Sideswiped, page 22
“I don’t know. All I know is I’m sick and tired of worrying about enemies that might never eventuate, fears that may never come true. If we have what I believe in my deepest heart we have, then this is a lifetime kind of love. So why be miserly? When we sit together someday at eighty, we can tell stories to grandkids about how you sailed around in the Antarctic and then came to visit me in Africa. We backpacked to Zanzibar. Climbed Kilimanjaro.”
“I’ve broken every rule for you, every last one. But not this. I can’t fucking do long distance with you. Trust me, I’ve been there, done that. You think it’ll be great but in reality the situation will grind us to dust.”
If he keeps talking like this, I’ll cave. “I’m never sure about anything but I’m positive about this. You have to believe, Bran.”
“Believe what?”
“That you are loveable.” My voice breaks. “That I will love you near, that I will love you far. You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not going to stand here and listen to a bunch of bullshit.”
He slams out the door.
My stomach roils but I lift the cordial and down the whole glass. Then I open my computer.
I keep my breathing slow, measured. I even try to smile at my reflection in the window.
You can do this. Make him believe.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bran
Talia cracks the bedroom door. “Brandon?”
She’s never called me that.
“You accepted.”
“Yes. I told you I would. And I did.”
I collapse against the banister and press my hands to my forehead, like if I squeeze hard enough, I can push her words from my skull.
“You’re leaving.”
“Yeah,” she whispers.
“Can’t hear you.”
“Yes—but only technically. Remember, I’ll get time off. I can visit. You’re able to stay with me, too, as long as you want, after you finish with the Sea Alliance.”
“Go ahead, say it.”
“What?”
“End this, end us. That’s what you want, right?”
“No!”
“Don’t you fucking lie to me, Talia. Not you.”
“We can make this work.” She reaches out.
I recoil like she offers a bouquet of cobras. “You are not allowed to touch me.”
Her fingers hover midair. The inches between us might as well be the Mariana Trench. “If you’d listen for once, try and see my perspective—”
“Everything is crystal clear.”
“Will you stop? Let me speak for a sec?”
“I loved you with every ounce of my shitty soul. I was ready to give you my whole life.”
“That’s just it, Bran.”
“I’m not good enough?”
“I don’t want to take your life to make us work. Or give you mine. I love you too—so much I might explode. Enough that I know we can do this. Chase our dreams yet stay together. Come on, take a leap of faith.”
“You want faith? Bloody hell, did you ever pick the wrong guy…”
“Tell me you don’t love me enough to believe, to take a chance.”
“I haven’t taken chances with you? I worked my guts out to make this work and you want to play Russian fucking roulette. Will Talia and Bran go the distance from separate continents? No? Bang, we’re dead.”
“But if I’m right, we’ll prove something to each other.”
“I don’t need to prove shit. I know the truth.”
“It’s okay to be scared. I’m freaked out too.”
“Not nearly enough.” She’s my anchor. I fly up the stairs, grab her hips, lift her against the wall, knock my forehead into hers so she can’t look anywhere but my eyes. “You said you’d always hang on. We swore that to each other.”
“Bran—”
“Don’t break us. Don’t you do that, Talia.”
“I—”
“Why can’t you shut up?” I kiss her. I’m an ass, a coward. When have I ever been anything different, down deep? I’m a cheetah who painted stripes over his spots. Her lips soften. Hope claws from my heart as she offers a breathless moan. I fold my arms around her in a protective cocoon.
The last few days were insane. Okay, sure, she got cold feet. There were moments the world seemed to disintegrate into thin air.
She tears open my pants and my hands are everywhere. Her nightshirt loses a button but she doesn’t seem to mind. Our urgent soundtrack undercuts every movement, ragged inhalations followed by groans torn straight from the dark center of the universe. We collapse, a knot of sweat-slicked flesh. There’s no room for anything measured or gentle. Her mouth tastes like apples and mint. Maybe I should slow down, savor, but I’m like that bloody kid in the Dickens novel.
Please, can I have some more?
We kneel, face-to-face, breathing each other’s breath. Streetlight filters through the skylight’s frosted glass, shrouding her body in a pale glow. She looks like a hallucination, or a ghost. There’s an indistinct growl, distant thunder. She pushes the space between my shaft and navel with the heel of her palm. I tip back against the floor and she crawls on top. Shadows cling to her body, a night angel coming straight for my soul. I grit my teeth when the wetness between her thighs slides against my leg. I start to shake and so does she, all over. Vibrations hum between our bodies and she shifts her weight, grinding in a slow deliberate rhythm, the way that’s good for her.
“I want… I want everything,” she whispers, working harder.
“It’s already yours.” I lock my forearm over my eyes and let her use me.
With a slight pivot, her pelvis sinks, descending to my hilt.
Eyes, meet skull.
Outside, rain unleashes in a furious downpour.
“Gorgeous.”
Her pretty lips crook in a half-smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
I hiss through clenched teeth and her knees grip my hips as she rides, pressing into my pubic bone. She leans all the way back, hands braced on my shins, exposing every beautiful inch.
Fucking hell. Talia on top, there’s nothing better. Nothing.
I shudder hard.
“Bran.” She dips her torso over mine and there’s this wet suction sound from the sweat misting our bellies. She grinds harder and our kisses grow wetter. Her tongue traces the roof of my mouth.
“God, Bran. Oh my holy God.”
It’s like she wages war on my body and I’m not putting up any defenses. I don’t even want to win a battle. I just want her. With me. Always.
Her head rocks back. What happens when we come together—there are no bloody words. You don’t throw this away. “It’s not going to be better, Talia. Not with anyone else.”
“I know that.” It sounds like she wants to add “you idiot” to the last part.
With her every rock, I’m coming home, so why does it feel like good-bye?
We inch closer and closer to the brink; the drop is just there, right ahead. I dig in my heels and fight against the inevitable because if she slips from my reach, I’ll free-fall. For a second we hang in midair, like a cartoon character right before everything falls apart.
She screams.
I snarl.
We’re coming.
But where the fuck are we going?
My head knocks against the floorboard, my dick still pulsing from the aftershocks. She pulls away, clutching her pajamas to her chest, and pads into the bathroom. My brief spark of hope fizzles as rain clangs against the tin roof. The sweat misting my chest and stomach cools. She rings a cab.
She emerges from the room, dressed, with her two bags.
This is happening.
“Are you fucking for real?”
“I’m staying in a hotel tonight. I’m going to book a flight that leaves tomorrow.” I can’t decipher her features in the dark. There are familiar planes and angles but nothing concrete. Is this what she’s destined to become—a faded memory?
“If I stay here—with you—it will mess with my head and you’ll talk me out of leaving. You’ll literally screw me senseless. I need space tonight. But I know we can do this.”
Rage cuts through me with white-hot heat. “We’re breaking up.”
She starts to cry. “Why are you saying this? I love you.”
“Stop fucking lying to yourself!” I fly toward her and she jumps back.
“I love you.” She’s hysterical, covering her face with her hands.
“I hate every fucking lying lie coming out of your lying liar mouth.” I punch the wall over her shoulder.
“I’m not… I do love… I believe… I—”
“Enough.” I’m scoured clean. Empty doesn’t begin to describe the hollowness in my chest. “You want to fuck and run? Fine. Get out. Go. I won’t try and change your mind. But know this, once you walk out that door, you and me? We’re finished. No take-backs.”
“If you really love me, not the idea of me, you’d never make me choose.”
“What was I? A stunt. A kick? A twentysomething adventure so someday when you’re back in your same boring hometown with your same boring friends living your same boring life you can brag how once upon a time, long, long ago, Natalia Stolfi had herself a great big adventure?”
“Stop and think. You want to join the Sea Alliance. This is your chance. You still have time.”
“Sure, I could do that. But I wanted you more. That’s where we differ. If given the choice, I choose you, Talia. I always choose you.”
“We shouldn’t have to choose. We have a whole lifetime. I don’t want to ask you to sacrifice your dreams for me, not ever. Why can’t you pull your head out and see that I’m breaking us apart to keep us together?”
I brace against the wall. “You want to leave. So go.”
Her boots click closer to me and so I fold my arms, bury my face. There’s a long pause.
“Tell me the truth about one thing.”
She runs her hand over my back. “Okay.”
“If you hadn’t gotten arrested. If I hadn’t dragged you to the protest, tried to bring you into my world, would this have happened? Would you still be leaving?”
“Yes.” The resulting silence lasts longer than the age of the dinosaurs. “Please, Bran, say something, anything. I want to take part in your interests but I want my own too.”
Sure, makes sense. But I can’t agree. Literally, my mouth won’t form the words.
Her shoulders slump. “Forget about it.”
“We don’t share that particular talent, sweetheart.”
Headlights flash through the front door windows. A car horn blares.
“That’s my cab.”
“So it seems.” She won’t even let me drive her away. I’ve blown it so hard it’s like I’m touring a bombsite, unable to wrap my head around the devastation. “Tell me leaving is going to make you happy.”
“Leaving will make me happy,” she whispers.
“Is that what your mom said?”
She starts to noiselessly cry. “Please try.”
“Can’t.” Cue my own waterworks. I grind a fist into my eyes.
The taxi honks again.
“We can make this work. You and me, we’re different, right?” She vaults forward, wraps her arms around my waist and leans into my bare skin like she belongs there. Which she does.
Grow a fucking backbone. She’s leaving. She’s not who you thought. Kick out the pedestal and be done with it. Stop the bleeding.
Every cell in my body wants to reach for her. But my brain has me on survival mode lockdown. I can’t do this. In another minute, I’m going to fall on my knees, wrap my arms around her legs, and beg.
I clear my throat. “Go then.”
“Kiss me.”
She thinks her lips will work mind-fuckery on me. She’s right.
There’s one last warning horn blast from the cab.
“I… I have to go.”
“You don’t.”
“Stop!” she whispers.
“You’re breaking us. You. No one else.” A storm whooshes through my body. I’m hanging on to a spiraling hurricane.
“I’m trying to save us but you’re too stupid and myopic to notice.”
“Break us down to rebuild us into something stronger?”
“Yes, that, exactly.”
“Good-bye, Talia.”
“Please, stop!”
“Truth hurts.” It’s funny, saying something cliché—so why isn’t anyone laughing?
“I lo—”
“No. You don’t.” I throw down a spindly hall table. Glass breaks, probably a bloody antique vase. I kick a porcelain shard into the wall. “If you loved me, you’d never go through with this.”
Her eyes are huge, two moons.
Sorry, sweetheart. I’m no bloody astronaut.
I throw on my boxers and run. I’m outside, in the yard, at the back fence. There’s nowhere else to go, so I collapse to my knees and keel forward, face in the dirt.
Right where I belong.
* * *
One swing of my ax and the wood cleaves into neat halves—not unlike how Talia treated my fucking heart. I’m three seconds away from puking or ripping open like a mutant alien. Fine by me. I can use my guts to hang myself from the apple tree—fitting conclusion to tonight’s gong show.
A light in the cottage next door flicks on and outshines my head torch’s feeble glow. “Bloody ’ell, dickhead, it’s past midnight,” the neighbor hisses from a side window.
I ignore him and seize another log. Swing and chop, swing and chop. That’s all I can manage. Reverberations ricochet through my locked shoulders, an ache that fails to override the bone-deep pain. Sweat streams down my clenched back. Empty beer bottles pile to my left and a mountain of kindling grows on my right.
“Mate?”
Dude, better to leave ax-wielding psychos well enough alone.
“You all right?” The guy’s voice grows hesitant, unsure if I’ve got a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. I refuse to answer. Eventually, the lamp clicks off.
Alone, raging in the dark, exhausted, devastated, my self-control frays to a single strand of whipcord. Got to keep my hands tight gripped on the rusted handle, ensure I don’t pull an idiotic stunt—like grabbing my keys. Chasing her down.
“I held on,” I mutter. My eyes sting with a fierce burn. “Fucking held fast.”
Tough shit.
I still lost everything.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Talia
I fly to Santa Cruz in a series of mind-numbing flights: Hobart to Sydney to Los Angeles to San Francisco. My tear ducts are broken by the time I clear customs. Somehow, incredibly, life continues. Breathe in, breathe out, and I’m here, surviving without a heart. Every morning I wake, lock the bathroom door until it feels right, and stare in the bathroom mirror. Each time I am surprised to find myself still here, staring back.
I speak about that last, terrible night with Bran only once, with Sunny, on New Year’s Eve. She’s letting me crash in her garden studio behind her grandma’s house while I wait for my Peace Corps posting to begin in a few weeks. We hide out at Cowell Beach, avoiding the drunken shitshow raging up and down Pacific Avenue.
Sunny’s features briefly blaze into view as she inhales her joint. I work through a box of Junior Mints. Weed, sugar—we all have our vices.
Beyond the waves, sea lions bark on the rocks. A few intrepid surfers ring in the year with a night session. I can’t decode their bodies in the dark but there are occasional whoops and hollers. I bite my lip. I’m not going to cry. I’ve shed enough tears for Bran to irrigate Death Valley. I thought we would work, no matter what.
By the time I reached Santa Cruz, his phone was disconnected and his university e-mail disabled. I try to believe he’ll come around but it’s hard, like diamond hard, without the luster.
“Wait, wait, wait. Holy shit, T! He punched a wall above your head? Why didn’t you knee him in the junk?”
“He wasn’t threatening me with violence.”
“No excuses. Good thing he’s far, far over the rainbow. You’re done.”
I know. We are.
“It’s better this way, trust me. Someday you’ll see.”
“He hasn’t e-mailed or called. Just the one postcard.”
The card arrived at Sunny’s address, which is the one I left him, a few days before Christmas. He’d scrawled two words: Going south.
My sweet boy did it; he joined the Sea Alliance.
“You look like shit, honeybunch.”
“I feel worse.”
“Fucking Bran.”
“Don’t say that.”
I drop onto the sand beside Sunny and she passes me the joint. I take a single, lung-stinging puff, shove away a fleeting lung-cancer fear, and exhale.
“Why do you insist on defending him?” She sounds genuinely curious. “I mean, Brandon Lockhart is the type of guy who’s fun to fall into bed with, but that’s it, no más.”
“I…”
I’ve heard people toss around the term other half and it always sounds like an expression served with a heaping side of barfaroni. Bran and I, we share the same soul and end up yanking it back and forth like two people with a single blanket on a cold night.
I can’t help but hope he’ll catch his mistake, want to tuck me back in.
“Sorry, Sunshine. I can’t give you a reason that will make sense.”
She smooches my forehead. “You were going along, minding your own business and—bam!—out of nowhere he careened into your life, a total sideswipe. But you’ll get back on track.”
“Do you believe in true love?” I say, turning to face her straight on.
Sunny kicks the sand. “What about Tanner? Ever think about him anymore?” Her voice is strained, in a weird way that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s the weed.
Tanner—my sister’s big love. The guy I nursed a major crush on for my entire teenage existence. The guy I drunkenly lost my virginity to a year after her death.
“Why are you bringing him up? He’s ancient history.”
“You make my point.”
“Which is?”
“People move on. It’s what we do, as a species, how we survive. Someday you’ll realize this guy was an accident. Nothing more.”
