Chapter Thirty One – Leah

This doesn’t feel good, I think to myself as I sit in the café that I’ve chosen for the neutral location for us to have this dreaded meeting. It feels wrong, I hate lying to everyone… again. I just hope that it works.

The strain in the air surrounding me and Zane with regards to Brandon has been weighing thick for days, and I know that Zane thinks we should just leave things to cool down a bit, but I can’t do that. I need to get it going. I’m going to have to try and force the issue to make it better. Fortunately for me, I’m not alone in this.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asks while squeezing my hand. “This is the right thing to do, you know that, right? Brandon has been in absolutely bits. Ever since the fight, he’s all closed off and tense. He won’t talk about it, but you know what he’s like. He doesn’t like to share his negative feelings at the best of times, so…”

“Oh, God, I can’t take it.” Even my voice is shaking. “I can’t stand it. Why aren’t they here yet?”

“Well, I told Brandon to meet me here at half past and it isn’t quite that yet…”

The funny thing is, much as me and Jenny had a good relationship before, this has brought us closer. We’ve talked a lot in secret about what’s happened and it’s really built our bond. She hasn’t judged me for even a second for falling for Zane. We haven’t had an in depth conversation about it, but I think that she understands.

“Yeah, well I said quarter past to Zane because he’s usually late, so hopefully they’ll turn up soon…”

The door swings open and both me and Jenny suck in a deep and panicked breath. In theory, this was the best idea in the world, but putting it into practice is something else. Now, I’m really freaked out.

“What’s going on here?” Brandon demands, his eyes narrowing when he sees me. He runs his fingers through his hair looking increasingly stressed out by the second. “Jenny, why is Leah here? She chose him, remember?”

Jenny rolls her eyes and snorts at him. “Brandon, do you hear yourself? Leah is your sister. You need to talk.”

He pauses in the same standing position for a couple of seconds, flicking his eyes between us both. Once he makes the decision that he can handle this much – which is a shame because there’s still a lot more to come – he scrapes the chair back and he falls back into the chair glaring at us both. His arms fold defiantly over him.

“Brandon.” I lean forwards, needing to talk. “I’m sorry that you think I’ve disappointed you. I understand why you’re angry at me, but if you’ll just take some time to listen to me…”

“How can I listen to you?” he hisses, trying to keep his anger down because we’re in public. “You’re acting like an idiot. I don’t think you even see it. How can you spend any time with Zane, knowing what he’s like?”

“Brandon, he isn’t what you think he is.” Am I whining? Shit. “We’re in love, this is different.”

“Love? You aren’t in love. Zane Morris doesn’t know how to be in love. When will you see that?”

I feel a tight ball of frustration in my chest. He’s being so stubborn just because he doesn’t want to understand. He won’t even open his ears for a second to listen to me. I squeeze my fists by my side, trying to contain myself.

“Brandon, maybe you should just take some time to listen to Leah,” Jenny jumps in. “I’ve heard your side of the story over this, and I get it. I do know why you’re angry and hurt, you feel betrayed, you feel like you’ve been stabbed in the side. I know it. But, you haven’t listened to Leah and heard what she has to say.”

Brandon looks at his girlfriend, at first glaring at her, but soon his expression starts to relax. I think that he might actually be about to listen to Jenny, but then I suppose the reality of me and Zane hits him again and he shuts down. “Leah, how could you walk out of our house? How could you pick him? What the fuck?”

“Me and Zane have had something for a long time.” I need him to try and understand. “We liked each other even before he left five years ago, this isn’t something that we’re just running head first into.”

“Oh, you are fucking kidding me.” Brandon smacks his hands down on the table, forgetting that we’re in public now. His anger has truly gotten the better of him. “You were fucking even when we were younger? Because I have some real news for you. You were one of many, and I mean many whom Zane Morris fucked around the whole school. You were definitely not special to him then. If you thought that you were, then you’re stupid.”

I slide my eyes closed, hating the way that feels. I know that he was a player back then, I know I might not have been special, but I am now. I’m confident in his love for me this time around.

“I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t appreciate you talking to me like that. You need to start respecting me. I’m very appreciative that you’ve always looked out for me and taken care of me, but now it’s time for me to look after myself. I know what I’m doing, you just need to trust me.”

Brandon shakes his head, still refusing to pay any attention to me. “Your decisions have all been shit recently, I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re throwing your whole life away.”

“I’m making my life better, that’s what I’m doing, maybe one day you’ll see that.”

Just at that moment, when I’m really about to get into the middle of my rant, the doors swing open and Zane comes through it, completely unsuspecting of what he’s about to face. I feel bad because all I’ve done is rile Brandon up and piss him off. That wasn’t part of the plan at all. Shit, how can I make this right?

“What the fuck is going on here?” Zane snaps, his walls already high. “Why are you all fighting?”

“Because of you!” Brandon yells. “Because you cannot keep your fucking hands to yourself, that’s why. Because you have to defile my sister, and now I learn that’s been going on for years. Even in high school.”

Zane’s face falls, this knocks him back a bit, I can see it in his face. I didn’t mean for any of this to come out, especially not like this. I was just trying to defend what me and Zane have now.

“Brandon, it really isn’t like that,” I try one last time, but now male pride has gotten in the way and there isn’t any chance of anyone listening to me. Brandon is squaring up to Zane and I have the horrible feeling that things are going to go south again. Maybe I should have waited, perhaps this is too soon.

“You are a scum bag with no respect for our friendship,” Brandon yells. “The more I think about it, the more wound up I get. You used to be at our house all the time, I used to feed you, I gave you a place to avoid your father, I did everything with you. The only one thing I asked you not to do was go anywhere near Leah.”

“Does that not show you how serious I am about her? We wouldn’t be here if not. I wouldn’t do anything to throw away what we had. You’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember.”

“Huh. Well you sure as shit have a funny way of showing it. You don’t care about me at all.”

“I stood back and let you say all those terrible things about me the other day, without fighting back…”

“Terrible but true.” Brandon sneers nastily. “I suppose the truth must hurt.”

“Truth? You don’t even know the truth anymore. You don’t care to get to know me.”

“People like you never change. It doesn’t matter at all. You’ll be a prick for the rest of your life.”

“You’re being ignorant and you’re making everyone unhappy around you. Don’t you get that?”

“You are the asshole who came back here and wrecked everything. We were better when you were gone.”

“For you, maybe. But you don’t even want to know about your sister. You’re so busy trying to control her…”

“Control? Just because I dint want her anywhere near you? That’s the most ridiculous thing that I’ve heard.”

“You do control her. Even when you were kids. You were always way too involved in her life.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose I got in the way of you fucking her then as well. What a real shame.”

“It wasn’t like that, it was never like that. It’s always been different with Leah.”

“If it was so different, then why did you go? Why didn’t you stay for her? And don’t try and blame that one on your father because you could have kept in touch, if you were so in love. But you didn’t.”

I don’t know how he even knows that, but the accusation opens a wound. I can almost feel it burning.

“I… I…” Zane stammers, the color flooding from his cheeks.

“You… you, what? You have no excuse because you behaved like a dickhead. Just like you always did. Girls were just a play thing to you. If I’d known that Leah was one of them…”

I don’t even know why they’re yelling so loudly, they’re right in one another’s faces. The neutral location was a terrible idea. I should have thought all of this through more. I need to work out how to get us all out of here before more stuff gets smashes to smithereens. It was bad enough in my room. Here’ we’ll have to pay for it.

I dart my panicked eyes around, trying to hunt for an escape route. The staff look just as freaked out as I feel and not one of them appear brave enough to do anything about it. To be fair, this is a quiet and quaint little establishment. I’m sure they don’t usually have trouble like this. Brandon and Zane are both big, intimidating looking guys. They probably look very frightening. I guess it’s up to me and Jenny to stop this.

“What do we do?” I hiss to Jenny. “This is horrible, we need to get them out.”

She nods defiantly and pulls out her chair. She stands on it so she’s almost looming above the pair of them and yells at the top of her voice. “If you idiots don’t stop this now, I’ll call the cops immediately.”

Brandon gives his girlfriend a strange look, but to his credit he does step back from Zane. Both of them have the sense to look sheepish since they’ve been caught out by many people acting foolish. If we were in the sort of place where it was filled with young people, this row would be on YouTube already, going viral.

“We need to go,” I join in hurriedly, taking advantage of the moment of silence. “The staff want us to leave.”

Maybe they haven’t directly said that, but they don’t need to. It’s obvious from their faces that this is their idea of hell. I can almost see all of them sag with relief when I suggest leaving them all alone. One by one, we file out in silence, all of us lost in our own bubble of sadness. Mine centers around Brandon. I cannot believe that he even said some of those things. I don’t know if any of us can come back from them. He might have gone too far this time. The damage that his anger has caused might well be irreparable.