Bram
Six Weeks Later
“You know, I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I am.”
I hear Taylor’s voice from across the table but I’m not really listening. There’s a song playing in this San Bernardino strip-mall café, the volume too low and it’s bugging me that I can recognize the beat but I can’t hear the lyrics.
“Bram,” she says softly and finally I look at her.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry about the way things happened with Nicola,” she says and that name feels like a fist in my heart. “I shouldn’t have shown up at your door like that. I didn’t think that…”
“You didn’t think that I’d have anyone meaningful in my life,” I finish absently. I twirl the watch around my wrist and give a melancholy shrug. “I don’t blame you. And please, there’s no need for you to be sorry. I’m sure I had it coming. Karma has a sharp eye, you know.”
She nods. “I know. But it’s been so many years and…I really didn’t have the right to show up like I did.”
I sigh. She says this but I know she thinks its justified and she’s probably right. When someone has been wronged– when someone else has fucked up so much that their debt will never end – there’s really nothing they can do that’s ever uncalled for, ever too much.
I don’t blame Taylor whatsoever. She was watching the news and suddenly there I was, the baby daddy she tried so hard to forget. She doesn’t tell me this, but I bet she wanted to throw rocks at her TV, perhaps burn it. She at least screamed and cursed it, I know that.
Then motherly instinct took over and she piled Matthew into the car and drove up to San Francisco to see the man she tried to pretend never existed.
I know she only came for the money, though she tells me that wasn’t the case. She said it was about seeing me through new eyes. I was successful and ambitious and, more than that, I was virtuous now. I was the opposite of the man she hated. I had proven that I could get my life on track and actually make a difference in other people’s lives, not just my own.
And maybe that’s true. But at the moment, I’m not making that much difference. I still have the same tenants in my building, the same ones who can’t afford to live anywhere else, the ones that need me. I’ve got all but two…the most important ones.
Nicola moved out the next day, true to her word. I tried to stop her. I tried everything. She wouldn’t have any of it. I’d never seen her so headstrong, so vicious, and I know I deserved it but it hurt more than anything else. She was protecting Ava more than she was protecting herself and when I caught a glimpse of that little girl crying in the halls, well…I lost it that day.
I lost plenty that day.
And the loss is still with me. It’s building, not easing. Every morning, I wake up to an empty bed and it’s like another fucking black brick is cemented into my chest. Nicola has absolutely no idea what she meant to me – what she still means to me – and what hurts the most is that she’ll never see my pain.
I need her to see it, to feel it, to know it.
I’ve lost the magic in my life.
“You’re a good man, Bram,” Taylor says.
I let out a dry laugh and raise my brow at her. “Are you sure there isn’t a splash of booze in your coffee?”
She gives me a quick smile. “You’re a good man now. And maybe you were back then, deep down. I certainly thought so. You know I was madly in love with you, Bram. Madly. That’s why it hurt so much.”
I nod. “As I said. Karma.” I pause. “I loved you too, you know.”
She shakes her head. “No. That wasn’t love Bram. You don’t…do things like that to someone you love. I have no doubt you felt what you thought was love, but when you have love, you don’t throw it away. You don’t give up on it. You don’t run, even when it scares you. And if you do, then it wasn’t love.”
I chew on my lip for a moment. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“It is that simple. Human beings are complicated. Love is simple.”
“Well,” I say, having a hard time arguing with that. I sip my tea, which is growing cold. “Whatever it was that I felt for you, I thought it was love. And I believed it was for the longest time.”
“Until you met her.”
I meet her eyes but I can’t hide the wince. “Yeah. Until her.”
“So now you know. What you had for me and what you have for her, they aren’t the same.”
I can’t help but notice her use of the present tense.
She gives me a knowing smile. “No use in pretending you’re not still madly in love with her, Bram.”
“Well,” I start, not sure if I should tell her that I didn’t even know I had been in love with Nicola until now.
But she’s right.
Because all along, I was in love with her. It was too simple to know. I was expecting something more drawn-out and complicated than it already was. When really, she had my heart for a while.
Just that realization on its own is enough to knock me off my chair.
And to think, when she told me she loved me, I could have told her in return. I could have said anything at all instead of what I did. I didn’t have to already break her heart before I broke it again.
“Listen,” Taylor says to me. “When I saw you on the news, I didn’t go up there to mess up your life. I didn’t want you to tell me you still loved me, because I know we have both moved on. And you’ve been more than gracious to put the two of us up for this last month. It all couldn’t have been better timing, with me being between jobs and Matthew really needing a father figure right now. All I wanted from you was for him to know you and for you to know him and so far, that’s what he’s gotten. He now knows the man behind the socks.” She smiles to herself and twirls the coffee cup around in her hands. “The last thing I want is to ruin what you had. If you love her still, you need to go after her. You need to tell her and you need to fight for her.”
I swallow misery down my throat. “It’s a bit too late for that.”
She blinks at me surprised. “It’s never too late,” she says adamantly. “What did I just say about love? It’s simple. It doesn’t just go away. If she was in love with you before, and judging by the heartache on that poor girl’s face, she was in deep, then she’s still in love with you now. Believe me, please, I’ve been there. Anger doesn’t erase love. Pain doesn’t erase love. Crying doesn’t erase love. Only time does. Lots and lots and lots of time.” She flicks her finger at me. “And take it from me, time has barely moved on for the both of you. It’s been just over a month. She’s going to love you for a lot longer than that. I hate to admit this, but until three years ago, if you had showed up at my door again with one more attempt to win me over, it would have worked.”
“And our lives would be completely different,” I note, leaning back in my chair. The volume of the song goes up and I recognize Garbage’s “The Trick is to Keep Breathing,” and I think Shirley Manson’s right about a lot of things.
“Different, yes,” Taylor says. “But you know what, I don’t regret a thing.”
I look at her sharply. “What was that?”
“I said I don’t regret it. I don’t believe in regrets anyway. It’s no way to go through life. Whatever happens, happens and it shapes us all to the here and now, where we are supposed to be.”
Nicola’s motto. It’s all too much.
Taylor reaches over and touches my hand. “We were never supposed to be together, Bram. And Matthew wasn’t supposed to know his father until now. Because we’ve been okay, him and I. We’re a team. Because of you, the checks, he’s never wanted for everything. And it’s made me stronger. It’s made me realize what I want. Sure, no one asks to be a single mom but it’s not the end of the world either. It’s just life. You deal with it and keep moving.”
“And love?”
She gives me a coquettish smile. “There is a man you know. Irving. He’s in the military so I don’t see him that often and we’re only really friends anyway. But he’s fond of Matthew and Matthew is fond of him. And I know it’s love. Small love on its way to big love. I just haven’t found the nerve to tell him yet. But I will, the moment he gets back.”
I manage a smile. “That’s great. Good to hear.”
She does a little dance in her seat and the way she blushes reminds me of Nicola. “So you see, there’s hope for me. And there’s a lot of hope for you, Bram.”
I suck in her words like oxygen. Hope has seemed like a very dangerous word lately.
“Well,” she says, pushing back her coffee. “I should get going back to the house.”
I know this is goodbye for now. After Taylor and Matthew arrived on my doorstep, I made sure they were able to stay in the city for as long as they wanted. Then a week ago, they went back down to San Bernardino and I went along for the ride to see where Matthew lives, to be more involved.
I’ve been staying at a local hotel but now it’s time for me to fly back into SF. I’ve got my cousin coming in from Edinburgh tonight, which means I’ll be distracted for the next while, something I sorely need.
“Are you sure you’re okay with taking a cab to the airport?” she asks. “I can drive you.”
I pat the suitcase beside me. “I’m fine, go rescue Matthew from his aunt.” I get out of my chair and though my first instinct is to shake her hand, I end up pulling her into a bear hug. “Thank you for being so forgiving.”
She hugs me back, patting me lightly. “Thank you for being so easy to forgive,” she says. “Once a charmer, always a charmer.” We both pull away and she puts her hands on either side of my face and stares intently at me. “I live with no regrets. You need to too. Go and make sure you don’t have any.”
“I will,” I assure her. As she walks to the door, I yell, “And tell that wee boy that the next time the Dodgers play the Giants, I’ll be calling him up, gloating.”
She rolls her eyes and keeps walking. Naturally, I don’t have much interest in baseball, but Matthew is obsessed with the LA Dodgers and I’m trying to relate to him on as many levels as I can. It’s definitely not easy to go from being such a distant figure to someone real in Matthew’s life. It’s a learning curve for both him and for me. We don’t yet have a relationship with each other and I doubt it will ever get to the level where he’ll start calling me dad, but you never know. I’ll certainly be working on it whenever I can.
But Taylor has made it very clear that they have their own life and though she wants me to be a part of it, I’m to have my own life too.
If only my life had Nicola in it.
I exhale, those bricks shifting around in my chest but never moving. I finish my tea, then pick up my suitcase and head back home.
***
The next few days fly by for once, instead of the slow, painful grind. There’s nothing like heartache to make every day last a million years, to make every breath feel like your last. But having your cousin, whom you haven’t seen in ages, bunk with you makes the clock tick on. I would have put him up in Nicola and Ava’s old apartment but I can’t quite seem to move on from that. It’s empty and I want it to stay that way, just in case they ever come back.
To say I’m delusional is an understatement.
Needless to say, Lachlan McGregor is quite the roommate. The man really opens up when he’s drunk, otherwise he’s extremely serious and rarely smiles. Normally that would be okay because, let’s face it, I can’t deal with any more drama. But I’m also the type who cracks jokes to win people over and with Lach it feels like I’m talking to a brick wall. It doesn’t help that he kind of resembles one.
Back at his home in Edinburgh, Lach is a rugby player, a wing, for the city’s main team but a recent tear to his Achilles tendon has put him on their backburner for the time being. I had known for some time that Lach was pretty loaded, not just from the sport but because he’s actually an extremely smart man whose been making a lot of key investments over the years. If anyone is going to disprove the stereotype that all rugby players are dumb gits, well, it’s Lach.
Though we chat on FB on occasion, commenting on pictures or whatever else (“oh, you won the game again, way to go you dumb ape” – even though he’s smart, I don’t want him to think I know that) our relationship never really went beyond that. You know how it is with cousins, especially when you come from a fucked up family.
However, with the news feature on me and then a write-up opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that fought for my funding, my whole low-income housing project has stalled. I’m out of a lot of money, paying my mortgage with my savings and no money coming in. If this all keeps up, I’ll lose my project and my dream and be in the hole for it. After losing Nicola and Ava, I refuse to let that happen.
So, I swallowed my goddamn pride and called him up. It’s not easy asking your cousin, who is far more successful than you and three years younger to boot, for help. But I did it. Because, fuck it, I’m not going to fail again.
To my surprise, Lachlan was bored waiting on the sidelines, and even though he should be returning to the sport by the time the new season starts, he said he would at least come over for most of the summer. Though I grilled him on my idea beforehand, now that he’s been here we’ve really put our heads together trying to come up with the best way to move forward. If things go well and if he can find a backer on his own, he says he’d be willing to join me, make a non-profit corporation and get this thing off the ground.
“Justine!” I suddenly say with a snap of my fingers.
Lach looks up from his beer, his face tired from our day of monotonous brainstorming. “What?”
I grab my beer off the kitchen counter and sit down across from him in my living room. “Justine is a woman I took to the opera once.”
“The opera.” He snorts, giving a rare smile. So glad it was at my expense.
“Yes, the opera. She comes from money. A lot of it. In fact, it was my father who set us up. He still believes that you’re supposed to date money to get ahead, and from what I understood, her family has a lot of money and power. She’s a gorgeous gal and you’re not too ugly a man, so maybe you can wine and dine her and see if we can get an investment out of her.”
He considers that. “What kind of money and power?”
I shrug and take a sip of my beer. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask.”
“Aye, I see. Too busy shagging her.”
“Actually, no,” I point out and there’s that bloody pressure in my heart. “No, I wasn’t interested in her.”
“She’s gorgeous and has money and you weren’t interested?” he asks. “What makes you think I will be?”
“Because,” I tell him. I exhale loudly. “I was with Nicola at the time.”
“Ah,” he says, knowing far too much about her already. I haven’t really shut up about her to be honest. Perhaps that’s why he always looks like he wants to kill himself.
“Actually,” I go on, “we weren’t dating at that time but…but that’s when she really started to get under my skin, you know. The whole time I was with Justine, I was just thinking about Nicola. Looking back, I can see that I was already a goner. Just too stubborn at the time to see it.”
“What’s your excuse now?”
“What?”
“You won’t stop talking about this bloody bird. If you’re not talking about the building it’s her and I’m sorry, but in my professional opinion, you need to either move the hell on or get off your stubborn arse and go do something about it. Stop being such a pansy.”
“Your professional opinion?” I repeat.
He gives me a look. “Hey, I’m in rugby, right? And aside from some of these scars,” he touches a few faded ones on his cheekbone, “I ain’t bad to look at. Which means, I get more pussy than you probably do.”
The old me would have challenged that but having a pissing contest with my cousin doesn’t seem right.
Not right now, anyway.
I’ll come back to this one later.
“And,” he adds, “with all the pussy comes all the problems. Go sort your shit out soon or I’m going to start using your head as a rugby ball. I need the bloody practice.”
I frown at him. “So uncouth.” But I don’t push it. We may be the same height, and I may almost have the same amount of muscle as he has, but he doesn’t seem to give a rat’s arse about messing up his face, whereas I do.
The only thing holding me back from what he suggests, from what Taylor suggested, is the same old story. My goddamn pride. My goddamn fear.
What if I go after Nicola and she turns away? She may not want to see me again. She may never trust me again. Even though right now I have nothing left but this dull, hollow ache inside, like some vital part of me has been removed. I also have the unknown on my side and that dangerous hint of hope. In the here and now, I can bitch and moan like a little girl as long as I never do anything about it. I can just imagine that maybe one day, in due time, it will all work out.
But I don’t want to listen to my motto. Not this time. I’m not leaving this to sort itself out in due time, to take that chance that things will work out.
Nicola is worth so much more than chance.
I need to have no regrets.