When You Come to Me (31 page)

“I guess in the beginning I started dating Anthony out of spite,” she replied earnestly. “I wanted to forget about you in the quickest, easiest, painless way and Anthony presented me with that opportunity. I wanted to leave him as soon as I felt better, as soon I stopped loving you. But then we connected in a way that I didn’t expect, as if I was meant to give him a chance. He treated me like a princess, and in all aspects he seemed so right for me. We both seemed to be heading steadfast in the right direction and that always appealed to me. He reminds me of home. And I’ll never be able to break that connection to him.”

Brandon didn’t readily respond, as if he were soaking in every word she spoke to him. She could see him staring downward out of the corner of her eye.

“So I guess, in a way,” she continued. “I was able to move on without you…and that was very hard for me to do…”

She knew that she sounded robotic and icy, but she couldn’t think of a better way to get her point across. She then desperately attempted to not get swept away by her surroundings; but it was only a matter of time before she gave up the fight out of weakness…or something else.

She could sense a peculiar type of tension that stirred inside of Brandon at the peak of their collective silence, but she couldn’t remedy the sensation. And then he got to his feet as she urgently searched for a resolution. He travelled down a shallow slope slowly with his hands clamped to his head, staring skyward. She followed suit.

She approached him from behind and wriggled her arms around his waist, clamping her hands together on the other side. She settled her face against his back, and felt his every inhale and exhale.

“You go to college totally uncertain of who you are and where you’re going,” he began quietly. “And then there’s those few people you meet who change your life in the process…they can either be toxic or beneficial…but it’s only after some time and maturity that you realize their significance, the relativity…”

She squeezed him tighter.

“I may have made some mistakes, Tallie, but none of them included loving you with all that I had inside of me…I can rest each night confident in the idea that I’d never stopped loving you, that I’d never stopped thinking about you…you were always different from the rest…you were always far more special…and…and…I genuinely felt something real for you…and whether or not you believe that is up to you…”

She chuckled vacantly. “I always believed that, Brandy…that wasn’t the point…”

He then turned to her. “Then tell me what it was…”

“I can’t,” she replied sincerely. “This isn’t right, Brandon…”

“Everything is right about this, Tallie,” he retorted. “That’s what you can’t understand. Everything about us is right…you just have to believe in us, baby…you just have to believe that we can make it work again…”

She heard his voice splinter and it melted her.

“You’re everything that I want out of life…I can’t…I don’t make any fucking sense without you…you have to understand, Natalie…you have to…you have to…”

She shuddered as his eyes’ scrutiny filled her internal vacancy. And she dizzily watched his hair move against the breeze. She didn’t want to admit that a certain portion of her had always feared him, and she couldn’t determine if it was reverence or something far more sinister. She took a deep breath before him, and allowed him to tuck a flying strand of her black hair behind her ear. She knew that her susceptibility was exposed, but she prayed that he didn’t take advantage of it. She prayed that he only cradled it…

She tried to stop the tear, but it came anyway, and it slid down her cheek unreservedly for him to see plainly. And she released her rigid breath and attempted to back away demurely. But he caught her promptly with one arm and wrangled her into him again. He moved close to her face with his own, and she brushed the tip of her nose against his, as his protracted gaze lulled her into a stupor. She smelled his nearness, and the tepid warmth from his parted lips attracted her eyes to the vicinity much longer than she wanted it to.

And she pushed her lips into his slowly as her fingers dawdled along his jaw, following the curve of his ear, and the wave of his lengthy ebony hair.

And in seconds the kiss was over, and she moved away from him, back toward the blanket, sitting down once more. She cradled her knees in her arms’ embrace and rocked back and forth with perplexity slathered across her face.

He sat down next to her.

“I don’t do this,” she told him, her eyes forced before her.

“I know this,” he replied confidently.

Then she looked at him. “Then why do you have to make this hard for me?”

“I’m not trying to, Natalie,” he told her. “I know you feel everything that I’m feeling…”

“You don’t understand,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’m trying not to have these feelings…I’m trying to say goodbye to you…”

“You don’t have to say goodbye,” he replied. “We can give this another chance…”

“You’re diluted,” she snapped. “You’re diluted if you think I can just waltz back into my life and pretend as if nothing’s happened…”

He sighed regressively. “I just want you to look at me the same way you did back then, Tallie…before all of this happened…”

She shook her head defiantly. “I can’t, Brandon…I can’t…I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at you the same way…too much has happened between us now…”

He didn’t respond. She fought back the tears.

“Tell me one thing…”

He glanced in her direction, waiting for her to continue.

“Why did you go back to her?” she muttered. “Was she worth it? Huh? Was she better than me? Did she kiss better than me? Was her touch better than mine? You don’t know how many nights I stayed up after I left Clearwater, thinking of the ways that you touched her, wondering if you still loved her the same way you did back then, wondering if she was it for you. If she was the real reason why you left me…I was so hurt, and so angry, and so confused…you’re a selfish, selfish bastard…and I’m hate it…and I hate you…I really do…I hate…”

He didn’t let her finish. He grabbed her face in his hands and he kissed her again, but she didn’t stop him. They only lay down on the blanket together like two jaded puppies after a long day of playing in the backyard. He moved his body close to hers and flashes of what their relationship used to be fluttered before her eyes making her grow dizzy. She tried to block them out. She wanted the sensation of Brandon’s nearness to mount anything else that mantled her internally and externally.

He rolled her on her back, and the nerves she should have felt were absent. She never felt more isolated than she did at that moment. She realized that she and her Brandon had entered Fantasy Land, and she didn’t want the carousel to ever stop. He loomed over her, temporarily blocking the sunlight, and she released a deep breath. And as he settled himself between her thighs, she grabbed a hold of his neck and she started to cry soft sobs into the collar of his shirt. He steered clear of asking her what was wrong because maybe he already knew.

Maybe she’d finally throw herself off of the constantly rotating carousel. Maybe she’d grow sick of the dizziness, of the annoying, perilously persistent revolving door. But she liked the way it felt; she liked being near Brandon.

#

She ordered him to take her home. Did he not know that this was goodbye?

Could he not understand she no longer had the desire to speak to him anymore? They were done, finished, no more!

Inside, her heart was breaking, on the outside, her face was still wet from the tears…could he not understand that this was the hardest thing she ever had to do?

No, because he was Brandon Greene, because he could not understand anything through that thick head of his.

She exited the car without saying a word, only left him a single tear, and slammed the car door behind her.

#

He’d never seen twilight before. He’d never taken notice of its enchantment, of its peace, of its silence, of how much it reminded him of Natalie.

He held a beer bottle between his fingers. It had been his seventh in an hour and he felt the sobriety exit his body slowly as his eyes grew cloudy, his mind starting to flourish.

He saw the warmth of the light, felt the haze of the breeze, and he attempted then, in the silence of the evening by the small pond that had become home, to imagine a life without Natalie.

What would change exactly? Hell, he did it for a year, didn’t he? How quickly he was to forget that
he
was the one to leave her, leave them, eliminate any possible future.

What a strange thought of him, of a girl who, only a couple of years prior, would stick her long, brown feet in his face, would tickle him like a child, would tease him about his nail biting or the way his eyes got really big when he got angry, who, in her sweet way, wanted nothing more of him than a friend, a real one, solid support, a rock, a hero.

What was he now?

Where was his principle, his meaning, his word? Had he lost all of that when, in a brief moment of fright and stupidity, he ran away from her and all of his responsibilities?

He reached into his pocket, retrieved his phone, and dialed, slowly, hesitantly. The three droning rings made his head pulsate. And when he parted his lips with the angry words he'd formulated in his head, no sound came out. He was only able to breathe her name once before he clumsily closed his phone again and vehemently tossed is aside.

SHE THOUGHT ABOUT CALLING HIM FOR HIS BIRTHDAY.

Twenty-six.

A quick hello, a little small talk and she’d just say it.

“Happy Birthday, Brandy…I hope that you have fun…I hope that you have a nice life…”

Then she reminded herself that just a few months prior, she was crying, endlessly it seemed, over something that had been over for a year.

Calling him would prompt problems, wouldn’t it?

Yes, yes. The wounds were still fresh. Her mind helplessly traced back to the willow tree and the ring and the look in Brandon’s eyes almost six months prior, and how something in her mind knew that she couldn’t do it, that she could never be with Brandon Greene again.

Her friends and family alike thought she’d lost it when she cut her hair towards the end of summer. It now hung just below her chin, in a neat, little bob of loose ringlets. She didn't mind the new look much...the transmutation was freeing.

Old, stuck-in-her-ways Nat was gone.

She’d made the decision to go to Duke Medical School, finally, after toiling with it for so long. It was hard to ignore a school that offered her the most money, that was still located in the south. At such a point in time, she couldn't imagine the thought of living somewhere else and being just as satisfied with life.

She came home to her apartment that afternoon; the interior bathed in faded sunlight, quiet, and expelled a deep sigh of relief. Anthony was on his way over to pick her up for dinner and a movie. She knew that as soon as he told him the good news that he’d want to celebrate.

He was there a little after six, dressed professionally, kissing her cheek as soon as he saw her.

“How was your day?” he asked politely, grazing her bare arm with the back of his hand.

She smiled, nodded slowly in his direction and said, “Nice."

“I didn’t see you at the hospital today,” he remarked, removing his grey blazer, revealing a sweaty blue shirt underneath. “Where were you?”

“I shadowed a doctor today,” she lied.

In reality, she was locked in the storage closet for an hour, holding her cell phone before her, wanting to call him…wanting
so
badly to call him…wish him happy birthday.

It was the first time in months that she’d thought about him, truly so, about his face, randomly recalling a small period in their stint together, that they rented a scary movie, sat on his couch in the house on Trent road, and she’d never been more scared. In the first moment that she jumped at a frightening part, Brandon reacted immediately, calmed her, chuckled under his breath, and wrapped his arms around her, while she covered her face, peeking through her boney fingers.

“Brandon, tell me when it’s over…”

“Nat, just watch the damn movie...”

“I can’t…why does her face look like that?”

He laughs and squeezes her tighter. “You loser, watch the damn movie.”

“You mean to tell me, that that doesn’t scare you?”

“I don’t scare easily…”

She couldn’t remember a time where she felt safe around Ant. Not the kind of “safe” she felt around Brandon. She'd previously appreciated the type of comfort in knowing that he would never let anything bad happen to her.

When she attempted to dial his number a third time, in the dark, smelly closet, she randomly recalled a time where they were in the ocean, and her fear of water had gotten the best of her. The waves just kept rolling in, each one overwhelming her. In seconds it seemed, Brandon was near her, arms lifting her up, above the waves, her fingers pressed into his back, lips against his shoulder blade, smelling him, hearing him say,
“Stop all your crying…I’m here, girl…it’s just water…”

In her final, unsuccessful attempt of the phone call, she recalled a time when they went to Atlanta, went exploring in Buckhead at twilight on a warm day. All the windows in the green Explorer were rolled down, the lights of the city alive, the trees green, his music, of the alternative, acoustic nature blaring. They laughed together and she commented on the atrocity of his driving. Her hand was atop his on the handbrake. She relished in the small moments of being in his car, watching him drive.

How could he leave her like that?

“Which doctor?” Anthony asked, clearing his throat.

“What?”

“Which doctor, Natalie?”

“Dr. Benson.”

“But he’s not a pediatrician.”

“He’s not what?”

“He’s not a—are you feeling okay?”

“Yes,” she smiled superficially. “I’m going to Duke.”

“You are?” Anthony smiled that amazing smile. “That’s excellent news, girl. Where do you want to go? Dinner’s on me…”

But before she could answer, Asha entered the apartment, tossing her keys on the kitchen counter.