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The Road to Love
“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want to go out?” Tessa and Grady were out for her birthday and today marked two years since we had met.
“I really need to get this file uploaded,” Brandt replied without taking his eyes off the computer.
Brandt and Grady had opened an online surf shop and he had been working extremely hard lately, while it seemed Grady just partied more.
“Let me help,” I said, leaning over his shoulder and kissing his neck.
“I need a phone number off a business card. I think it’s on my nightstand.”
I bit his neck lightly. “I’ll go get it.”
I loved being at Brandt’s place. When Grady wasn’t around, it almost seemed like it could be our place. We spent a lot of time here, cooking together and watching movies. I spent almost every day here when he worked, but we had decided to wait until we were married to sleep together, so I went home every night. It was silly, really, but he loved the idea and so I went along with it. Not that it was easy by any means, and with no engagement in sight, I had a feeling one of us would waver on our promise. Our relationship hadn’t taken many steps forward in the last year, but mainly because of the business. There wasn’t much time for anything else right now.
I picked up some clothes and tossed them into the laundry basket as I made my way over to his nightstand. I didn’t see a card on the table, so I opened the top drawer and rummaged around. “Hey, babe, I can’t find it. Are you sure it was on the nightstand? Maybe it’s in one of the drawers?”
I had never really gone through Brandt’s drawers. I never had a reason and I wanted to respect his privacy, so when I came across a picture hidden at the bottom of the drawer of him and another guy with a girl sandwiched between them, both kissing either side of her cheeks, my heart stopped beating for a millisecond.
“Bay, I’ll look,” Brandt called in the room urgently.
It was too late, though. When I turned to him, holding the picture with tears in my eyes, I expected for him to comfort me. To tell me it was nothing. To tell me she meant nothing and he had forgotten the picture was in there. Something other than storming over to me, snatching the picture out of my hand, and shouting, “Get out.”
I was so startled I flinched. He had never spoken to me that way, and I had never seen the look that consumed him. He was angry, but he also looked deflated.
“Who is she?” My words trembled and I wrapped my arms around myself protectively.
He shook his head. “You said the past was the past.”
“Clearly it’s not.” My heart had been launched into the sky and then shot down, scattering the pieces all around us.
I stood there, hoping he would confess whatever dark secret he was hiding, but his silence was loud and clear. I pushed past him, running outside, across the lot to an open field of grass with a large oak tree. On nice days residents would come out here with their kids and have picnics, but it was late and abandoned.
“Bay, wait,” Brandt called after me.
I stopped at the tree, tears streaming down my face and my lungs burning with betrayal. Brandt caught up and immediately wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m so sorry, Bay. I’m so sorry,” he pleaded through broken words and tears of his own.
I wiped my nose and pulled away. My eyes fell to his hand that was still holding the picture.
“I need to know,” I said shamefully.
I wanted to pretend his life started when we met, and it seemed to have worked until now, but I was being naïve. We couldn’t go into a marriage, if that was where we were headed, and not know the skeletons that followed us around.
He raised his chin to the sky and coughed back tears. “Chris was my best friend and Becca was his girlfriend.” He took a deep breath. “She was mine, too,” he confessed.
I steadied my eyes from judgment, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. That wasn’t the Brandt I knew.
“We all went to high school together, and Chris and I were awarded soccer scholarships to Berkeley. Naturally, Becca followed him.” He corrected himself, “Us.” His head dropped to the photo. “We partied a lot. More than we should have. One night Chris walked in on Becca and me. I was a jerk for doing it, but we were all kind of a thing in high school, and I just assumed it was the same when we took off to college.” He paused. “I was an idiot. Chris had asked Becca to marry him, and I had no idea. He was my best friend, and I didn’t even know he loved her like that.”
“It’s okay,” I interjected when he was lost in the memory for more than a few seconds. “We all make mistakes.”
“You’re right, Bay. We do, but this one has followed me since the day he died.”
I gasped and covered my mouth, chills splaying across my insides.
“We were all drunk and high when Chris walked in on us. He threw some punches and then took off in his truck. I tried to stop him. I ran after the truck, but I wasn’t fast enough. And then, not even twenty seconds later, I heard a crash and the world just stopped moving. I ran to the crash, but he was already gone, Bay. He was gone.” He covered his mouth, choking through coughs, and then crumbled to the ground.
