Brooke
Growing up, Christmas had always been my favorite time of the year. Everything about the season seemed so wondrous and magical. Every memory I had of the holidays was filled with love, laughter, and lots of fairy lights. To me, it was joyous and remained that way, even after the loss of my parents.
It’s funny how that can all change.
Now the thought of celebrating something I’d loved so much is the last thing on my mind, thanks to Brody. Instead, I’m spending Christmas Eve standing next to Hope as she lays down the bouquet of white roses that we bought to place on our parents’ graves.
We’d made the long journey back to Emmerton by car, arriving late last night. Lola had been overjoyed when I asked her if she minded if we stayed with her for a few days over the festive period. It turned out that her boyfriend was whisking her away for the week to some exotic beach somewhere but she had no one to look after her cat. She was grateful when I offered to house-sit for her.
Staying at Lola’s meant that Hope and I could keep a low profile. No one needed to know that we were here unless we wanted them to. Hope suggested that we drive to the next town over any time we needed supplies to limit the chance of meeting someone who would recognize us. It was kind of weird stepping out on to Lola’s porch this morning and seeing my old house next door. I wondered if Brody still lived there or if he’d moved in with Joely.
Our shopping expedition was non-eventful. We didn’t see anyone that we knew, and that was fine by me. I didn’t want the town gossip grapevine to go into meltdown over the fact that the Elderhouse sisters were back in Emmerton. I especially didn’t want my ex-fiancé or his parents to know we were here. I couldn’t cope with seeing any of them. Not today.
The snow falls lightly around us as Hope pushes up from her kneeling position, taking my hand in hers and wiping away her tears with her other one. We stand in companionable silence, gazing at the writing on their joint headstone.
HERE LIES ELIZABETH AND JASON ELDERHOUSE.
BELOVED PARENTS OF BROOKE AND HOPE.
Orphans.
Brooke and Hope Elderhouse, the orphans that no one wants.
“You okay?” Hope asks me.
“No.”
“Me either.” I give her hand a squeeze. “Someone has been looking after Mom and Dad. They put fresh flowers down and cleared away the weeds,” she says, nodding toward the bouquet of pink lilies that had been on the graves when we got here.
Mom’s favorite.
“Judy,” I say with a smile. I guess Brody’s mom has been looking after Mom and Dad in our absence. I’m glad someone did.
“Do you want to stay a little longer?”
“No.”
The snow falls heavier as we make our way back to the SUV. I take one last look back to where our parents rest and mentally say goodbye until the next time we come up here.
We drive back to Lola’s in silence. The snow now so bad that I can barely see the road ahead of us. Thank God we don’t have far to go.
Hope and I both sigh with relief as we make the final turn on to Maple Street and pull into the drive. Snow crunches underfoot as we make our way in to the comfortable little house that Lola calls home. I pause briefly to look at my old house. I can just make out twinkling lights from a Christmas tree in the window, apart from that, there seems to be no other decorations. Not like when Brody and I lived there, when every conceivable space was filled with Christmas related things and you could see our small abode from space.
A stray tear rolls down my cheek as I think of all the good times we had in the home that I’d loved so much, until Brody had ruined it for me. To me it was my forever home—the place where Brody would carry me over the threshold on our first day as a married couple, where we would excitedly wait for the pregnancy test to show two pink lines, where I would pace up and down the hallway with my baby while Brody made up a bottle. I hate that some of my last memories of the place will forever be tainted by the sounds of Brody having sex with another woman.
Today should have been so different. Today, I should be celebrating my marriage, surrounded by the people I love. In a couple of hours’ time, Brody and I would have taken our vows and began spending the rest of our lives together. I would have visited the cemetery with a couple of glasses of champagne and raised a toast to my parents with Brody by my side.
Today should have been a happy day—I doubt it ever will be happy again.
The curtain of my old house twitches and I can see someone in the window looking at me. I walk as fast as I can toward the warmth and safety of Lola’s. Just as I reach the door handle, I hear someone call my name.
“Brooke?”
Shit.
“Brooke. Is that you?”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Brooke?”
Why? Today of all days, why?
“Baby?”
I’m tempted to pretend that I didn’t hear him, just slam the door behind me and hide in Lola’s, but the fact that the asshole has the nerve to call me baby makes my blood boil. I curse myself because I never asked Lola whether he still lived next door, because I didn’t want to hear about his awesome new life without me.
“What do you want, Brody?” I snap, my hand paused on the handle in readiness to flee. I can’t look at him. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see how happy he is.
“I…I…” He clears his throat. “I thought I was seeing things. I can’t believe you’re back.”
“Well, I am, and now you’ve seen me.”
“Brooke, please look at me.” He sounds closer now, the creak of the porch step tells me that he’s feet away from me.
“Don’t come any further, Brody,” I say, briefly leaning my head against the cold door.
“I won’t…I promise.” I just know that his hands are held up in surrender. “But do me a favor and turn around?”
“Why?”
“I want to see you,” he whispers.
“Well, I don’t want to see you.” I snort.
“Please, Brooke,” he begs.
“Why the hell should I?”
“I’ve missed you.”
Is it possible to love and hate someone in equal measure? Because that’s how I feel right now. I’m done with this crap. Maybe I can persuade Hope to leave tonight. I can’t stay here. Not if I know that he’s next door.
“That’s really great,” I say through gritted teeth as I open the door. “Have a nice life, Brody.”
“No, wait,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder.
My plan to slap him across the face falls flat when I slip on the ice covered wooden porch as I spin around to face him. Instead of delivering him a stinging reproach, I end up in his arms, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne. His arms tighten around me and my heartbeat speeds up as he holds me still. I allow myself to bathe in the familiarity of his touch, pretending for a moment that the past year didn’t happened and we are still together. The spell that I’d been under is broken when he places a gentle kiss to the top of my head.
“What the hell, Brody?” He looks surprised as I push him away.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, reluctantly letting me go, and I immediately miss his warmth. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He steps back into the shadows so that I can’t quite see his face.
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I just forget, you know?”
“No, Brody, I don’t.”
He doesn’t answer, just stares at me from a safe distance. It could be seconds, it could be minutes, or it could be hours before he speaks again.
“You look good, Bab…rooke.” There’s a sadness to his voice.
“I’d say the same but I can’t see your face.”
He steps forward cautiously, as though he’s approaching a wild animal, not the woman he had claimed to love for most of his life. I now realize, as he walks toward me, that he’s only wearing a towel around his waist. His feet are bare, his ink black hair is tipped with frost and plastered against his head.
“Did you just get out of the shower?”
“Yeah,” he says with a shy smile. “I saw it was you and ran straight out here.”
“Why the hell would you do that? You’ll catch your death out here.”
“Getting the chance to talk to you seemed more important than my dick falling off because of frostbite.” I struggle not to laugh at his confession. “You never returned my calls,” he says suddenly, chasing away any warm thoughts I’d had toward him in an instant.
“I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Then you blocked my number.”
“Because I didn’t want to talk to you,” I hiss. “And news flash, I still don’t.” I back up toward the door, groping behind me for the handle.
“But I want to-to ta-talk to you, Brooke.” His teeth chatter. Even in the dim light I can see that he’s turning blue.
“We have nothing left to say to each other, Brody. You made it perfectly clear that you moved on, I get it, okay. Please don’t keep rubbing my nose in how much you’re enjoying your life without me. Now please, for the love of God, go inside and put—”
“I’m not,” he says, interrupting me.
“Not what?”
“Not doing so…so good without you. I miss you, Brooke. I-I love you.”
“Brody.” I sigh, surprised that I haven’t broken down in a weeping mess. “You made the choice to end us. Not me. You were bored and wanted to explore. I didn’t. I was happy.”
“I was happy, too.”
“No, you weren’t, Brody. Don’t lie to yourself. Now do me a favor, and go back inside to your girlfriend and get some clothes on.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Just go back inside and have a nice life.”
“I ca-can’t without you in it.”
“Brody…”
“Just give me ten minutes, okay? Ten minutes to-to say what I ha-have to say, and then if you never want to hear from me again, you won’t, I promise. I’ll st-stop stalking you.” He grins. “I’ll even make us some hot chocolate.”
“Will you put some clothes on?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Well in that case…” I turn and grab the door handle.
“Do you want to be responsible for my death?”
“Meh,” I say as I fling the door open.
“Brooke?” Hope walks into the hallway with a steaming mug of cocoa in her hands. “What’s taking you so…oh, hey, Brody,” she says sweetly.
Traitor. She’s supposed to hiss at him or something, not be all “oh hiiiiiii, Brody.”
“Hey, Hope.” Brody raises his hand in greeting to my traitorous sister.
“Are you naked?”
“I have a towel.”
“Why are you on the porch in a towel in the freezing cold?”
“He was just leaving. Weren’t you, Brody?” I chime in.
“I want to-to talk to your sis-sister,” Brody answers, completely ignoring me.
“Well, you could talk in here. I can make myself scarce,” my traitor sister singsongs. I’m beginning to wonder whose side she’s on.
“That’s real nice of you, Hope, but I-I kinda want to put some clothes on.” He flashes her an apologetic grin as he steps into the light. I can’t stop my eyes from raking over his body. He was muscular before we split, but holy mother of God, he has a V...When the hell did he get that? An eight pack and a V. Jesus Christ. Is that a new tattoo? It looks like it begins with a B…
“Ahem.”
A subtle cough pulls me from my not so subtle ogling of Brody’s body.
“Maybe you should follow him next door,” Hope says, nodding her head toward Brody, a sly smile plastered over her face. “You might get some closure that way.”
“I might get pregnant that way,” I utter as I watch Brody head down the porch steps.
“Just go, Brooke. See what he has to say. Then you can move on.”
“What if I don’t want to hear it?”
“What if you do?” She smiles sadly and pushes me outside, slamming the door behind me, leaving me alone on the freezing porch, contemplating sororicide.
“Brooke? You coming?” Brody calls from the door of our old house. Reluctantly, I leave the safety of Lola’s and make my way across to Brody’s, closing the door behind me as I dust snow off of my shoulders.
I let out a slight gasp as I take in the place that I used to call home. Nothing has changed…literally nothing. It’s slightly messier, there are dirty cups and empty pizza boxes on the floor, but apart from that, everything is how I left it when I walked out all those months ago. The photos that I had taken from the frames and destroyed have been replaced with other pictures of us. My vintage flea market throw that Brody despised is still where I left it, draped over the back of the couch.
“I burned the old bed.”
“Huh?” I look up to see a fully dressed Brody leaning up against the doorway to the kitchen. His gray eyes regard me with tenderness.
“I got rid of the bed in the guest room. Burned it.”
“And I’d care because?”
“I didn’t want there to be a constant reminder of what happened in our home.”
“Your home, Brody. Not mine.” He closes his eyes, and tilts his head up to the ceiling.
“It could be yours again,” he says quietly as he refocuses his gaze on me. “If you want.”
“Brody…”
“I miss you, Brooke. I miss you so damn much.” He pushes off the wall and walks toward me. “Just give me a chance to explain...to say what I should have said in the first place, instead of acting like the asshat that I did.”
“We have nothing to say to each other, Brody.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. We have plenty to say.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Do you remember when we were kids and we used to tell each other stories in your treehouse?” he asks, taking my hands in his. “Do you remember the story you used to tell me about when we grew up? How we’d get married and have kids. A boy and a girl that looked like the mini versions of us? That no matter what happened, we would always find our way back to each other.”
“We were kids, Brody.”
“We were kids who grew up and fell in love.”
“And then you got cold feet and broke my heart.”
“I’m…”
“It was always special to me, you know?”
He strokes his thumbs over mine; his touch is distracting, making my treacherous heart beat a mile a minute. “What was?”
“The fact that you were mine. Only mine. That we’d only ever slept with each other. That was special to me…you know?” My voice wobbles as tears threaten to fall. “But then you took what meant so much to me away and I had to listen to it…” I pull my hands out of his and walk to the other side of the room, as far away from him as I can get in the small confines of the living room.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, his eyes are red-rimmed with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry. I wish…I wish it had never happened.”
“But it did.”
“I know, and I’ll regret it until the end of my life.”
“You have no idea what it’s like to listen to the person you love have sex with someone else.” I snap. “No idea at all…how much it broke me.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did! You hurt me more than anyone ever has. You were the one person who should have protected me.”
“Brooke…”
“I just don’t understand why, Brody.”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it because you were bored?”
“No.”
“Because you hated me?”
“I could never hate you.”
“Then please explain to me why you did what you did, because I don’t have a clue.” I throw my hands up in the air in frustration. “You wanted to talk to me, Brody. This is your chance. I want…no, I deserve closure, and then I can move on.”
“I don’t want you to move on,” he growls.
“So you get to have your fun and I don’t. Is that it?”
“What? No!”
“Then why can’t I move on?”
“Because I still love you, Brooke. I still want that happy ending.”
“And I want closure.”
“I can’t give you that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you’ll walk away and never look back.”
“That’s more than you deserve.”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” he says sadly, his gun metal eyes meeting mine. “But I don’t want it to be.”
“Our story is over, Brody. The end.”
“Our story will never end, Brooke.”
“It ended the moment you told me you wanted out.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“What happened?” I goad. “She didn’t want you?”
“No.”
“So where is she?”
“How the hell should I know?” He huffs. “I haven’t seen her since the party and,” he says quickly before I can interrupt him, “before you say anything, I only slept with her the once. It was a one night thing only. I haven’t been with anyone else since.”
“You want a medal?”
“I was a fool, Brooke,” he continues. “When I saw you the morning after…your face. That you’d overheard us…I wanted to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness, beg you to take me back, but my damn pride got in the way. Then I had that damn trade show…I was going to talk to you when I got back, but you were gone.”
“Do you blame me?”
“No.”
We warily watch each other from opposite sides of the room, neither of us not really knowing what to say to the familiar stranger. It’s me that breaks first.
“Still doesn’t tell me why, Brody.”
“I keep asking myself over and over why I broke up with you in the first place.”
“And?”
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.” He shrugs.
“Fuck you, asshole,” I say as I head for the door.
“Brooke, wait! Please just…let me…”
I sigh as I turn to face him again, and cross my arms in a pathetic attempt to form some sort of barrier between us. Being this close to him stirs up all kinds of feelings in me that I thought I’d buried. I don’t know if it’s because of the familiarity and comfort of being in his presence, or his cologne, or if it’s the lingering feelings for him that I have. Who am I kidding? I still love the man standing in front of me. I’ve loved him for most of my life, and those feelings aren’t just going to disappear, no matter how hard I try.
Maybe if I hear him out, listen to what he has to say, then perhaps I can get some closure. I’ll look back at our relationship fondly, well maybe not fondly. If I close the chapter now, then I won’t forever be wondering what if.
“You have fifteen minutes and that’s it.”
“I uh…I.”
“Clock’s ticking. Fifteen minutes, Brody, then I walk out the door and you’ll never see me again. Understand?”
He nods his head in agreement and beckons me to follow him to the couch. Confusion forms on his face at my hesitation to sit down.
“I hope you scrubbed this with bleach.”
His eyes widen as he realizes the reason for my reluctance.
“I didn’t…we didn’t…Jesus, Brooke.” He scrubs his hands over his face. “I didn’t fuck Joely on the couch. I swear.” He holds out his hand to me. “I swear.”
I ignore his outstretched hand, making sure to sit as far away from him on the couch as I can. I can’t trust myself around him.
“So talk, Brody.”
He lowers his head for a moment. When he looks at me again, his eyes are awash with emotion. Love. Remorse. Regret. So much regret.
“I fucked up, Brooke,” he says without preamble. “I fucked up real bad.”
I don’t answer, choosing to look at my nails, the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but at him. I don’t want him to see the tears that are forming in my eyes.
“I thought I was missing out, when I had what I wanted in front of me the whole time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were pulling away from me. You’ve always been so independent, but those last few months, it was like you didn’t need me anymore. I thought you didn’t want me,” he says sadly.
“I did want you. I loved you, Brody. I needed you.”
“I saw…I saw other guys with a different girl each week and I got…” He sighs. “I didn’t know what that was like. I thought you didn’t want me anymore. It had only been us…I wanted to know what it was like with someone else.” He pulls me back down as I start to stand, encompassing me in his strong arms.
“Let me go!” I snarl, struggling against him.
“Not until I finish.”
“I get it, Brody. I get it. You don’t have to tell me anything else. Just let me go so I can get on with my life.”
“For the love of God, will you let me finish.” He growls into my ear, holding me tightly against him. To stop my struggling, he places light kisses against my hair until I finally run out of fight. “It wasn’t worth it,” he continues. “It wasn’t worth it at all. I wish I could take it back, Brooke. I thought you’d be happier. You’d find someone who was worthy of you. Not me. I’ve never deserved you, Brooke. You’re smart, beautiful, and you deserve someone better than a deadbeat with no ambition in his life beyond building stuff.”
“But you went on dates with her.” I sob against his shoulder. “You had feelings for her. I had to listen to you…”
“I’m so sorry, Brooke. No one can replace you, no one. It was a lie, all of it.” His voice breaks, and I feel the first tear fall onto my face.
“I only ever wanted you, Brody. No one else, just you.”
“You have me, Brooke. We can start over—”
“It’s too late.”
“No, baby.”
“I’m seeing someone.” His body stiffens around me as I make my confession. “I like him, Brody. I like him a lot.” It’s all a lie, of course, I’m not seeing anyone; but I’ll admit that I sound convincing, even to my own ears.
“Have you fucked him?” he asks angrily.
“Of all the things…” I shout, pushing him away from me. “Yes, I have. Not that it’s your business. We have wild monkey sex. Every. Single. Night.” Oh, I’m angry now, and my words hit their intended target. Brody’s face is a picture of agony.
“Broo—” He tries to interrupt.
“You ended us, Brody. Not me. What was I supposed to do why you were exploring what you’d missed out on, huh? Sit there and pine for you? Is that it? Lie in bed at night, sobbing, while you got Joely out of your fucking system? It doesn’t work like that. You and I are over. It doesn’t mean I have to become a nun until you decide that you’ve had your fun and want me back.” Brody sits stunned on the couch as I head to the front door. “This was a mistake, in fact, you and I were a mistake, full stop. Goodbye, Brody.” I bite out as I fling the door wide open and stomp through the snow toward Lola’s without looking back. The sad part of the whole debacle is that if Brody had just left it and hadn’t interrupted me when he did, then I would have told him that I like Jake a lot, as a friend, nothing more.
Asshole.