Stay
by Chandrah
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Contents
Speaking In Tongues
Part I
Chapter 5
Tim walks us into the lobby of the hotel, my bags in hand.  He doesn’t seem as perplexed as I am about what to do with them, or why he’s carrying them.  No one in the lobby notices us but for a concierge who politely nods to David, who politely nods back.  As we get into the elevator, David moves to take the bags from Tim, who doesn’t relinquish them.

“What time for this meeting?”

“You have hours, it’s not until late this afternoon,” Tim informs, looking at his watch.  “Look, boss, I have to see you up…”

“No, you don’t, everything is fine.  Y’all come for us at three, then, and we’ll be waitin’ right here in the lobby.”

“Boss…”

“Tim, man, c’mon now.  We’re in the hotel…”

“And you don’t know what or who might be up on your floor trying to break into your room, or already has,” he says with a steady determination.  He still hasn’t let go of my bags.

“David, let the man do what he has to,” I intercede.  I’ve been down this road so many times it’s boring.  Handlers are paid to handle, to see record company cliental to and from places safely, securely, and with a minimum amount of hassle.  Because D.J. doesn’t employ bodyguards, his record company keeps a “Tim” on hand for just such occasions as this.

“Okay, okay,” he concedes, and he lets go of my bags to allow Tim entrance into the elevator.  “I really hate all this,” he says, not too quietly.

“I never would have guessed.”

“My fans, they’re not the kind who…”

“Don’t be naïve, not at this late date,” I tell him.  I’m too tired and upset for petty arguments over the inconveniences of his life.  David looks at me with a raised eyebrow, but says nothing.  Me, I just want a place to sit down and digest the last two hours.

The room is something so unlike David it’s laughable.  Amenities and perks and baskets of fruit and trays of cookies and too much of everything.  Lush fabrics, heavy drapes.  The view is a Manhattan view of more of Manhattan than anyone needs to see at our altitude.  There are fresh flowers.  Everywhere.  David looks out of place, but worse, out of sorts, as Tim puts my bags near the door, and then makes a quick sweep of the suite: living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms.

“I’ll be back at three.  I’ll come to get you, don’t be down in the lobby,” Tim says, and he leaves, closing the door with a soft click behind him.

Now… now it’s uncomfortable.  There’s an expanse of carpet, a lovely Persian one, which runs between David and me as we stand alone in this unfamiliar room.  Who we are, and more, what we’ve become, seems painfully vivid.  We are people who meet in anonymous places.  We are people that other people like Tim are paid to not notice.  There will be no mention of the woman that David has brought to his room.  Not from staff at this luxurious mid-town hotel, not from Tim, not from anyone connected to David and his career, because anything that might not help, that might even taint his image, will be unspoken of and well hidden.  If an outsider might question my being here, alone with this man, there are a million excuses and explanations at the ready to answer anyone from a nosy fan to a concerned wife.

Honor and protect.  No matter to what end.

I don’t know if this is what’s going through David’s mind as he stands before me for this one, prolonged moment, and looks at me from a distance that, although it might only be a few feet, seems likes miles.  He could be thinking of anything, his expression reveals nothing.  I would be in his head right now, if that was possible.  What I’ll settle for is his arms that reach out and bridge the distance.

**~~***~~****~~***~~**
**~~***~~****~~***~~**

What often seems like a good idea can turn to somethin’ horrible in a matter of seconds; at least that’s been my experience.  I’m thinkin’ that maybe this is one of those experiences; at least I did when I saw Betts drop to the floor at my feet.  Up until then, comin’ to New York and arranging to drop in at her office seemed like a very good idea indeed.

The whole ordeal of making ‘My Lady of the Lake’ turned into just that, a big, fucked up ordeal.  I wasn’t even in the process when we started, my head was with Betts along with various other bits of my anatomy, and I about cared less for making this record than for maybe anything in the world.  I was… I was distraught to say the least, and dove into one of my black moods, something that hasn’t happened in years.  Alcohol was my companion.  I drank heavily.  Not a little heavily; heavily.  Started with tequila in my orange juice for breakfast, sipped beer throughout the afternoon, and topped it off with Jack Daniels in the evenings.  I couldn’t bear to touch wine, though.  Wine was something I shared with Betts.  Wine was on her lips when I kissed her.  Wine fueled some outrageous nights, nights of epic love making the likes of which I never imagined.  Once Betts left, the mere smell of wine made the pain of her departure rise up fresh.  I couldn’t bear the stuff.  So I drank anything and everything else, and I smoked.  I got fucked up quite a bit as I recall, at least for the first few weeks until I became impossible to be around and Jackson cut me off like the child I was bein’.  The guys, I have to give ‘em credit, after my first bout with being disturbed that happened, hell, ten, twelve years ago, and they didn’t know what to do so they did nothin’ until I was a mess, well, they didn’t wait that long on my shit anymore.  So after a good two, three weeks of feelin’ very sorry for myself, and bein’ particularly worthless, they cut me short.

After that, it didn’t exactly get better, but it got bearable.

Barely.

I didn’t like to think too much, but I couldn’t control my thoughts.  They ranged liked wild things in my head, feeding off of this memory, feasting off of my guilt.  ‘Cause there was, and still is, guilt, it’s just changed its flavor and focus about a dozen times.  At times, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and my reactions to everyday things that never even caused a reaction in me became, well, ridiculous.

First, I was a drunken fool.  Then, I didn’t know how to talk to the people I work with, which dovetailed neatly into not bein’ able to talk to my wife or kids, like a normal person.  Of course, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Betts after a while, either.  It just all turned to shit and hurt too much and the best course of action seemed to be to do nothing.  Just a whole hell of a lot of nothing.  Recording became impossible, even after my initial stupidity.  And the songs, they meant nothing to me, too.

I didn’t know what I wanted, just what I didn’t want, and that’s no place good to be.

I tried to control myself after Jack told me I basically didn’t have a choice in whether I did or didn’t.  I tried to talk to Miranda and the kids like I wasn’t the different person I’d become.  I tried to work, to write, to sing, to play my guitar.  I tried to throw myself into all my old familiar patterns.  And for a while, it worked.  I pushed music out of myself in a way I never have before.  Forced out things that should have shamed me.  It was garbage.  All garbage, but I did it anyway.  I did it until I was able to make myself own what I’d done, what Betts and I had done together; it was the only thing on my mind, anyway.  Betsy.  My Betts.  Mine.

After that, things changed.  I don’t know if they got better, or worse, but they changed.  I was bearable and life was bearable and my plans revolved around gettin’ the CD done and gettin’ away from the farm.  My intention, my true intention, was to go home to Oregon and just… just let it go.  Let it all go.  I had done something very wrong, by anyone’s standards, and while I could never take it back, hell, wouldn’t take it back, I couldn’t go in the direction I wanted to.  My crossroads seemed to waver in the heat like a mirage, my mental pictures of Betts dimmed.  I decided to never tell anyone a thing, no remorseful confessions, no unburdening, and have it all pass over me, and hope to hell that Betts would understand.  Too many people were gonna end up destroyed in the aftermath of loving her.  I tried to see it as a ‘bigger picture’ thing, where it wasn’t just about the two of us but the whole damn world I had built, and her world, too.

It was a decision, and decisions always result in action for me.  The band and I went into shelve mode, started the CD from scratch, and changed everything about it we had planned.  No one was happy with what had been accomplished, not me, the band, the producer, the record company.  Not a soul.  I have all those songs on a demo disc and they’re an embarrassment.  They were all about the ‘bad’ of everything that had happened, about the guilt and my self-pity.  Pure crap.  Then I had to go through havin’ to own up all over again, because there was a large part of me that had no remorse at all, just regret that I let Betts go when I wanted her to stay, and that empty feeling of having lost something so valuable it was like losing a limb.

We started over again, and it didn’t matter, it was all about Betts anyway.  She was there in all of it, with me in a way she’ll never understand and I’ll never be able to explain.  And after putting myself and the people around me through a bit of personal hell, I never thought twice again about the songs, the title, the content, the cover art.  I wanted it to be about Betts.  It was something I could give her, if I couldn’t give her what I thought she wanted, or I wanted.  I let all the feelings, the months of knowin’ Betts alone on the farm, just come out instead of keepin’ them so tight inside I pretty much felt my chest was gonna explode on any given day.  Put it all out there, and the hell with the rest of the world.  The hell with it.

‘My Lady of the Lake’ is probably the best work I’ve done.  It doesn’t matter if it’s commercial, or sells.  My blood is in it; along with my heart and soul; that’s all that matters.  My blood and Betts’ and when it was done, my mind changed again, and the idea of going to Oregon was something I couldn’t even deal with.  I made arrangements to go north, to go to New York and hand deliver the CD in its completed form to Betts, to sit with her and listened to it with her and try to work out a way to live with it, and myself.  To see her one more time and see… and see.

Of course my wife had other ideas.  She knew something was wrong, and she acted on it.  Wouldn’t expect anything less of her and was an idiot to think she would let my prolonged absence continue without question.  I never did quite answer Betts about that when she asked me about bein’ away from home, not the way I should have.  I guess I didn’t want to seem… fettered.  Not in any way.

I met Miranda and the children on neutral territory in Virginia.  One look at her, one touch of her hand, and I knew exactly how fettered I was.  It was as if she literally took my hand and said, “I am your life, and your children are your life, are you mad?”  I think it changed my mind for about twenty-four hours.  In twenty-four hours I watched my family from a comfortable distance.  My children, they’re a part of me.  I see myself in them, and I see Randa in them, too, but more than that, I see them as themselves, and as much as I love them, and take that love for granted, I could see how my life, our lives, are so… individual of each other’s that they were like strangers to me.  Beautiful, loved, but strangers.

Miranda was something different altogether.  There was an edge to her that had never been there before, and I didn’t care for it.  I had pressed her tolerance to the limit, or so it appeared, and no amount of explanation seemed to satisfy her.  What had once been a common rhythm to our lives apparently no longer sat well with her; long periods of time apart were unacceptable, and she told me so outright.  So instead of my even having a chance at being penitent about things she didn’t know about, I got defensive, and instead of her and I coming together once more as a whole, we ended up apart.  I stayed away, devoting all my time to the all consuming schedule of details that goes into making a CD and keeping the late hours I usually did.  She remained on the same schedule she had been on in Oregon.  We were tense with each other and argued over small things when I think we both knew there were bigger problems.

Well, at least I knew there were bigger problems.

So I left my family in Virginia to be with my mother and wait for me while I, well, while I came here to find myself looking at someone I love with all that’s in me from a small distance that seems like a chasm.  Somehow, some way, it all brought me to here anyway.  Betts looks terrible, all pale and thin and tired.  She looks like she walked from Madrid instead of flying and she looks at me as if this plan of mine was stupid, which I’m pretty sure she’s right about.  It never occurred to me that she would be shocked at seeing me; I honestly thought it would be a wonderful surprise and she would run into my arms and resolve my dilemma of the crossroads in my heart in one spontaneous, wonderful moment.

Instead, she dropped to the floor.  I will never forget that instant when she went completely white and went trippin’ over her luggage onto the floor.  Never.  And even after we’ve had our few minutes together in the car, and I’ve kissed those lips again, and held her close, I’m as far from her as I can be right now.  She’s making no move to me, either, and even that decision is gonna have to be mine.

I should have know that, I should have know it from the moment I took the attraction I felt for her and acted on it that from that second on, this was all gonna be on me.

The longer we stand here, the more I understand that, and I’m at that crossroads all over again.  Betts looks so draw, so tired, that I think she might keel over one more time if I keep waitin’ on myself.  I try to stop thinkin’ about what I want, and think about what she wants, what Miranda wants, what my children, my band, every goddamned person in my goddamned life wants.  And it’s the crossroads for sure, the one that any musician worth his salt knows about.  This is the place where, once you go forward, there’s no turning back.

I reach out for her, hold out my arms, and make my deal with the devil.

**~~***~~****~~***~~**
**~~***~~****~~***~~**

David and I fell asleep talking and I don’t believe it took too long, either.  One moment we were on the bed, still in our clothes, shoes kicked to the floor and our heads sharing one pillow.  I don’t even remember what we were talking about; nothing important, just small things, tiny remembrances.  Once, I opened my eyes and saw him beside me, his own eyes shut, the steady flare of his nostrils as he breathed, our hands clasped between us.  Now, when I open my eyes it’s dark.  I’ve had many moments of disorientation, but this is a frightening one.  In the first instant, I’m petrified because I can’t see, the darkness is so complete.  I’m not used to this kind of dark; there is always some bit of light sneaking through the blinds in my condo.  I make myself still, strain to see, and recall the farm, the perfect darkness of the nights there, and remember where I am, in New York, and that I’m in David’s suite of rooms.

I reach my hand out and find that I’m alone.

Alone.

I’m awake and alert in an instant, sitting up and swinging my feet to the floor.  My heart is thumping in my chest as I grope for a lamp, knocking bits and pieces of who knows what to the floor in my efforts.  Lit, the room seems cavernous, with too many shadowed corners and secret places.  And still, I’m alone.

There is no one in the bath.  There is no one in the living room.  I sweep back the curtains, and find that it’s not dark out at all, that the sun is setting over Central Park, and that it’s a beautiful evening by anyone’s standards.  It’s the protective glass of the windows and the thickness of the drapes and the blackout shades that have created the darkness in the bedroom, but I can’t recall who may have closed them, or why.  It only occurs to me now, now that I’ve scared myself, to look at my watch and see that it’s seven in the evening.  It’s only now that I remember the appointment David had with his record company, the press conference that I’ve missed, and a different sort of panic sets in.  I was supposed to be covering it.  Instead, I slept.  David left, never waking me, never disturbing me in the least, and here I am, disgusting in my traveled in, slept in clothes with no coverage to write about and no valid explanation as to why I missed this opportunity.

I wander into the bathroom and see that David even had the time to take a shower and change.  His clothes, the ones I recall him wearing today, are in a small heap on the floor.  A razor, a toothbrush, a damp washcloth grace the counter by the sink, along with the few toiletries he uses.  Nothing much, but definitely used.

Back in the bedroom I see the tumble of things I knocked off the table, and bend to retrieve them.  A handful of coins, a clock, and a scrawled note to me.  Just a few words to stay, make myself at home and he’d be back in time for supper, wherever I wanted to go.

Stupid with relief, I press the paper to my face and think I smell him, knowing full well that the scent of him is all over the room, on the pillows; on my hand that held his while we slept.

It doesn’t take me long to make myself at home.  Home has been hotel rooms for a time now, a series of them that have kept me well and away from my own little condo in suburban New Jersey, and well away from the memories of the farm in the Carolinas.  I drag my bags into the bedroom and rifle through them for clean clothes, and my own, much more extensive bag of necessaries.  What I have that’s wearable is nothing much.  It has become my habit to pack just enough, to wear it all, to clean it after the fact.  I would have been home tonight doing laundry and sleeping until the next assignment I have lined up, which is a junket to Indiana to interview John Mellencamp, a direct, backlash assignment after interviewing David: all the ‘green’ musicians want a chat up with Calliope now.

There is a pair of jeans rolled at the bottom of my bag along with some emergency underwear I always have stashed, and that’s about it.  I quickly rinse out a camisole with a bottle of complimentary hand washing detergent that’s lounging on the sink and use the blow dryer to get it damp dry.  I can play with it once I’ve showered.  I have sandals packed somewhere, so the socks and boots aren’t a necessity.

The water feels like heaven.  The showers in Madrid were lacking, despite my being in one of the better hotels.  This one almost has some water pressure behind it.  I don’t care, I just lather twice and take my time rinsing off; at least there’s no lack of hot water.

David finds me in one of the hotel’s bathrobes trying to make something of my face with my makeup.

“Y’all don’t need this,” he says as he lopes into the room on his long legs and makes himself comfortable on the counter to watch me and play with my blush.  He’s not stranger to it, he’s been in enough photo shoots, but he’s a naturalist.  He’s also a man.  I never met a man who understood the need to embellish.

“We’ve been down this road, David.  I need ALL this,” I tell him, applying mascara to my lashes.  Waterproof, no less, because humid climates take their toll.

“You just needed sleep.”

“I needed to get up and go to that press conference with you.  Now I’m going to have to call someone and piece something together from nothing.”

“Think this might help?” he asks, taking my small tape recorder out of his jacket pocket and placing it before me.  “I took the liberty, seein’ as it was just out there, on the top of your bag and all.  Thought you might want to listen to what went on.”

I stop what I’m doing and stare at the recorder in his hand.  When I reach to take it, he pulls me to him instead.

“I’ll fill in any blanks there might be, all right?”

“All right.”

“I really did think you might be worried about missin’ out, but it was a whole lotta nothin’ anyway.  Just, well… I think you should listen to the CD before you write about it.”

“I will.”

“Now.”

“No, not now.”  Not now.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to be in the same room with you when I do.”  I lean back, rest my hands on his thighs.  “I honestly don’t.  For a lot of reasons, one being that you being here and whatever reaction you’re having to any of my reactions will end up tainting my conception of it.”

“I could stay in here and…”

“And you’d still be here, anticipating.  Too much pressure.  Too much expectation.”  I look down, look up again, and look him straight in the eye.  “Another reason is, and maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think I am, but, well, considering that I recognize my own ass on the cover of this CD, I don’t think it would be beyond the scope of reality to assume that some of the content might, well, might reflect certain feelings and…”

“The whole damn CD is about us,” he says.  Plain and simple, without a hint of embarrassment, which, of course, embarrasses me.  “All of it.  That’s why it took so long, all the stuff I had before we were at the farm there; it was meaningless.  It was a struggle to make anything of it, so we threw it out, and I used the stuff I’d written down there, and some new things you haven’t heard before.  You were the only thing on my mind, Betts.  You still are, mostly.”  His eyes flicker, side to side, then settle back on mine.  “There’s the CD and tour and rehearsals and… and that’s kinda become the smaller part of me.”

“I don’t believe that,” I tell him.  “There’s more to you than tours and CD’s, to be sure, but it’s also who you are.”

“Not when the record company’s on us about it, then it’s just business,” he says with a small laugh.  “Doesn’t matter.  I do what I do, and I like it.  I like this CD; it’s probably some of my best stuff.”

“Can I quote you?” I tease.

“No, I’d sound like a real asshole.”

“No, just confident.”

“Okay, a confident asshole.  The same rules apply, Betts, there’s shit I tell you that you’re free to tell everyone in the free world, and there’s shit I tell you that’s just for you.”  He kisses my forehead.  “Nothing’s changed.”

“David, the universe has changed.”

“Are you sorry I’m here?”  He switches subject in a flash.

“Oh, Jesus…”

“Are you sorry I came here?  I know I probably should have given you fair warning, but if I had, would you have told me not to come?  Or would you have just avoided bein’ with me?”

I have to take a moment to run that through my head.  Just a moment.  Just a pause.

“No, I’m not sorry you’re here.  I hoped that you would… turn up some time.”

“Is that it, is it the timing?”

“There’s no ‘it’, David, and timing means nothing.  I just got… damn it, David, I didn’t hear from you and I missed you, missed the cabin and all that and I was keeping myself busy, because that’s all I have, being busy, and I was so tired getting off that plane… seeing your face everywhere… they didn’t advance me copy of the article.  They’d changed things… I didn’t know you’d scrapped the album, or that it was coming out, or that there were those pictures of all of you, out there at the pond…. Damn it!  I wasn’t ready for you.  I… I was ready to convince myself that it had all just been some… some thing… some… some… I don’t know, shit, yes I do, just a fling.  That it was all just a fling and that you were going your way and I was going mine and…”

His fingers stop me.  The entire time I’ve been rambling on he’s watched me without a change of expression, but now his one eyebrow lifts slightly, and his finger traces the beads at my neck, those damned beads that haven’t come off since he put them on me, and without him saying a word, I know what he’s telling me.

“If you make me cry,” I tell him, “I will hit you.  Hard.”

“Have a little faith, Betts…”

“O, dear god in heaven, listen to yourself.  Faith?  I thought you had no faith.  I thought…”

“Please.  I’m just askin’ you to have a little faith.  In me.  Just a little.”  He holds my face in his hands so I can’t look away from him.  “Girl, timing is everything, and I can’t predict when it’s gonna be our time, but I’m not about to give up when it’s barely started.  The solutions are easy, they really are, but they’re painful and hurtful and I have to know when the right time is to bring that down on the people I love.  That time is not now.  It doesn’t mean I love you less.  It means I love them, too.”

“I don’t want you to…”

“You don’t want anyone to get hurt.  Neither do I, only, unless you have some really spectacular solution somewhere, I don’t rightly see how this ends up bein’ anything but hurtful.  In some way.”  He sighs and kisses my lips, the lightest of kisses.  “I love my family, my children, my wife, yes, hey.., hey, don’t pull away… don’t not listen to this ‘cause I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say this again… yes, I love her, there’s been years and history and ups and downs and I have no reason to be unsatisfied with her, while she has plenty of reasons to be unsatisfied with me, so I even love her for that, for her loyalty.  I’m the one who’s fallen short here, Betts, and no matter how many ways I run this through my pig head, I still can’t see me livin’ out the end of my days with her.  Not since I met you.  I can’t.  Can’t explain it, can’t deny it, and I’m not about to, but I can’t just rip everything apart in one fell swoop, shit, I suppose I could, but it wouldn’t be fair and this is not fair enough already.  My children didn’t do anything, and Miranda didn’t do anything to bring this on.  Neither did you.  You’re just you, and it’s me and I have to change everything, everything in their lives, because of how I want mine and now is not the right time.”

David continues to hold my face steady in his hands, and we’re almost petrified into place, two stone people who are anything but stone.  He’s saying things out loud that I’ve only heard in my head.  Things I never wanted to hear, but know are true.

“There’s gonna be a time, though, Betts, and that’s all I’m askin’ for.  And I’ll understand if you tell me to go fuck myself, ‘cause if I heard all this that might be my own first reaction.  But I love you, and I always will, whether we’re together, or apart.  If you can’t be with me like this, I’ll understand, but you have to understand that when everything changes, and it will, I’m comin’ for you, and only you.”

“David, don’t say things…”

“I’ll say what I like.  I’m sayin’ this from places inside me I didn’t know existed until just this friggin’ minute.  If you have to go, if this isn’t… if you can’t… just… if you have to go, go, and know that I’m with you whether you want me there or not.  If you stay, you have all of me that I can give you, when I can.  That’s the best I can do right now, and it even sounds like shit to me, but that’s the best I can do.”

“You’re trying to make me hate you,” I whisper, because if I talk out loud, I will scream.

“Maybe.  Maybe I am.”

“You’re not letting me off so easy, though, are you?” I counter, still letting the pain of his words, his true, true thoughts, eat into me.  “You won’t make me hate you enough to be able to walk away from you.”

“Maybe not.”

“Then why should I let you off easy?”

“None of this is easy…”

“No, it’s not, but when did you come to the conclusion that this is all about you and your life and rocking your world to the core, and that it won’t do the same for me?  Did it occur to you that I have… that I… I…”  My argument is empty and feeble at best.  He has more to lose than I do: a life he’s already living.  My life is less, at least that’s how it feels to me.  I know that everything he’s saying is true, and that he’s offering me an escape the same way he did that first night, when he was deep inside of me, and I drifted away for a moment; even if it’s by baiting my anger.  If I want him to, he’ll walk away.  My life will be my life again, the life I had before, a sort of half-lived life with maybe more work, with maybe a bit more exposure for me and what I do, and the loneliness that knowing David has brought into vivid relief.  Along with that will be the bittersweet memory of him turning more to bitter than to sweet as the years pass by, and the mere thread of a thought that he will love me in some esoteric, romantic way until he and I die.  And if I want him to, he’ll be with me when it’s convenient for us to be together, a secret to be kept until some miracle of timing may or may not bring us together.

“I didn’t come to any such conclusion, Betts.  It certainly isn’t just about me, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you…”

“I know,” I say, and it comes out of my mouth like a childish wail, bourn of such deep, deep frustration with the situation that I do want to cry, and stamp my feet and pound David’s chest with my fists.

“Tell me what to do, Betts.  Tell me what you want… what you want me to do.”

“I want you to be with me.  I want to be with you.  And even in an ideal situation, where both of us led normal lives, with normal schedules, I know that asking for that is the impossible.  I wish we were back at the cabin, on the pond, and that there was no one in the world but you and me, and that I had met you years ago, so that I was the one you chose.”  I take a breath and plunge on, feeling that, at this point, I have nothing to lose.  “I want to be the one to grow old with you.  I want the forever and ever ending to the story.  And a child.  I want a child before it’s too late, and the opportunity passes me by.  If I could pick any man to have a child with, you would be that man.  If I can’t have you, the way I want you, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone else… I don’t.  So that’s what I want, you, and only you, with you wanting me, and only me.”  And the tears I didn’t want to shed slip out of the corners of my eyes.  My throat is sore from holding them back, and my next words come out in a small voice.  “I’ve wanted to be someone’s one and only.  I thought that’s how it was supposed to be.  And I want to be that to you.  Someone special, as special as they are to me.”  I can’t look at him anymore.  I drop my eyes, and no matter how David tries to turn my face, I keep letting my eyes slip away from his so I don’t have to read anything in his that I might not want to.  There’s an unbearable pain in my chest.  Unbearable.  I’ve told him things that I’ve never allowed myself to even think.  Things I’ve never given myself the luxury of entertaining.  As soon as I’ve given voice to these thoughts, though, they become real and concrete.  Monumental in all their implications, in the plain truth of them.

“Betts…”

“You asked.  That’s what I want.  It’s not an ultimatum, David.  Far from it.  It’s just what I want.  It’s just a dream… my dream.  And this spring, I got a taste of that dream… and that hurts, too.”  I find the will to look at him, to pry his hands from my head and let my own head stand tall on its own.  His eyes are so very dark, but there’s nothing harsh in his expression, there’s nothing defeated about him, either.  He’s just him, like me, a pragmatist battling with his romantic soul.  “But it’s my dream, and I’m not about to let it go.  I didn’t expect you in my life any more than you expected me.  I didn’t plan on you, and I certainly didn’t intend for something like this to happen.  I didn’t, but it has and I don’t know what to do any more than you do, because as wrong as this is, there’s such a big part of me that doesn’t give a damn.  You’re here, and I don’t care about anyone else outside these four walls.”

I kiss him.  It’s not usually me who does the kissing, it’s usually him.  I kiss him and it turns greedy in a heartbeat.  Greedy and tense and some of my loneliness, my alone-ness, dissipates as we’re lips to lips.  There’s even a streak of meanness in me as I do this, and try to do it well, to be enticing, to seduce him in some way that might… might make him want to… stay.

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© 2006 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2006 (*> Baby Bird Productions