When You Come to Me (33 page)

She only fell limp in his arms.

Brandon swiftly tossed Natalie over his shoulder, and she beat his back, but he headed outdoors anyway, Asha following closely behind. Brandon and Asha conversed so lowly that she couldn’t hear them. Her increasing agitation then prompted her to start screaming at him incoherently.

“Puh me dow…Bran…puh me down…righ now…you hurtin’ me…Brand…Brandon!”

And he did, right into the front seat of Asha’s Volvo. He’d strapped her in, didn’t say a word to her, shut her door, and she heard him say, though relatively muffled, “Two Advil and water…and make sure she gets her ass in the bed...oh yeah, and a trash can by her bed…she’s
definitely
got a rough night ahead of her…”

She’d forgotten the last time she cried about Brandon, and was sickened by the idea that the tears were approaching the moment she stumbled into the apartment behind Asha, who held her hand, guiding her.

She collapsed onto the bed, felt the familiar lump in her throat. She pictured Brandon, his arms around that girl, his lips on that girl, pictured him laying with that girl, sleeping with that girl in the same spot that she’d occupied so many times over. And with tear-smeared cheeks, she ran towards the bathroom, emptied the contents of her belly into the toilet, and slumped to the side of the toilet lazily, wishing then, that Brandon was there to pick her up and carry her to bed.

They would lie together, he would rub her head with his big hand, and she would feel his rhythmic breath on her skin, and she’d relish in the fact that she was with him again.

She felt her eyes close slowly, felt her head grow heavy, and roll quickly to the right. A hazy image appeared through the pain of her throbbing skull, and the image slowly became less blurry…

Brandon stands in a tuxedo…he is smiling…Brandon attempts to reach for her hand…she cannot reach him…suddenly the distance becomes greater and greater…she is shouting in his direction…shouting his name, tears follow…a loud crashing sound nearly collapses her eardrums…she watches Brandon slump down slowly, his white shirt beneath his jacket begins to turn red…the distance grows greater…she realizes she cannot save him…Brandon lies dead on the floor, out of her reach…

Her eyes reopened and she felt a strange, cool sweat about her chest, felt her heart grip, and she murmured his name between her lips.

As she recollected herself there on the cool tile floor, Asha rushed to her side, having retired almost an hour prior.

Her friend reached for her hands, pulled her up to her feet, and in a flash it seemed she was in the bed, and Asha was sitting by her side, and Asha was coaxing her to drink water.

She refused to drink, pushing the glass away with her boney fingers.

“Go away, Ash—Asha,” Natalie told her friend. “I’m fine…”

“You are
not
fine,” Asha Castile scoffed. “And you haven’t been fine since you saw Brandon at the bar.”

“Fine…”

“
Not
fine,” Asha said. “I’m staying with you tonight…”

“Abso—absolutely not…”

“Yes, I am…”

Asha began to push her way into Natalie’s bed. With a small struggle, Natalie eventually gave up, passed out seconds later, to the sensation of her friend’s arms wrapped around her. They were not Brandon’s…but they suited her just fine.

In another hazy image, Brandon returned, in his tuxedo, they are running through a crowd, tightly packed, and this time Brandon has a tight grip to her hand…

“Come on, Tallie,” he tells her. “Keep up…”

The crowd grows tighter and tighter, and she begins to hear people call his name. She looks to her left…Sophia Baldwin stands in a white gown…Natalie looks to her right…the Reina girl she met at the bar stands in a white gown as well…they shout Brandon’s name over and over, becoming louder and louder…she slowly loses her grip on his hand, the voices grow louder and louder…Brandon doesn’t look back…she begins to cry…the voices, louder and louder…she attempts to shout his name, watches the distance grow greater and greater…her voice is lost…the crowd grows tighter…she tries to call his name again…it’s muffled …Brandon begins to disappear…the crowd begins to hold her back…she can see Sophia and Reina run in his direction, their voices loud, booming…she tries to yell out his name one more time…

“Natalie, Nat, N—Natalie…wake up, girl! Nat, wake up!”

Asha was hovering above her in the darkness, shaking the frame of her body wildly. Natalie felt a strain in her throat, felt a tear on her cheek, looked up at her friend.

“Are you crazy?” her friend asked her with a nervous laugh.

“W—what?”

“You were howlin’ Brandon’s name like a buffoon…I knew he got to you!”

#

The next day, she wore her big straw hat, a pair of old cut-off shorts and a slinky white tank, and though her head throbbed, she slaved the heat as she went for a long drive. She found
their
field, removed herself from the car and sat in it.

Amidst the tall golden grass, she found the sun on her face, captured the breeze in her hair, her arms open wide, and saw Brandon’s eyes in the cloudless sky.

She felt clarity, felt the warmth of the sun run through her veins.

She then became only feeling.

And she reveled in unexpected delight the idea that soul mates actually existed...

SHE REALIZED THAT THERE was a gaping hole where her heart used to be, and it had been replaced with a series of painful, selfish, vengeful parasites that made her careless and single-minded. Or at least that’s the way she viewed herself.

She thought it best to distract Anthony with his favorite meal that night. And as she slaved over the stove, stirring a piping hot brew aimlessly, she, herself, was distracted by her plaguing dreams and her visit to the field that Brandon had taken her to that frosty night all those years ago. And as much as she knew, the dragonfly pendant had been meticulously tossed in the trash a few months ago…or at least that’s what Asha told Anthony.

Anthony startled her when he entered the apartment, calling out her name. He placed a bottle of wine on the kitchen counter and kissed her cheek.

“Baby, it’s been a long day,” he told her. “But your cooking will make it alright…”

The Reina girl that she’d seen Brandon with was only remotely pretty, so there had to have been more to her that appealed to Brandon. Maybe it was her unmatched perkiness, or the fact that they had the same hair color. Or maybe it was the fact that she seemed fun and sweet in the appropriate way, and that she didn’t give him as many problems as Natalie did.

Maybe he was actually falling for her…and maybe it was time to actually stop thinking about him…

Anthony had disappeared into her bedroom. She’d given him a drawer and enough space for his clothes in the closet. It was only a matter of time before he returned in his sweats and lounged on the couch till she got done cooking. She’d forgotten that his favorite television show came on that night – there were also a number of other things she’d forgotten about him.

But he took longer than expected, giving Natalie plenty of time to let her thoughts drift away from her coolly. And it was only a matter of time before she burned the stew that Anthony loved so much.

She turned off the burner, and just as turned around and called out his name, he stood there in the kitchen behind her. She hadn’t heard him come.

“God, you scared me,” she said, placing the pot down.

“Natalie…”

“What?”

She took notice of his face, as if he were teetering on the edge of delirium. She couldn’t decide if he was going to slap her or choke her. She instinctively took a step back anyway.

“I thought you said the dragonfly pendant was Asha’s?”

Natalie felt her heart stop, and she attempted to steady herself. She was never good at lying; especially when her emotions were being squeezed to their breaking point. She chose to remain silent. That only seemed to aggravate him further.

“You’re just not going to say anything…? You’re just going to stand there and not answer me?”

“What do you expect me to say? Shouldn’t you be asking Asha that question?”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head violently. “I’m asking the right person…”

“Where is this even coming from…?”

“You know exactly where this is coming from,” he said, his voice getting louder. He then held up the picture that Natalie had neglected to hide in a more secure spot. The close-up shot featured her and Brandon with their arms around each other, she, with her head rested on his shoulder. She couldn’t remember when and where the picture was taken – but it had become one of her favorites.

He paused for a moment; each breath he took was ridged and painfully audible. “I want the truth, Natalie…I want the truth
now
.”

She turned her eyes away and started to walk past him. She had no idea where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do. She only mumbled, “Don’t do this right now, Anthony…”

“No, we are,” he demanded. He grabbed her arm aggressively and pulled her back around. She shrieked with discomfort.

He visibly quieted and calmed himself, releasing her arm swiftly. “Isn’t this you,” he began quietly.

She nodded.

“Isn’t that the same pendant he said was Asha’s?”

She nodded again.

He released a long, heavy breath. “Just tell me, Natalie…tell me the truth…what does the ‘T’ stand for…?”

Her lips began to quiver and tears brimmed her eyes. “He used to call me Tallie…”

Anthony nodded. “So the note was for
you
…?”

She nodded slowly.

“And the pendant…?”

“It was
my
twentieth birthday…not Asha’s…”

A tear slid down her cheek. Recollection then crossed his face.

“And the girl that Scotty was talking about…the girl that he was so hung up on…?”

Natalie wiped the tear away and Anthony retraced a couple of steps. “It was me…”

“How long were you together…?”

“A year…”

“Why did you break up?”

“He proposed to me, but I said no…so he broke it off with me…”

Anthony paused and lowered his head.

“I’m sorry, Ant…”

Suddenly, he raised it again, ripped the picture to shreds, and threw the shards all around the room.

“Sorry? You’ve been lying to my face for weeks about this, Natalie,” he said. “As far as I know you’ve been carrying on an affair behind my back, and I’ve been stupid enough to think that we had something special and that you were being faithful…”

She wanted to assure him that she was being faithful, just so he could stop being mad at her. But she could no longer perpetuate a lie; she knew that Anthony could no longer trust her as fully as he’d done in the past.

He took a deep breath. “You should have just told me from the beginning,” he continued quietly.

“You wouldn’t have understood,” she replied, breathlessly.

“Maybe not,” he responded honestly, bouncing his shoulders up and down once. “But I would’ve tried really hard…now I can spend the rest of my days obsessing over the things he did right that I’m doing wrong now…all because you wouldn’t tell me. Is
he
the reason why you won’t move in with me…?”

She wanted to reply honestly and say yes.

Ant, we’ll never be as close as he and I were, she wanted to tell him, but I’ve sincerely tried to make it different between us…it’s just so hard to open up to you the way I did him…he knows all of my secrets…my dreams, my wants, my needs…he knows me better than anyone else…and it’s not fair…I’ve tried so hard to forget he ever existed…but he won’t leave my mind…

She only nodded childishly, watching him throw his hands up angrily and turn his back on her.

“Just tell me the truth, Nat,” he began quietly, bracing himself up against the kitchen counter. “Are you still in love with him? Is this why you kept your relationship secret from me?”

She cried harder and she felt pathetic. But the simplicity in Anthony’s essence was reading like a flashing yellow light at a four-way junction, showing her what her life could be if she didn’t choose wisely. He was beautiful, apt, brilliant and secure, and she could envision the comfortable life that they would lead: she would be a successful pediatrician alongside her husband, and they would live in a brick masterpiece in Buckhead, and she would sink into a life of complete normalcy, and she would hate herself for retreating behind the lines of the boundaries she thought she was rid of. She would love Dr. Jones, but her heart would never be fully satisfied, like only drinking half a cup of sweet tea and leaving the rest out in the sun to evaporate. And then she reminded herself of what being in love really felt like; she could no longer be afraid to embrace it or suppress it or deny it. It would never be fair to Anthony; he would never really know her true love. She had already established a considerably stronger connection with someone years ago; and she was now willing to step out on a ledge and wait for the mound of rocks to go crumbling beneath her.

Anthony turned to face her again and she knew that her moment of truth was fast approaching. She took a deep breath and braced herself, picturing the pools of Caribbean blue eyes in her head, smelling the coconut shampoo, seeing the rusted soccer cleats in the front yard beneath a UGA flag, remembering the salty breeze on Jekyll Island, envisioning the late-night conversations that lasted till breakfast at the Pancake House down the street, hearing the laughter as the result of dozens of inside jokes and random events that couldn’t be experienced with any other person.

“I love you, Anthony,” she whispered, piercing his befuddled gaze with her own. “But I can’t lie to you anymore. And I can’t…I can’t lie to myself anymore. I need to leave. Goodbye…”

It was viciously plain, blunt and simple, but that’s just the person she was. She only hoped that she didn’t regret her rationality in making her final, heartfelt decision. She would attempt to be comfortable living in the moment; and for that particular moment, she knew that she wasn’t in love with Anthony Jones.

She gathered her thoughts on the drive over. She loosened and tightened her grip on the wheel, making sure that she kept her eyes focused on the road. She didn’t want her nerves to get the best of her. She veered onto the familiar street, dampened and misty, and she could feel her entrails flip a dozen times. The green Ford Explorer was present, but the baby blue BMW wasn’t. She was confident that this would be easy. She knew that Brandon still loved her as much as she loved him. She took a deep breath and exited the car.