Falling in Love With My Ex’s Best

by Izabella Brooks

  I’ve hung out with Bree and Arla and Taye a lot, but I’ve been extra careful not to go to any of the group things that we do. I don’t want to risk that Bryn would be there, or Trell, or Bryn and Trell together.

  I haven’t told anyone what happened. I told Bree and Arla and Taye that I didn’t want to talk about Trell at the moment and they haven’t dug for details. It’s one of the things I love most about my friends. They actually listen to me and respect what I need. We do other things instead. Talk about other thigs. Ever since the crazy Valentine’s Day thing at Arla’s, I’ve been including Taye more. Taye’s given me the biggest break. She saved me that night and she hasn’t dug into the juicy details, even though she probably can sense that something isn’t right. She seems a little distracted too, and I haven’t pried into her business, so maybe we’ve just given each other a break.

  It’s Friday night and the only thing I want to do is slip out of my work clothes, run a hot bath, and have a pity party for one, which includes getting into bed around eight and watching trash TV until nine, then trying to make myself sleep in late the next day so there aren’t so many hours to kill alone.

  I’m surprised when there’s a knock at the door. Not that surprised, since Arla and Bree show up all the time and I’m pretty sure my mom cut them keys without telling me. Taye has one too. I guess I can handle my family or friends, but if it’s anyone else out there, I swear, I’m revoking my mom’s key privilege.

  I let out a sigh of relief when I spot Taye through the peephole in the door. I pull it open and she walks in, all breezy, effortless sunshine. She even smells like fresh air. She’s also dressed in yellow, which, oddly enough, I know she hates. It’s my favorite color and I’ve never seen her wear anything in that shade before, but she has a yellow maxi dress on, paired with a black cardigan. She has her curls down, but unlike mine, they’re not frizzy and out of control. As usual, her makeup is tasteful, she has big hoop earrings in, and she looks stunning.

  “Whoa. What’s the occasion?” I’m kidding. I don’t think there’s actually an occasion. She always looks good. She surprises me by clearing her throat.

  “Well…I knew if I called you that you’d say no, so I wanted to come over.” She digs into her messenger bag and pulls out two pale blue tickets. “I got these for this play tonight. I was supposed to take a friend, but she bailed on me last minute. Do you want to go?”

  “No, not really,” I answer far too honestly, and Taye throws her bag on the floor and sighs.

  “Please? I’ll beg! I’ll get on my knees! Please come with me. You’ll like it. We haven’t been out to do anything with just us in forever. I think it would be good for you. Plus, we still have time to get ready. It’s only five thirty and the thing doesn’t start until eight. I can do your hair and makeup. You won’t have to actually expend any effort.”

  Taye’s face is so eager that I can’t say no. I haven’t exactly been a stellar sister lately. So I give in. I let her do my hair and give me a mini-makeover and pick out a sleek black dress with a bright red sweater, a red headband to match, and ankle boots, which she insists aren’t trashy to wear with a dress.

  I’m on board, even though I won’t admit it, right up until Taye pulls up outside a giant art gallery. She parks the car in the parking lot at the side and I stare at her, trying to force down the shivers that just raced up and down my spine and the scream rattling around in my chest.

  I hate that any gallery makes me think of Trell, which makes me want to call him and tell him that I’m sorry that I likely really hurt him. I should. I should just do it. I don’t know why I haven’t. I guess I have a little bit of pride that I can’t shove out of the way yet. Maybe I’m not fully over the hurt. Maybe a small part of me wants him to come after me and fight for me and prove that he wasn’t using me like I said. I guess that’s why I haven’t reached out to him yet. Because I don’t want to be the one to give in and then find out everything I said was actually true and have to be dragged through the pain and the humiliation all over again.

  “Are you sure we’re at the right place?” I ask Taye, trying not to wince.

  “Yes, for sure. It’s some artsy interpretive thing. You’ll like it. There are supposed to be live dancers and what not.”

  “It sounds weird. Are you sure?”

  “No, not totally, but I got talked into getting the tickets and I don’t want to waste eighty bucks.”

  “Okay,” I sigh. “Fine.” I pick my tote off the floor beside my feet and launch myself out of the car.

  I just hope that I can get through this and all the triggers it’s bound to produce. I’m already thinking about the stupid painting I have stuffed away in my storage room. It’s been driving me nuts. It’s like a spectre in there, haunting me.

  The first thing I see when we enter the gallery is a crowd of people. That’s not unnatural. The weird thing is that I spot Arla and Jake off to the side. Karsyn and Bree are there, chatting with them, and hovering in the background is Bryn.

  “What the heck?” I turn to Taye. “What is everyone doing here?”

  “Oh,” Taye says. She reaches up and grips one of her curls and twirls it nervously between her fingers. She never does things like that and the hair on the back of my arms spikes. “It was Arla who suggested the showing to me and convinced me to buy the tickets. We know you don’t want to hang out with everyone because all the guys will be there, including Bryn, so, uh, I didn’t tell you that they’d be here.”

  She’s still acting weird, playing with her hair and digging the toe of her black flat into the industrial carpet. I glance towards the massive set of stairs and the glass railings, looking for an out. Taye’s too fast though. She grips my hand in hers.

  “Please don’t go. I know it’s awkward with Bryn and—”

  “It’s fine,” I say, too curtly. I sigh. “Seriously, it’s okay. We’re here now. I’ll be alright. It’s not like he’s going to be sitting right beside us.” Taye laughs, but it’s high pitched and off. Something is definitely off. “Is he?” I prod. If he is, I might seriously bail.

  “No. He’s not. The odds of that would be…really shitty. If he somehow sits anywhere near us, I’ll make him change seats.”

  The only one not there is Trell. I have to breathe out a sigh of relief that he decided not to show. He probably thought if everyone else was going, that I’d be there. Which means he either decided to respect what I said about not contacting me or he actually doesn’t give a shit and I was right all along.

  It hurts like salt in fresh wounds to think like that, so instead I focus on the crowd. I wave at my friends and they wave back. They don’t come over, which is kind of strange, but maybe Arla and Bree think that if they do, Jake and Karsyn will and then Bryn will.

  Taye and I make small talk until the gallery doors open. My jaw hits the floor.

  All the paintings on the walls are Trell’s. Every. Single. One.

  I recognize a few of them from that night a few weeks ago, but most of all, I recognize his style. I whip my head around to Taye, who shrugs innocently, but her guilty, nervous smile says it all.

  “I’m sorry. Seriously. He didn’t think you’d come. I had to get you here somehow.”

  “Taye!” I hiss. “No! I want to go! Right now!”

  Her eyes search the space, which is huge. There are probably fifty different pieces in there. I wish I had the capacity to actually enjoy them, but I’m so filled with panic that I feel my throat closing up and I can barely focus on anything except my need to get out of there. If this is his showing, then Trell is probably here somewhere. I don’t want him to see me. I don’t want to have a conversation in front of everyone. I don’t even know if I could.

  “There.” Taye points to a black door with an exit sign glowing overtop. “Let’s go through there.”

  “Okay.” I don’t even really look.

  I let Taye steer me through the crowd milling around, exclaiming over the work, laughing and talking, doing all
sorts of things that seem so normal it makes me want to scream, right to the door. When she pulls it open, I stumble through. It clicks shut behind us and I realize that it wasn’t an exit at all. It was a door into another gallery.

  The space is done up in blacks and lit from spotlights above. The canvases on the wall are a far cry from what we just saw. They’re strange, grouped together in different shapes, sizes, and sequences with black block letters on each. It must be some weird conceptual thing.

  I turn to Taye, but she shakes her head. She untangles her hand from my arm and dodges back through the door.

  What. The. Hell?

  I want to turn and chase after her and ask her what the heck is going on, but when I turn, it puts me within reading distance of the first cluster of canvases. Two medium sized ones, each with a word in block letters.

  I’M SORRY

  I blink. I have a feeling it isn’t a normal exhibit. That it isn’t someone else’s at all. That this is a private exhibit for an audience of one.

  My suspicions are pretty much confirmed when I go on to the next cluster. Smaller canvases a few feet away, each with a word again.

  I LIED TO YOU ABOUT MY PROFESSION AND MY HOUSE BUT NOT ABOUT WHO I AM

  It’s pretty obvious to me by now what’s going on, and so I run to the next set. I don’t even bother trying to keep calm and composed, to try to regulate my breath or my crazy heart rate or the internal chaos going on inside me. I have to read the rest.

  The next group takes my breath away.

  I’VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU

  I nearly trip over my feet in my haste to read the next ones.

  IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING ELSE BELIEVE THAT

  The next one is a large canvas that has just one word.

  ALWAYS

  The next group makes my stomach clench up tight.

  I HAVE NEVER USED YOU

  I hurry to the next one, the backs of my eyes stinging, my throat clenched up. I don’t think it’s even possible to breathe at this point.

  I WOULD NEVER USE YOU

  The next ones are smaller.

  YOU WERE RIGHT THOUGH

  The last white canvas stands at the edge of the long wall, right before it banks to turn a corner. It’s a huge one, and this time, all the words are written on one.

  YOU ARE MY MUSE

  On instinct, I round the corner and there, on a black wall just like the rest, backlit from above, is the painting of me that I took from Trell’s house.

  I let out a gasp and whirl, as if the walls could answer me. I know they can’t, but the figure, who emerges from the shadowy corers of the room, dressed in a completely black suit, almost like a shadow himself, can.

  Trell.

  Chapter 16

  Trell

  I might have taken a page from Karsyn’s playbook when it came to the canvases. When I finally got everyone together and confessed everything I should have told them right from the start, told them how Cozzie discovered my shit-pile of secrets and basically told me to go fuck myself, Karsyn said that when Breona refused to listen, he showed up at her parents’ on Christmas morning with a series of blow ups that contained signs with statements that she just wouldn’t listen to straight out of his mouth. It was his last ditch effort to win her back. Breona had thumped him playfully on the shoulder and said that she wouldn’t listen because he was a jerk, but the gesture was so romantic and her family was there to pressure her and she couldn’t say no.

  I’m not counting on the same thing here.

  Cozzie is staring at me like there’s a good chance I might be a ghost. She might not be wrong. I feel like I’ve barely existed these past weeks.

  Now that she’s here, standing just a few feet away, a mix of distrust and disbelief and just a hint of shyness lighting her face, I want to say the magical thing that will make her understand that I know I fucked up big time and that I pretty much can’t live without her, but my tongue is wrapped in knots and my brain has pretty much checked out and all I can do is stand there staring at her.

  Because she’s Cozzie and she’s not like anyone else—she’s amazing and compassionate and empathetic, insanely smart, incredibly beautiful, the woman I hang all my stars on—she breaks the silence first.

  “Trell…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got mad. I thought about everything for so long. I wanted to call you. I guess I had, I want to say too much pride, but I guess I had doubts too. That I was right. That maybe I didn’t fly off the handle and blow everything out of proportion. That maybe it was a gust instinct and that I was right.”

  “No.” Great. I try to push out more words, but everything is clenched up so tight inside that it’s hard to even breathe let alone make coherent language.

  “No?” Cozzie’s lips twitch, and that’s what saves me. Finally, the floodgates unlock.

  “No. Never. You weren’t right. I’m an idiot. If you said that, you were right about that. I don’t know what I was so afraid of besides everyone knowing that I was a massive failure if I didn’t make it. I even painted with gloves on so that no one would see it under my nails or staining my hands. God, I was so fake. I didn’t want to be. I should have had more faith and trust in everyone. I’m sorry that my dad poisoned the well of good faith. That I kind of thought everyone would tell me to grow up and get a real job, go back to finance, to stop dreaming. I wanted to make it first. I—”

  “You did,” Cozzie breathes. She glances around in wonder. “You did. You have your own show. This is a really nice gallery. I think you made it, Trell. You did that all without anyone’s support.”

  “Well, my mom knew about it. She privately told me that she always knew I wasn’t meant to sit behind a desk all day. I loved art as a kid. Of course, I never let that come out. It was much better to play football and let everyone think that I was a dumb jock. I did the art thing in private. I don’t know. I just…it was stupid. All of it. All my fears, keeping the house a secret, the painting. I’m sorry. I should have trusted everyone. I was going to tell you, especially because I knew I had the show coming up. I was going to ask you to help me tell everyone else. That went to hell in a handbasket real fast and I’m sorry about that too.”

  Cozzie stares at me. She doesn’t look harsh. She doesn’t even look mad anymore. Maybe time actually does heal some shit.

  “How did you get the painting back?”

  I’m pretty sure I look really guilty at this point. “I got everyone together and confessed everything. You’ll be surprised to hear that Bryn was the one who came up with the plan. I think he’s sorry about what happened. All of it. He wants you to be happy too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. Karsyn gave me the idea for the words on the canvases. Arla and Bree wanted to help too, but I said it was too obvious. Their poker faces suck.”

  Cozzie smiles softly. “They do.”

  “So it was Bryn who called Taye and told her everything. She has a key to your apartment and she went in, even though she felt really bad about it, and she told me to tell you that she hopes you won’t hate her for her part in this.”

  “No. I could never hate her. She’s my sister.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “She went in and found the painting. She said you had it hidden away in the storage room and she spent almost two hours trying to find it. It’s lucky for me that you didn’t burn it or smash it or throw it in the nearest dumpster, because I happen to really like it. It’s my favorite, actually.”

  “I could never do that,” Cozzie says raggedly. “You painted it and I just couldn’t wreck it no matter how mad I was. I- I was really hurt in the moment. All I could think about was the lies. I don’t know why I said half of what I did. It wasn’t right. It made me sound crazy and heartless. Like I didn’t care. That wasn’t true. I- I hope you know that.”

  I take that in stride. I look at her tenderly. It goes without saying that I know it.“Everyone wanted you to be happy, Coz. Do you want to be happy? You should. You’ve always been so c
ourageous. I can’t believe you’re here. That you’re real. I want another chance, Coz, and I promise that this time I won’t screw it all up. We all have our secrets, but I promise that I won’t keep anything from you.”

  Cozzie doesn’t say anything. Instead, she steps forward and I meet her halfway. I open my arms and she steps into them. Mine close around her, wrapping her in, tugging her against me. She lets me hold her, even as I breathe all raspy and shuddery.

  “I’m sorry too,” she whispers against my chest. “Everyone is allowed to have their secrets. I get it. I know there’s a line and I flipped out. I took things personally that weren’t personal at all because I was scared. It was a misunderstanding. I should know better. I’m not normally so bad at communicating. I was just so scared of being hurt. I stayed in a relationship that was all wrong for so many years because it was easier than going out and taking a chance on my heart, putting it out there to be cut and wounded. People see me as courageous, but really, I’m just like everyone else. Scared. Scared of being hurt. Scared of hurting someone else. It was stupid. I don’t want that to be me. What if we give this another chance and it ends in a disaster? What if we mess everything up and we hate each other and everyone hates us?”

  My arms tighten around Cozzie’s trembling shoulders. God, it feels so good to hold her that my legs almost give out. Hope edges its way into my heart, and even though it’s dangerous, I let it in and soon that steady drip turns into a torrent and it floods my chest and my limbs until I feel like I’m light as air.

  “No one could ever hate you, Cozzie. If we’re too scared, we’ll never take a chance and nothing good will ever happen. I took a risk on this. On my real passion. I quit a good job and almost alienated my friends and lost you. The only thing I regret is that last part. I don’t regret taking a chance on what I really wanted. If it didn’t pan out, I would have picked up the pieces. We can do that too, but I promise you right now, I would never hate you. No one could. I know we’d make it. You’ve always been it for me.”