When You Come to Me (18 page)

“For what?”

“For that terrible fight we had earlier,” she said. “I was being childish, but I just wanted you to understand…”

“You call that a fight? I’ve had worse, trust me,” he admitted with a chuckle. “And you’re not ready, I completely understand that…well…not
completely
, but I respect your decision all the while…you just let me know when you are…I’ll wait for you…”

#

She wasn’t a huge fan of all of the secrecy that surrounded her that following week, at how they each laughed at her, secretly planning stuff right in front of her face. She’d inquire and they’d all deny it, as if they enjoyed seeing her squirm.

Under the circumstances, she kept her cool, pretended as if she didn’t care about her twentieth birthday at all. After all, she wasn’t necessarily accustomed to celebrating her birthday with candles and bright, billowy birthday cakes and balloons and clowns anyway. She wasn’t accustomed to receiving big gifts, and had gotten used to no one making a big deal about it. After all, could she or anyone else necessarily help it that her father, the elusive Raphael Alba Santos, decided to leave mere hours before sunrise on the day of her tenth birthday?

Could anyone necessarily blame her for not wanting to even think about another birthday following? The only person she’d told about this embarrassing history was Brandon, and he understood.

All that man left her was a note, telling her how sorry he was, wishing her a happy birthday, telling her that she’d always be his
querido
.

She left her lab in the early evening, in the middle of that week, and headed in the direction of the large soccer fields on East Campus, under warm October sunlight and crisp, breezy autumn air. The fields were shaded by fanning branches of oaks and reddened maple leaves, slightly overgrown, and she spotted him instantly, tall, with white shorts, three-stripe tube socks, an old soccer uniform from his high school days and a long, athletic frame, legs sprawling out, longing to kick the ball. If she admired nothing else about him, she would admire his physical appearance, his long legs, his high kicks, the way he grunted when he missed the ball, the determination, the hunger, the drive of competition flooding his eyes. She would admire how beautiful he looked, despite his sweatiness, and his tiredness, in his full masculine form. She would admire the fact that he was
hers
; him and that pretty body of his.

This is what he’d done all summer, when he wasn’t around her, helping her get situated in the bedroom in Asha’s apartment; ordering pizzas with Scotty; lounging around on her grandmother’s old sofa; watching television; eating all of her food and drinking all of her juice; or getting on her last nerve with his belching and stomach-scratching and yawning and breaking everything in his path with his oversized clumsiness. Yes, Brandon Greene was on that field, with his friends, joking and playing, kicking and grunting, hoping that he didn’t lose so he wouldn’t have to buy each guy on the opposing side beers at the pub downtown.

She quickly discovered the reason why Brandon Greene came to UGA: to play soccer. He said some strange, balding recruiter with the biggest southern accent he’d ever heard, had come up to New York to watch him play and had loved what he’d seen, and had offered him a full scholarship to play for the school. So, Brandon, whose initial plans were to go to Syracuse and study finance and marketing, where the rest of his friends from up north were going, packed up his things and headed south. He naturally experienced initial culture shock. He played for the team for a semester or two, then quit suddenly, without any sort of explanation. He lost his scholarship, of course, and his parents had to pay out-of-state tuition strictly out-of-pocket, which, he explained, they still aren’t very pleased with to this day.

Natalie wouldn’t dare tell him that she was glad that he stayed at UGA, or that he even came at all. She wouldn’t even attempt to imagine how dull her entire college experience would have been had it not been for him.

Aside from all the soccer playing, and the apartment invasions, they’d spent the summer beneath the trees, she, falling more in love with him than she ever could have imagined.

But she could never tell him so. She figured that if she divulged how she truly felt, like explaining why her heart did such crazy leaps or why she hated
not
being around him, it would all go away, her feelings, him included, and she would soon discover that it was all in her head.

She loved him, but wouldn’t tell him. Actually formulating her lips to express the words "I", "love" and "you" seemed even scarier than how he made her feel. The mere unspoken comfort and feeling of his proximity was enough for her. And he seemed to understand her hesitancy, as strange as it was.

He spotted her when they were done playing, and she approached him quietly. He placed his arm around her shoulder, breathing hard, drenched with sweat. When he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away, smiling, and said, “Don’t, you smell." This only prompted him to try again, harder, succeeding this time, pressing his lips hard against hers, making his friends jeer with delight.

She’d never met some of those boys before, and one of them, a short, stocky, blond one, wrapped a towel around his head, and said, “Now, this must be…uh…Tallie…”

Natalie nodded. “Yep, that’s right,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm.

The boy, as country as anyone she’d ever seen, did some old-fashioned bow, and said, “Jake…nice to meet you…”

He then patted Brandon on the back and said, “This boy talks about you all the time, ain’t that right, Brandon?”

Brandon looked embarrassed, but his friends loved it, as if they always got a kick out of getting under his skin.

She looked up at him. “Well, that’s good to hear.”

Brandon introduced her to the rest of his soccer pals, and they nodded in her direction, and when he was done packing up his things, he offered to give her a ride back to her apartment, she, who had taken the bus.

"Nah," she sighed. "I'd rather go back to your place..."

She loved sitting on the comfortable, plush brown couch in the living room, she loved how the hardwood floor creaked beneath her feet, she loved the fact that they had digital cable, she loved wrapping up in his grandmother’s patchwork quilt and falling asleep after reading a chapter on macromolecules and nucleic acids, while he worked on his dissertation of the falling economies in select third-world countries.

She loved that so many of her memories lied there and loved that he was there to experience them with her.

“So,” she began with a sigh, as they sat on his bed together.

He looked at her. “So…what?”

“You want to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“About my birthday…”

“Oh sure,” he said, reaching for a pillow to rest his arms on. “It’s on Saturday…”

“Good job,” she said. “But you know what I want.”

“Tallie, I’m not telling you,” he said. “Get over it…”

“Why won’t you? You tell me everything else…”

“Because if I tell you this, then all the mystery in our relationship will be gone,” he said jokingly.

“
Brandy
,” she whined, flopping on her back.

“Natalie, you can say my name like that all that you want to, but I’m still not telling,” he said. “And Scott and Asha better not have told you anything either…I’ve sworn them to secrecy…”

He extended his body and laid with her.

“We’re friends, we should never keep secrets from each other,” she said.

“Yes, we are,” he told her. “But stop being a baby and let me surprise you…”

“Will I even like it?”

“What do you mean ‘Will you like it’? Of course you will…I know you a little better than you think…”

“Okay, so I’ll like it,” she said with a sigh. “Will I
really
like it?”

“Natalie, I’m not about to do this with you…”

“Indulge me, please…”

“I refuse to…”

“Well, then get off this bed,” she said. “I refuse to lay with you…”

“That wouldn’t be the first time,” he joked, allowing her to shove him.

“Go take a shower,” she demanded, kicking him with her feet.

“Will you stop it? I was just about to go…”

“Good…”

“Are you comfortable being in here while I do that?”

“Probably not…”

“I thought so,” he said, rolling his eyes. “So, why don’t you go in the living room and wait till I get done?”

“Sounds like a good idea…”

She walked back into the living room, flicked on the television and heard Brandon start the shower in the next room.

They should go eat, shouldn’t they? She’ll pay this time, and she can do her homework over here. No, maybe it was best that she did it at her own apartment. Yes, that was a much better idea. She would be less distracted there. She would simply call Brandon before she went to bed.

Scotty joined them when he came home from working as the rush hour DJ on the school’s radio station. The three of them climbed into Scotty’s black Tahoe and headed to a sub place on the east side. And when they returned, they retired to the couch and she'd passed out in his lap after the third or fourth rerun of
Friends
took her under.

He gently shook her awake, and she knew almost instantly what the context of the conversation would be.

“I’ll drive you home in the morning,” he offered. “Just in time for your first class.”

No, no.
She should go home. And she hadn’t even started her reading. She stopped herself at thinking about how great it would feel to lie there next to him, fall asleep with the moonlight, and his soft breathing.

He looked disappointed when she refused him. But she was doing the right thing, in spite of feeling guilty for making him drive her back to her apartment, when he had to get up early for class the next day.

He pulled up in front of her complex and she sighed.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He only nodded, made some strange noise and looked out of his window.

She leaned over and kissed the side of his face, lingeringly, and whispered, “Will I see you tomorrow?”

He shrugged his shoulders, keeping his eyes focused ahead of him, and murmured, “I guess…”

He actions only made her feel worse, only made her want to drop her beliefs that instance and invite him to stay with her.

She got out of the car, shut the door behind her and hoped that he’d make the routine phone call before he went to sleep.

But he didn't call her. And she went to bed confused.

She didn’t see him the next day either. She only got a phone call from him sometime after lunch saying that he was way too busy and had some sort of test to study for. Of course, he’d never mentioned this test to her before, leaving her suspicious. But in her attempt to brush it off as her own stupidity, she called Asha when she got home from her classes, to see if she’d like to do something that night. After all, she didn’t have any classes on Friday and it would be the perfect opportunity for her to catch up with her friend.

“I can’t,” Asha sighed. “I have to stay in the library all night until I get this homework done…of course, I waited till the last minute to do it, and the shit just piled up on me…I’m sorry…”

She called Scotty to see if he wanted to catch the movie that he’d been dying to see, or at least see if he wanted to hang out with her at all, considering her two bests had ditched her suddenly.

“Sorry, babe, no can do,” he told her. “I have to work a double shift at the radio station tonight…I won’t get home till late.”

The poor girl went to bed that night feeling pitiful, and for what reason? Didn’t she like being alone? Of course she did. So, why then did it matter that none of her friends had any time for her? It was just one night. She could deal with one night. She would simply lay in her bed in her favorite pajamas and watch her favorite sitcom till she passed out. She wouldn’t even wait up for Brandon’s phone call. He’d been slacking lately and she’d give him a piece of her mind when she woke up the next morning. How dare he get upset over something so minuscule? She was sorry that she wasn’t more like Sophia Baldwin: loose and carefree and just as easy as her light, bouncy blond curls. Maybe, if he was so unsatisfied with the way they were progressing physically, he should think about going back to her. Then maybe, they could both have peace of mind, and Sophia with that porcelain skin and those angelic green eyes, could give him all the worldly pleasures that he could think of.

But no, she was being silly, wasn’t she? At this point, at least from what she could tell from her heart, she wasn’t even close to letting Brandon Greene stray away from her.

#

Brandon called the following morning. She was waiting for her moment to let all of her frustrations spew. But before she could get a word in, he said, “Pack a bag,” and hung up the phone.

And, without thinking, she began packing light. She loved the fact that it was almost mid-October, and the heat wave from one of the most memorable summers in her young life still lingered in the air. She wasn’t sure what she had ahead of her, or what Brandon had planned at all, but her heart pounded all the while, and even in the silence of her bedroom with no one looking, she tried to mask her excitement, tried to play it cool, running her mind around how she would treat Brandon once she saw him again. She showered, washed her hair, and put on her clothes with just minutes to spare before Brandon was calling again, ordering her to meet him in the parking lot. She took her small duffel, tossed it over her shoulder, grabbed her keys and was out the door. She felt her stomach fall, seeing Brandon standing in front of his car, still running, with a single red rose and a cheesy grin on his face.

She approached him, folding her arms and tapping her foot, the way her mother used to do with her father when he’d done something stupid.

If Brandon didn’t smell so nice then, she would have probably harmed him in some way. He shoved the rose at her, chuckled and said, “Happy Birthday, baby!”

She took it from him slowly, and sighed, knowing that telling her that doubled as an apology for his behavior for the past couple of days.