All She Wanted (2) (28 page)

Briggs

Tomorrow.

Charlie
was leaving tomorrow morning.

That
reality was about as painful as stepping on a tack while barefoot. With every
text that we shared, the urge to beg her not to leave had grown increasingly
strong. My self pep talks were failing at an alarming rate.

Sweat
dripped off my forehead as I ran down Wilton Street, the late night air still
very warm. I had been running for nearly an hour, listening to nothing but my
own thoughts. I didn’t want music tonight. I needed to think—make a plan.

I
wasn’t a quitter, or a liar, or a failure, but all three titles sounded better
to me than being without Charlie. Maybe we could figure out a way make it work.
I could give her whatever time and space she needed to practice—whatever she
needed in order to complete her assignments and compositions…

“What
was your dream before there was an anymore?”

“To
be in concert, to travel to different venues and play for anyone who would
listen, to use my music as a ticket to see the world, I guess.”

Charlie’s
plans didn’t include living in
Texas,
her dream was to
travel the world. That took the idea of a
long-distance
relationship to a whole new level. Every time I heard her voice replay that
line in my head, it was a slap to the face. Practicality took priority over any
romantic notions I had of leaving my life behind to follow Charlie on her
future tours. As much as I would love to be with her, watch her play, explore
the world with her…there were too many anchors holding me here.

How would I work? How would I provide
for Angie and Cody if I didn’t have sufficient income coming in? Would I really
be okay with not seeing my nephew for a year at a time?
No. I couldn’t leave Cody and Angie
behind—they were the only family I had left.

I
stopped suddenly, realizing where my feet hand taken me while my mind had
escaped to the land of problem solving. I was a block away from Charlie’s
house—Chief’s house.

Even
when my mind was saying no, my heart was saying yes. I fished my phone from my
pocket.

11:30pm.

I
took my shirt and wiped the sweat off my face, making a decision—one I knew I’d
likely regret come morning.

Me:
You awake?

If she responds I tell her everything
tonight.

Immediately,
the phone buzzed in my hand.

Strawberry Shortcake:
Yep. Leave it to me to be doing
laundry at midnight…procrastinator. You home from work?

My
fingers shook as they hovered over the keys. I was now only a few houses away,
walking quickly before I could change my mind. My heart was beating at a faster
rate than it had been during my run.

Me:
I’m actually in front of your house…talk?

Strawberry Shortcake:
Um…yes. Hang on.

It
was official, I was going to be the first man who’s heart shot right out of his
chest due to anxiety. The drumming was so loud in my ears that I swore the neighbors
across the street could hear it. A minute later, her front door opened and she
stepped off her porch, turning on the infamous floodlight I had grown to love.

Her
hair was up, her makeup scrubbed away, and she was barefoot, but she couldn’t
have been more beautiful to me. I charged toward her, her eyes growing wider
with my every step. I couldn’t wait one more day, or one more minute, or even
one more second.

I
didn’t have any new answers for how it was going to work.

I
didn’t know of any new formulas that would make the distance between us
bearable.

I
didn’t even know how Charlie would respond to what I was about to unload on
her…

But
there was
nothing
that was going to
stop me.

“Briggs—are
you okay? Is something wrong?” She stood in the driveway, light illuminating
her like a spotlight from heaven.

“No,
nothing is wrong-”

“Why
are you all wet? Is…is that sweat?” She asked, scrunching her face up.

Fifteen
feet. She was fifteen feet away.

“I
was running.”

“Why
were you running? It’s almost midnight…are you
sure
everything’s okay?”

I
closed the gap, my body shaking with adrenaline.

“It
is now,” I smiled, taking in each detail of her face. “I need to say some
things to you before you leave.”

She
nodded, staring at my lips while I spoke. It was everything I could do not pull
her to me and kiss her in a way that would make up for every moment I had lost
with her during the past few weeks, but I needed to speak first. I had to
speak.

“Okay...”
she breathed.

I
took a breath, my mind trying to catch up to speed with my heart. “I’ve
waited…I’ve waited for what feels like forever, Shortcake, and I know that you
leave tomorrow for school and I’ll do everything I can to support you in that
choice, but you have to know…you
must
know that my feelings are not-”

“Briggs?
Charlie? What’s going on out here? It’s almost midnight.”

I
froze.

Charlie
froze.

Chief
walked over to us both, squinting as he made his way out of the shadows to the
well-lit stage where I was about declare my undying love for his daughter. The
hot adrenaline surge I had felt only a second earlier, was now a cold, slow
molasses, working it’s way out of my veins with each pump of my heart.

He
stared at me.

Even
in his sleepy state, I saw the question in his eyes.

What are you doing, Briggs?

And
then I remembered his words on a Tuesday in his office, not long ago.

“I can’t make you choose to do what’s
right for her, Briggs, but I hope you will.”

My
body deflated like a popped balloon.

“Briggs
was just telling me, goodbye, Daddy. Everything’s fine, really. Sorry the light
woke you.”

Chief
never broke his gaze from mine.

“Is
that all?” Chief asked, knowing I would understand what his question really
implied.

I
took several seconds before responding, Charlie’s eyes burning into me like
fire. “Yes, that’s all, sir.”

“Okay…I’ll
leave you to it, then. Goodnight.” The words left his mouth, but his body took
longer to catch on to what he had just said. Finally, Chief headed back toward
the porch.

We
both stood silently, watching him retreat back into the shadows.

My
rush was gone; my reality was back.
               

Charlie
stared at me, waiting for me to say something more.

“Charlie,
I-” I shook my head, staring at the ground.

“Your
feelings are not, what?” Her voice was strained; I couldn’t bear to see her
eyes.

I
squeezed my hands into fits at my sides.

Say something!

“My
feelings for you are not…temporary.”

“What?”
she asked.

What? What does that even mean?

“What
does that mean, Briggs? I don’t understand.”

I don’t either!

“It
means…it means…” I lifted my head, “It means that no matter where you are…you
will always have a friend in me.” I scratched my head, willing my brain to
think of something platonic to say that didn’t involve the word
love
. “I
need
you, Charlie. I
need
your friendship, your humor, your ability to tell it to me like it is. Tomorrow
your life will switch gears again—with school, homework, music, practice,
touring…but I will still be here for you. I’m only a call away, a text away, a
postcard away…please don’t forget that,
please
.”
My throat grew thick as I said the last word, a rush of emotion threatening to
drown me where I stood.

I
struggled to keep my head afloat.

Her
eyes glistened. “I could never forget you, Briggs. I need you, too. You’re the
best friend I’ve ever had.”

My
heart ached—no, my heart shattered.

“This
isn’t goodbye.”

She
shook her head. “No, this isn’t goodbye.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I
stared at her for a few more seconds more before she finally turned and walked
back inside. As I heard the front door close, the last fragment of my heart—the
only piece that had remained so I could finish out this conversation, fell away.

And
for the first time since the night of my sister’s stabbing, tears blurred my
eyes, mixing with the sweat on my face as I ran back home.

Home.

Did such a place even exist anymore?

The
answer was too unbearable for me to acknowledge.

Charlie

The
second I closed the front door, I slid down it into a heap on the floor, my
knees finally giving out on me.

No! No! No!

I
banged my head against the door, closing my eyes as I felt my heart rate return
to a steady rhythm once again.

“
I need you, Charlie. I need your friendship,
your humor, your ability to tell it to me like it is.”

I
sobbed silently into the darkness, his words looping through my mind again and
again. He had looked so raw when he said them, so completely vulnerable, yet
they were not the words I craved his lips to speak.

“I
need you too, Briggs…more than you’ll ever know.”

**********

The
next morning when I left for Austin, there was a text waiting for me.

Manny knows best:
This isn’t goodbye.

My
eyes watered as I smiled.
No, this isn’t
goodbye, Briggs.

I
wouldn’t have been able to leave if it had meant saying a real one.

I
drove to school in the sunshine, convincing myself not to stop until I arrived.
I needed the distraction of new compositions and tour performances and
Professor Wade to help me remember why I had fallen in love with music in the
first place.

Because maybe in that, I could uncover
the secret of how to fall
out of love
with Briggs.

**********

One
week later, I loaded into a charter bus with twelve other seniors, and hit the
road.

Briggs

“Got another one, Briggs,” Evan said while
holding a stack of mail and walking through the dining hall.

I couldn’t help but smile.

True to her word, Charlie had not only
sent me a postcard from every state she had been in, but every city as well.
And true to Charlie, all were some obscure and usually hilarious representation
of said location. I had kept them to myself at first, pinning them to the
inside of my locker, but after about number fifteen, I decided I would share
them. She never wrote anything too personal on the back, so I felt okay about
tacking them up to the bulletin board in the hallway. The Charlie shrine had
become quite a spectacle—the guys loved them, almost as much I loved getting
them.

She was on her last week of tour,
heading back down to the southern east coastline toward Austin. I busted out
loud when Evan handed me this latest post card. On the front of the postcard
was a picture of a billboard—one that stood next to an old, beat-up highway,
farmland all around it.

The words on the billboard read:

Please
…Neuter
your pets

&

Your
weird
friends and relatives, too!

Evan laughed with me as I tacked it up
next to the rest of them. She would be in Atlanta one more night before moving
into Alabama tomorrow. We usually texted numerous times a day
,
talking
on the phone whenever possible, even if that was only for a few
minutes. I couldn’t describe what hearing her voice did to me, but it was
almost enough to squelch the pain that was now a constant part of my reality,
almost
. Living on a charter bus,
however, had left little to no privacy for Charlie in the evenings, so we often
resorted solely to texting.

Eight weeks had passed since I last saw
her.
Eight. Long. Weeks.

At first I had tried to pretend that
time
might somehow make missing her more
bearable, but that, in short, was a load of crap. There was nothing
bearable
about not being with Charlie. I
had learned a few new tricks since that first awful month without her. I might
never be able to lessen the sting of her absence, but I could at least try to
manage it.

The pain at first had been a sharp and
twisted kind of torture. The kind that made me lose sleep, pacing while others
slept peacefully in their beds, the kind that spurred on seemingly endless
workouts, and created a perpetual state of adrenaline (otherwise known as
appetite suppression).

It was that same pain that served as my
daily reminder: I had
willingly
watched the love of my life walk away from me. It went against my nature. I was
not
the type of man to surrender; I
was a fighter.

But not this time.
Not with Charlie.

I’d been in the midst of a downward
spiral of self-pity and depression when Kai decided he was done watching my
misery unfold. I couldn’t really blame him. Being miserable and watching
someone be miserable were fairly close to each other on the scale of awful.

He had been right; it was time.

I had to find a way to manage without
her.

Managing, as it turned out, looked a
lot like being an anal-retentive busybody. But hey, it worked. I kept myself on
a tight schedule, no longer living the life of spontaneity I had once loved.
Unaccounted hours didn’t serve me well. In addition to keeping active in the
gym, I taught classes at the Women’s University twice a week, along with
finding odd jobs to do around the station when I wasn’t on rotation.

And I watched a lot of sunrises at the
dog park.