Mesmerized (4 page)

“All right, you have my attention. Start talking,” I prompt as I merge onto the freeway.

Not even in my weirdest dreams would I have imagined something like this happening, but now that it’s in front of me, I have to admit I am curious to see what he has to say. It’s been three years, but considering everything that has happened, it might as well have been a lifetime since I last saw him. At the same time, even with all the time that has passed, I can still remember the day and that final conversation.

“I know you must hate me Cherry. And I don’t blame you for that. I also know that simply saying that I’m sorry would not even begin to cover what I did to you.”

“I don’t hate you Brandon. I tried to hate you for a long time, believe me. I just never could.” I don’t meet his eyes when I say this, although I can feel his gaze on me. I feel tears brewing too close to the surface, but I absolutely refuse to break down in front of him.

I flick a glance in his direction, my brows crinkled with confusion. “Why are you even here? You didn’t fly here to see me.”

He shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. This is really the first break I’ve had since I moved to LA, and my parents asked me to come home. My grandparents and my Aunt Cara are in town. It’s a bit of a family reunion, I guess.”

I nod and focus on the road as pictures of his family flood my mind. Other than a few awkward run-ins at the grocery store or around town, I haven’t really seen his parents or younger brothers since the night of our rehearsal dinner.

“How are Marky and Steve these days?” I ask. I smile sadly as a shuffle of memories plays through my mind. Mark aka “Marky
””
”
had just turned thirteen when Brandon left town, and Steve had been sixteen. “I bet they love having a movie star for a big brother.” I smile.

He returns my smile and I feel a wave of heat hit my stomach.
Traitor,
I silently scold my body.

“They’re doing good. We Skype a lot. I’ve flown them out to LA a few times to come visit me on set and meet all the other actors. Of course, Steve is more interested in meeting the actresses than hanging out with me these days.”

We both laugh. I can just picture the now nineteen-year-old Steve, chasing down the girls for autographs and pictures. The last time I saw him, he looked just like a slightly taller and stockier version of Brandon, so I’m sure he does quite well with the ladies.

Our laughter trails off and leaves an empty silence in its place.

“Cherry, I really am sorry,” he says. “For everything.”

His words paralyze me. My heart feels like it has stopped beating, but my brain has alarm bells going off.

I take a deep breath to steady myself, and ask the one question that has been ricocheting around my mind since the day he left. “Just tell me why. Why did you leave? You never gave me a reason.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve thought a lot about that question over the years. The conclusion I’ve come to, is I was scared. We were so young, and I felt like the walls were closing in, like I was trapped.”

“Trapped?” My head snaps to face him. “What is that supposed to mean? No one was holding a gun to your head when you proposed!”

Hearing his words, I feel the scars of a three-year-old wound rip open. All the healing and processing I’ve gone through seems to have evaporated. I am left raw… exposed.

Brandon quickly backpedals. “I didn’t mean trapped by you. I loved you. I wanted to spend my life with you. Always did. I just meant that being married so young would have entailed a certain lifestyle. I couldn’t just pick up and move for an acting job. I’d have to give up that dream, and I didn’t want to end up twenty years into a marriage with regrets that I never tried, to be left always wondering ‘what if?’ I cared too much to put that on you. I needed to go out and see what would happen, and if I ended up crashing and burning, it would be on me. I didn’t want you to suffer for my mistakes.”

“I never asked you to give up your dreams,” I say, trying not to sound defensive.

“Not directly,” he says.

“What are you talking about? I never said I wanted you to stop acting, or to give it up and just work some job you hated for the rest of your life for my sake. I loved you. I wanted you to be happy.”

“What about all those brochures? The trade school applications? That didn’t exactly seem supportive.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. I try to scan back through my memories to figure out what he is referring to, but come up empty.

“I came to see you the morning of the rehearsal. I had been on the phone with my agent, and a studio wanted me to come down to California for an audition. I went to your house to tell you about it, but you were out doing something for the wedding. I don’t remember what. Anyways, I had brought some flowers, so your mom let me in and when I put them down on the table I saw an envelope with a sticky note that said ‘For Brandon.’ I assumed it was from you, so I took it home and it was full of brochures for different schools and training programs, things like plumber, electrician, EMT, and more.

“Seeing all that gave me this picture of what you wanted, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to live up to that. You wanted a normal life with a normal guy, and I just didn’t fit that mold. I felt like I would be a disappointment.”

My heart is beating too fast, and my mind is spinning as his words tumble out.

“Brandon, I didn’t leave that package for you. I have no idea what you’re even talking about!”

He looks completely stunned before asking, “Well if you didn’t, then who did?”

I can’t say for sure, but my top suspect would be my mother. She was always rattling on about Brandon needing to get more serious about finding a career. We had received our two-year degrees, but had not returned to college to finish the full four-year program. Neither of us had a solid plan of what we wanted next, so we had decided to take a year off to get married, get settled, and then go back to school. Thinking of her packaging up career options and leaving them for him like that makes me want to hit something. Hard. Anger boils up, mostly directed at my mother, but it spills over onto Brandon as well.

“How could you feel all this and not bring this up to me? You didn’t let me have a chance to work this out with you! Why just run away without getting all the information first? After all the years we spent together, I feel like I should at least have been given a chance to explain!”

“I wanted to talk to you. I tried. I was upset, but I still showed up at the rehearsal and was still planning to go through with everything. Then, there was this moment of clarity. Or confirmation I guess.”

“What? What happened?” I demand.

“At the dinner, my dad asked how you felt about the possibility of moving to California, and you said we’d have to wait and see about that.”

He pauses.

“So? What’s wrong with saying ‘wait and see’?”

“Cherry, we both know that is what you
always
said when you didn’t want to do something, but you didn’t want to just say no outright. It was like a cover.”

“You cannot be serious. That’s what this is all based off of? An assumption?”

I take a deep breath and try to slow my heart rate. It feels like I’m going to have a panic attack…or maybe an aneurysm.

“It wasn’t an easy decision. I wrestled with it all night, going back and forth, trying to figure out what to do, but in the end I took the selfish road.”

My voice sounds hollow when I finally speak, “Brandon, do you know how many times I said ‘we’ll wait and see’ that week?”

I stare at him, keeping my hands level on the wheel. “Everyone wanted to know everything all at once. When are you going to have kids? Where will you live? Are you going to keep your job at the library? Are you going to move to the city for more jobs? Are you going back to school?”

I sigh and fix my eyes back on the road.

“I didn’t have the answers for any of them, so my default became ‘wait and see’ with a big, fake smile to convince everyone that we had all our ducks in a row. You think you were scared? I was terrified. I had no idea what I wanted. Did I want to stay in our hometown or did I want to move? Did I want to be a housewife and stay-at-home mom or did I want to finish school and get a career and have my own thing? I didn’t have answers to any of my own questions, let alone anyone else’s.

“The only thing I was sure about was that I was crazy in love with you, and that I always would be. Ironically, that ended up being the most unstable thing of all. I guess I threw myself into planning our perfect wedding because I figured that as long as we were together, the rest would work itself out somehow. Starting our life together, whatever it would look like, was the only thing that gave me peace and made everything else not seem so scary. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with you. Filling in the blanks and everything else was ‘wait and see’.”

Brandon looks like I just punched him in the gut.

Neither of us speaks for a long time. I have a compulsion to reach out and take his hand and tell him that everything will be okay. But it’s not okay. Nothing about this whole situation is okay.

I’m mad and sad and completely at a loss.

Brandon finally speaks. “I’m sorry, Charity, you have no idea. I should have said something. I should have stayed. I should have given you a chance to explain back then.”

He honestly looks close to tears. I wish I could think of something to say, but I can’t. A long time ago, I mentally boxed up my thoughts and memories of Brandon, and packed them away deep in my mind. Right now, it feels like someone dropped a bomb on that box. Now the contents are scattered in a million pieces, and nothing makes sense. All I feel is chaos. I’ve spent the better part of the last three years trying to move on and to let go of the past, but it seems as though all that work and energy has unraveled over the course of a single conversation.

I can’t deal with this anymore. I mentally shut the box again and decide to pick up the pieces once I’m alone. Right now, I just need to get out of this situation. It’s claustrophobic.

“It’s fine. Really. It was a long time ago. We were both young, we both made mistakes,” I say.

Without giving him a chance to reply, I flick on the radio and scan around trying to find something worth listening to before settling on an instrumental channel with jazzy music. Normally it would give me a soothing, relaxed feel, but tonight I don’t think anything is going to take the edge off. I turn up the volume loud enough to prohibit further conversation.

Fifteen minutes passes before Brandon reaches out and turns the volume down. “Charity, do you think you will ever be able to forgive me?”

“I already have,” I say. “It’s been three years Brandon. I’ve moved on with my life, you have obviously moved on with yours.”

“So, then, what now? Where do we go from here?”

“There’s nowhere to go. You came, said your piece, and I listened. That was the deal, remember? It’s over now,” I say, my tone frosty, daring him to argue.

I can process this whole conversation when I get home, back to the safety of my bed, but right now it’s time to put the wall back up and just get this night over with. I feel stupid enough for even getting myself into this situation. It hasn’t accomplished a thing, other than to dig up a lot of feelings I would rather have left buried.

“That’s it? After all that?” Brandon asks. He seems to be genuinely surprised.

“What did you expect? What is this really all about? You thought I would just be sitting here pining away for you? Get real Brandon. We have no ties to each other. We’re not together, and we’re not even friends anymore. Haven’t been for a long, long time.”

I can hear the edge to my voice but can’t seem to curb it.

“As far as I’ve seen and heard, you’re
some
bazillionaire
, with more money than you know what to do with. You’re
shacked up with some fame-hungry gold digger down in LA, and are quite content to wander through life only caring about your career, mansion, and designer clothes. I don’t even know why you begged to come with me tonight. You would have been better off in your town car talking sports with your fancy driver. Did you just want to see if I would still be hopelessly in love with you? To stroke your ego? Well you came, you have now seen, and can go back home with your curiosity satisfied.
”
”
”

Half of my brain cheers at my sassy comeback, but the other half feels a guilty sting at my harsh words. I quickly drown out the naysayer side, by reminding myself that I am finally moving on with my life, and do not need a giant, Brandon-shaped roadblock in my way.

Brandon’s nostrils flare and I can see the heat in his eyes. “Fine, if that’s what you want to think. I won’t try to change your mind. But just for the record, I’ve avoided this town, even just to visit, since we broke up because just being here makes me crazy. Every single thing reminds me of you. Honestly? I was hoping I wouldn’t see you during my visit. I was hoping to have a little peace from all that. But when I saw you tonight, I don’t know, I guess I figured it meant something. That it was more than just a coincidence.”