When You Come to Me (30 page)

He was going out of town for a week to a pediatric conference in Charleston. He had offered an invitation for her to come along, but she declined, of course, opting to stay in Athens. She wanted to enjoy the peace, hoping that it was just long enough for her to breathe, long enough to miss him, and love him more when he was away, actually
need
him.

For that moment, she tried not to remember the note that had been attached to the dragonfly pendant that Brandon had returned to Asha. She tried not to remember the conversation that occurred in the kitchen once Anthony had alerted her of what Brandon had done.

She'd looked at him so curiously, arching her eyebrow as she sat at the round kitchen table.

Anthony explained the situation in the best way he knew how.

"He just showed up," he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee.

Why wouldn't he have taken an earlier flight? Natalie hovered over the stove, tossing eggs with a spatula. She slyly and frequently glanced over at the pendant, ogling it from the countertop. She felt she couldn't breathe.

"He was drunk but he knew exactly what he was doing," he continued. "'Give this to Asha,' he said, 'She'll know exactly what to do with it'..."

Asha cleared her throat. "And what was it again?"

"A dragonfly necklace...it's a real gaudy sort of thing... he said you left it over there quite some time ago and he just got the courage to bring it back over..."

"Hmmm," Asha returned. "I don't recall a dragonfly necklace of any kind..."

When Anthony turned his back toward them, she then took the opportunity to shoot her eyes in Natalie's direction and widen them a little. Natalie only shook her head as quickly and as vigorously as she could.

"Sure you do, Ash," Natalie returned quickly. "You remember when Brandon bought that pendant for your twentieth birthday? You remember? We went to Lake Hartwell and stayed in that cabin for the weekend?"

Asha pursed her lips. "I remember going to the lake...but I'm not sure..."

"You remember, crazy, because you told me it freaked you out that he bought you something like that so soon...remember I told you I could tell he really cared about you?"

"Sure..."

"There's a note, Ash," Anthony said, picking up the folded piece of paper. "Why don't you read that...maybe that'll jog your memory..."

Asha sighed heavily as she slowly unfolded the paper, clearing her throat before she read it aloud:

T. -

We don't chose who we love. It just kind of happens. We can blame fate or whatever, but something up above is pointing us toward each other and our feelings just go along with it. I have no regrets about my feelings toward you - I only regret how I handled it. Take this, and if we never see each other again, don't ever forget what we shared.

Brandy

She felt her throat burn, and she attempted to quickly stifle the emotion as Asha glared at her.

"Well, it's good to finally know how he feels," she said nonchalantly, tossing the paper aside. "Well that's done..."

"Asha, the man poured his heart out to you," Anthony said. "How can you be so cold? And who is 'T'?"

Asha bounced her shoulders up and down. "It's all about choices, Ant," she said. "Making good ones and bad ones...he was saying goodbye...and I made the choice to accept this...no matter how much I love him...I made a
bad
choice not to love Brandon. Oh! And
Taylor
is my middle name...who else?"

Natalie swallowed thickly as Anthony came toward her.

"Well, good thing I don't have to worry about that," he said, pressing his lips into the side of her face. "What we have is solid...isn't that right, baby?"

#

That night, it rained, hard against the window of her bedroom, and she lay on her bed, body cast in darkness, a bundle of candles lit around the room; the sound of the pellets beating against the glass, soothing her ears.

She’d just gotten off the phone with Anthony, had just enjoyed the calm in his voice, the way he said that he loved her. But knew somewhere in the back of her mind, on instance, that staying with him made sense, that somewhere deep down inside of her would allow her to love him as much as he loved her one day. She decided then that she had a choice to make, and fast.

She knew that staying with Anthony posed stability, a life of security, a promise of the future, though, luckily enough for her heart and her mental state, they had not discussed a
solid
future together, as if Ant sensed her fears, as if Ant, who luckily had no clue of Brandon’s significance, knew that a piece of her heart still lingered elsewhere.

Brandon’s presence bred fantasy, idealism, instability…though she romanticized his strength, his intelligence, them as an item made less sense (no sense!), was the birthplace of all of her fears.

But oh, there was something about Brandon, yes? There would always be something about Brandon. There was life, there was breath, there was connection...but then there were the differences…yes, the subtle ones that were just enough to make her look at him differently…just enough.

She reached for her cellular phone, conveniently placed by her side, dialed the first number of his that came to her mind.

The line connected, a low voice answered on the other end. Natalie swallowed her pride down hard in the sound of the rain, and whispered, “Brandon, I need to see you…”

#

She was nervous and she had every right to be.

She sat at a small round table at a café across from Lennox Square, and all she could think about was how much Brandon used to like the pancakes there or the fact that she’d purposely screened three out of the five calls that Anthony had delivered, as she anxiously waited on the green Explorer to pull up. She didn’t need any distractions what she wanted to do in this situation. She wanted it to be painless and sweet – but she figured that neither one of those would occur.

She ordered water with lemon and he, a sweet tea, as the familiar image of his truck pulled up along the curb. Every nerve in her hands rattled at the sight of him, pulling his shades away from his eyes and plugging them into the collar of his crisp grey t-shirt. He said down across from her, and placed his keys on the ground. She avoided his eye contact, but she could feel his eyes ardently placed on hers.

She internally admitted that she’d forgotten how handsome he could be in his simplicity, and every other part of her, besides her burdensome mind, wanted to reach across the table and envelop him in her arms. But she resisted the urge and took another long sip of water.

He picked up his own drink. “I guess there are some things you never forget,” he murmured, pressing his lips against the glass.

“Stop it, Brandy,” she replied.

“Why are you so nervous?” he asked her. “Aren’t you the one who asked me to lunch? Shouldn’t I be the one that’s nervous?”

“You’re never nervous,” she reminded him. “When’s the last you were nervous about something…”

“I can think of a couple of times,” he admitted. “But this meeting isn’t about me…so I’ll let you continue…”

“I don’t know where to begin…”

“Let’s start with why you called me up in the first place,” he said. “Or why you drunkenly called me the other night? Or why…”

“It’s probably the same reason why you returned that pendant, or you wrote that note attached with it…”

He pursed his lips and remained silent.

“Exactly,” she sighed. “I thought my reasoning for asking you to meet with me should go without saying…”

“Maybe I just wanted a semblance of closure,” he responded bluntly. “Which you have yet to give me…”

“And I…? What about me? Don’t I deserve some closure…?”

“Is that what this meeting is about, Tal? If so, then let’s get it over with,” he told her. She flinched at the flicker of frostiness that was glazed across his expression.

“You were the one who said you’d never forgive me,” he reminded her quietly, taking a cue from her silence. “You were the one that said you’d never speak to me again. You never wanted to see me again. Shouldn’t you be glad that I’ve finally managed to return the sentiment? We’ve dragged this thing on long enough…tell me what you have to tell me so that we can finally fucking move on with our lives…I’ve stopped thinking about you, I’ve stopped caring about you…so why haven’t you done the same…?”

She couldn’t stop the formation of feeling from brimming her eyes as she watched him arrogantly flop back in his seat with lackadaisical ease. He looked so unaffected and it bothered her. She caught her fallen tear with her finger, slapped her napkin down on the tabletop and removed herself, mumbling, “You asshole,” as she stormed away from the restaurant.

She fumbled in her purse for her keys as she moved across the street in the direction of her car, but she’d forgotten where she’d parked, and she couldn’t remember if she’d even put her keys in her purse at all or if she’d even tipped the waitress for the water. She was only conveniently attempting to shove the dozens of memories that she and Brandon had had at that restaurant out of her head as she simultaneously attempted to shove the visualization of Brandon’s dispassionate eyes out of her head. And as she finally caught hold to her keys, she begin to imagine herself as the new Sophia, a woman who’d been used by Brandon and shoveled aside with the rest of the trash.

Another tear fell as she reached her car, and she fought for breath as her head became light. And just as she began to open the car door, a hand caught her arm and swung her around.

Brandon pulled her into him, forcing an embrace around her.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “I swear to God, baby, I didn’t mean it…”

She wriggled out of his grasp, sniffling as she turned away from him.

“Well, you said it,” she reminded him. He pressed himself up against her, grabbing at her arms to steady her.

“I’m just as frustrated as you are,” he whispered against her cheek. He squeezed her arms a little tighter; she tried her hardest not to become putty in his grapple.

“I look at you, and I’m fucking pissed, Tallie,” he continued. “I’m pissed because I want you so badly…and I can’t have you…I can’t have all of you the way I want…”

She only cried pathetically in his vicinity. She felt weak and useless as her fingers allowed her keys to clamor to the ground.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet,” he suggested, pressing his lips into her ear once. “Somewhere we can be alone…no distractions…”

“I don’t want to go back to your house, Brandon,” he told him.

“I had another place in mind,” he replied. “Just get in my car…”

She hesitantly slid into the passenger seat, watching her sweet Athens pass her by. But there wasn’t a single moment where she felt imprisoned by him, to the point where she couldn’t escape. She was no longer the childlike curious being that she once was; what had replaced her was someone who was far more comfortable being sneaky and deceitful. And for the moment, she had chosen to exist only in fantasy land, where she and Brandon coexisted congenially without fault or negativity.

He gently pulled away from the curb, and her mind was set at surprising ease, but her heart remained relentlessly guarded, and she tried to think about where he might take her. The roads he took were only vaguely familiar, but she quickly lost interest. Her senses had come alive: the sight of being in Brandon’s car again, the smell of the date pineapple air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, the sound of the Goo Goo Dolls, playing effortlessly from a stereo that hasn’t lost its original sound.

The truck drifted off the road, and settled onto a rocky bridle path, cradled gently by the verdant leaves of fully grown trees. Ahead of them was nothing but an open meadow of wildflowers, tall golden grass, and copious sunshine. Brandon killed the engine and told her to exit the car. She followed suit easily.

“Brandon, where are we?” she asked him coyly, scrutinizing the field under blinding light.

“You don’t remember?”

She shook her head earnestly.

“You were a freshman,” he began, inching closer to her. “You were barely eighteen. We took a philosophy class together second semester, and you swore you wanted nothing to do with me outside of class. But I somehow convinced you to come with me and Scotty to Halley’s in Atlanta for a night, and to this day, I still can’t believe you agreed. But you got angry with me once you found out that I was trying to hook you up with Scotty. But if you only knew why I did it…I just wanted to be closer to you. I just wanted to know you better. After we dropped Scotty off, you agreed to take a ride with me. I took you to this very same field, Tal, so that we could talk. And I realized then that I cared about you way more than I should have at the time.”

Natalie laughed in disbelief. “It looks so different in the daytime…and it’s a lot warmer too…”

Brandon retrieved a blanket from the back of his car and draped it over the wild grass. They both settled down easily. She sat in reflective silence beside him, cradling her knees in her arms, taking one deep breath after the other. She wasn’t certain of what she wanted to say or how she wanted to say it, but sitting this close to Brandon and not feeling every part of her insides curl was something she wasn’t particularly used to. And she assumed he wasn’t either.

She resorted to staring straight ahead of her, watching the sun slip beneath watchful clouds and reappear again, remembering just what it felt like to be in the servitude of benevolent silence, if only for a little while. Their shoulders touched and she felt a glint of bliss roll through her fluently.

“I always thought,” Brandon began, taking a deep sigh. “That when we came back to this spot we’d still be just as secure as the day before or the month before or the year before…but I guess it shows just how confusing our lives can be in a matter of seconds…”

She nodded compliantly.

“I don’t ever think I was fully willing to own up to my mistakes because I was still so angry,” he admitted. “I guess it was hard for me to accept that you could actually move on so easily. I’d created this illusion in my head that you’d struggle just as much as I did…”