Break Your Heart (12 page)

             
Realizing she had four hours to herself prior to needing to be ready she decided on being productive. She went over to her living room to retrieve the briefcase that was thrown on the floor next to her sofa.  She picked it up and began rummaging through it pulling out the essays her students had written on the Underground Railroad.  She walked over to her dining room table and set them down, along with the textbook she taught out of and the purple pen she used for grading.

             
The piercing sound of the boiling kettle shot through her ears. She rushed back into the kitchen to take the kettle off the stove, pouring the hot water into the mug she had set out with the bag of green tea.  Taking her tea back to the dinning room table with her she took a seat and assessed the papers in front of her deciding where to begin.  She picked up the first essay in the stack. Todd Walker. 
This should be good.
  Gina burst into laughter as she began to read his very descriptive essay on an actual railroad that was built underground.

             
“Very creative,” she mumbled as she wrote
See me
on the top of his essay before adding it to the pile she had finished the day before. She lost herself in the remaining essays in front of her as she worked away making comments on their papers.

             
As the last essay was graded, she stood up stretching out her tense body. Gina could feel her muscles aching from the stress of her day. She capped her pen, tossed it on the table and slowly walked to the stairs, climbing them one by one before reaching the bathroom door at the top. Although only twenty-five and in good shape, her body ached like that of an elderly woman today. She opened the door to the silent bathroom flicking on the lights.  She plugged the bath and turned the dial to her desired warmth before pouring lavender scented bubbles into the running water. She stood up, closing the door to the bathroom behind her to keep in the heat of the warm vapors. Gina opened the drawer on the left of her vanity and shuffled through its contents, eventually pulling out a pink lighter.  She gathered four candles from around her bathroom and set them together in a cluster, lighting each one by one. 

             
The room filled with the glow of the candlelight as she flicked off the lights and undressed, exposing her naked body to the darkness of the bathroom.  Gently, she dipped the top of her right foot into the water to test its temperature.
Perfect.
She lowered herself into the bath, taking in the warmth as it wrapped her body, leaning back onto a soft cream bath pillow.

             
An unexpected wave of emotion came over her as tears suddenly filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks into the water below. She lacked the strength to fight off the feeling that overcame her and decided to succumb to it. Her chest rose and fell in quick and deep spurts as she let the emotional pain in her mind and body fly out. She cried until she felt the tiredness of her actions and allowed her tears to dry up with her thoughts, leaving her to think of nothing as she sat soaking in the warm water.  She finally wrapped her mind around the fact that the stress from her wedding and thoughts of Grant merged together had clearly created the bubble of chaos in her mind.

             
When she could soak no more, she got out of the tub and draped her body in a plush cotton towel. Gina moved out of the bathroom and down the hall into her master bedroom and straight to her small closet, quickly scanning the clothes it held.  Without much thought, she threw on a black, strapless knee length satin dress and a long black and white large pearl necklace.  She glanced in the body length mirror that sat against the wall. 
Make up and hair, still fine from the morning.
  She headed down the stairs and into her living room, opening the doors to the closet that sat across from her front door.  Her long black wool dress coat was nowhere to be found. 
Basement?
 

             
Gina slipped her feet into the blue fuzzy slippers that sat at the bottom of the closet and walked down to the unfinished basement.  It was cool and dark. No matter what kind of scented plug-in she put in the basement it still held that funky, musty “basement” smell. 

             
As she reached the last step, the exhaustion of the day crashed through her body.  She walked into the middle of the small room, taking a seat on the old couch that was in the center of the room.  It was comfortable and worn from Yeahrs of college life. Gina pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned her had against the back of the couch. Taking in a long breath she gazed up at the unfinished ceiling above her.  Memories of Grant seemed to attack her conscious as the stillness of the room paralyzed her in her thoughts. The night she decided to walk away from what they had played on the ceiling of her mind bringing on the pain that never seemed to stop haunting her. 

             
A sense of autopilot consumed her as she stood from the couch and made her way over to two racks, each filled with three plastic storage containers, labeled appropriately.
Christmas Decorations. Halloween. Other Holidays. Financials.  MISC Pictures, etc.  College.
She pulled down the container labeled
College
and took it over to the wooden and worn coffee table. As she popped the lid, a slight waft of plastic and dust filled her nose.  A mass of random items piled themselves on top of one another. Gina shuffled around the container, elbows deep searching for what she knew, well hoped, was put in the plastic case long ago.  Her hands made there way over the smooth square wooden box. She pulled it out from under the random photos and keepsakes and fell back onto the couch, setting the box on her lap.  It was funny to her how this box, a simple wooden box, made her heart feel like it was about to miss a beat. 

             
Realizing it hadn't been opened in almost a decade filled her stomach with the excitement she got as a kid on her birthday, but knowing the secret she held for the painful loss of her first love made her as equally nervous.  She opened it.  The smell of
Pleasures
cologne seeped out.  Gina picked up the small, sample bottle, popped the capped and held it to her nose, smelling the scent, smelling Grant.  A photo album shaped in a heart full of pictures sat at the top of the box.  Gina pulled it out, set it on her lap, and continued to look through the box.  A leaf she took off a tree at the bluff one summer night sat in the bottom of the box, a bit more tattered than when she put it in.  She pushed around the contents. Movie tickets, dried roses and letters.
She continued to rummage through the box, clearing space to the bottom.

             
Her heart felt like it was jumping out of her chest as she spotted a diamond eternity band ring.
Oh my God! How?
Gina gasped.
No, that’s impossible!
She felt the panic set in that she had felt the last day of her sophomore Yeahr of college. She searched frantically for the ring, checking every drawer, every bag, every square inch of her dorm.  It never appeared.  She left school that Yeahr, feeling like she left a piece of Grant behind. 

             
Seven Yeahrs later, here it miraculously sat at the bottom of an old memory box.  Gina carefully picked it up, her tiny fingers shaking with disbelief. She looked around the basement, expecting to be out of reality, in a dream or a daze.  The world around her hadn’t moved.  She looked back at the ring she held and smiled to herself as she slipped it on her ring finger recalling the day he gave it to her.

*****

              “You kids want lunch?” Momma asked as she popped her head into the garage from the house. Gina and Grant had been out in the open air enjoying the first day of the spring weather. Grant was lying under his motorcycle full of grease, working meticulously.  His white v-neck t-shirt and light washed jeans were covered in blotches of grease stains. Gina sat on a lawn chair close by, zoning in and out of conversation with him as she flipped through the pages of a magazine.

             
“No thanks,” Grant shouted as he sat up, his weight bearing on his elbows behind him. “Babe, you hungry?” 

             
“I’m good, thank you.” Gina shouted towards the house.  She looked back down to Grant who had returned to his position lying under his bike.  She didn't quite understand what he was doing to the bike or why he had to work on it so often, but she understood it made him happy so she quickly learned to just go along with it.

“What are we going to do tonight?” She asked as she

slowly skimmed the pages of her
People
magazine.

             
“I thought we’d take the bike down to the lake. There is supposed to be a beautiful sunset.”

             
“Sounds perfect.” Gina looked down at the pages below her.  She began to read the horoscopes in the back of her magazine. 
This month your true love will find his way to you.  If you already have a true love, this month you will be brought closer.  A friend will come into your life in the middle of the month, beware of her intentions.  Your lucky numbers this month are 4, 7 and 9.
“My horoscope says my true love will be brought closer to me this month.” She informed Grant. It was in part to irritate him and get his attention and part to see what his reaction would be.

             
“Is that so?”

             
She was certain that he had only heard half her words and processed only a few of them.  He seemed lost in his own space, happily playing with the mechanics of his bike. “Uh huh.” She returned to her magazine, flipping through the pages looking at the pictures and skimming the articles. 

             
“That shit is shrinking your brain,” he declared. 

“Whatever,” she replied, paying little attention to his

sarcasm. “What? Should I be reading
Men’s Health
instead?” She picking up the magazine lying on the floor next to her. She was holding it in the air between her thumb and pointer finger like a dirty rag.  “Cause that’s educational.” 

             
Grant rolled his eyes at her as Gina countered with her tongue sticking out at him like a school child.

             
“Gina.”

             
“Grant.”

             
“Remember the name of that song we danced to?”

             
“At the wedding?” She smiled, recalling the wedding of her cousin Beth and the endless time they seemed to spend on the dance floor. “At Last” She stated.

             
“Remember what we talked about?”

             
“Uh huh.” She didn't bother looking up as her eyes stayed focused on the story she was reading. 

             
“Do you think you’re ready?”

             
Gina looked up from the magazine confused before quickly realizing where his words were going. Her cheeks flushed and her mouth opened in a large “O”, as her eyes grew wide. “To get engaged?”

             
“Yeah,” he replied with a grunt. He was struggling with a piece on his bike. He wanted it off, it wanted to stay on.

             
“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. You think you’d say yes?” He
continued

working, giving no attention to the excitement in Gina's eyes.

              “I…” She tossed her magazine to the floor, focusing solely on Grant. “Why?”

             
“Just curious, that’s all.” He turned to her with a

suspicious grin on his face. “What?”

              “You tell me!”

             
“Calm down, I was just curious.” He said, ignoring her

stare. 

              She opened her mouth wide again, as if she was going to reply to him, and then closed it again brushing away the thought. “How much longer till you are done?” She asked.

             
“About twenty minutes or so. You getting bored?”

             
“A little.” She stood up, stretching her arms above her

head. “I’m going to go inside and see what As
hley is doing.” She began towards the door heading into the house.

“Hey Gina.”

She turned around, looking back to see him holding

something in his hand. Grant made no attempt to look in her direction; instead he simply tossed the item towards her.

              Gina caught it in her hands. She looked down.
A ring box. Oh God, it’s a ring box.
  Her face went blank, as she looked back to Grant for answers, or confirmation, or anything to ease the thoughts in her mind. He was looking at his bike paying no attention to her.  She held the box tight in her hands not knowing what to say or do. 

             
“You going to open it?”

             
“I’m not sure,” she whispered.