Girl Code (14 page)

“Is this about Leo?” Her head tilted slightly to one side.

Did she know?

“Yeah,” I said and took a deep breath, preparing to speak.

“I don’t want to talk about Leo,” she said briskly before I could talk. “I don’t want to hear anything about him.”

I was a little taken aback by her tone and insistence.

“You may want to hear this,” I suggested, but she shook her head.

“I don’t want to hear anything about him, Tabitha. You don’t understand, or maybe you do. Yeah, I’m the one that broke up with him after high school, and I have a boyfriend now that I really love, but Leo was my first…” She sighed and looked down at the yearbook on her lap. I followed her gaze and saw that the page was open to a picture of them together. They were voted favorite couple our senior year. They were wrapped in a tight, loving, happy, smiley embrace in the photo.

When Leslie looked up at me again, her eyes were gleaming with unshed tears.

“Leo was my first for everything. My first real boyfriend. My first real kiss. My first sexual partner. The first person to make me feel that…that happy, elated, full-heart feeling.” She smiled sadly as her hand floated to her chest. “He was the first boy I ever loved, and…” She sighed again and blinked back her tears. “And I can’t hear whatever it is you are going to say to me about him right now, Tabitha. I would rather be dead, dumb, and blind than to sit here and endure whatever it is you are about to tell me.”

I nodded my understanding quickly and held back my own tears.

She looked back down at the yearbook and flipped to the back where all of the random pictures were. She seemed to be looking for a specific one as she turned page after page, only skimming over the faces. After a couple more pages, she stopped and stared for a moment before touching the picture she had been looking for. It was a picture of Leo and me. It wasn’t a shot we posed for. Leslie was taking random pictures for the yearbook that day, and it was she who had caught that moment in the crowded hallway between classes. Leo’s arm was wrapped tight around my neck and his mouth was open like he was about to take a bite out of my head. My mouth was wide open with laughter at something unseen in the photo, but I knew Sandy was a couple of feet away making me laugh. Years ago, when the yearbooks were issued, we laughed at the picture. It had been funny, but looking at it now, I saw it differently. We looked like a couple, Leo and me—a silly couple, but a happy couple. We didn’t look any less like a couple than Leslie and he did at the front of the book.

Leslie closed the book carefully. She put it inside of a nearly full box of high school memorabilia and taped the box shut. As the fat black marker spelled out the general contents of the box, it made a loud squeaking noise, the only noise in the room. When she finished, she took a deep breath and met my eyes.

We simply looked at one another for a long minute, leaving all of the unsaid shit hanging in the air between us.

When Xander and I first moved to San Francisco, things were difficult. Our first apartment was horrible. Our car was stolen and totaled, I couldn’t find secure work and Xander was working very long hours. Things were hard for the first year and a half, but we were happy, and things improved over time. Xander got a promotion with better working hours, I found a decent job in hospital administration, and a few magazines started publishing some of my short stories. After two full years on the west coast, we moved into an apartment we didn’t have to share with roaches and rats and we each got new cars with the best alarm systems.

In our third year in California, my first book
Grind
was published and released, and to my surprise, it had landed on the New York Times Best Seller’s list. Xander had received yet another promotion and we purchased our first home together. A date had been set for a spring wedding for the following year and we had just dropped a deposit down on a beautiful venue we would have never been able to afford even two years before. With our careers in full swing, an active social life and plenty of friends, and our wedding on the horizon, the life Xander and I had made together was very satisfying. So, I was completely blindsided when I came home from a book signing in Los Angeles after a long weekend and found Xander moving out of our home.

“I don’t understand,” I said as I watched him carelessly stuff his clothes into a large duffel bag.

Xander did not look at me when, in his faded British accent, he said, “What don’t you understand, Tabitha? I am leaving. This isn’t working for me. There is nothing else to understand.”

I pushed my long, dark tresses out of my face and held it back with my hand. I was so baffled by his sudden departure. “What changed? What changed so quickly that I didn’t even notice?”

When he didn’t answer and continued with his packing, I stepped toward him with my eyes narrowed. I fisted my hands at my sides and my hair fell back into my face, partially obscuring my view of him.

I tried not to grit my teeth when I spoke to him in a tight voice. “We just bought a house, Xander. We just put a deposit down for our wedding. I asked you if you were ready to do this and you assured me that you were. I gave you an opportunity to back out and you told me you loved me and this was what you wanted—that I was what you wanted. Were you lying the entire time?”

His eyes stayed focused on the task at hand. “I was ready,” he said. “I did want this and I did want you. Now I don’t. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

His tone was soft, but the words were cold. They were an icy, sharp blow to my chest. He sounded so detached, like his mind was already on whatever it was that was taking him from the life we had made together.

“Xander,” I said in a whisper with a hint of pleading. “Just tell me the truth. Tell me what happened. Everything was fine. We were fine. We were more than fine.”

Xander paused. Slowly, his head rose and he met my eyes. He had eyes the color of golden honey. My heart used to flutter when he looked at me with those orbs, but now I was struck by the various emotions in them: love, regret, sadness, fear.

“We were never fine, Tabitha,” he said softly. Even as the shock registered on my face, he repeated his admission. “We were never fine.”

I sputtered, trying to ask too many questions in one word, and in the end asked nothing, but he answered me anyway.

“I thought we were fine,” he said. “I thought we were more than fine. I thought we were great. I loved you—I still love you—so bloody much.” He covered his heart with his hand and said, “I felt such a fire for you inside. My love for you was an inferno, incinerating me, burning me from the inside out, and I loved every damn second of it.”

I was shocked into silence. Those were my words, the words I used in
Grind
.

I feel such a fire for you inside. My love for you is an inferno, incinerating me, burning me from the inside out, and I love every damn second of it. Burn me. Torch me. Ignite me over and over until I die and I will die a very satisfied, scorching death.

I stood there, with my hand on my throat, swallowing hard repeatedly, staring at Xander. I understood. I knew what he was trying to say, but I had to allow him to finish. I needed to hear it.

“You don’t burn for me, Tabitha,” he said with so much sadness and bitterness that it became a tangible tangle of emotions. “I read your book, and I realized that these romantic notions, these earth-shattering emotions you described in your novel are real—somewhere inside of you, they are real, but they’re not for me. They never were. They never will be. I don’t know who they are for, but I can’t stay here and pretend that we are fine. I want to marry all of you, and I am not getting all of you. I am only getting this small, cold portion of you. I woke up this morning and understood that I don’t really know who you are. You don’t burn for me,” he repeated, shaking his head slowly. “And quite frankly, that rather doused my own flames.”

I could have argued, I could have fought for him. I could have told him that those words I wrote were just fiction, that the emotions were the result of watching way too many British period pieces, reading too many romance novels, and listening to sappy love songs. I could have told him that it was my job to make the reader feel those emotions, and he couldn’t judge my love for him by what I had written for entertainment. I could have told Xander that I burned for him.

But if I had said any of that, I would have been lying.

“You know,” he started as he zipped up the bag. “I just want to know who it is. Who is it that makes you feel like you can happily die ablaze? Who is this man that will have all of you?”

He looked at me, waiting for an answer, but I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t tell him about the boy I had sent away the year before I met him. Instead, I said, “I did the best I could. I am doing the best I can. You can’t really believe that I don’t love you or that I am purposely holding myself back from you.”

He sighed. He was disappointed and relieved that I did not answer his question directly. He slipped the strap of the bag onto his shoulder and came to me. His honey eyes peered into mine and he put his hand on my cheek.

“I don’t doubt that you love me, Tabitha,” he said gently. “I know you love me, and I love you, but stop lying to me and stop lying to yourself. I’m not who you really want or need and it is unfair to keep me here when you can’t give me one hundred percent, when someone else has your heart.”

He kissed me and I opened up for him, eager to put everything I had into that kiss, to try to convince him and myself that there was at least a kindling for him. We could make this work. We could be together. He didn’t have to leave, if only he would feel it in my kiss. But even to me, the kiss fell short. I could not sell him a story without any truth to it.

Xander sighed when he pulled away from me. He rested his head against mine and said, “I don’t know why it took me four years to realize that there was no heat in your kiss.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, because the least I could do was apologize. “I’m so sorry.”

He took a deep, fortifying breath, kissed my forehead and then walked out of the room. Moments later, the front door slammed shut and I was left in our house, alone.

“I don’t believe in a girl code. I believe in integrity.”

~Carin M., Utah, United States~