As I Fade (One Breath at a Time: Book 1) (24 page)

“
Yes of course, he’s been hanging around here for a long while now.”

“
A long while...” she whispered audibly, the words pierced her ears. A huge amount of guilt flooded over Nuilley. As Brielle’s so called best friend, she should have met her new boyfriend by now. Brielle must have shared with Mr. Piccart what a terrible friend she had been, which explained why it was like prying an arm from a shark’s mouth. It was almost as if he was rubbing Brielle’s new social life in her face.

“
That’s right, a long while. Well, I don’t want to be rude but it’s past my bedtime. My old bones are losing precious minutes of rest as we speak,” he said firmly. “I have an early morning planned. I need my beauty sleep.” He chuckled delightfully. The way his moods flipped Nuilley wondered if the man was bi-polar.

“
Sure, sorry to bother you. When you see Brie, can you please tell her to call me?”

“
We prefer to call her Brielle the Ballerina,” He jovially confided.

We? Ballerina?
Nuilley snapped inwardly,
What is he talking about?
Brielle’s dancing skills didn’t merit the name. Nuilley furrowed her brows together...she wasn’t too keen with how evasive, yet possessive, Mr. Piccart behaved when it came to Brie.

“
Okay, well, please tell her to call me. Thanks.” She stepped through the door and glanced over her shoulder toward the staircase once more. Something felt wrong to Nuilley. Something was wrong and she knew it.

“
Of course, I will. But I can’t guarantee she will call you. She’s her own woman, as you know, strong willed, and she has every right to be.” Nuilley wondered if that was a hidden message for her.

Nuilley’s patience waned and she huffed, “Just ask her to call me, okay? I’m sure her parents haven’t heard from her either. They’re probably worried sick,” she inadvertently shrieked.

“Aww yes, I believe she has been in contact with them somehow.”
What did that mean?
“Brie shared with me that they are traveling in Africa, on a three-month sabbatical.”

Brielle you mean,
Nuilley corrected him, inwardly
.
He was hell bent on calling her Brielle now he called her Brie
.

Mr. Piccart
gabbed on,
“
Since Brett has moved out—he’s off to college you know—and they’re enjoying their time alone, finally.”

Nuilley’s heart sank for the umpteenth time, feeling again as if she was the last to know what was going on in her best friend’s life. This newsflash validated why Brie’s parents weren’t returning her calls either.

“That’s right, I forgot—Brielle had told me all about their travel plans.” Nuilley lied. Her heart was breaking, certain that their lifetime relationship had ended. She couldn’t imagine not having Brie in her life. She wanted to ask Mr. Piccart if he knew the reason why Brielle wasn’t returning her calls. It seemed pointless to probe any further because somewhere in her heart she felt this was her fault.

Nuilley stepped out onto the front stoop, paused and turned. “I’m sorry, Mr. Piccart, for snapping at you.” Her tone filled with sincerity. “It’s just Brielle and I have been friends since the seventh grade, and I’m worried about her.”

An image of the first time she met Brielle popped into her head. They were complete strangers, both waiting to get spray tans at “Magic Bronze”. When the client before them stepped out from behind the curtain, the receptionist raved on and on how gorgeous the woman looked. The woman was bright orange from head to toe; even her hair had a tinge of orange. This was long before they had perfected the coloring process. Nuilley and Brielle had burst into laughter and ran out the door. Ever since then, they had been inseparable. Nuilley inwardly laughed remembering the woman and their inability to not gawk and laugh out loud. Damn, she missed those days.

Another side of Mr. Piccart emerged, the old man nodded, a hint of empathy lingered in his eyes. “Eh, it’s okay.” He waved at her. “I understand you’re upset, but don’t worry sweetie, she’ll be fine. Sometimes you just have to keep the faith and allow nature to take its course.” He offered Nuilley those words of wisdom.

There wasn’t much else left to say. She thanked him for his time, then bid him good-bye and headed on her way.

“
Thanks for stopping by. You have a good night now, Nuilley.” Mr. Piccart called out to her as she made her way down the dilapidated old steps. She didn’t have the strength to turn around and bid him a second goodbye. She heard the door close so fast behind her there wouldn’t have been any time to if she had tried.

Tears pressed against the back of her eyes, her throat tightened painfully. It wasn’t like her to get emotional, and she certainly wasn’t going to cry. She looked back at the brownstone just in time to see the lights go out in Mr. Piccart’s place. How unsafe she thought it was that he left the fire blazing in the lobby, unattended.

Nuilley considered showing up at Café’ Louis, but that may have been another wrong choice. If Brielle wanted her there, she’d had ample opportunity to invite her. Instead, Nuilley hunkered down on a bench directly across the street from the brownstone. The modernized building on the opposite side of the street behind her didn’t give her the creeps the way Brie’s place had. She figured she would wait there until Brielle returned home, no matter how long it took.

Nuilley sat in the dark on the bench for hours—watching Brielle’s neighbors making their way home for the night. She texted a few friends, here and there, and smoked cigarettes, one after the other. She knew the damn things would kill her one-day if she didn’t give them up soon.

As the night waned on, and the crowd dwindled down, she glanced up at the brownstone every time she heard the slightest sound of footsteps. When there wasn’t much else left to do, she studied the old brownstone, wondering what it was that drew Brielle to it.

At night, the brownstone was a view of perfection. The darkness hid the overdue paint job it was in dire need of. The moonlight and the old-fashioned streetlamps splashed an elegant glow over the entire property. The structure of the building was grand and opulent but now worn through time as an old leather wallet, giving it the vintage charm that Brielle adored so much. Nuilley imagined in its day it must have been pristine with its floor to ceiling windows, iron belly-railed balconies and pointed roof peaks that shot up toward the stars. The large sandstone bricks were perfectly aligned, and appeared sturdy. It wasn’t as ornate as the famous Notre Dame building but had a distinction all of its own. Gray shutters that were more than likely originally white, hinged on both sides of selected windows. The building was as wide as it was tall with a lot of empty rooms. That was the reason it felt dead to Nuilley. There was no life within the walls. She didn’t understand why Mr. Piccart hadn’t taken on more tenants even though Brielle encouraged him to do so.

On many occasions Nuilley had begged Brielle to live with her; she didn’t feel it was healthy for her to live alone in the soulless building that was only occupied by an old man.

Brielle claimed she had a strange tie to the brownstone and would rather die there, alone, than live elsewhere in Paris. Brielle felt the brownstone was a masterpiece and with a little tender love and care, and more tenants, of course, breathing life into the empty spaces, it would stand until the end of time.

Brielle’s comeback argument was beyond eccentric and flat out weird to Nuilley, and she had openly expressed this to Brielle in sharp words. She had even tried to scare Brielle with rumors that the brownstone was haunted and cursed. This had probably added resentments over time to the rift that was now between them. For sometime, long before the night of the storm, Nuilley felt their relationship had shifted somehow, but she didn’t give much credence to it until now that things were worse than ever before.

It was getting late and still Brielle hadn’t returned. After Nuilley had burned through the entire pack of cigarettes, restless and tired, she couldn’t wait it out any longer. Perhaps Brielle decided to stay the night with her new boyfriend. That didn’t seem like the sort of thing Brielle would do—she wanted to save herself for marriage—but there were a lot of things that were peculiar about her friend since she had moved to Paris.

Just as Nuilley pushed up to leave, she saw that Mr. Piccart’s bedroom lights were back on. It was well past midnight.

When she passed by the brownstone she could hear soft music playing through Mr. Piccart’s open bedroom window. She now realized his early morning engagement was a diversion; a lame ploy to get her to leave. She had felt shunned by her best friend, and now the old man shunned her too, on the behalf of her friend.

An ache tore through Nuilley’s heart—despite that she wasn’t as emotionally open as Brielle had wanted her to be, she felt connected to her still. Something was definitely wrong, although she couldn’t place her finger on what that was.

She recalled the last conversation they’d had and how they exchanged I love yous. Had they reached the place most relationships do? To Nuilley the three little words would only bring heartache, although it seemed everyone in the world, at one time or another, wanted to hear those words. Nuilley question why. To toss the words around the way most people do, meaninglessly, was a crime. That was Nuilley’s dark impression of the words. The meaning of LOVE is to give; wanting to hear “I love you” constantly, was taking, not giving.

Everyone takes, Nuilley knew this much about love. The fallacy of what it was came in a perfect package, tinted in red, a color that was blinding to the eye: red hearts, red roses, red valentines, and red kisses were all bullshit! Nuilley felt love was a horror show between two people that would eventually end in war and hateful words spewing from two people who once claimed to love each other. Nuilley didn’t know how to stop her insensitive way of thinking, although she had better if she didn’t want her relationship with Brielle to end. She had been living in the dark for far too long. It was time to come into the light before it was too late. Saying “I love you,” was the norm for Brielle, and a one-time event for Nuilley. Now Brielle was gone. The thought caused pangs of regret to surface.

When she glanced up at the brownstone, looking into Brielle’s window on the third floor there were no signs of life. Inadvertently, her eyes shot up to the fourth-floor window, a flight above Brielle’s place. She could have sworn that she saw a shadow, a man with broad-shoulders, standing in the dark, watching her. It couldn’t have been Mr. Piccart he wasn’t tall or broad.

Gazing up into the darkness she realized that the image might have been caused by the branches of the tall trees that swayed in front of the window. Besides, Mr. Piccart had just told her no one else lived there, so it had to have been her imagination. He had no reason to lie to her, at least, about who lived there and who didn’t.

As Nuilley strolled down the narrow cobblestone street toward her apartment, she continued to kick herself for not behaving interested when Brielle tried to tell her she had met someone special. Nuilley purposefully skipped over that part of their conversation. Now she understood why Brielle had kept this a secret from her for months. Instead, Mr. Piccart seemed to have all the details of Brielle’s love life. Brielle couldn’t trust her with that information. After much reflecting on their friendship, it was apparent that Brielle had chosen Mr. Piccart as her new confidante.

Nuilley was now sure her insensitive, sardonic mindset about love was the cause of why Brielle chose to detach from her.

Words like love and forever drove Nuilley crazy. She had never even opened any of the books Brielle wrote. Despite that her novels were mysteries, the plots all had a romantic factor. Nuilley would rather cut off her head than fill it with romantic prose. When Brielle had tried to spark her interest in poetry, she’d developed an immediate case of acid reflux. Now, books filled with raunchy sex were a different story. Nuilley ate that up.

Brielle had been putting up with Nuilley’s, “
fuck’em and leave’em, before they leave you
,” shitty attitude for years. Nuilley wished she had been a better friend and displayed a measure of happiness that Brielle had found someone to love. How could she have been so selfish?

Even though Nuilley didn’t believe in happily ever after, Brielle did. That was what she should have desired too, for her friend. Instead, she had behaved coldly and bitterly when it came to their discussions of men, love and finding the right one. One too many times, Nuilley knew she had discouraged Brielle against giving her heart to a man. This time she had gone too far.

The realization of letting her friend down in so many ways, washed over her in waves. Nuilley tried to choke back her tears, to no avail; they poured from her eyes uncontrollably. She felt like she was suffocating. She could barely breathe. The feeling of tears against her cheeks was foreign to her, and she didn’t know how to stop them. She hadn’t wept since her father had left her mother and her years ago. He had never returned to them. Now Brielle had faded away, too.

The End

(for now)

~~~~~

Coming soon!

As I Breathe

One Breath at a Time #2