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“You know how I feel about him.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Maya says. She squeezes my hand before releasing it. “You come across in a way people take as meek and like a pushover, but you’re not. That’s your little shell hard at work, sweetie, and I think if he mentioned he knew, you’d have done the idiotic thing and rejected him because of this stupid guilt and feeling like you don’t deserve happiness.”
I let out a sigh. “That’s true. But now there’s all this stuff going on, with his brother and his ex, and it’s just… a lot.”
Maya’s eyes are as kind as they always are. “You walk around with all this guilt. About me. About your past. About getting pregnant. Well, Brandi, it takes two for that last one and you had no blame in the other two things, either. It’s time to take the weight off your shoulders and breathe.”
I let go of the spoon and pick up my napkin, using it to distract myself from the turmoil of emotions that I’m not going to get rid of anytime soon. “He’s lied to me, and he’s hiding something. Even when he says that we know each other… we don’t.”
“You want twenty questions?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know.” Which doesn’t help the situation at all, because I’m indecisive as all hell. “It’s like, from the beginning, I’ve competed with a ghost. Now, she’s suddenly morphed into living flesh; that’s what it feels like. And then he got into a fight with his brother over her in front of the house.” Even if he did say the whole time anything he felt for his ex is gone, I saw proof that it isn’t. I can’t even voice the nightmares that I’m having, the ones where he’s settled for me just because I’m a pale comparison of her… and the closest he’ll get to actually having her.
“I want it to all be simple.”
But I know better. My life isn’t meant to be simple.
“That isn’t life, B. Simple isn’t worth it. Simple isn’t happiness. Simple… Well, simple’s boring. Life is about love, and love is complicated. It takes trust. But mostly time to figure it out and how it works for you. And you have the time to do that. Just don’t… don’t push him away without taking that time first.”
Her words stay with me long after lunch and well into the night because she’s absolutely right.
I wasn’t going to go home. I wanted to go to my old place and leave Travis to stew in whatever his feelings were. But I didn’t think to take clothes with me, and the only thing to sleep on was the old couch. Neither of which would bother me on a normal day.
“I’m not weak,” I tell the emptiness of mine and Travis’ bedroom. “I just wanted to be comfortable.”
“That doesn’t make you weak.”
No. No, it doesn’t. But the surprised squeak and the fact that I almost peed myself when Travis walked into the room like he was a ninja, that would make me weak.
Travis looks exhausted when he steps through the doorway, watching me carefully with a guarded expression, a little frayed about the edges.
My traitor of a heart is pounding loudly against my chest. Not in fear, but excitement at seeing him.
Stupid heart.
“Brandi,” he says with a small smile that holds only a hint of wariness, “you’re a welcome sight for these eyes.”
“We need to talk.” I don’t bother with the small talk. I have a hundred problems, and he holds the answers to all of them.
He nods, sliding his hands in his pockets as he stands there, like he’s too afraid to get any closer out of fear or something similar. “Yesterday, you saw shit I didn’t want you to see. Heard things out of context.”
“You know, my life wasn’t great as a kid,” I say, surprising even myself. “I didn’t have anyone really steady in my life until my grandparents and even they weren’t around all that long. But it was enough, it was a taste of what life is supposed to be like. What happiness could be like. For a while I was alone again, and then I had Maya and my friends and everything was good. Until you.”
“I let you down.”
He did.
“I’m an asshole.”
He really is.
I sigh, a long and beleaguered thing, dragged from the depths of my soul.
“I think…” I pull up my big girl panties and breathe as deeply as I can. “I think I need space.”
18
TRAVIS
