Alex

Kicking my feet up onto the couch, I study my toenails, which I just painted a steel blue color the other day. In fact, I notice with lazy interest, they sort of match my couch, which is done in a floral pattern of blues and yellows. While I have to wear professional clothes during the day, I like getting by with touches of crazy that can’t be seen while I’m in counselor mode. So that means unconventionally colored nail polish and naughty lingerie, neither of which is seen by anyone but me at the current time. Not that I mind.

I mentally giggle to myself, wondering what Brandon would think of my blue nail polish. I’m quite positive he’d wrinkle his nose up at it, proclaiming that it’s not professional.

Sighing, I lean my head back against the couch pillow and close my eyes. My date with Brandon is tomorrow night. At least, I think it’s a date. I meant to clarify that with him when he first called me earlier in the week, but then forgot because I had gotten sidetracked during the conversation by his natural charm.

“Sutton?” I had heard Brandon’s voice when I answered my phone, a tad tentative but clear as a bell.

“Brandon? Is that you?” I asked in disbelief, because in a million years I had not expected his call.

“Yes,” he said exuberantly. “I was watching our movie last night before I went to bed, and it made me all nostalgic, so I told myself when I woke up today I was going to give you a call and check in on you.”

Our movie? He was watching Zombieland and it made him nostalgic for me?

“So, tell me what you’ve been doing with your life,” Brandon urged me, and then blew me away when he said, “Knowing you, I’m sure you’ve been extremely successful.”

I can’t lie…his words of pride and confidence in me are what got me sidetracked. The way he sounded so happy to hear my voice, and the way he had been thinking about me just from watching a movie. It’s as if our time apart melted into nothingness, and we chatted away like old friends.

Yes, we had promptly fallen into old times, talking about this and that, and all the things that each of us had been doing over the last year while we had been apart.

Yes, apart.

Brandon had been the love of my life…or so I had thought. We met our freshman year in college at N.C. State University in a mathematics study group that he helped tutor. He was in the engineering program and was pretty freakin’ brilliant when it came to math. I was pursuing an arts degree—sociology—and I basically sucked at math.

It took less than two months for Brandon to go from tutor to friend to good friend to boyfriend to lover. We clicked right off the bat and spent a lot of time together. There was an underlying mutual attraction that just kept getting stronger and stronger the more time we spent with each other.

By our sophomore year, we were in love and making plans to spend the rest of our lives together. He was everything I had desired in a boyfriend and potential husband. Smart, kind, caring, considerate, attentive, successful, upstanding…all the things antithetical to my birth dad.

The list could go on and on. Brandon was made up of one long list of commendable virtues and it was just so easy to love him. Hell, even when he broke up with me, he was f**king commendable and lovable.

Now, I’d heard of the old “I want to sow my wild oats” speech before. Even met a few girls who had suffered through it. I just never thought I’d be the one to get it, though. And Brandon, when he laid it out to me—told me he wanted to be with other women—did it in such a kind and caring way, I was nodding my head in agreement with him by the time he was finished.

“Sutton…I am so, so sorry to be hurting you this way” were the first words Brandon said after he dumped me. He held my face gently in his hands so I would look at him and he could look back at me.

So I could gauge the truthfulness of his words.

“I love and respect you too much, though, to cheat on you. I could never go behind your back, so I want to be honest with you as to why I’m doing this.”

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked quietly, searching his eyes for the reason behind his crazy actions.

“God, no,” he said, with such ferocity in his voice and conviction in his eyes I had no choice but to believe him. “In fact, I’m betting this may be the singularly most stupid thing I’ve ever done, and I’m sure it may eventually be one of my biggest regrets, but I can’t keep going forward with you when I have these doubts and these curiosities.”

I nodded in agreement with what he was saying, because it did make sense the way he was laying it out to me.

Sometimes, when I think back to that day—just three weeks before we graduated with our bachelor degrees, I want to go back in time and slap myself on the back of the head. Sometimes I think I must have been the biggest loser to ever look at a man I loved, a man who was breaking up with me, and be thankful and love him that much more for the way in which he did it. I didn’t even have one bitter feeling against him. I f**king congratulated him for the great job he did.

Gah, I was so pathetic back then. I think I’ve changed a lot in the past year, though, in a good way, and much of it thanks to Brandon breaking my heart.

Yes, Brandon felt that in order to be absolutely honest and candid with me, he had to let me know that he was thinking about what it would be like to be with other women.

“You are the most incredible woman I’ve ever been with, Sutton,” he had told me, almost begging me to believe him. “But lately, I’m just wondering all the time what it would be like to be with someone else.”