--"Razzle Dazzle Rose", Camera Obscura
Continued from I Can Be A Friend To You, I Won't Pretend, I'm Not Interested In Breaking A Heart, It's Not Love, No, It's Nothing Like That
Hmmm... fourteen or fifteen somehow turned into nineteen.
Imagine that.FEELING OLDER
a story by e. patrick taroc
When she first heard from him that they were going to a relatively fancy restaurant overlooking the city she was expecting something nice, quaint even. What she didn’t expect was the magnitude and scope of the establishment she now saw. It wasn’t the masonry of the supports or even the way the woodwork of the beams which held the ceiling up that impressed her. It was the feeling of warmth and welcoming that every fixture, painting, and member of the personnel gave off. The Rusty Pelican was certainly a far cry from the small diners and random late night meals at Denny’s she was used to when her and her friend went out to eat. This was a restaurant where the grown-ups ate, a place she supposed she would have to get used to eating.
She approached the front doors with some trepidation. The feeling that possibly they would not be welcomed still lingered in the back of her mind. After all, she had only recently turned eighteen, only recently been embraced into the arms of adulthood. Maybe there was some secret handshake that she needed to know to greet the host, a sign to show that she was finally now part of the exclusive club. She half-believed he would laugh in her face after one look at her. Who did she think she was? Dressed in a strapless black satin gown that hugged every curve and fit like a glove, she still felt like she was playing at maturity. That’s what she was a girl pretending to be a woman and the host would immediately pick up on that, she just knew it.
“Party of two, sir?” she heard him ask her friend.
“Yes,” her friend answered. He wasn’t dressed too shabby either. He had bothered even to put on a navy blue collared shirt as well as a splash of cologne, both of which were rarities for him. However, unlike her, he fit into his skin, a testament to the fact he had had five years longer to get accustomed to the idea of adulthood.
“And might I say, madam, that you look exquisite tonight. You two make a lovely couple,” the host managed to say before another staff member took the two of them to their table.
“Oh, we’re not a couple. We’re just friends,” she casually said back to him with a knowing smile.
----
Forty minutes later, she and her friend were in the midst of their meal. Somehow they couldn’t quite get past the distraction of the couple six tables down from them. She looked deep into her friend’s quiet brown eyes, gave a look of exasperation, and tried to steer the conversation to the subject that was on both their minds. She didn’t even need to say a word. She grabbed her friend’s hand tightly when the shouting got especially heated, saying “Good Lord!” more effectively and more politely than the actual words would have ever conveyed.
“Take a listen to those guys. I bet you can hear them clear across the whole dining room,” he replied. Indeed, one could have heard them down the block as clear as their brouhaha was being broadcast. The waiters had already approached them twice about keeping the noise down or face being exiled from the restaurant. The two of them had managed to tone it down a bit, but the dispute apparently had always come rearing back.
“Some people just have a knack for making their private laundry public.”
This time it was his turn to strengthen his grip on her hand. She watched the familiar smile settle across his mischievous face.
“Promise me something, Breanne. If I ever cause a scene like that you’ll take me out back and beat me with a switch.”
“I hate to break it to you, but it wouldn’t be the first scene you’ve caused with me in public.”
“Says the girl who runs away all the time.”
She released her grip on him. She knew he was playing, but she still possessed certain subjects that she felt were off-limits. She had forgotten just how well he knew her. She had forgotten just how much of her past he had access to. Most of the friends she had now had not been privy to the days when stress and the plain experience of growing up had dictated to her that she needed to escape it as quickly and as often as possible. Hardly anybody knew she had been prone to running away from home. But he did. She thought that part of her, the willful child who couldn’t cope with her troubles, was behind her. She thought it was all but forgotten. Except he knew. He would always know that part of her. It was good in a way. Other times, though, like this, it embarrassed her to no end.
He would always think of her as the girl who runs away.
“Technically, sugar, those aren’t scenes since I don’t go around parading myself in public. I avoid the public. That’s why it’s called running away.”
She heard him laugh slightly.
“I think those would still be scenes because it causes quite a spectacle back at your house. Friends, family, the cops, all gathering on your behalf. I’d say you’ve had your fair share of scenes caused.”
“Since I’m not present, I’m not actually causing a scene,” she argued.
“So what then?”
She mulled it over a minute, watching his eyes follow hers with every possible excuse she could come up with. Finally, she had to say something.
“Maybe we could agree that a scene arises after my actions, but not as a direct result.”
“So a scene merely spontaneously appears after you just happen to leave?”
“Kind of like St. Elmo’s Fire. My scenes just magically appear,” she giggled, closing her eyes.
When she looked at him again, he was trying hard to stifle a grin. She sensed that, despite his gray-flecked hair, the developing laugh lines that she had never noticed before, and the fact that she was talking to a college graduate, he was still playing at being stoic and noble. To her, he would always be the dorky friend she had known for years.
Meanwhile, the couple at the bickering table had stopped to raise their voices again. This time, instead of thinly veiled points and counterpoints, they had resorted to thinly veiled threats and insults. She couldn’t make out every word, let alone every syllable, but she understood hostility in its many forms. Apparently, someone out there didn’t want the festive mood of her last day in California to continue. She mentally shrugged it off and tried to tune out the couple as best she could. She didn’t the evening to go off perfectly, but she did want to take away a somewhat joyous memory of the dinner. She already had too many memories with him that had ended in sadness or anger. This night she wanted to claim for the other side.
“Wow, this sounds to be a four-alarmer,” she heard him say.
“Shush. You shouldn’t be listening to their conversation anyway, Patrick. It’s impolite.”
“It’s kind of hard not to.”
She knew he was right. She knew that despite her best efforts to make this evening about the two of them, it really wasn’t. Something else always wanted to creep its way in. If it wasn’t the couple, it’d be something else, she tried to console herself with.
“Do you ever wonder in arguments like those, when exactly it is the
participants actually realize that everyone can and probably is listening in? I mean—in situations like those, I don’t exactly get self-conscious, but there always comes a point when I can imagine what everybody else around me must be thinking.”
“’That girl’s crazy?’” she heard him joke.
“Or ‘that couple’s crazy.’”
“I know what you mean. I always reach a point where I want to shut up and let everything die, but I just can’t let the fire die. You come to a crossroads where there really is no turning back.”
“Exactly. Sometimes there’s no unbaking the cake.
“Arguments like these almost make me want to step in and intercede. They’re obviously not doing so well in resolving their differences. I believe that a third party may be the solution they’re looking for, like a mediator.”
“You wouldn’t.”
She pretended to get up, even going so far as scooting out from the booth, brushing the creases out on her dress, and standing partly way up. In the end, it was the comfortable touch of his hand on her upper arm, prompting to her please sit down, that convinced her that she was merely bluffing. Perhaps a few years maybe she might have spoke her peace. Tonight, however, she was not that woman any more.
“I wouldn’t… but I could.” She gave him her best smile, the one she knew he absolutely couldn’t resist. She had noticed him looking over at her dress the whole evening and now she caught him once again peeking downward a bit at his longtime friend in a way that she thought may be not so couched in friendly terms. Imagination, she tried to convince herself. Still, she wasn’t taking any chances and she knew her smile had been one he had always complimented her on.
“I know that. You’re capable of anything.”
“What in Providence does that mean, darling?”
“Nothing. Just that I wouldn’t put anything past you, especially when it goes to show how ‘sassy’ you are.”
“Sassy, huh? You think of me as sassy?”
“I think of you as Miss Sassy, The Sassy Princess, The Sassinator.”
“Okay, Copy Boy,” she felt her eyes tearing up with all the laughing the two of them were sharing between them. She was going to miss him something fierce when she left the next day. Georgia was ever so far from California and she’d be ever so far from him. Then the situation would go back to normal, they’d become long-distance best friends once more, replacing face-to-face conversations with phone calls and e-mails. She was going to miss the intensity of hashing what was on her mind in front of him. She was going to miss the expressions, cute or not, he made when she talked when he thought she wasn’t watching him. She was going to miss having him only mere miles away instead of mere states.
Mostly, though, she was going to miss conversing with him in the language of the touch that the two of them had only begun to re-learn. The hand-holding, the warm and gentle hugs, the playful pinching, and especially the way he loved to brush the bangs out of her chestnut brown hair—all that would be disappearing with the plane ride tomorrow. What’s more, she was powerless to stop it. That’s why tonight needed to be great because it was going to be her last chance, her last of anything with him for awhile.
“Do you think I’m too forward?” she asked him after neither of him had spoken for a minute.
“Don’t mistake me. I think it’s a good trait to have. I was just kidding about the whole sassy thing. It’s a lot of the reason why I like you.”
“But?”
She heard him huff.
“But sometimes I think you do things just because people don’t think you will. Maybe they don’t tell you in so many words, but I think, when you’re presented with an option to do the more mundane thing or the more flashy thing, you’ll always opt to do the showier thing.”
Outside she remained. Inside, though, she was reeling. She actually thought she’d gotten away from such behavior.
“So you’re saying I have a streak of the proud princess in me?”
“If the veil fits, Breanne.”
“No, no, no. I’m not saying you’re incorrect,” she tried to backtrack. She knew she hadn’t really outgrown the trait, but she thought she’d managed to distance herself from it somewhat. She thought she had other, more predominant traits now. What those were, she couldn’t decide. She knew she didn’t want to be known as the bratty and impatient girl all her life, though. “It’s only that it’s a little off-putting to hear someone else call out my shortcomings,” she managed to eke out meekly through a half-smile, “even if it is you.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t told you before,” she heard him say as she felt him pat her on the shoulder.
“No, I know you have. And, believe me, you’re not the only person who has. It’s been a long time, though. Honestly, I thought I’d lost some of my vanity with old age.”
“If eighteen is old age, then what am I?”
“Ancient? Prehistoric? Fossilriffic?” she answered. She blew him a fake kiss, indicating that she, in fact, was wicked but that she was only wicked because she cared about him. Either that or she undoubtedly enjoyed teasing him. She wasn’t sure which.
“Anyway. I do think you have mellowed with age. I don’t consider you as self-absorbed as you once were. Yet, if you were to ask me if you’ve lost all your self-admiration completely, I’d have to answer you haven’t. Face it, Little Miss Chipper, it’s just a part of you.”
“I know. But everyone always talks about how it’s this bad quality to have in a person and I’ve sincerely been trying to shed it like a family of ticks for awhile now. It’s disheartening to be told I haven’t suceeeded completely yet.”
She placed her head on the table against her better judgment. She wasn’t that disappointed, but dramatics was a talent she always had a flair for and this situation seemed to call for some drama. Bad etiquette, to be sure, but mighty fine drama. While resting on the table she caught more of what the couple were still arguing about—something about how he didn’t really love her and that, if he really did, he wouldn’t go through the motions. She heard in the woman’s voice that not only did she want his man to mean everything he said, but that she wanted him to say the words she longed for him to hear. The man asked her what those words might be. If you don’t know them by now, then you’ll never know them, she said.
She heard her friend speak. She perked up her head and sat upright again.
“What about me? What do you find quite the same about me?”
“Besides your utter failure at being able to compliment somebody?”
“Seriously,” he said, a lack of mischievous surprisingly missing from his face.
“Seriously,” she spoke in as deep a register as she could muster.
“There’s nothing that you think I think I’ve shed that I really haven’t?”
She pondered the question somewhat before answering. He honestly sounded like he wanted to know so she obliged them as concisely as possible.
“I don’t know. What have you been trying to shed?”
“Nothing consciously. However, I do think I’ve changed some in the intermittent years since meeting you.”
He had changed. He had changed a lot. The only excuse she was equipped with that could possibly explain away why she couldn’t see the changes was the fact she had changed right along with him. She looked at his fussy black hair that once was over-styled and over-gelled black hair in his pictures. Was that any different than the medium-length copper curls she now sported that once was the ribbon-tied tails her mother had forced her to wear? She looked at the man sitting across from her in the charming blue shirt and slacks and tried her best to remember when he had flown all the way to her house in denim, denim, and more denim. Was that any different from her now wearing gowns that she once could only picture her mother wearing and the girl who once upon a time never left the house except in sundresses and jumpers? The truth was as much as the two of them had changed, the two of them also had managed to stay the same with the other. Neither had so overtly changed as to alienate the other. Neither had changed so much as to not be recognized the other. That’s the main reason that we’re still friends, she thought. We haven’t changed enough to belong with anyone else.
“It’s like trying to see how far a brook has shifted sideways when you live
right upon its banks, you know? I’ve been there for all the subtle changes that sometimes it isn’t so easy to see them for myself.
“One thing I’d have to say, though, is the fact you’ve come far in terms of showing how you feel. There were times when you could be frigid.”
The look on his face was almost inconsolable. She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. In case he wasn’t, she began to scoot around the half-circle shaped booth next to him. Upon reaching him, she put her arm around his shoulders. When she felt him accept it willingly, she knew she’d actually touched a nerve.
Hugs. Definitely she was going to miss those.
After a brief respite from talking, they again separated.
“See? I never thought I was especially rigid around you. I always though I was rather forthcoming in how I felt about you and where the two of us stood.”
“Oh sure, you’ve always been that way. Now… now you’re more of that way. I don’t know—it’s hard to put into words,” she backpedaled.
She reached to take a drink of her ice tea. Her attention was then caught by his gesturing arms to the Sam Adams he tried to offer her. She shook her head slightly. Not only was she not legally old enough, drinking was an activity best left to less refined locations. She knew, anyway, that the only reason he was offering was he wanted to show off his newfound interest in drinking. That was one change she also noticed. He was beginning to take up habits that he had once foresworn. It gave her hope that his mind could be changed regarding other matters.
She put down her glass of tea.
“I’m glad you see at least one aspect of positive growth in me, Breanne.”
“I’m just glad I had something to report, Eeyore.”
“I always thought I told you how I felt or maybe it was just that I always thought you knew.”
She always knew. That was part of the problem.
“Oh, I always knew. It’s only that a girl likes to hear the words every now and then.”
“Got it.”
“Besides with someone like me, telling me how you feel is tantamount to a compliment and well, you know,” she stifled a laugh. Her penchant for adulation was well-documented.
“Yeah, I know.”
She decided to put the thoughts she’d been having all evening into play and see what the conversation made of them.
“I think we’ve both come a long way and, if I daresay so myself, I think we both have reached an age where we could be considered mature.”
“Oh, we’re all sorts mature,” she heard him say mockingly, putting up his hand in the international sign for a high five. She shook her head and he sheepishly put his palm back down.
“I’m serious, Patrick.”
“We’re all over this mature thing,” he whispered to her still grinning devilishly.
“Okay, maybe I spoke too soon.” She patted him on the head like a child. “Maybe I can be considered mature and you’d still be considered a dork.”
She felt him brush away her hand gently until it once more rested around his neck, on his shoulder.
“One thing I can tell you for sure. We’re way more mature than that couple over there. They’re still going strong after, what, fifteen minutes?”
She turned to sneak a peek at the still bickering couple. They had settled into the silent treatment, possibly after being asked to leave one more time, by the manager no less. They had promised to behave once more and were told that, if one more complaint was lodged, they would be escorted out and never allowed back in ever. She then turned her attention back to her friend.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked, stopping to pick up a sugar packet from the container. She began to play with it slowly in her hands.
“Isn’t that my usual question?”
She closed her eyes debating whether or not now was the right time to pose her inquiry. She’d been wanting to ask him all night, all day even, but thought better of it. However, with her plane scheduled to take off at precisely eight the next morning, she was running out of opportunities.
Over and over she felt the packet revolving between her fingers.
“What? Am I being obnoxious again? Do you want me to stop?” she heard him continue, attempting to get her to open her eyes.
She risked it.
“Please, thank you,” she started. She opened her eyes and looked directly into his concerned brown eyes. “Do you think if we’d been more of a couple we would have ended up like them?” She gestured with her chin over to the table, but they both knew who she was talking about.
“Do I think, if we were more involved than we already are, we would be fighting like crazy all the time? No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not? We fight a lot, sugar.”
“I don’t think any more than any set of friends.”
“Seems like a lot to me.”
“I think we’ve fought more often in the past.”
“True. There’s that maturity beast rearing its ugly head again.”
“I think we’ve reached a stage where petty squabbles are a thing of the past. I think we’ve reached a place in our lives where we are just comfortable with one another. Don’t you think?”
She considered that he spoke the truth. She was comfortable with him. More comfortable than with anyone else up to that point. Maybe she was wrong for thinking she could change that, for even wanting to change that. She knew that her friend was not prone to speaking out of turn when it came to how he felt. If anything, he more often spoke with too much emotion when it came to something or someone he cared for and was passionate about.
Someone like her.
There had been a time, when the two of them had been “dating,” when the two of them had laid together in her bed after sleeping together, that he had convinced her that he wanted something much more than comfortable. She’d believed him then too. She’d let every word sink in as if it were concrete, immovable and solid. She’d been attempting to convince him that the two of them as a couple were worth all the hassle and problems that they were bound to encounter and, for those few weeks anyway, he had sounded as if he’d been convinced. That night, in her room, with her parents still out of the house, they had begun to talk about plans as to how it would all work—where she would go to school, how soon he’d be able to move out there, how their whole future would eventually come together.
All those words, all those feelings, came pouring out of him as if they were proclamations. She believed, really believed, that he had enough determination for the both of them. She remembered going to sleep that night convinced her future would be word for word just as he had said. She couldn’t have been happier.
Yet the next day he had left, promising to come back to visit, but he never did. Not yet anyway.
And the day after that, every day after that, he sounded less convincing to her. Fairly soon she began to understand that whatever feelings of utter fearlessness and grit the two of them shared were once more giving way to reality. It wasn’t even reality, she thought, but merely the disproportianate opinions of everyone who knew them. No one gave them a chance so they stopped believing.
That was the real shame of it all, the fact they gave up when they sincerely didn’t know how it would have ended. She felt ashamed for not giving it her best when she was accustomed to giving her best in every other aspect of her life. This, him, was more important that most everything in her life and she had let it all go without a proper fight.
That’s what she needed to correct.
“Definitely. I just worry sometimes that perhaps what we have is either too little or too much for this, us, to survive. I feel that sometime soon we’re going to have to move forward or back… or I don’t know.”
“Why would you say that?” She watched as he gave her a paranoid look.
“Because there comes a point in everyone’s life where the same just isn’t the same, where being at the same place you were a year ago isn’t really all that healthy. I’m afraid that what makes this, us, special needs to change to continue. Otherwise, we’re doomed to lose it.
“Crazy, huh, Eeyore?”
“A tad. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
She wanted to yell at him, just like the woman only a few yards away. She wanted to tell him not to dismiss her so entirely without hearing her entire argument out.
“I’m not worried. I’m thinking is all. You probably think I’m sorry as a two dollar watch. I can’t help it sometimes. Sometimes I think it’s true we’re not destined long for this world.”
She again watched for his reaction. She watched as he hid his eyes from her with his hands, cupping his face like a shield. When he appeared again from behind them, she thought he was still hiding something.
“That makes me think you think we’re dying.”
“Maybe we’re each not dying, but perhaps
we’re dying in a way.”
She heard him cough. She watched as he took a swig from his beer. She watched as he tried to distance himself from the conversation.
“Do you really want to rehash this again? I thought we were both pleased with where we are. I thought everything was running smoothly.”
“Maybe smooth is not that smooth. Maybe choppier waters are what is callef for if only to show that there’s still some life left in this ‘ole vessel.”
She reached for and received his hands. She began to smooth away the top of it. She needed him to believe and didn’t know what else she could do to convince him.
Again, she saw him peeking at her, all of her, and she hoped there was still something beautiful where he was looking. God, please, let him believe, she thought.
“Is that how you really feel or are you just talking out of your lily white ass?”
She hid her smile gracefully. There was a time when she would allowed him his tangent and, certainly her penchant for mooning at a moment’s notice was a fairly large tangent. Tonight, she had more pressing matters than her lily white ass, however.
“Lord knows I talk a majority of the time from there, but, no, I’m being upfront. I truly believed we’re worth more than skirting around the issue.”
“I would think that you would get tired, like me, about always trying to define where and what we are. It’s like fruitcake. Sometimes it’s better not to know what something is and to leave it alone.”
“And I would think it would drive you batty to just sit there unawares as to how much somebody, you claim to be important to you, means. Aren’t you the least bit curious to see if trying again would be in vain?”
“Not in the least. I’m happy where were at and, deep down, I believe it’s for the best that we don’t try again.”
She gathered up every inch of her self-control not to show any sign of disappointment or sadness. She gathered it up as ammunition, as fuel for her argument. She would not show weakness now.
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say to that. I have no response to that.”
She felt him move in closer to her. She felt more than heard him lean in to kiss her sweetly. She felt him nicely. She only wished his kisses meant something more to him. The kiss, she knew, was only one of consolation and not the one she secretly clamored after. It meant something different to both of them and that idea was slowly melting her heart away.
“I can be a friend to you, my Breannie. You know that,” she heard him say after they again separated. “I just don’t know how much more you can honestly expect from me. All the same problems that made it impossible then make it still impossible now.”
She didn’t care about distance. She didn’t care about ages or life experience. She didn’t care about how often their personalities seemed to clash. All she cared about, truthfully, was him.
“I know, I know. Call me curious, though, I thought you were always the idealistic Romantic. I never took for you a liar in that regard, Patrick.”
“There comes a point after being constantly redirected away from one’s
efforts that one begins to get the hint, as they say. It’s too hard to constantly want something, someone, and to be rebuffed by circumstance at every opportunity.”
“Even if the someone in question has never done any of the rebuffing?”
“Even if.”
“Well, I think that’s plain sad.”
“I know it is.”
She scooted even closer to him till she was practically whispering in his ears.
“What I think is this. I think that certain people are like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Certain people just belong together. Now, I’m not saying that you and I are destined for each other or that we would end up in the happily ever after scenario, but I think it’s worth a shot to give it a shot.”
“Even if we end up like them?” she heard him ask as he whispered to her own ear.
“Even if. I believe it’s up to us. It’s our responsibility to try and keep trying until we’re both sure it’s not going to work. So what if it’s hard or that it’s all been said and done before. If we keep trying, we’re bound to get it right one of these times. I don’t think it’s right for us to just give up on this.”
“Even if it’s a matter of fitting a square peg into a round hole?”
“Even if it’s a matter of fitting a basketball into the eighteenth hole on a golf course. We need to try again.”
She kissed him on the cheek as she once more backed away from him.
She looked on as he shook his head.
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, darling, I’m not going to beg,” she sighed. “I’m still just tossing ideas at you here. We’re both adult enough to converse about this without resorting to histrionics. You can follow plainly enough the meaning of my words by my saying them. You know me. I haven’t changed, I’m still Breanne. I’m still little ‘ole me. I’m not going anywhere even if the two of us as an us doesn’t work out. But I want to give it another go.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“Who knows where ideas come from? They just appear,” she quoted while allowing a bit of a smile to break through. She began flipping the sugar packet again. Then, before she could continue, she felt his hand reaching for her bangs to brush them aside from her eyes. That alone made it difficult for her to continue. She waited for him to retreat his hand before continuing. “Because, because, because, we’re supposed to. Because that’s the way it is. Because that’s the way I feel. Because of a lot of little reasons that don’t make a whole lot of sense when spoken aloud. But, mostly, because I said so.”
She watched him bite his lip as he searched for a reply. She still tasted him upon hers and wondered if he was thinking the exact same thought. She couldn’t face him directly, though, and kept an eye on the sugar packet spinning slowly in her hands. It’s amazing how distracted one wants to become when presented with an event where all of her attention should be focused, she thought. There she was in a swanky restaurant, looking out over the whole city, in a relatively new dress purchased expressly for this occasion, with the only person who only ever mattered to her, and all she wanted to concentrate on was some measly sugar packet. She couldn’t understand the logic in that. She doubted there was any. She thought it might have a bit to do with only tackling what she could handle and, possibly, she had taken on more than she could reasonably handle. The thought she was overmatched in this situation crept over her.
It was during moments like this that the old her would ponder extricating herself from the situation, allowing it to simmer for another day. Back then she always thought her problems would solve themselves eventually or, barring that, she thought they’d be easier to solve given enough time. The old her thought troubles got easier the farther one got away from them.
This was the new her, though, and the new her realized that nothing would be resolved unless she resolved it. She put down the packet once more.
“Is that right? And I’m supposed to follow along blindly because you ordered it?”
“Exactly.”
“What happened to us moving past that stage? I thought we had given up the foolish whims of an arrangement that could never come to a suitable conclusion. I thought we both decided it was better to settle for reality.”
She kicked him beneath the table.
“One, I’ve never settled for anything, and, two, woman’s prerogative and all that.”
She kicked him again for good measure, this time producing the desired result of eliciting an audible yelp.
She began to notice that the tables immediately around her had started to whisper about the two of them. Gone were the original troublemakes, either because they had finished their meal or because they had finally been forcibly removed. In their stead now only sat her and her friend.
“Oh, I see,” she heard him say as he rubbed his shin.
“I know you still care about me,” she said, trying to explain to him with her eyes how deeply she felt about him. “I know you still love me.”
This time it was his turn to sigh.
“That just doesn’t go away no matter how much easier I think it would be. Sometimes, though, you have to give up what you want for what will make you happy.”
She put her hands on his face, gliding over his cheeks, until finally slipping off his chin. She wanted to let her fingers do her arguing for her. She hoped it was enough to convince him of just how happy she could make him.
“And you don’t think I’ll make you happy, Patrick?”
“I think you’ll try, but there’s just too much that won’t work out, can’t work out.”
She started to stroke his arm, trying anything to get a sign of reciprocation out of him.
“Then why did you invite me out here to California? You can’t tell me that it wasn’t because you wanted a taste of what it could be like.”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to tell you that there isn’t some part of me that yearns for you like a horny, little schoolboy. I’m not going to say that you don’t still rank as one of the most perfect women I have ever met. I really would be crazy not to want you. But mainly I wanted you out here because, well, you’re going off to college, during which we’ll probably stop being friends or at least as close as we are now. Call it our last hurrah before everything changes for you. That’s the way I thought about your trip here, at least.”
She felt like dying except dying would be too good for her. More precisely, she felt like fading into nothingness. She stared into his soul, felt his every emotion, and only found a void when it came to loving her like she hoped for. She felt like she was turning as white as a ghost and slowly disappearing into the searing pain of losing something that she had briefly. She should have consoled herself with the notion that she had held it once. She should have reflected on the idea that, having it once, she always could hold onto that feeling, that feeling that somebody had loved her enough once to give her everything that was him and to honestly decide to share his life with her. However, all she could reflect on was the emptiness her life had suddenly taken on.
There was no hope for being happy without him, she thought.
She was angry more than anything else. She was angry at herself for believing in a young girl’s dream. She was mad at him for dashing her hopes so. She was irate that her trip would have to end on such a sour not. She was angry.
She wanted to leave.
Run away.
“That’s just great. And here I was silly enough to believe you were going to ask me to be something more to you precisely because I was going off to college. Silly me.”
She got up forcefully. It was enough to catch the attention of most of the restaurant. However, it wasn’t until she threw the sugar packet, still perched on the table, at him that the whole restaurant began to see what a real scene is. She watched as the packet him squarely across the jaw and turned abruptly to walk away.
She knew that the tears would be arriving any second and she didn’t want to
be inside when their arrival actually happened.
“Don’t walk away. Please, let’s just finish our dinner and we can talk about this some more after,” she heard him say rather loudly behind her.
She yelled over her shoulder as she still walked towards the door.
“I could no more eat dinner with you now as stand to look at you. I want to go back to the hotel. Take me back, please, thank you.”
She couldn’t be there with him any longer. When she reached the door she didn’t have the strength to push through. Not only that, but the host was insisting that someone had to pay the bill before she could leave. She would have explained that her friend would be picking up the check, but, even if she did leave, he had driven. She was completely stuck.
As she stood close to sobbing at the doorway, barring patrons from both entering or exiting, she felt his familiar touch on her shoulder. She heard him speaking into her ear behind the delicate strands of her. She felt him trying to apologize as he pressed his chest up against her back. She allowed the warmth of his body to announce all his apologies.
“I don’t want to make you more upset, Breanne. If you really want to go back, we’ll go back.”
She heard the host call for someone to get the bill. The next thing she heard was her friend shoo them away, telling them he would take care of the bill as soon as he took care of her. She could hear the people at a loss on both sides of the doorway. She listened as the irritation began to build to an audible crest.
She just didn’t care.
“It’s what I want.”
She felt as he took her hand in his, putting it up to his lips, and kissing it twice for good measure.
“I’m sorry. I’ve disappointed you.”
“What can I say?” She started to cry in earnest. “You have.”
“You knew it was never going to be easy with me when you met me, Breanne. That much hasn’t changed.”
“I know, I know. I just didn’t know everything, everyday would be so difficult is all. I do believe that often times I don’t think I was born with the sense God gave geese. If I had, I wouldn’t be so intent on someone who always seems to break my heart.”
She felt him kiss the back of her head in an attempt to stop her tears.
“I don’t break your heart, do I, Breannie?”
“Yes, you do. You really do. And you know what’s worse?”
She began to turn around at the door to face him as the crowd outside the restaurant began to start returning back to their cars in vehement annoyance. When she had done a complete about face she noticed that the host was calling for someone on the staff to clear the two of them.
“What’s that?” she heard him question, oblivious as well to the spectacle that was springing to life around them.
“There is no one else I’d rather have put it back together again afterwards. It’s a mean trick how you managed to pull that off,” she said plainly, pushing her eyes his way. She wished for a different outcome, but knew the inevitable result would have to suffice. She still had time to dream, but this time would only and could only in the tears she was now shedding.
“I wish I could be everything you want me to be, Breanne,” she heard him breathe into her ear again. “But I just can’t.”
“I know.”
“You know I love you… with all my heart.”
“Sure.”
She started to place her arms softly around him and felt him follow her example. She began to slide her cheeks past his as if they were ice-skating upon them. Anything, she thought, to feel him close to me.
“I don’t know what more else to say.”
She placed her head delicately on his shoulder.
“You don’t have to say anything else. Can’t we just stand here and can’t you just hold me? I’d like that.”
The two arms that engulfed her were as close to happily ever after as she was going to get from this evening. Yet as the two of them maintained their embrace, even with people shouting at them to move this display elsewhere, she realized that, as far as endings go, this one wasn’t too shabby.
“You have to know I’ll always love you. No matter what,” she said as she kissed him quickly. The restaurant had finally begin to push them out the door.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll cause a scene?” she heard him laugh as they found themselves outside.
“Never happen,” she giggled. “At any rate, I don’t care. Now shush.”
She closed her eyes, placed her cheek up against his again, and let herself float away to a feeling of complete safety. So what if she didn’t exactly get the result she wanted? Most people never do. She would have to allow herself to make the best of what she’s got.
That’s what mature people do, anyway.
Before they walked back to the car, he stopped to whisper to her one last thing. She felt him kiss her eyelids, then her tear-stained cheeks, and finally just below her chin.
“Breannie mine, with her eyes so bright, tears so silvery, and my kisses
still wet on her cheek…”
(08/10/06) Copyright 2006 E. Patrick Taroc
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
