Break Your Heart (21 page)

             
“The purse suits you,” she teased. 

             
He smiled lightly and nodded his head.  He walked to his car, dumping his bag in front of the door. He walked over to Gina, handing her things over.

             
“
I had a great time today,” she said quietly. She looked down at her feet as she nervously swayed back and forth.
A great time? Gina you didn’t just have coffee, you had sex. You made love.

             
“Me too. It’s been nice having you here, Gina. I forgot how good life was.” He paused. “Where’s your head at?” He asked with a raised brow.

             
“I’m not sure,”

             
“What do you make of today. Of everything we,” he paused, “talked about.” He was playing with a leaf he had torn off the tree on his way down from the guesthouse.  He was tearing it into small pieces, tossing the shreds to the ground.

             
“It’s real.” She replied. “I felt silly sometimes for hanging onto our old memories, thinking about you all the time, wondering if you would ever come back into my life. I felt like I was living in the past and not allowing myself to have a future.”

             
“I feel the same way.” He said subtly.

             
“That was convincing!” 

             
“Its just not right babe. I mean, how did we end up here?”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“God, Gina, why’d you leave? I would have been so good to you. You knew that.” He turned away as if he was going to walk and then looked back to her.

             
“Grant, I, I don’t know what to say.  I was scared, I wasn’t ready for what you were ready for.”

             
“I’m sorry, I just, God, I just can’t figure out how we got here.”

             
“Grant?”

             
“I just, I don’t know what to do.”

             
“What do we do?” She asked.

             
“I’m not sure what we can do.”

             
“We can’t just look back Grant, pretend like this never happened.”

             
“We also can’t just,“ he paused, “Shit, I don’t know.”  He looked down at his watch.  “It’s getting late.”

             
“I should go.” She replied in instant reaction. She didn’t know what else to say.
Does he want me to go?  What the fuck do we do?
Gina inhaled a long deep breath.  “What do we do Grant? Seriously, what do we do about this?”

             
“I’m not sure what we can do about it.”

             
“Well, I knew the truth before I came here today, and I know it now.  I can’t just leave today here.”

             
“I don’t want to leave today here either.” He replied with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

             
“But you’re going to?”

“I made her a promise, Gina.”

              “Are you kidding? Grant! I made a promise to Adam when he proposed.”

             
“But you’re not happy.”

             
“No. Yes, I mean. If I was happy I would have never called you, and I certainly wouldn’t be here today!” She screamed.

             
“Is that why you called me? Because you’re not happy?”

             
“I don’t know why I called you. I just felt like I needed to.” She could feel her heart doubling in beats as her body filled with anger. “What about us? I mean, today. Us. This,” she went on.

             
He was staring back to her void of anything discernable.

             
“You said you wished you could have us back.”

             
“I do wish we could be together, but I don’t know if we can.”             

             
“What?” Her mind began to spin around leaving a slight dizzying feeling to settle in her. “I, wow,” she paused. Heat began to rise up through her throat and to her face, practically choking her on its trail. “I should go.”

             
“Stop. Please, stop and think about what you’re doing. You need to take reality into consideration. There are a lot of moving pieces here. I would love to be with you.  God, you have no idea how much.  But I am not going to be careless about it.  You have to really think about it all.”

             
“You’re not going to be careless?” She gave him an annoyed smile with a cynical chuckle. “What we did was careless!” She pointed up to the side of the guesthouse in the direction of the bedroom. Her hands were trembling as she continued to point. “Grant, you made love to me! That’s careless!”

             
“Gina, listen. I love you…”

             
“No,” she screamed cutting through his words as she shook her head like a little child being scolded.

             
Grant’s eyes grew wide as he realized how much more complicated this situation had become. “I never stopped loving you. And I never will.  I want you to be happy.  I want you to think about what you’re doing.  If you love Adam and you two can be happy together than you should marry him.  But if you don’t think you’ll be happy, Gina, then leave. This is the rest of your life.”

             
“I just don’t get you, you should practice what you preach,” she smirked.

             
“I love Sarah. She is a good girl. I know I can be happy.  I also know the only problem is,” he sighed, “I will always love you.”

             
“Stop!”

             
“What?”

             
“Stop saying that! And stop telling me things are so good for you. If they were, you wouldn’t be here either.” She raised her hands to her mouth, almost stopping the words that were going to come out of her mouth. “I’ve got to go.” She said, wiping the tears that she hadn’t realized were spilling from her eyes.

             
She reached for the car handle, pausing to gain her composure.  Gina took a long deep breath before turning slowly to meet his eyes with hers.  “It was really nice to see you, Grant.  I wish you the best.”

             
His eyes appeared glazed and heavy, as he stood slightly hunched with his hands tightly tucked into his pockets. “Gina.” He muttered.

             
“Yes?” She perked up in hopes of some sort of clarity to come through his mouth. She couldn’t walk the tireless circle of words they just played.

             
“Drive safe.”

             
Drive safe? Are you fucking kidding? After all of this all he has to say to me is drive safe?
“You too.” She pulled the handle, opening the door and falling her body onto the driver’s seat as quickly as she could. She snapped the door shut, careful not to look in his direction as she did so. Her body was trembling with the most toxic mix of emotions she had ever experienced.  She couldn’t place anything she felt with a word to describe it with the exception of urgency.  She could feel and understand the urgency that consumed her mind and body to get as far away from the situation as she could.

             
Gina made a right out of the drive speeding towards the main road. She peeked into the rearview mirror just in time to see the home disappear in the distance. A flood of tears began to crash down her face, for she felt as if she lost them all over again.

Sixteen

              The sobs inside Gina’s car drowned out the song on the radio pouring through the speakers.  Her heart felt broken. Her spirit felt cracked and her dignity was nowhere to be found. Tears were streaming down her face so quickly that the road in front of her began to blur.  She rustled through her purse pulling out a travel sized tissue pack and pulled on the tissue inside until it came free and the pack fell. Wiping her eyes dry, she did her best to calm herself enough to slow the tears. 

             
Twenty exhausting minutes later, she walked into her house, flopped down on the couch and cried until her tears ran dry. She laid her head back against the armrest of the couch and pulled the blanket that was slung over the back of the couch and covered her body.  She crunched her body up in a fetal position and stared straight in front of her trying to mentally close all thoughts in her head.

             
The days ahead of her came and went as Gina mopped through every minute doing all she could to think thoughts of nothing. The first three days she called in sick lying in bed, watching TV and bummed around her house searching for some sort of peace. The remaining two days were back to work pretending to be still a little under the weather as she avoided conversation with everyone. The week summed itself up with the result that she could only think about two things: the fact that Grant was gone and knowing that Adam wasn’t nor would ever be the one.

             
Adam had tried all week to come by to check on her. She couldn’t bear to see him knowing what was going on in her head. The time she spent with Grant continued to replay over in her mind. She leapt from one thought to the next thinking about the wonderful and painful things he said to her.  Her thoughts always closed with being lost in the moment when he made love to her again.  She knew what she did wasn’t fair to Adam but more so that spending the rest of her life with him, living in the lie that he was the one for her, was more than unfair to the both of them. The duality of what she felt for Grant plagued her. Having the opportunity to be with him one last time reminded her of the love and passion they had. It was something she craved for but knew would never be with Adam.

*****

              Gina stood in the kitchen in front of the microwave as the popcorn finished popping up.  Adam had insisted on coming over to see her and spend time with her. He brought a comedy that had just come out and was highly rated.  As he sat on the couch watching the end of the baseball game, Gina searched her mind for what to say to him.  She knew she had to be honest with him about how she felt.  Her fingers were trembling as she opened the popcorn bag and tossed it into the bowl.

             
Adam took the popcorn bowl from her as she took a seat on the couch next to him. 

             
“Adam, I…” Gina began; her words shook out of her mouth.

             
“One sec, G.” He stood up from the couch and headed to the kitchen.  “I’ve got to use the bathroom.”  He disappeared through the kitchen to the bathroom by the side door.

             
Gina practiced in her head what to say to him.  She took in a deep breath, trying all she could do to slow her heart from beating at such a rapid rate. She couldn’t decide if she should bring up Grant. Or if it was the most important to stick to the fact that she knew this marriage wasn’t something she wanted.  She knew that her time with Grant was simply the catalyst to ending things with Adam. After all, she couldn’t be with him now anyway.

             
“G!” Adam came barreling into the family room holding a stack of envelopes in his hand. “Are you kidding? You were supposed to mail these weeks ago!”

             
Gina snapped out of her thoughts and met Adam’s eyes.  She could feel his hurt and anger beaming back at her.  Flailing in the air being waved back and forth was a stack of their wedding invitations.

             
“I.” It was all she could muster up.  There was a good reason she hadn’t mailed them, a reason she didn’t know herself until she spent the time she did with Grant. A reason she knew would break Adam’s heart.  “I meant,” she began, but stopped herself from lying.  “Adam, I.”

             
Adam stood as stiff as a board, staring back to her as the invitations stayed clutched firmly in his left hand. His facial expressions told a story as they went from angry to hurt to confused.  “Gina.” He slowly walked over to the couch and sat at the opposite end of her. “Did you not mail these on purpose?”

             
Gina looked back at him. She wanted to say something. There were so many words she wanted to give him. So much explaining she felt like she owed him.  Time seemed to freeze. She kept trying to put the right words together. She kept trying to tell him what was going on in her mind, but all she could do was stare back at him.  She could feel anxiety rolling up through her stomach and into her throat making it even harder for her to try and speak.