Brent
EVERY FEW MINUTES I’d look up and think to myself Sweet baby donkeys, I’m sitting next to V. Rush.
I’d been following her work for years. She was relatively new on the mystery scene – maybe a dozen books to her name – but everything she wrote was brilliant. I practically hung on every phrase and word.
My obsession bordered on insanity.
It was amazing to be sitting across the table from your favorite author. We readers tended to think of authors as our friends. We took them in the tub, on the toilet, into bed. They tucked us in at night and greeted us at dawn.
Their words stuck with us. We carried around the pieces of their souls in Kindles and paperbacks. We stuffed them into purses and backpacks. Sometimes we clutched the paperbacks after we finished them if the story had particularly touched us.
I’d done that many times.
There was no way I could’ve known that V. Rush was even a woman. There was no indication on her website or any other social media platform what gender she was. Her profile pictures are books and the picture on the back of her paperbacks was a stretch of trees with the sunset pouring through the spaces between.
I certainly had no idea the person whose books I so admired would be the only other person in the world I considered knowing better than myself.
There were things I knew about Vivian that would curl her toes and mine – again.
“It’s good to know people don’t really know who I am. Well, I guess that cover is blown now, but it was nice while it lasted.” She mused while trailing her pinkie around the rim of her cup of coffee. There was no way it was hot, probably not even warm anymore.
She shrugged and barely ate the cookie she’d taken a full five minutes to pick out.
I couldn’t help myself. I prodded her for more info, taking full advantage of our youthful romance. After all, how many can say they knew a celebrity back when.
“Why? You’re famous for your writing. Your books are beloved all over the world. What are you hiding from?”
Okay, I hadn’t meant to ask her that last question, yet it hung in the air, and I couldn’t stuff it back in my mouth – even if I wanted to.
I really wanted to.
She looked at me again as though she had forgotten I was even there.
“I am engrossed in my own world and other worlds at the same time. It’s addictive. You know, the life of a writer. There’s no need for reality when I have a housekeeper and a grocery delivery service and anything else I need at the touch of a button on the computer. Not even a button, I ask the little speaker lady and she reorders my groceries. My mouth hurts.” She took her jaw between her fingers and moved it back and forth. She really didn’t answer my question.
“Your mouth or your jaw?”
“Jaw,” she answered.
“Why does your jaw hurt?”
She laughed and groaned again. I noticed her red lipstick hadn’t budged all through the signing and while she drank her cup of coffee. She used to always make me check it to see if it had smudged. Of course, I’d smudged it more times than I could count.
Thinking about it caused those feelings to bubble in my throat again. I pushed them down like I always did.
“Too much smiling and talking. I probably talked and smiled more today than I have in a year. That’s probably not healthy, right? One time, between books, I was flipping through channels and I saw this show called “Alone”. It was about people who couldn’t stand being alone in the wilderness for more than like thirty days. I could win that show ten times over. Just give me a notebook and a pen to go with my tent.”
It sounded horrible – from my side of the table. I had put this woman on a pedestal. I wasn’t alone. Most readers probably put authors on a pedestal of some kind. They make up grandiose worlds and characters that we come to love as our own.
It must be awfully lonely sometimes.
Her voice lulled in a way that sounded lonely though her words said the opposite.
“That sounds miserable, actually.” I continued to blurt out things to this woman. My brain took a trip somewhere else today, apparently, and my mouth is at full blast.
“Like I said,” she shrugged, making her dark hair shift around her shoulders, “it gets addictive. One day you look around and realize it’s been a week since you’ve talked to someone who was not on the computer. Then a month, then more.”
She still hadn’t answered my question.
“I know that look.” She finally smiled. That smile used to be like the sun to me. It drove my days and at night when I wasn’t with her everything was dark.
“Do you?” My eyebrow cocked in response.
“To answer that question, I need a drink – like something that punches me in the face so I don’t remember what I’ve told you tonight. It’s like before with you. I could tell you everything and anything. There’s no filter with you.”
She got on her phone and came up with a few places to get that drink before I invited her to my hotel. She probably wanted to stay somewhere public, though Viv knew I was the last person in the entire world who would ever hurt her.
After all, she was the one who hurt me.
I smiled and tried to put her at ease. “Ladies choice. Wherever you feel comfortable.”
She laughed again and for the hundredth time fixed the sugar and other sweeteners on the table. They were straighter now than even the manufacturer intended them to be.
“There’s a place two blocks down called Spirits. According to Yelp, it is haunted, apparently.”
She remembered. She didn’t say so, but she was just about the only person in the world who knew I had a secret obsession with all things haunted and ghosts.
“Let’s go.”
We walked the two blocks in silence. Viv meant what she said about needing the drink before she started talking. My eyes drifted time and time again to her svelte new figure.
She was bigger than the other girls in high school, and I loved it. When we went out for burgers, she would order the same thing as me and put it down just as quickly. Her hips were meant for my hands back then. Every once in a while, she would complain about her weight but nothing serious.
I knew some of the girls picked on her, but after I threatened them, they seemed to stop.
At least, I hoped they’d stopped.
Every inch of her was the epitome of gorgeous.
Once while we were walking to the bar, she turned around and looked over her shoulder at me and I winked at her.
Why did I just wink at V. Rush?
Because I was a class-A turd-dork.
Yes, a turd and a dork together.
I couldn’t help myself. This woman was two creatures in one. On one hand, I knew her, on the other, she was some grand dream out of reach.
Yet, I’d reached her.
And winked at her.
Idiot.
“Here it is.”
I held the door open for her as we went inside. Windows were shaded so the public couldn’t see in from the street, which automatically piqued my curiosity. The place looked like voodoo and every shade of purple had gotten food poisoning and took out the effects on the walls. There wasn’t a square inch that wasn’t covered with some kind of spooky knick-knack.
It was right up my alley.
“Vodka rocks and…” She looked at me for my order at the bar. I wasn’t much of a drinker but leaving her to do it alone didn’t seem quite gentlemanly.
“An old-fashioned, please.”
We found a little table with two stools just as the previous occupants left it. I let her get exactly two swigs of her drink down before I repeated the question of the night.
“I was ready to have a life with you. Why did you leave me?”
She choked a little but quickly recouped. “It wasn’t you. It was me. You know this. I told you that a thousand times before I left.”
I rolled my eyes so far back in my head, my mama would’ve said they would stick like that.
“You mean the night before you left. We’d been together for years.”
Her thinner hands reached across the table and held one of mine – tightly. She did that when she was telling the truth as if she wanted to infuse the truth into my skin through hers.
“I’m serious, Brent. It kind of feels good to say your name. It was me. There were things happening to me – inside and outside. I was unhappy, not with you but with me. I needed to grow up. I needed to find some love for myself that didn’t involve the word Brent.”
I pulled my hands back at the statement.
She needed to get away from me for some reason.
“That leads to my next question. When you found what you were looking for, why didn’t you come back?”
“Because I would’ve been a new girl in an old town.”
“A new Vivian for an old Brent. I get it.”
With every sentence, I sounded more pathetic. Maybe I would drink after all.
“Ugh. See? This is why I don’t people anymore. My words come out all wrong from my mouth. From my hands, my words are…”
“Brilliant.” I finished for her.
She blushed. “Thank you. See? That’s the thing, Brent. It took me years to simply say ‘thank you’ when someone complimented my work. I would say, ‘Oh, but have you read Neil Gaiman? Now he is brilliant.’ I don’t do that anymore. I’ve learned to take the compliment.
“But when I talk to people face to face I get all scrambled up. What I mean is…” She took another long pull of her vodka and with two fingers waved in the air, ordered a second. “What I mean is, I loved my hair because you loved it. I loved my smile because you loved it. The things I loved about me was through your eyes. If that makes any sense. I was afraid that going back to that town meant going back to the old Vivian. I won’t let myself be hurt like that anymore. Do you understand what I mean?”
I did but didn’t.
“Kind of. Isn’t that something we could have figured out together?”
Those words didn’t sound quite so desperate in my mind as they did coming out of my mouth.
Again.
“Honestly? No. Can we talk about something else? And when I say talk about something else, I mean can you please talk about you? I’m not used to talking, let alone talking about me.”
Her eyes dipped to the drink the bartender slipped in front of her. She wasn’t the same girl, yet at the same time, she was.
Her little idiosyncrasies were the same, but she was quite the woman now. A few more drinks and I could forget that she broke my heart in two and took one half.
“Well, there’s not much to tell. I waited a year after high school to go to college. I went to Dartmouth for business. Came back home and now I run the ranch. I made some good investments. I do all right.”
She nodded, her gaze never left mine. That was one of the things I’d always loved about her. She held your gaze when she talked.
“Married?” she asked under her breath, raising the glass to her full red lips.
“No. You?”
Stupid question. She just wrote a dissertation about being alone.
“No. Never. I went to college, finished and somewhere in there decided to write a book. I’m talking about me again. Back to you.”
“Not married – never did. No kids. No girlfriend. No fiancée. No hot waitress I’m flirting with at the coffee shop. Sorry, just covering the bases here.”
Her renewed blush told me she got the point.
“Me either.”
I laughed, louder and deeper than I had in years. “No girlfriend? Good to hear.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
She gasped a little out of nowhere. “What about your mama? Your dad? Paps? All of the sudden, I feel wretched for not asking before.”
“All alive and kicking. They talk about you from time to time. They’ve moved out of the farm and into town. I have some hired hands to run the farm while I’m away. Paps lives in a little guest house above the carport. They’re enjoying being closer to town.”
Vivian didn’t do that thing where she nodded every time I ended a sentence. She was truly wanting to know about my family.
“Oh goodness! What about Scamper? Please tell me he’s still alive.”
Scamper was our old bloodhound that loved Viv more than I did. Or that’s what everyone thought.
“Him too. He’s got arthritis now, but he keeps the critters away from the barn and on a good day, he chases a cat for about an hour.”
“Oh! I loved that old dog. I wish I could see him again.”
“What about your parents? I see your mama from time to time but she looks the other way. Can’t blame her.”
“She looks the other way because she’s rude, Brent. We have these shallow conversations by text and that’s the gist of it. She never did approve of me leaving.”
All the memories flooded in with her mention of Scamper and her mom. It was the key that unlatched the door I was trying like heck to keep closed. I picked up the drink that so far I had managed not to drink and downed it with one swallow.
“You don’t drink, huh?”
I motioned for the waiter to bring us another round.
“There’s a lot of firsts today, Viv.”
She smiled but quickly quelled it. “I used to love that you called me Viv. My parents were so formal. What other firsts today?”
“Well, let’s see. I met my favorite author. Went to my first book convention. This is my first time in Vegas. I ordered my first old-fashioned. Lots of firsts.”
“You ordered a drink you’ve never had before. Brave man.” Her eyebrow rose up. I used to call that cute.
“Yeah, I’m brave all right.
“Well,” she said, raising her drink to mine for a toast. “Here’s to lots of firsts in Vegas.”