Diamonds and Dreams (22 page)

“Well,
should I tell the realtor he has a buyer for this home?” Brant pressed,
noticing the way her eyes lingered on the house.

“I
made a commitment to WCIT even before I made one to you.”
 
She looked away from the house and forced
herself to meet his hurt expression.
 
“If
you’d like to go house-hunting with me in New York, nothing would please me
more.”

“Start
the car.
 
There’s no use in wasting any
more of our time if I can’t convince you to become a resident of
Windrush
Lake.”

She
returned to her home where he left his car parked in the driveway.
 
Inside she served him coffee and chocolate
chip cookies.

“I
see you already packed most of your things,” he observed, looking around the
living room where boxes filled with personal belongings lay scattered.
 
“I guess you’re really going to do it.”

“I
wish you’d stop using that tone of voice to talk to me.”
 
She pretended to smooth out an imaginary
wrinkle on the sofa cushion.
 
“You make
me feel like I did something wrong and now I should be guilty about it.”

“But
it
is
wrong to throw our love
away!
 
Most people search all their lives
to find the kind of love we share and they never even catch a glimpse of it.”

“Brant,
I accepted the job at WCIT before you ever asked me to marry you.
 
I did it because I feel
it’s
right for me.”

“It’s
not right for us, though.”

“It
could be.
 
We’d love each other in New
York as much as we would if we lived here.”

“If
I’d asked you to marry me before you received the offer from WCIT, would you
still have wanted to go work for that station later?”

“Yes.
 
I’ll always be interested in learning and
advancing my career.”

“So
I was destined both ways to lose you to New York?”
 
He reached out and stroked her hair.

“I
guess so.
 
That is, if you don’t want to
go there with me.”

“Ah,
Lindsay,” he moaned, putting his arms around her and scattering warm kisses
over her neck.
 
“Do you really think we
can ever be happy if we decide to go our separate ways?”

“I--
”
 
She
never finished
the sentence.
 
His firm lips came
crushing down on hers as he caressed her back with one hand.

Hugging
her tightly, he inhaled the clean fragrance of her hair and murmured, “I won’t
be whole without you.”

She
knew she should try to resist his kisses to avoid painful memories later, but
she was powerless to push him away.
 
“Acting like this now will make us miss each other more later when we’re
apart.
 
Don’t make things harder than
they already are, Brant.”

“You
want me, Lindsay.
 
Admit it.”

His
thigh brushed against her hip now and she felt a burning desire shoot through
her.
 
“Yes, I do.”

“There’ll
never be another woman in my life
who
can compare to
you.”

“Does
this mean you’re going to come with me tomorrow evening when I leave for New
York?”

“No.”
 
His answer felt like a thorn pierced his
heart.
 
“I can’t pack up and leave all my
responsibilities here.
 
As soon as I have
free time, I’ll visit you.
 
Send me your
new address and phone number whenever you find out what it is.”

The
sudden coldness of his decision shocked her.
 
Somehow she expected that everything would turn out all right in the end
just because she so desperately wanted it to work.
 
She didn’t tell him, but she had no intention
of sending him her new address.
 
What
would it accomplish?
 
To see him in the
future only to have to endure the pain of parting again was an experience she
wanted to avoid.

“I
guess this is goodbye then.”
 
Her voice
started to crack with emotion as she blinked back tears.

“Yes.”
 
He gently cupped her chin with his hands as
his mouth moved over her lips in a quick, sweet kiss.
 
“Have a safe trip, darling.
 
And don’t forget to write and call me.”

In
a minute he was gone.
 
Her knees felt
weak as she crossed the room to the window and pulled back the curtains so she
could watch him drive away.
 
When he was
out of sight, she threw herself on the sofa and finally allowed the wet tears
to flow like slow fountains down her cheeks.

The
warm sun stretched down and touched Lindsay’s face as she awoke following a
restless night.
 
Before the next twenty-four hours end, I’ll be headed toward a new
life,
she pondered.
 
Surprisingly,
now that it was almost time for her to depart from these familiar surroundings,
she experienced mixed emotions about leaving.
 
On one hand, she looked forward to meeting the challenge that awaited
her in New York.
 
At the same time, she
felt sad about leaving Brant and everyone else dear to her.
 
She was even a bit apprehensive that she’d
enter a new environment where as yet she knew no one, but she anticipated
starting a new chapter of her life.
 
Forcing herself to start on last minute chores, she decided to skip
breakfast and tackle the work.

Around
noon the movers she hired arrived and began loading her furniture onto a long
gray truck.
 
Serita
also dropped by to offer assistance.

Lindsay
brushed dust off her blue jeans and pink cotton blouse.
 
“Shouldn’t you be working at the dental
office today?”

“I
asked Doc to let me take a vacation day when I found out you’re moving.”
 
Serita
opened a
white paper sack that she brought with her.
 
“Here are some roast beef sandwiches and soft drinks.
 
Since I figured you might be hungry, and it
could be a long time before we have lunch again, I stopped at a restaurant and
got a carry-out order for us.”

“That’s
thoughtful of you.
 
Let’s eat now before
the men take away the table.”

During
their lunch,
Serita
observed, “You’re handling it
well.”

Lindsay
glanced up from eating her sandwich.
 
“Handling what?”

“Breaking up with Brant.
 
I must admit, for my own selfish purposes, I
secretly hoped that he’d persuade you to change your mind and stay.”

“He
certainly tried hard enough.”

Throughout
the day she kept hoping that Brant would appear, preferably with his suitcases
and an announcement that he’d had a change of heart and decided to go with
her.
 
When the sun started to set,
casting an eerie red glow over the earth and the maple trees which appeared to
be aflame, she finally accepted the fact that he wasn’t coming.
 
Would she ever see him again?

“As
soon as I find tenants to rent your house, I’ll call you,”
Serita
promised, “and don’t worry.
 
I’ll take
care of everything that’s left to do here.”

“Thanks.”
 
Lindsay embraced her.
 
“By helping me, you made this day much
easier.
 
I’ll miss you terribly.”

“You
don’t have to.
 
We can call and write
often.
 
New York isn’t so far away that
we can’t visit from time to time.”

“I’d
like that.”

After
saying a long goodbye to
Serita
, Lindsay looked at
her GPS, then without glancing back, drove away from her old home.
 
Although she had many friends and happy
memories in Columbus, there were sad events of the past which she couldn’t
forget as long as she remained in a setting that provided constant reminders
each day.
 
She desperately wanted a new
beginning in the Big Apple, but why did it have to mean the end of her
relationship with Brant?
 
In her heart
she knew that she only recently adjusted to the idea of falling in love with
him, and already he tried to make demands on her.
 
If she sacrificed her career, wouldn’t she
always resent him for taking a very special part of her life away?
 
Yes.
 
In the long run, it would be for the best that they broke up, but this
realization still didn’t stop the tears that started to form in her already
swollen eyes.

She’s
probably gone by now,
Brant thought, sitting in a donut shop on East Main
Street.
 
He bit into a raspberry jelly
donut, but his taste buds, like his heart, felt numb.
 
He wanted to see Lindsay, try to beg her to
stay, one last time before she left, but he forced himself to stay away from
her.
 
Let her go to New York and have a
chance at making it big.
 
He didn’t doubt
that she’d be a success, probably within a few months.
 
Lindsay was talented, possessing the right
amount of drive and ambition to reach her highest goals.
 
This was just one of the traits that
attracted him to her in the first place.
 
Now it was the one that took her away from him.
 
Anguish wrinkled his forehead as he wished
he’d never gotten so deeply involved with her.
 
Then he might not have fallen in love with a woman he couldn’t have.

If only
it were a man instead of a career,
he thought,
then
I’d know more about how to compete.

Comfort
came when he remembered how it felt when he’d been at the top with his own
career during the time he worked on the West Coast.
 
At first, there was a deep sense of
satisfaction at achieving success, but a lengthy period of loneliness followed
and he wondered why he knocked himself out working so hard when he had no one
to share his happiness.
 
He could only
hope that, after Lindsay savored the glorious feeling of reaching her dream of
being one of the best deejays in North
America, that
she would miss him and return to him.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

By
the end of September, Lindsay became one of WCIT’s most popular radio
personalities.
 
Besides wanting to be
successful, she threw herself into her work partly because it helped her to
stop thinking about Brant so often.
 
She
had little time to concentrate on her social life, so she turned down many
invitations, mostly from men, coming and going at WCIT.
 
Frank Thomas had been considerate enough to
offer her the use of an apartment in a building he owned in the heart of the
city until she found the time later to search for a home of her own.
 
Since she worked the day shift now, the
nights seemed long.
 
Sometimes she found
Brant’s show and listened to his voice online.
 
Hearing him again only left her more frustrated than ever.

“You’re
a regular workaholic,” Dawn Carson, the flamboyant, blonde-haired, blue-eyed
program director for WCIT, told Lindsay one afternoon when they had lunch and
sat in the Lower Plaza in front of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center.
 
“I’m glad that you take your job so
seriously, but you’d better be careful or you might burn out.”

Crisp
blue and white striped umbrellas above round tables fluttered slightly in the
faint breeze.
 
The verdant flower gardens
encircling the Prometheus Fountain permeated the air with sweet perfume.
 
Looking around at the other people seated
nearby, Lindsay observed how most of them appeared to be relaxed.
 
How strange that the only time she felt
comfortable anymore was when she was absorbed in her work.

There
were days when Lindsay fought the temptation to call Brant so she could plead
with him one last time to join her in New York.
 
She missed him as much as she had Constance since her death, but Lindsay
wasn’t about to change her mind and give up her job.
 
Brant made it clear that he felt the same way
about his own career, so she didn’t make any calls to him.
 
What was the use?

Her
reluctant acceptance of their situation still didn’t stop her from thinking
about him during the strangest times.
 
At
work, at home, even when she was among a crowd of people at a theater or
shopping mall, visions of Brant flashed through her mind.
 
The way he looked—confident and
enthusiastic—when they first met and
Desi
informed
her that she’d share her job with Brant.
 
The picture of ultimate masculinity that Brant made
when she saw him in his bathing trunks at the pool party where they were
emcees.
 
The charged atmosphere
when they were forced to spend one night in the same hotel room.
 
All of these memories returned to stick
needles in her heart as she struggled to adjust to her new lifestyle without
Brant in it.