What Brings Me to You (30 page)

And how do you know I’m not married? You were eternally cocky, weren’t you? You have no idea if I’m unattached. Perhaps I’m writing to you now with a giant diamond glinting off my finger, hmm?

I appreciate you being so frank about Lacey, but you’re wrong, I wasn’t getting at anything. I thought this is what old friends do. They catch up on the important stuff they remember about each other’s lives. As I recall, she was important, no?

I don’t have to be Mrs. Pat. I liked it when he called her Stella, anyway.

And yes. You gave a fantastic performance on your knees. ;)

Stella

My Dearest Stella,

Ah, how you’ve bewitched me so with your wit and charm.

I should think it would be quite obvious why I would address you in the possessive. In fairness, I should say that while you don’t belong to me, I will forever belong to you.

You’re right, I have no idea if you’re attached or not. Though, something tells me you aren’t since you yourself said you don’t belong to anyone. Forgive me if I am mistaken and enlighten me on the lucky SOB who’s captured your heart. Do include the measurements of said attachment so I’ll know if I should prepare for an ass kicking for your lurid comments.

Speaking of lurid comments, I like what dorm life is doing for you. You’re quick with the double entendre. Yet another, very pleasant, surprise.

Forgive me for being disappointed that you aren’t jealous of Lacey. I’m jealous of anyone who can be near you right now. 

I’m not the only one close with his mommy. Seems you and your mom are in a good place now, eh? “And so goodnight, friend who understands about one’s mother, and other things.”

Yours,

G(eorge) Theodore Holmes III

G.,

You’re quite ridiculous, you know that? Re my lurid comments: I’m just returning the countless uncouth things you said/did to me in public last summer (e.g. bra shopping in Nieman Marcus with you and a total stranger).

I emailed your mother. She, Markus and I have a date. I’m so excited! I know she’s going to be blown away by the presentation. Thank you for the contact.

Your Stella

My Stella/Charley

That’s great news! I wish I could be there. Where is it going to be? What day? What time? Haha, kidding (sort of).

Maybe not. The truth is I want to see you, Charley. I know I told you I wasn’t going to push but I need to see you. I miss you so much. I miss what we were. I wasn’t sure at first if, after all the time apart and...everything else there’d be anything left to salvage between us but I had to try. I’m so glad that I did, Charley. There’s still something here -so much here between us. I’m not going to deny that I still love you, that I’ve pined for you for all these months. You can’t tell me that, even via email, there isn’t something here. Something powerful. I can feel it. God, I can still smell you when I breathe in (you know you smell faintly of peaches?), I can hear your voice when I read these emails. I can picture every facial expression, every gesture of your tiny hands. I feel so close to you like this, but I want to be closer. I need you. In the flesh. I need to know you’re not just a figment of my imagination. Please let me see you.

Your Teddy

              Days went by and I didn’t get another message. I’d pushed her away, I thought. I came on too strong. I fucking blew it. Again.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Charley

              I was living in one world through emails with Teddy and in another, in the real world, with my friends and Jaime. My original intention was to do just as mom said; put him out of his misery once and for all because I couldn’t, despite my heart, give into him again. I’d allowed him to crack my shell and glimpse the fucked up mushiness that I worked so hard to bury and it’d nearly broken me. I wasn’t letting him do it to me again. I wouldn’t have deigned to speak to him at all had I not had an ulterior motive: I was going to exploit my relationship with Teddy to get Brooke’s contact information. I could parlay the disastrous relationship into a win for myself, Markus and our future.  I had visions of her tasting his food and just needing to invest in us. I was going to get what I wanted and then drop him and, finally, be free of him. Wrong? Of course and I was aware of the wrongness, but Jaime's win at all costs attitude had rubbed off on me. I was determined to make it happen not just for me, but for Markus, too.

              It all changed with one damn email. From the moment I saw his signature, all my grand plans melted away. I was right back there on the beach, staring into his eyes, feeling his breath on my face, being swept away by his full-watted smile. Like a hot knife to butter he’d cracked open the shell I worked so hard to harden against him.

              We traded witty, snarky, semi-flirtatious emails back and forth for several weeks. I couldn’t help but smile at our badinage. I even took to reading his messages brazenly while I was in class because I couldn’t wait to continue the repartee. Even through a medium where there was no physical contact, where I could neither see his face nor hear his voice, the sense memory of his touch made my skin tingle and heat. I would save and reread the messages days later, and his compliments could always make me smile and blush the exchanges feeling intimate, which I know must sound strange to you. There was no way to deny by body’s reaction to the words I was reading on the screen and no way to hide it from Jaime if he ever found out.

I felt like I was in the middle of some twisted love triangle: I liked the person I was with Teddy: quick witted, coquettish, and spirited. I missed the playful side of me that only really came out around Teddy. Teddy made me remember what it was like to have fun. I’d had to grow up so fast, I felt sometimes like the oldest nineteen year old on campus. It was nice to strip my guard away for a bit and be a teenager. I couldn’t help but think how well he’d get along with Markus and Collette who were more like family to me than anyone in the world.

              Jaime was anything but playful. He was so utterly intense all the time that it was draining. While he tolerated Markus and Collette for my sake, because he knew what they meant to me, he couldn’t really be bothered with either of them most of the time. It wasn’t a problem at first, but as our relationship moved beyond the initial trepidations and became more comfortable, it was readily apparent he was a homebody, no, because I would consider myself somewhat of a homebody. Jaime was a recluse. He was content to sit at home alone and watch ESPN every single day. He didn’t really have any close friends that I knew of other than some other trainers at the gym and Mouse and this didn’t bother him at all. He didn’t mind if I went out without him though, which was nice, and if I told him it was important to me that he come along, he would do so without complaint. He would even genuinely try to enjoy himself, though I knew he never did. After a while, I stopped asking and even though he tried not to look relieved I could tell he was. Markus was uber offended that he never wanted to hang out but I tried to explain to him that it was just the way he was. Collette knew that Jaime was a loner, that he preferred his own company. She also was keenly aware of my tendency to isolate myself when I was feeling stressed or out of control and it wasn’t lost on her that Jaime was a great excuse to do it. Instead of talk to her, I avoided her too, knowing based on their strong family connection, that she’d be a heavy hitter on Team Jaime. The truth was, that between the strain between him and my friends, hiding Teddy, and being oblique about my family a wedge was being slowly driven between us.

Though Jaime had been candid with me about his family; though his story was painful, it didn’t even come close to mine. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the whole story because I liked how uncomplicated our relationship was without all of my baggage. Or so I convinced myself. Jaime under the pretense that finals were coming up and I needed to study. He didn’t question this and gave me my needed space. Adding that he would never get in the way of his girlfriend making the Dean’s list, then gently shoving me in the direction of my dorm with a congenial slap on the ass.  While it was true and finals were coming up, that wasn’t the reason I needed space. there was that nagging voice in the back of my head constantly whispering
cheater.
Cheater when I’d respond to another message from Teddy.
Cheater
when I’d hang out with Jaime.
They’re just emails,
I thought. Though, if I was being honest with myself, which, of course I wasn’t, it was kind of cheating. Maybe not in the physical sense but I was definitely emotionally cheating. I’d given something to Teddy that I hadn’t given to Jaime: the truth about my past.

              To make matters worse, the duplicity and the strain in our relationship kept me from being intimate with Jaime. We’d kiss but that was pretty much it. I’d gone further with Teddy in a few weeks than I’d gone with Jaime in a few months. He was being patient with me. Letting me set the pace for our physical encounters but I could tell he was getting frustrated and it was only a matter of time before there was a confrontation about it. I wondered selfishly if, when he got sexually frustrated enough, it would make it easier if he cheated on me. It would make the decision to stay or leave so much easier.

              Cheating.
I couldn’t help but compare myself to my mother, and every time I thought about it I got sick. I couldn’t stop myself, though. I couldn’t just let Teddy go. He was inside, under my skin, knew me in a way no one else did and I relished that. I wasn’t just going to give Jaime up either. I’d worked too hard over the year to be a stronger, healthier, more stable person and I liked the person I could become with Jaime: a successful force to be reckoned with. He brought out the competitive, ambitious side of me. The side that had to rise to the top. The side that wished there was a letter before A, a number before one. He was, frankly, the reason I came up with the idea to get in touch with Teddy in the first place which was all kinds of fucked up.

              I think the worst part of all of it was that I couldn’t really talk to anyone about it.

              I never wanted Jaime to know about those emails, as harmless (or not harmless as the case may be) as they were. And I never mentioned I had a boyfriend in the emails to Teddy because, I justified, he never asked, only
alluded.
There I was in the center of an ethical shit storm and I couldn’t talk to Markus because he was loathe to hear about my “love” life,  I wouldn’t talk to my mother and give her the satisfaction that I had feelings for Teddy again,  I certainly couldn’t talk to Collette who would make Teddy out to be the bad guy because of her loyalty to Jaime. So I regressed into old habits and withdrew from everyone. Instead of take the time to sort through my feelings, I buried myself in my work. I studied furiously for my finals, though I really didn’t need to, had marathon study sessions with my macroeconomics group, picked up extra hours at the restaurant, and worked tirelessly on a prospectus for Markus’s restaurant.

              I did hours of research on businesses in the vicinity, the location, I drew up plans for reconstruction, projected income, pricing. I justified the extra work by convincing myself I could somehow use anything I did for my senior project. After weeks of work I gathered the nerve to show Markus all that I’d done. I’ll never forget the look on his face when I plopped an eighty page binder down on the steel island in front of him in the kitchen. He denies it to this day, but I know I saw a tear. Together we tweaked the business plan to suit the atmosphere he wanted to create. By the time we’d both worked on it, the vision was so clear even I got misty thinking we may actually pull it off. Markus traded gourmet food for a professionally designed logo and menu font from a web design major in my building. The only thing it was missing was a name, but I left that to Markus. He said that it had to capture the gestalt of his creation. Whatever that meant. So I left him to the creative side while I focused on the business side and called Brooke Holmes.

              Brooke was just as sweet as I remembered on the phone and she put me at ease right away with her cool, easy laugh. I was grateful to Teddy that he warned her I’d be calling and she was kind enough stick to business talk and not ask about my family or Teddy. Thank God. I told her everything about Markus and how he was a culinary genius and flattered her with the memory of her lavish dinner party. I offered Markus’s services for her next gathering and perhaps after tasting his food she’d entertain a meeting with us about investing in the business.

              “Well,” I breathed once I’d gone through the entire rehearsed spiel.

              “Charley, from what you told me he sounds incredible! And so young!”

              “He really is incredible Mrs. Holmes --“

              “Brooke, please.”

              “Brooke. I think his youth is an assest. He’s only going to get better.”

              “You don’t have to sell him to me anymore. I want him for my next party.”

              “You do?”

              “Absolutely. Then afterward we can talk business.”

              “Mrs. --I mean, Brooke, he will be thrilled to hear it. Thank you for the opportunity.”

              “Thank you for thinking of me. Do you have an email address? I will send you all of the details.”

              The dinner party was going to be not unlike the one I attended months prior. Markus was to use the state of the art kitchen that all of the cooks used when they came. She specified there would be one vegetarian at the table and several guests were allergic to gluten. I relayed the message to a not so happy Markus, but assured him that that was the way the game was to be played if we were ever going to get an audience with her. She gave us a budget -an exorbitant amount of money for food for eight guests but that made up for the gluten free work-arounds Markus was going to have to do. I did tell Markus we’d have to enlist the help of our friends for the service.

              “There were eighteen waiters, Markus! Eighteen! We’re going to need to cajole some people into helping.”

              “Okay,” he said holding up his enormous, baseball mitt hands to count on his fingers. “There’s you, me, Collette, maybe we could get Calliope, Jaime --“

              “Not Jaime,” I said a little too quickly.

              “Why?”

              “He’ll be working at the club. Can’t.”

              “Honey, I think that boy would forfeit a night’s pay to be with you.” I groaned internally and that awful guilty feeling boiled in my stomach.

              “I wouldn’t want him to do that.”

              “Fine,” he said dismissively. “Jaime’s out. Who else?”

              “I could get Colin and Kelsey and there a couple of guys from three who owe me a favor”

              “Should we pay them?”

              “Only if you have to! You don’t have to tell them about the money and we can use it as a last resort.”

              “You’re sneaky.”

              “I’m brilliant. You need to come out ahead on this. Especially if…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence, but we had to be smart. If it didn’t work out we had to be able to rally and come up with a new plan.

              “Yeah, I know.”

              “Let’s not think like that.” Though, I couldn’t help but think like that. Everything that Markus and I had worked for, our friendship, was based on this contact with Brooke Holmes. If she wasn’t satisfied, not only was it likely that she wouldn’t invest, but she’d certainly not recommend Markus to any of her wealthy friends. If I couldn’t bring him this business, then what would happen to me as a finance/marketing major? What would happen to my friendship with Markus? I kind of wished he would ask me about excluding Jaime, but he was too preoccupied with planning a menu. I pushed it all out of my mind, pushed myself harder further away from everyone except Teddy.

              When I would see Jaime, usually for a rushed lunch or coffee break, I tried to be the same I always was with him but maybe that’s what tipped him off. That I was trying at all. I tried to recapture the easiness of our interactions pre-Teddy emails, but it felt forced even to me and I missed it. I did appreciate that about my relationship with Jaime. It was easy. I always found myself squabbling with Teddy. We always found a way to have an explosive argument over nothing. Jaime never argued with me. Even when I wanted to argue, which was so infuriating sometimes but he kept me level. Our relationship had been so easy, so natural but I was hiding something. Even something innocent because I knew it would mess us up. Jaime never confronted me about it. Maybe because it was all too new and he didn’t know how or maybe he chocked it up to stress. One day, during our thirty minute lunch, Jaime launched in on me.