She steps into my arms like she belongs there, and to be perfectly honest— she does. The door closes behind her and pushes us back into the main foyer. She snuggles further into my arms and sighs deeply, her breath warming my heart.
“We need to talk,” my voice says with uncertainty. “I feel like I’m on the edge of falling and I don’t know if it’s to fly or die.”
“I feel the same way,” she murmurs into my shirt, nodding her head in affirmation of her words. “Let’s go up to the mezzanine and try to find a quiet corner. They should be breaking down that area by now.” She takes my hand and guides us to the third level, well above the reception hall.
We make our way to a corner table, but it’s neither secluded nor private. The bar staff is tearing down the makeshift bars, boxing everything up and picking up trash. Some wedding guests mill about, but it’s not nearly as crowded as it was earlier.
I wish we would have left the building, but I understand why we can’t. She’s working.
“Why did you run?’ I ask, jumping headfirst into the flames scared out of my fucking mind of her thoughts. She takes a deep breath and her shoulders shudder with a nervous twinge. “No bullshit. Just give it to me straight, Bella.” She flinches at my harsh words.
“I wanted you to come to me,” she mumbles softly.
“I just drove sixty miles to come to you,” I snap. She isn’t looking at me, so I reach across the table and lift her chin with my index finger to see each other eye to eye. “There. That’s better. And might I add, before tonight— I haven’t driven into the city in twenty-two years. Hell, before you, I hadn’t driven since Olivia died. You’ve got me doing things I vowed I never would again.”
We sit in silence, both of us mulling over my last words. She’ll never understand what a huge statement that is about my life and how much I’ve let her in. It may not seem like a lot, but to me and how I’ve lived for the past two decades, it’s like crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope, fucking scary as hell.
“I guess you got my letter?” she asks quietly breaking the silence that hangs between us.
“I did,” nodding absentmindedly. “Two weeks too late I think, but I got it.”
“Why did it take that long?” she asks bewildered. Her eyebrows are knitted in confusion.
“Bella, you will probably find this hard to believe, but I never go in that room,” I explain. “It’s a death trap of memories for me. Once I go in, I get sucked into the vortex of anger and regret, thrusting me back down into the pit of my life that I try my best to crawl out of every day. And once I’m down, I’m down for a while. I’m not an easy man to deal with when I’m in the pit.”
“You’re not an easy man to deal with living here in the now with a ghost of a past love,” she boldly announces. “It’s choking you, and I can’t set you free from the hold it has on you.”
“The past love isn’t killing me,” I insist, banging my fist on the table once, “it’s the guilt.” Such a simple sentence for so powerful a feeling.
I stand and walk to the bar feeling a need for a powerful drink. I know I can’t get hammered like I want, but maybe it will help this conversation flow. I order her a White Wine Spritzer and two fingers of Jameson for myself, offering him a fifty dollar bill to pour two drinks and then go find something else to do, giving us some privacy. My anxiety level is riding high tonight.
After a little too long of a wait, I slide her drink to her as I sit. The look on her face is relief, but for what. Relief that I came back? Relief that I brought her a drink? Doesn’t matter, either one is acceptable tonight.
She takes a few sips of her wine and her shoulders finally begin to relax. “Are you ever going to tell me about her?” she asks, her voice is loaded with tension. I’m sure it took a lot of courage to ask that in this moment.
I swallow my whiskey hard and almost choke on her question. I feel the burn of the Jameson all the way down to my soul. Her question stings just as bad, so it’s a double torture for me. She doesn’t know of the hell she just asked me. Talking about Olivia as an “us” will open up my closet of demons, and I’m pretty damn sure I dead-bolted that motherfucker closed and braced it with steel rods. Some sins are just meant to be left alone to rot.
I swallow hard again before asking, “What would you like to know?” My fingertips are white from gripping my drink too hard. I ease up on the pressure I hold it with, and take a deep breath, waiting for her response.
“How did you meet?” she blurts out. She’s going to start with the easy stuff before we have to pull out the tissues.
“Actually, she was Aran’s mother’s best friend, and one of my neighbor’s growing up,” I concede, feeling less nervous after that question. I pray to God they’re all that easy, but somehow I doubt it. Nothing ever is.
“You were childhood sweethearts,” she says. It’s not a question, but I feel the need to respond.
“We were friends first, that fell into an easy and comfortable relationship until we both realized we couldn’t function without the other,” I add. “I’m not sure childhood sweethearts explains our relationship. She became my voice of reason and the calm in the storms of my racing life. I became her strength in a life riddled with social and economic issues. Her parents were planters and pickers at one of the local farms. It wasn’t an easy life. I promised to take her away from all of that.”
“And did you?” she asks, finishing off her wine and pushing the glass to the edge of the table. The few couples that were by the ledge taking in the view have left, and we are finally alone. I worry about her job duties. Surely the party is almost over, but she doesn’t seem worried; she’s still firing questions at me full throttle.
“Physically yes,” I reply with a quick half-answer. “Mentally, no. She had battle scars that were too deep to heal. They bled continuously because her family wouldn’t let her forget where she came from, but I tried my best to. I fucking swear I did. Most days we lived without a thought of it, wrapped up in whatever twilight zone that encased us that made whole days pass without noticing them. But then her parents would call and triple load the guilt of not helping them. She’d run away to escape into her music. I just had to wait for her return. It’s a special kind of torture waiting for someone to return when they’re right there in front of you.”
I look over at Bella, and she’s lost in her own thoughts. I don’t even know when I lost her. I snap my fingers, and she refocuses on me. “Sorry,” she whispers.
“When we were intimate last weekend, did I really call you Olivia?” I ask, raising my eyebrow in question. It’s not that I don’t believe her, but I don’t recall saying her name. I need to bring it up before this evening gets away from me.
“Yes, you did,” she replies in a low voice. “You were nuzzling and kissing my neck. Then you leaned in to smell my hair, and whispered in my ear.” She swallows hard, and looks down at the table, fidgeting with her bar napkin. I feel her sadness and heartbreak in her hollow words. She can’t even repeat the exact words I said to her that night.
“Bella, I’m sorry. Please forgive me?” I beg. I reach across the table to take her hands in mine, but she jerks them back like my touch burns her. Fuck, maybe it will. If anything, I will taint her with my fucked up past.
I don’t see a clear way to love again. It’s a fucking obstacle course with no easy way to win, and it’s not something I can cheat or scam my way to the winner’s circle. It has to be clean and honest— that’s the part that will kill me. She’ll walk away from the honest truth of it. I’m a murderer.
“Tell me how I remind you of her?” she asks. She looks me directly in the eye, challenging me for the hard truth. Her courage is escalating, and the questions are getting stronger while I’m feeling weaker.
“Alright,” I say, blowing out the breath I was holding.”At first, I didn’t like you. I thought you were a snobby bitch. In fact, that was your nickname when you came into the bar. Much like Olivia at first, except we were twelve and she was just a pest.”
“I think I would have preferred pest, as well,” she laughs a little and gives me a quick smile.
“On her stronger days, Olivia refused to be put into a box. Anything that defined her was limiting and she didn’t like that,” I inform her. “She was going to try to rule the world on her terms. Sound familiar?”
Bella nods her head, lost for words. She’s twirling her napkin around in circles while holding one corner steady. Her nerves are working overtime again fidgeting with the corners of the napkin until it starts to shred.
“But your scent is what draws me to you. Olivia loved honeysuckle and wore it in every form it came in: perfume, body spray, lotion, even shampoo. She would burn candles with its scent, and bring in bouquets to decorate our table with when they were in bloom,” I explain. “It’s what draws me to you.”
She sits in quiet stillness taking in my words. I have no idea what thoughts are rolling through her mind. She’s either taking it all in to form one opinion of it all, or she’s numb.
“You probably aren’t going to believe me, but I promise you this,” I beg, “when we made love the other night, it was you on my mind. It was you I was pleasuring. It was your moans and body turning me on. I never once thought about her. I never once thought about holding back because of her. It was all you in my mind and in my arms. I hope that’s enough to accept my apology.”
She burrows down further into the leather seating of the bench, and I hear her shoes drop to the concrete tiles. She’s fidgeting with her worn napkin again. It’s tattered from the condensation from her wine glass and her constant twirling of it.
The breeze picks up from the bay and blows a stray piece of her hair across her face. I want to reach out and tuck it back in, but I’m transfixed by her nervousness and the napkin twirling. She absently catches it and twists it behind her ear, and my heart hurts at the missed opportunity to touch her.
“Tell me how Olivia died,” she commands softly. My stomach twists in knots as her words leave her mouth.
“That will be a difficult conversation that I really don’t want to have here or now,” I confess. “I just can’t do it tonight.” There may never be a time and place for that conversation. I hate to be so callous and cold-hearted, but why does she need to know exactly what happened?
That’s something I need to work through and leave it in my past before I can share it with my future.