Butterfly Weeds (22 page)

             
With that thought, I scurried into my room and grabbed a jacket.

             
“April, I’ll be back,” I quickly yelled upstairs.

             
And before April could question my mission, I was out the door and in my jeep.

             
After driving several miles down the 805, I pulled off the interstate and meandered down a winding, neighborhood street. Then, where civilization on my side of the border finally ceased, I brought the SUV to a halt at the dead end and paused for a moment to stare out over my steering wheel and into the horizon.

             
Chula Vista
,
California
– the place where two worlds met. A sole land owner had owned the hundreds of acres of property along the California-Mexico border for most of his lifetime. Just recently, though, he had decided to sell the entire portion of it to a massive land development company. That company had since cleared all of the desert apricots and grasses and had left behind acres of barren, gently rolling hills of ginger-colored dirt, sparsely littered with parked land levelers and this road to nowhere. But just beyond the border, however, behind the obtrusive levy and massive fenced barrier, lay
Tijuana
. On that side of the world, houses, convenient stores, inns and abandoned buildings lay side-by-side – packed in tightly together.

             
“Hmm,” I said reflectively, as I let out an audible sigh, marveling at the contrast.

             
Moments went by before I turned the volume dial on the radio up just a little more so that I could hear the music softly pouring through the speakers. And without missing a beat, I stepped out of my jeep and carefully crawled onto its hood. The evening air was just beginning to cool my surroundings. I could feel each chilling, gentle breeze as it passed over my body and tossed strands of my long hair across my face. When times got tough in law school or life, I always found myself here, at the end of this newly paved road, looking out over the vast emptiness of the rolling California hills and to the sea of Mexico. It wasn’t much to look at during the daylight hours, but come night, the view completely transformed, taking on a magnificent and mysterious allure. It wasn’t fireflies, but it was the closest thing I had now to the displays I remembered in my adolescence.

             
Off in the distance, a tiny herd of mountains to my left and the same piece of ocean that had called me there tonight to my right served as bookends that enclosed the scene in front of me. Evening shadows were just beginning to cast a blanket of darkness over the landscape as my eyes left the deserted
California
land. And then, something magical happened.

             
A sea of radiance sprang up. Millions of colorful lights jam-packed into one, tiny city just beginning to showcase Mexico’s charm from where I lay boded farewell to the huge ball of red fire that had begun its dissent into the ocean. New lights from homes, hotels, stores and bars were added every couple of seconds as the darkness grew around me. And tonight, my sky was
Tijuana
, and my stars, its lights.

             
I lay there silently, thinking about Brady, lakes, alligators and fireflies when one of Will’s songs came gently pouring through my radio’s speakers. A weighty smile found my lips then as I waited on the ebony sky to finally swallow me and then for the ever-appearing lights of
Tijuana
to rescue me from the darkness.

             
I
pulled up to the first terminal in the airport and immediately spotted him. I gazed admirably at the tall, strawberry-blond figure. He looked so austere and handsome, even standing there with his little bags in hand. And as soon as I could, I brought the jeep to a stop alongside the curb and popped out.

             
“Hey, Babe,” Brady said, with a warm smile growing across his guise.

             
“Hi, Honey,” I exclaimed. A blissful expression was planted on my face. “How was your flight?”

             
He set his bags down and wrapped his arms around me.

             
“It went okay. I can never get here fast enough though,” he replied, his lips close to my ear, squeezing me tightly.

             
I too wrapped my arms around his muscular frame and squeezed him close. The embrace seemed strange and slightly forced, but it always had after we had gone weeks without seeing each other. It was hard to explain, but that first hug was like greeting someone you should know but secretly you don’t know. It normally took a little while for us to warm up to each other again, but once we had, it was like we had never been apart.

             
Brady kissed me on my lips and then took a deep breath, as if taking in all of me in one inhale.

             
“Okay, let’s get going,” he said then, grabbing his carry-on and his small, rolling bag. “We’ve got reservations.”

             
He threw his bags into the back of my jeep and then closed the hatch.

             
“Do you want me to drive?” Brady asked.

             
“Sure,” I said, smiling. “Do you remember how to get there?”

             
“Oh course. How many times have we been there now?” he asked rhetorically.

             
I smiled and then tossed Brady my keys and climbed quickly into the passenger’s seat before the airport security guard could wave me down and tell me that I couldn’t stop there. They were good at that.

             
It took roughly ten minutes to make it up the coast to
La Jolla
. Calvin’s on the Cove was a quaint, but elegant restaurant on the water in the small, coastal city just up Interstate 5. Brady and I had eaten there a few times before in Brady’s several visits. The restaurant had become, by far, our favorite dinner place – reserved for special occasions.

             
When we arrived in the center of
La Jolla
, Brady found a parking space on one of the town’s narrow streets, not too far from Calvin’s, and pulled in.

             
“I missed you, Julia,” he said as he reached for my hand, pausing to look into my eyes, after putting the jeep into park.

             
“I missed you too,” I said, smiling.

             
He kissed the top of my hand and then stepped out of the SUV. Meanwhile, I searched for my purse on the floorboard below my feet and noticed my cell phone had somehow fallen out and had landed on the opposite side of the floor. I grabbed my purse and then reached for the phone. Just as my hand felt its hard, boxy frame, I noticed the screen glow. I took a quick glance at the caller and felt my heart beat a little faster. It was Will. I hesitated for a second. I didn’t know if it was out of habit or curiosity that I wanted to answer his call. Regardless, I wasn’t going to answer it tonight, and I hastily pressed
Ignore
and stuffed the phone back into my purse just as Brady opened the passenger door.

             
“Thank ya, Dear,” I said, smiling and stepping onto the sidewalk – careful to disguise my knowledge of the call.

             
“Wait, Will, I want to leave my sunglasses in the car,” I said as Brady attempted to close the door behind me.

             
Before I could even realize what I had said, he paused and caught my eyes.

             
“What did you say?” he asked. A puzzled look had lightninged across his face.

             
My thoughts stopped suddenly. Had I just said what I thought I had? It was an honest slip, and with it, my heart raced again.

             
“Will I need my sunglasses or should I leave them in the car?” I recited quickly, trying my best to recover.

             
“Oh,” Brady said and then paused. “Probably not.”

             
“Then, I’ll leave them here,” I said, throwing the glasses onto the seat and breathing a sigh of relief.

             
It wasn’t the first time I had let it slip, and it also wasn’t the first time I had successfully covered it up either. I despised, at times, that I was a living, breathing creature of habit, and that my old habits died hard. I knew, however, that like most bad habits constantly corrected, this one too would eventually fade. I just wished that the whole process would speed up a little – at least for my relationship’s sake.

             
I smiled at Brady and took his hand as we made our way to the restaurant, resting quietly on the water.

             
When we reached the front desk, the hostess seated us at a table next to the low railing on the ocean terrace. The sun was just beginning to set in the distance, and its warm colors had already started bleeding into the piece of the
Pacific Ocean
that Brady and I now viewed.

             
“This spot is perfect,” I exclaimed to my date. “I can see everything from here.”

             
Brady only smiled.

             
When the waiter came over to the table to take our order, Brady recited from memory our favorite dishes.

             
“I’ll have the steak, and my beautiful girlfriend will have the lemon tortellini,” Brady rattled off to the waiter.

             
“You sure we just can’t start with the chocolate cake?” I asked Brady teasingly, the corners of my mouth rising slightly.

             
Brady looked at me with a flushed expression. It made me stop short.

             
“Okay, I guess it can wait,” I said, still smiling but now half-questioning his severe reaction, while handing my menu to the waiter.

             
The man in black then disappeared to fill our request as Brady’s face went back to a perfect, confident normal again.

             
“I love you,” he said as if it were the first time he had ever said it to me.

             
My questioning look quickly dissolved into a warm smile.

             
“I love you too,” I said.

             
Charm had always been his best quality, though I had to admit that it had matured over the years – or at least had come a long way since the sly trickery that had ultimately landed him our first date.