A Broken Us (London Lover Series Book 1) (5 page)

I decided I couldn’t handle a life with Brody
and no
us
baby. So when Leslie asked
me to come out and visit her for a week, it seemed like fate was telling me my
next move. I knew there was no way I could break up with Brody and continue
living near him, in the same town. The temptation would be too much. I loved
us
way too much to trust myself to do the
right thing and stay away.

So I shattered his heart instead. I moved as
far away as humanly possible. I tried to prepare him by pulling away a few
weeks before my flight. He picked up on it and tried to pull me back into
us
by being goofy and playful, like we
always were. But I couldn’t get past all the issues of my new diagnosis. Even
surrogacy sounded terrible to me. I couldn’t fathom using some other woman to
carry
our
baby.

The fundamental gift a woman can give a man is
a baby. It’s the ultimate evidence of love. The longer I stuck around with
Brody, the less like a woman I felt. I made arrangements with my sister to help
me by picking up my car at the airport and storing it at their acreage in
Marshall. The rest of my belongings I’d deal with later, once Brody moved on
maybe? I don’t know. I didn’t think it all through.

Brody didn’t know until the day I left that I
was ending us. I honestly thought he’d fight harder for me to stay. Sure, he
tried, but he still let me go. Maybe he was ready to call it quits, too? If
that were the case, I don’t think he’d be showing up at my sister’s house drunk
and cantankerous. He’d be moving on.

 
I
hugged the blanket closely to me, aching for the warmth of his familiar arms
around me, and I eventually drift into a restless sleep.

I awaken later in the afternoon and hear voices
below me. Holy crap, its 2:00 p.m.! I can’t believe I slept this long. I’m
bursting to pee, so I crawl up off my mattress to make my way out the door.
Looking down when I open the door, I am surprised when I slam right into
Frank’s chest. He smells strangely like cinnamon.

“Morning, love!” he announces, brightly.

“Uh, hi?” I reply, rubbing the sleep out of my
eyes and inspecting his outfit. He is covered in denim, head to toe. Tight,
Skinny Jeans, a denim button-down shirt and a denim jacket. He even has a denim
ball cap on with the bill tilted up high, revealing his frizzy orange hair.

“The
Lezbo
went to a
meeting with the gods of photography and requests our presence at Shay
Nightclub promptly at 10:00 p.m. tonight,” he says, with a curt nod of his
head. “I’ve been instructed to escort you there and make sure you don’t look
like a dopey Midwestern hussy. Her words, not mine, love.”

“Okay, so…the all-denim look,” I lean back to
examine him more fully. “Is this considered fashionable here in the UK, or are
you headed to a hoedown later?”

“
Oooo
, what’s a
hoedown? I want one!” he asks, eagerly.

“Never mind,” I say, moving past him toward the
bathroom across the hall.
 

“For your information, there’s a denim surplus
here in London and I’m just doing my civic duty to help the community. It’s a
real epidemic!” he remarks, seriously.

I squint my eyes at him, speculatively.

“Not as gullible as the
Lezbo
when she came to town. Pity. We had a ball feeding her full of crazy crap.” He
begins walking down the creaky wooden staircase. “Food and refreshments in the
kitchen if you’d like to refuel that juicy ass of yours!”

I laugh as I walk into the bathroom. Frank is
definitely going to keep me on my toes.

 
After
a long, sort-of-hot shower, I dress myself in a pair of comfortable leggings
and a college hoodie. It’s a chillier fall here in London than it is back home.
I glance down the hallway of the second floor, wondering who occupies each
room, since I still haven’t received a grand tour of the house. Leslie, Frank
and I were a bit too buzzed to care when we got home last night.

They had both noisily, and albeit a bit
drunkenly, pounded their way up the narrow staircase with all my suitcases to
show me to the only room on the third floor. I had flopped straight down onto
the thin mattress and passed out within minutes, in the same nasty clothes I’d
been wearing for more than 24 hours.

In the light of day, I’m able to see more of
the home and appreciate the beauty of the old finishes and woodwork.

As I make my way through the dining room and
into the kitchen, I walk in on a couple in the midst of what looks to be an
intense conversation.

“Oh! Sorry, I can leave,” I state, annoyed at
myself for interrupting them.

“No, no. You’re fine! Don’t leave,” a small
Asian girl says, looking over her shoulder and extracting herself from between
the man’s legs where he sits perched up on the wood countertop.

The girl looks back to the guy and whispers
something incoherent, he looks back at her, angrily. I avert my eyes because I
feel like I’ve interrupted either a fight or a make-up session, I’m unsure. I
look out the front window behind the small kitchen-nook table and notice the
cute patio set surrounded by a wrought-iron fence covered in ivy. It looks like
the perfect place to sit and read.

“You’re Leslie’s mate, right?” the girl asks,
widening her slanted eyes at me in question. “I’m Julie, and this is Mitch.”

Mitch is in the process of inspecting his
shoes, apparently deep in thought. Or perhaps he is contemplating buying a new
pair? He’s cute in a petite skater-boy sort of way. He has chin-length blonde
hair tucked neatly behind his ears.

“Our room is the first door on the right,
upstairs,” Julie offers.

“Cool. Yeah, I’m Finley.
Er
,
Fin,
er
, whatever you want to call me. Nice to meet
you guys.” God, I’m a moron. I loathe that whole uncomfortable hand-shaking
moment. Do I shake their hands or don’t I? It might be a bit too formal. Oh
crap, now it’s too late. If I shake their hands, I’ll look like an idiot.
A dumbass wave of the hand it is!

“Right. Well, let’s bail then,” Mitch says,
sullenly. He’s obviously pissed about something; I hope it’s not my presence.
Maybe he’s mad about his shoes.

“Okay. Well, nice to meet you! We’ll see you
around a bit, I hope,” Julie announces apologetically on her way out. Mitch
drags her tiny frame out of the kitchen.

I make my way over to the counter and see an
assortment of pastry items next to a plate of tiny sausages. My stomach is
churning at the smell of it all. I nibble on a piece of what looks like a sweet
roll when Frank pops his head in.

“Thank the Lord, you’ve showered! I didn’t want
to be the one to tell you this, but I could literally smell your
pitties
last night at the pub. I nearly vomited in my
lager. It was a travesty!” he says, popping the top off the can he just grabbed
out of the fridge.

My reaction must be a good one, because in the
midst of his drink he busts out laughing, spraying pop all over himself and the
refrigerator door! “Bloody hell, Finley! I’m only messing with you!” he says,
wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his denim jacket. “Had to get back at you
for the denim crack upstairs, ye bitch!”

My shocked reaction turns to scorn. I look him
hard in the face and say, “You have pop boogers coming out of your nose.”

“Fuck me!” he shouts, turning into the
stainless-steel fridge door to get a look at himself.

“Now who’s the gullible one?” I ask, with a
sneaky smirk spreading across my face.

Frank looks me up and down, “I think you might
be a bit of fun after all, Finley, my dear.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Frank and Beans,”
I reply.

“What. The. Fuck. Are frank and beans?”

“A Midwestern delicacy. And in your denim
outfit, I think that’s exactly what I’ll be calling you from now on. I can see
you sitting around a campfire right now with a horse tied up to a tree behind
you, munching on your frank and beans.”

“As long as it’s a fire on Brokeback Mountain,
I’ll be any kind of Frank you want!” He looks at me proudly for a moment,
“Fine, fine, Finny. Let’s go explore some sights while
Lezbo
is off doing God knows what. Maybe we’ll even find you something to wear that’s
not so…university.
Blech
.”

***

I look down at my hoodie I’ve been wearing for
the past five years, and frown. I love this hoodie. I loved my college days.
They gave me Brody.
Brody. Damn
. I
was just starting to feel a little better.

Frank and I have an amazing afternoon together.
He walks me around the neighborhood and shows me all the best local places to
shop for groceries, clothes, and typical odds and ends stuff. We walk by the
pub we went to last night and he informs me they spend the majority of their
time there because they keep the old geezers in check for poor little
Zoey
.

The city is beautiful. It’s a huge
juxtaposition of different architectural structures from centuries long gone.
Definitely not something I’m used to seeing in Missouri or Kansas. Everything
here seems so much greener, too. Lusher, despite the constant grey overcast
sky. There are also tons of parks dotted around the place. I’ve never seen so
many tiny parks all in one place.

I’m taking it all in with wide eyes full of
wonder. I can’t help but mourn this experience a tiny bit because I’m not doing
it all with Brody. Brody would have loved this stuff. He never spoke much of
travel like I did, but he loved pretty much everything I loved. If we were
together, he was happy.

We pass a couple of women with tiny babies in
strollers. My heart hurts just looking at them. I wonder how they got their
precious little miracles.
Was it easy?
Was it hard? Do they know what a true gift they have? Do their husbands know
how lucky they are to have fertile wives?
The more I look at them, the
angrier I get because it’s quite likely they don’t appreciate all they have
been given, and I would!

Frank must have picked up on my wandering
thoughts because he quickly rushes us to the next street over to show me the
tattoo shop where we can watch artists tattoo people in the window. It’s cool,
so we purchase a basket of fries. Chips.
Whatever
the hell they call them.
We watch a guy getting a huge eagle tattooed on
his back for nearly an hour. Frank is easy to talk to; he says the most
outlandish things. I laugh and feel happy that I like my new roommate so much.

We make our way back to the house and Frank
rummages through my four suitcases until he finds an outfit he thinks is
passable for our evening ahead. By the time he starts rifling through the
fourth suitcase, I’m beginning to fear he won’t find anything suitable. I sure
as hell won’t fit into Leslie’s clothes!

“This will do. Now, tart yourself up so I can
escort you to the club and make all the men envious of my new bitch,” Frank
says, with flair, as he exits my room.

Frank has selected a long red high-waist skirt
with a cropped, tight cheetah t-shirt. The t-shirt is a spandex material and a
totally impulsive purchase I’d picked up in a thrift store back home. I actually
never found a place to wear it, so I am excited Frank put these two pieces
together for me.

I throw my long brown hair up high on my head
into a cute topknot that looks effortless, but chic. I jazz up my makeup a bit
thicker than I normally would, drawing out my eyeliner into a bit of a cat-eye
look. I throw on a long gold-pendant necklace and make my way downstairs.

Frank must be impressed because he doesn’t
scream at me to run upstairs and start over. “You look decidedly
fuckable
, my dear.”

“Oh?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.

“
I
wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, and believe me, I’ve got one under
here,” he says, gesturing toward his crotch. “But if I were a betting man, I’d
bet you’ll draw some attention tonight.”

“Aw, Frank, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve
ever said to me!” I answer, smiling gaily at him. “You look rather fetching
yourself!”

“Thanks, my dear,” he says, adjusting his
skinny black tie over his denim button-down. Thankfully, he’d swapped the denim
jeans for a pair of skin-tight red slacks. It’s still nothing I’ve ever seen
back home, but I can definitely see some style going on in there.

“If I had a dick,” I pause, wondering how he’ll
react, “…I’d stick it in you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. You and Leslie are definitely
friends. Two bitches in a bloody pod. Let’s fucking go.”

As we walk into Shay, the music is roaring. I’m
surprised to hear several American pop songs playing loudly over the grand
room. The British music scene is pretty awesome, but it’s nice to hear songs
from home that I’m familiar with.
 

We walk around for what feels like a good
twenty minutes before finally finding Leslie. She has a table on the upper
level that surrounds the packed dance floor. She already has three mixed drinks
sitting in front of her as she turns to me with eager and excited eyes,
obviously appraising my outfit.

“FIN! Who knew you had it in you?” she stares
at me with mock appreciation.

I self-consciously cover the exposed four
inches of belly above the high waist of my skirt, and frown at her. “Oh, come
on. You’re not the only one who can have cute clothes, you know!”

“I know! But you’re already a good foot taller
than me, the least you could do is throw me a bone and let me win the clothing
contest,” she laughs, incredulously.

Leslie looks gorgeous. She’s sporting a trendy
little black dress with pointy shoulders and triangular cutouts on the sides.
She’s painted her pout a deep matte-red and her bob is fluffed with extra body.

“You made that, didn’t you?” I ask, touching
the shoulder point on one side.

“Yep!” she replies, proudly.

“You are too fabulous,” I say, grabbing her
hand and twirling her so I can inspect the back—or should I say,
no back
. Three silver chains drape
across an open back and dangle sexily toward her bottom. I give her ass a good
smack and she squeals in delight.

“What about me, Lezzie?” Frank asks, looking
rather forlorn.

“Frank, you know I love your wacky style. You
look cool, as always,” she says, kissing him on both cheeks, “Now, let’s
drink!” she announces loudly, handing us our beverages.

Since the music is so loud, we do a lot of
drinking and people-watching, but not much talking. I’m glad for that though;
my thoughts seem to be getting darker and darker the more vodka tonics I’m
served. I never have done well with hard liquor, but Leslie bought the first
round and it seems easier to stick with what we have.

Frank takes over and starts buying all the
drinks.

I yell over to him, “Frank, let me buy the next
round!”

He shakes his head at me, “Stuff your money, I
got this. Just drink. I like you better pissed anyway.”

I laugh and oblige him by sucking on the straw
of my drink again.
 

“Who’s ready to shake their tail-feathers?”
Leslie hollers at us over the music.

Frank shoots up out of the table, grabs both of
our hands, and begins pulling us through the crowd. He shouts to the people
next to us to hold our table and offers to buy them a round in return, so they
quickly spread themselves out over our table and look eager for our return.

As we rub up next to the crowds of people, I
can see men’s eyes on me and it feels so strange. I’ve been with Brody for five
years and just being here feels like cheating. I silently chastise myself and
remind my brain that I am single now and this is like early college days all
over again. I loved flirting in college and was really good at it. I can be
that way again. So instead of feeling uncomfortable, I let the vodka’s
liquid-courage help me shake my round ass directly into Frank’s crotch. Leslie
laughs as Frank gives me a look like he’s about to be sick. I giggle and
continue dancing. Eventually, Frank finds a couple of guys that seem to catch
his eye and leaves Leslie and me to our own devices.

Without Frank’s watchful eyes, Leslie begins
pumping her hips behind a random frat-looking guy dancing near us. She looks
hilarious in her little black dress dancing like she isn’t dressed to the
nines. She might as well be wearing sweatpants right now with the way she’s acting.
Just when the frat guy turns around to see what the heck is going on, she
dashes away like she wasn’t just doing obnoxious sexual gestures to his back. I
love the fact that Leslie is never
too
cool
to be a moron.

I join in on the fun and jump directly in front
of a huge black guy who hasn’t even been dancing. I grab my right ankle with my
right hand, put my other hand behind my head, and begin pumping my leg back and
forth. No easy feat in a long skirt, but I’ve watched my fair share of 80’s
music videos, so I know I look
goooood
. The man pulls
his sunglasses down his nose and eyes me carefully. Thinking my move isn’t
impressive enough, I jump up and drop down into a classic robot.
Yeeeeah
, I own this dance. This will surely impress him. He
crosses his arms and lets out a big puff of air with a nasty sneer on his face.
Yeah, it’s time to get the hell outta
here.
I rush away from him and grab Leslie’s hand to haul her to the other
side of the dance floor. That dude looks ticked!

We pass a shot-girl and I quickly buy four long
test-tube shots from her and hand two to Leslie. We pop the foil tops off them
and down them one after another. They are sickly sweet and a bit nasty but I
don’t care. I am in London. I am starting a new life. It is time to celebrate!

Leslie is suddenly grabbed by a cute little guy
with dark-framed glasses and buzzed blonde hair. She looks up at him like she’s
going to pull away, but changes her mind and starts dancing provocatively with
him. She seems to be enjoying herself so I decide to let loose on my own and
really dance.

I love to dance. Like, seriously. I. Love. To.
Dance. I’m pretty decent at it, too, but even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t care; the
feel of a loud thumping bass, coupled with the syncopated movement of my body and
an increased heart rate is, like, an all-time high for me. Brody always said
that back in college, he noticed my dance moves before he noticed my face. I
remember he told me once after we officially met that he’d never seen a girl
dance like it was an athletic sport rather than some tease to get guys to
notice her.

And that’s exactly the way I dance. I don’t
care if I get sweaty and hot. The music moves me. It makes me forget about my
racing heart rate and the burning feeling in my lungs I only get the few times
a year I think I can be a runner—and then remember I fucking hate
running. Dancing is my cardio.

Those shots are really hitting me now. That’s
good, it’s what I want. Tonight is my farewell to the old Finley. Tonight I’m
going to dance and drink myself into a state of oblivion. I want to permanently
erase all the crap I ran away from. I don’t want to feel anything anymore. I am
in London, England. I’m starting a new life. There’s no turning back now.

I refuse to think of Brody and our last time
together. I refuse to remember the way he makes me feel when he looks at me
with those gorgeous navy-blue eyes. I refuse to remember the way his curly hair
feels coarse, like a
brillo
pad, when I thread my
fingers through it. Or the way he whispers
I
love us
, against my ear to make me giggle because he knows I’m ticklish.

The lights I’m gazing up at in the ceiling
begin to blur as my eyes fill with tears. Shocked, I look down and feel the
tears run quickly down my face.
What the
hell?
Where did these come from? This is supposed to be a night of
forgetting, not remembering. I look over to Leslie and see her facing her
dancing partner; they look pretty intense. I don’t want to ruin her fun with my
sudden burst of emotions, so I sneak over and whisper-yell in her ear that I’m
going to the bathroom and I’ll meet her back at our table later. She turns to
look at me but I dash away before she is able to see the tears on my face.

The bathrooms are located down a flight of
stairs in a lower-level bar area that’s much quieter and more laid back. I can
still hear the booming music above, but I can also hear the voices of the
people talking around me.

I find a big, comfy armchair in a quiet corner
of the bar and sink down into it before anyone else grabs it. I glance around
to see if there’s anybody within listening distance and decide I’m secluded
enough. I tuck my legs underneath my butt and grab my phone out of my clutch,
flipping to the last text I received from Brody.

Brody:
Not that I give a fuck, but I hope you’re alive and shit. I have no clue where
you are or who you are staying with. Hope you’re having a ball. I’m in hell.

Guilt courses through my veins as my
conversation with Cadence replays in my head.
He looks so sad, Finley. So incredibly sad.

I pull up his contact info on my phone so I can
see his face. He smiles happily back at me; my heart aches for the simpler
times we had together, before all the baby stuff.

Before I can process what I’m doing, I hit
Call
on my phone. I just need to hear his
voice again.

“Hello?” Brody answers on the second ring.

“
Heeeey
,” I drawl
out, realizing I sound a bit drunk.

“Hey?” he grunts, “Huh.”

“What?” I ask.

“You’re actually calling me right now, like for
real,” he sounds pissed.

“Yeah, I am. I just wanted to see if you were
okay. After…well….after yesterday,” I reply, tentatively.

“Okay? Am I okay?” he seems to be ramping up
for something big, “Well, considering I got wasted last night and showed up on
your sister’s doorstep, basically crying and belligerent, I would venture to
guess, no. No, Fin, I’m not o-fucking-
kay
.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer.

“You’re sorry? Ha! That’s fucking great,
Finley,” he spits. “I show up at your sister’s house that holds three tiny
girls. Beautiful little girls…girls I’ve grown to love and cherish like they
are my own. I mean…I’d walk through fire for those little girls, Finley! That’s
how in love with them I am. To think they could have come downstairs and seen
me the way I was behaving, makes me physically ill. I was the second person to
hold Maya when she was born, for Christ’s sake!”

He coughs hard into the phone, trying to clear
his throat, “I’m so fucked up over all this shit that George, who happens to be
a good friend of mine, nearly pummeled me in the jaw for being violent and
malicious toward his seven-month pregnant wife!”

I firmly squeeze my eyes together, willing away
the tears that are rising inside them as the horrible scene plays out in my
mind. “I’m sorry!” I croak out, not knowing what else to say to him.

“I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore,
Finley!” he roars and I cringe at the volume booming through the phone. “One
second, I’m madly in love with this incredible, vivacious girl who has
completely rocked my world and changed me for the better…like forever. Then the
next minute, she’s gone and I don’t have a fucking clue why or where to!”

“I know. It’s just better this way,” I cry back
into the phone.

“What’s better? We were trying to have a baby
together, Finley! A baby! That isn’t shit I go into lightly. You were my world
and you just fucking left!” His voice cracks on the last half of that statement
and I hear him breathing heavily, trying to get ahold of his emotions.

I never should have called him. This is making
things so much worse. “I can’t be the girl you need me to be, Brody. I just
can’t. I…can’t.”

“What girl do I need you to be?” he shouts,
into the phone. “You’re my girl, Fin! Just you. It’s always just been you!
Jesus, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore!”

“That’s the thing, Brody. You don’t know me,” I
reply, angry that he just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the pressure
this whole situation puts on me. “You care more about
us
than you do about me! I don’t get that anymore, Brody. I don’t
want to get it. I want different things than you do. There’s no reason to
pretend that
us
even matters
anymore.”

“You make no fucking sense. None. The Finley I
knew, the Finley I fell head over heels for in college, was with me through and
through. We wanted the same things together. She isn’t this person. This person
I’m talking to right now is a mean, spiteful…bitch.”

His words hang there over the line with ominous
reverberation for what feels like eternity.
 

“Speak, Finley…because I am truly giving up on
you,” he sighs, then sniffles into the phone.

I shake my head back and forth, willing my
heart to come up with an answer to whatever this fucked up situation needs.
Anything.
I’m desperate to say anything
to fix this—to fix this pain in Brody’s voice. But I know I have to stop
myself or it will make it harder in the end. I so badly wish it didn’t have to
end so terribly…so treacherously. Maybe there is no good way for this to end. I
need to suck it up and truly say goodbye to Brody this time. There is no coming
back from the agony in this conversation. He is broken and ruined—and it
is my fault. My beautiful, warm, heartfelt, incredible man is gone and it is
entirely my fault. My body’s fault. My body broke
us
. This perfect
us
we
made together and loved together. Two dumb college kids thinking they found
something nobody else ever had—but we didn’t. He won’t want me when he
knows the truth; it’s better to save him from the truth, not to mention the
guilt of staying with someone who can’t give him the basic thing in life that
makes a family.