Chapter 11
Gonna Wanna Tonight
- Amberly
“You’re crazy.” I’d heard that not accepting compliments was due to a low self-esteem, which I had. I know he could tell but he kept quiet, giving me my moments.
I continued to stare at the flowers, not wanting to say goodbye. For some selfish reason, I didn’t want to tell Haylie I would be okay. I felt comfort in knowing she knew how special she was to me. That, not a single day went by that I didn’t think about her. A part of me felt that if Haylie saw me enjoying life without her, somehow, she would feel disregarded.
Parents lost their children every day. How did they move on? How did they make it look so easy? Why didn’t they feel guilt for every smile or laugh that appeared despite the death of their child?
Bryant’s fingertips grazed my own and he reached for my hand, pulling me closer to the headstone. He let my hand fall when I was close enough.
“Did you know these were Haylie’s favorite flowers?” I toyed with the bunch of flowers, pulling out a snapdragon. “She said she liked them because of their names and since I had always called her dragonfly, it made her feel as though they were made for her.” I laid that one first and then separated the rest of them, telling Bryant a memory with each flower.
“She loved butter. When we went out to restaurants, the first thing she would reach for was the butter. She ate it by itself.” I laughed with the memory, conjuring up another one with the next flower.
“When she was learning to walk, she got her foot caught on a plastic bag and walked through the house with it. She couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t stop laughing. I recorded the whole thing.”
“One time, she was in her toy car. You couldn’t really understand anything she said until the word shit came out of her mouth. Then she started yelling at the imaginary traffic. I couldn’t even get onto her for it.” I laid the flower down as I spoke the words. I could feel the heat of Bryant’s gaze as he watched my every movement. I never knew someone watching you could feel so…heavy.
The snow seemed to come down a little faster, layering the flowers with its white dust. The wind picked up, making the balloons dance with my words as I finished with the flowers and the memories. I picked up the trophy that Bryant had placed to the right of her stone.
“If you want to keep that, you can. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“You kept it all this time?” Haylie’s name was engraved on the front of it.
“Yes. I did. I was hoping to give it to her someday.” He stood up. “Ready to let these fly?” He pointed to the sky with the balloons.
I put the trophy down, knowing that it belonged with Haylie. I felt admiration for him having kept it all this time. I took his outstretched hand and let him help me to my feet. “Let’s do it.”
One by one, the balloons took off in the sky, fighting against the wind to climb their way to the clouds above. Bryant had placed an arm around me, sharing his warmth. We both watched until their blue color vanished.
“Are you okay?” Bryant asked me as we started walking out of the graveyard and to his truck.
“I’m okay.”
He opened my door again and this time, I didn’t hesitate as I hopped up and into the seat.
“Still mad at me?”
I looked down at him and shook my head. I shivered as he shut the door and fought his way to the driver’s side. He blasted me with cold air, forgetting the setting had been on high when he had taken out the keys.
“Thank you for that.”
“Not so against surprises now?”
“A surprise every now and again wouldn’t be such a bad idea.” I joked, trying to blow warm air into the palms of both of my hands.
“Well,” he shifted out of park and reversed the truck, its wheels spinning, “I have another idea but it’s not such a surprise. How do you feel about hot cocoa and a fire?”
My teeth chattered against each other. “I would do just about anything to be sitting by a fire right now.”
“Anything huh?” A mischievous grin formed on Bryant’s face.
“Within reason.” I leaned into the vents as the air blowing from them became warmer by the second.
Bryant turned out, heading in the opposite direction from my apartment. “I can start a fire and I’m pretty sure I’ve got hot cocoa in my cabinets somewhere.”
“We’re going to your house?”
Bryant let off the gas and turned his head to me. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. No, no, it, it’s fine.” I stumbled through my words, the idea of being in his house putting me on edge. I had never been to his house before.
We turned into the driveway, the tires crunching over the rock. Trees lined the gravel, masking everything on the house except the porch lights that filtered through their bare tops, creating eerie shadows across the lawn. Bryant pulled in front of the garage doors, racing around his truck to catch me before I had a chance to open my door.
“Still not a date.” I grumbled, crossing my hands over my chest.
His face lit up with a half-smile and he offered his hand. “Still not a date.” He confirmed.
I took his hand, still leery of what he wanted the end result of this day to be.
He wasted no time after he unlocked his front door, gathering firewood and chunking it into the fireplace. I stood in the middle of his living room, admiring a few pictures of him and Delia spread without caution. Zero decorations littered his mantle. His house felt……. abandoned. I suppose it sort of was, since the history of a divorce was spread thick amongst the walls.
The fire crackled, devouring the firewood. The flames spread with ease, crawling higher as the seconds passed. The bark of the wood was turned to ashes, random colors flickering across the pieces of lumber.
I leaned into the fire, pushing my palms out to capture the warmth it delivered. The flames invited me into them, erasing any evidence of the chilling weather outside. It didn’t take long for my body heat to rise so I stepped away from the fire and let my eyes linger on the pictures around the living room. There were a few bare spots with hooks still popping out from the drywall, a sure sign that the pictures that were once hung there were of Bryant and his ex-wife. I had no clue why a sudden sadness entered my thoughts. A broken marriage.
Curiosity fell over me, wanting to know every detail of their divorce and the relationship they had before they realized it was time to call it quits. Was the split amicable? Were there hard feelings? Who walked away first? Perhaps I wanted to hear a different version of divorce. I knew my own all too well. A child who succumbed to her injuries, and a husband who gave up before he realized there might be something worth fighting for. Most people, including my family, would say his infidelity was not a means to an end. My father had even said, and I quote, “Eric’s cheating was just a sign that you two needed to reconnect.”
I blew out a shaky breath, reliving my father’s words as they replayed over and over again. It’d been a long time since I had seen either of my parents, but they were still in my life, dictating my every move. Any time I wanted to move on from my divorce, their words echoed like the demons of reason. Any time Cricket mentioned a new guy she wanted me to get to know, their words crept to the surface. I was so damned broken, I didn’t know how I could recover. I didn’t know how I could expunge their words for good. I wondered if I needed a priest to perform an exorcism on me, or maybe someone who could erase the memories with a high-tech device patented by a genius.
My eyes darted over the pictures, stopping to imagine what happened before and after the click of the camera. When I found one of Bryant dancing with Delia, my heart warmed. She was smiling, laughing even, as he twirled her around. Without thinking, I let my fingertips skate across the glass frame.
“That was when I took her two stepping. She loved it. The church was holding a daddy-daughter dance that evening. I took her to it, just the two of us. It was right before the separation, right before I knew we would be spending a lot of time together, just us two.”
I jumped and turned to look at him. He held out a cup, hot steam twirling upwards.
I took it and thanked him. “She looks like she’s having fun.” I turned back to the picture, noticing a glimmer in Bryant’s eyes as well. I didn’t think I would witness anything as beautiful as this single picture, captured in a time where happiness was the only emotion either of them knew.
“She was.” Bryant chuckled as he positioned himself beside me. I stole a glance, one of his hands supporting the cup and the other one stuffed into the pocket of his denim jeans.
“I’ve always wanted to learn.” I admitted, taking a slow sip of the hot chocolate.
I could see his eyebrow lift out of the corner of my eye. “You really don’t know how?”
I let my gaze fall to the floor. “Well, I can do the simple stuff. I can’t twirl around or anything.”
In one fluid movement, Bryant put down his cup while grabbing mine. “Then it’s time to learn.”
I gasped and shook my head. “No. I’m allergic to dancing. And I’m prone to stepping on people’s feet.”
He laughed and walked to a radio perched on his entertainment stand. I recognized the song immediately. Gonna Wanna Tonight.
“Lucky for you, I’m wearing steel-toed boots and I’ve always got allergy medication on hand.”
I felt my mouth betray me, turning up into a smile. When he held out his hands, I took them, letting him lead me to the middle of his living room.