. Rather than wait any longer, I croaked, “Hello?”

  Then I heard the sigh. The broken, painful, crippling sigh of a man who’d lost everything. It once again released the flood of sorrow that threatened to leave me dry and empty. There was no way I could cry this much and still have enough tears to blind me.

  “Why?” was all he could ask. His voice a scratchy, hollow pit of agony laced with pure and utter loss. Despite the rasp, it bellowed through the line and ripped me in half. Cut me to the bone. Where it embedded never-ending guilt into my marrow. “Is it because of what Indi told you at the bar?”

  “No.”

  “Because I was going to tell you. I swear to you, Mercy. I never meant to keep it from you. There was so much going on, and I wanted to make sure that you chose to stay not because of what he’d done, but because you truly want to be with me. I never wanted you to question my motives for telling you the truth about Jordan.”

  My chest burned, as though his words had turned to acid as they touched my heart. “I understand that, Brogan. That’s exactly why I left. I need to know that what we have is what we think it is.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. What does leaving me prove?”

  “My heart had been freshly broken when we met. And while your heartache was a couple of years old, it was still fresh because you had never dealt with it. We ran off to get married on a whim. A spur-of-the-moment d
ecision. Then Jordan pulled his stunt, begging me to go back to him. I need to know without a doubt that you didn’t fight for me because the thought of losing another wife was too painful. I have to know that it was never a pride thing.” My voice cracked, causing me to pause so I could collect my emotions long enough to get through this.

  He took that second of silence and used it to his advantage. “I don’t know how to prove that to you. Marrying you, wanting you to stay…none of that was done out of fear or selfishness. None of it was done for any reason other than you’re it for me.”

  “If that’s the case, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Except for the fact you left!” His anger had spiked, which only made me cry harder.

  “Listen, Brogan. Your show just started filming again. Focus on that. Get through that, and let me work through the chaos around me that has settled at my feet over the last several weeks. Right now, we’ve both had too much destruction surrounding us; let’s sift through the debris and see where we are.”

  He was silent for a while, nothing but a low hum coming from his side of the call. Right before I spoke up to see if he was still on the line, he muttered, “Wading through the mess alone will only separate us more than we already are. We should be holding hands, helping each other every step of the way. Otherwise, we will never reach the end on the same side.”

  While I understood what he was saying, I had a hard time seeing past my own issues. “I guess we just have to trust that we will. And that when we make it out of the ruins, we will both be stronger for it. I don’t want to be held up along the way. I want to make it to the other side, knowing I can do it on my own, so that when we have to weather another storm, I can lean on you and know I’m doing so because I trust you. Not because I’m too weak to stand on my own two feet. And I want you to know that I’m holding your hand along the way because I choose to…not because I’m dependent on you to save me.”

  His breathing hitched, amplifying his emotions.

  And it nearly broke me.

  “We’ve gone about everything in a jumbled order, Brogan. Even you can’t deny that.” I stared at the puddle of fallen tears on the pillow in my lap, watching it spread through the fabric. “We got married before we learned to trust the other. And we’ve been put through test after test ever since. I can’t risk either of us waking up one morning and realizing that our bubble has popped. I need to know, before it’s too late, that we aren’t living in a realm of false hope.”

  “I guess that’s where we differ then, huh? Because, you see, Mercy…I don’t need to do this alone to realize anything. I’m one thousand percent certain that you’re the other half of me, and it doesn’t matter what storm comes our way, I want to face it with you. The universe can test us all it wants, because I have faith that we’ll pass each and every time.” His words might’ve been filled with certainty and positivity, but his tone reeked of defeat.

  I hesitated, knowing nothing short of promising to get in my car and drive back would make this easier for him. Nothing would erase the pain and fear from his voice, other than my giving in. And I couldn’t do that. “I’m happy that you’re so confident. But this is what I need, Brogan.”

  “Seems you’ve already made up your mind.”

  No matter how badly I tried to rein it in, hold my emotions tight to my chest, and stuff down the frustration, it came out anyway. “I’m twenty-three. You’re almost thirty with one marriage already under your belt. You’ve lived and learned. It’s easier for you to trust your feelings and follow your gut. I’m not there yet. It’s unfair of you to ask me to ignore the crippling fear that runs through me, simply because you don’t feel the same. You’ve learned enough to believe in us. Allow me the same. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’m not asking you to ignore anything,” he argued calmly, possibly on the verge of giving up.

  I took a moment and cleared my vision with the pillowcase. Then I took a deep breath, knowing I had to forge on and fight for myself if I ever planned to reach the place he was at. “I get that you don’t like this. That this isn’t the way you would choose to do things. But this is what I have to do, Brogan. I have to see this through. If not, then I will spend the rest of my life wondering.”

  “What is there to wonder about?”

  While hearing him fight for me—for us—aided in my belief that we’d be okay at the end of this, there was a part of me that wished he’d concede and let us see this through. It was a comfort I reveled in, but at the same time, his insistence only made my decision harder to make.

  “If fate really did put us together. Or if it was simply circumstance.”

  The silence between us stretched out, filled only with his concentrated breathing.

  Finally, I decided to fill the void with the answers to the question I knew ran through his mind. “When you found me, I was utterly lost with nowhere to go—literally. I’d gone to town to stay with Jordan, whom I found on a dance floor with another woman. I had no car, no place to stay, and my luggage was at his house. You admitted that night that you look after Joe, a homeless man you have no connection to other than he lives on the streets of the town you live in. It’s part of your nature to help those who need it.”

  “That’s not why I offered you help that night.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s certainly something I could spend the rest of my life wondering about, along with my true reason for accepting your offer. Did I do that because I didn’t have any other option? Or was it because my heart knew something I hadn’t realized yet? And less than a week later, we got married. Did I say yes because I was high on lust? Or was that fate, too?”

  “Only you can answer these questions, Mercy.” Frustration rolled in his deep baritone. Scratched in the grit between the syllables. While his desperation thundered in the silence that separated each thought, like a drummer in a hollow well. “But I don’t know why you have to figure them out on your own. Why can’t you find those answers with me?”

  “It’s the only way I’ll know for sure. I figured that while you’re busy filming the show, it made sense to do it now. This way, I can try to sort out a job—or at least narrow it down to which direction I want to look at—while you finish your obligations. Especially since those obligations have had such a difficult impact on our relationship.” I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about, but really, I’d dialed his number without a single idea as to what I’d say. And now, I just had to go with it. Open my mouth and see what came out.

  “Any idea how long this will take?”

  “No. It’s best if we take this one day at a time.”

  Once again, the line went still. Then the harsh hitch of a sharp inhale rang in my ear, seconds before he said, “Okay. We’ll do it your way. Just as long as you keep me informed with where your head’s at along the way. I can’t be left in the dark thinking you’re coming back, only to find out at the end that you’ve decided this isn’t the life you want.”

  It was my turn to remain quiet as I choked down an audible sob. The pain was almost too much to bear. Silent emotion poured out of me like a river barreling over the side of a cliff with no way to make it stop. I squeezed my eyes shut, lips pulled wide in a grimace I didn’t allow many to witness, and gave my sorrow what it wanted—an outlet.

  “You still there, Mercy?”

  Finally, I dried my face, swallowed the knot in my throat, and muttered, “Yeah. I’m still here.”

  There was no way I’d managed to conceal the sound of my tears from my voice, but even if he had noticed it, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he informed me that he had to get ready for work. It was obvious there was more he wanted to say, yet he chose to keep it to himself.

  I had a solid reason to stay strong rather than run back to him right now. Not only for myself, but for him as well. I still wasn’t sure why Jessica had returned, or what they’d spoken about. Hell, I had no idea if they’d seen each other since Friday night. And it wasn’t tha
t I didn’t trust him. My biggest concern was that he wouldn’t allow himself to be honest about his feelings for her after all this time as long as I was there. Without that, I’d never have all of him. Just like he’d never have all of me until I believed with my entire being that we were meant to be, rather than an impulsive decision.

  With that in mind, I said goodbye and disconnected the call.

  And allowed myself to feel every emotion that ran through me.

  “Any idea how long you plan to shack up with me?”

  I glared at Stella, trying to keep a straight face despite the dramatic show she put on in the kitchen. She thought it was hysterical to phrase things a certain way to make it sound like we were more than friends. In all honesty, it was funny. It gave my heart the break it needed from constantly thinking of Brogan.

  “It’s only been a few days. Are you already about to kick me out?”

  She finished slathering peanut butter on a slice of bread and then licked the knife. “Technically. But only because my lease is up at the end of October. You’re welcome to come with me if you want. However, as for you staying in this apartment, you have three months before you’re out on your ass.”

  This was news to me. “Where are you going?”

  “After I came back from visiting you, I decided it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to move down there.” She shrugged, as if what she said was nothing major. “I wanted to surprise you. Thanks for ruining that, by the way.”

  Her news stunned me silent for a moment, leaving me staring at her, blinking dramatically. “What are you going to do about a job? Where will you stay? You can’t just pack up and move hundreds of miles away.”

  “You mean like you did…twice?” She shrugged, which was her version of a mic-drop. “I’ve spoken to the owner of that yoga studio you took me to when I was there. She said she’d love to have another instructor. I guess she’s been wanting to open more classes but hasn’t found anyone to cover the added shifts. And as for where I’d live, I’ve already found a townhouse close to the studio. I’ve got it all worked out. You have nothing to worry about, Best Friend.”