Butterfly Weeds (27 page)

             
Rachel was quiet for an instant.

             
“Then, there’s your answer, Sweetheart,” she said softly.

             
Moments after I ended my conversation with Rachel, Brady found me in my tears on the porch swing. He immediately took a seat next to me and put his arm around me.

             
“What’s wrong, Honey?” he asked softly. H
is voice trembled with concern.

             
I looked up at his face and saw the trepidation in his eyes. I hated what I had to do, and I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t hold back my doubts any longer, and for better or worse, I knew I had to voice my thoughts. Maybe he could even change my mind, though somehow, I feared he couldn’t.

             
“Brady, I’m nervous about getting married,” I said softly, tears rolling down my crimson cheeks and falling to my lap.

             
“It’ll be okay, Julia. What are you nervous about?” Brady asked, squeezing me closer.

             
“I’m nervous that we want different things and that maybe we’re not as similar as we thought we were,” I confessed.

             
Brady took a second to let my words sink in. He had to have wondered what had triggered my tears and if there was still
more I needed to say, I’m sure.

             
“Honey, sure, we may not always agree on everything, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it work,” he said, reassuring me.

             
“I know,” I agreed softly. “But I know that living and practicing in
New York
closer to your parents means the world to you, and really, working in D.C. means the world to me right now. And I even think that we could somehow work around that, but I also feel that instead of growing closer these last couple of years, we’ve only grown further apart.”

             
Brady paused.

             
“Is it someone else?” he asked softly.

             
My face hastily turned up toward his.

             
“What?” I asked him, completely thrown off-guard. “No, of course not. Why would you ask that?”

             
He hesitated. He seemed to have been regrouping.

             
“Because I’ve never really felt like I’ve had all of you,” he confessed softly.

             
My stare reached out to his sad eyes.

             
“Brady, I had no idea that you felt that way. Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked.

             
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I just never wanted to hear the truth.”

             
“Brady, there’s no one else,” I said. “That’s not what this is about. This is about us – only us.”

             
Brady sat on the swing, frozen in his place.

             
I let moments pass before I spoke
again.

             
“Don’t you think we’ve grown apart?” I asked him gently, eventually continuing the conversation.

             
I watched his eyes leave mine and settle on a spot in the far distance. I could tell he was thinking, and I grew more and more anxious as each moment of silence passed – until he finally spoke again.

             
“I love you, Julia,” he said, avoiding my question.

             
My heart ached. He could have said anything else but that. And even with his tender words, I knew he saw what I saw. I knew that him not answering my question gave me my answer, and that answer crushed me more than I had anticipated. My salty tears uncontrollably rolled down my cheeks in tiny bucketfuls as I fought back the urge to take everything back.

             
“I’m so sorry, Brady. I know you see it too,” I said as I slipped his ring off of my finger and placed it in his hand, while I still had the courage to do it.

             
Brady tenderly protested for almost an hour thereafter. And in that hour, he was perfect, and gentlemanly and sweet, but his words seemed more like he was fighting not to fail, not to see me hurt, not to hurt himself, instead of for love. And by the end, even he could admit that there had been a change and was forced to surrender to our looming decline. And I knew that he knew deep down we both wanted different lives and that those lives, no matter how much forcing, could never coexist. More so, however, something that he saw in my eyes that last hour, those last days after the proposal and even, to some extent, every day before the engagement, made him believe that I needed something that he could never give me, he tried to explain. He said he had tried so hard to figure out what that something was all of this time, but alas, was unsuccessful, he admitted. And like the true gentleman he was, he eventually told me that he understood, understood that I needed a different life than he could offer me, even though I could tell he felt as if
he didn’t fully understand why.

             
In the end, he had loved me with all that he had, believing that I hadn’t ever given him all of myself. And maybe I hadn’t or maybe that’s all I had to give anymore. I wasn’t sure. But I could tell that he realized that I had already made my decision, and regardless, to him, the outcome was the same – I didn’t see him in my future, and he would never have my whole heart.

             
We sat on his porch swing with my packed bags in front of us in silence before leaving for the airport that day. And the tears were still streaming down my cheeks even two hours later as we pulled into a spot in the airport’s parking lot and came to a halt. I met his eyes then. I could see in them that it pained him to see me so torn, and I just knew he wanted to make my world all better again, just like I wished I could his as well.

             
I tried to smile the best, sincere smile that I could muster up – one that said that we would both make it. I’m not really sure if I succeeded.

             
He smiled softly as well, but it was pained and not so assured. It pierced the outer wall of my already stabbed and beaten heart and forced my eyes to the floorboard. But in the next moment, I felt the top part of his hand under my chin gen
tly lifting my face toward his.

             
“Whatever you’re looking for, Julia, I hope you find it someday. You’re much too beautiful for tears,” he said softly, sincerely.

             
I could hear the sadness in his voice as I looked into his deep brown eyes. My heart continued to ache.

             
“I’m so sorry, Brady,” I said, through my tears. “I’m so sorry.”

             
“L
ife is funny,” I said under my breath as I sat back in my office chair, wearing a somewhat heavy-hearted grin.

             
Graduation had come and gone and so had the bar exam.
South Carolina
wasn’t exactly D.C. quite yet, but it was warm most of the year, and the beach was close and the water warm – a drastic difference from the icy cold waters of the Pacific. Most importantly, however,
Charleston
was home of the prestigious Summerton Law Group, a well-established firm that specialized in environmental law. As soon as I had passed the bar, I had put my first application into Summerton. I was beside myself the day the firm called me in for an interview. And then there was a second interview, and then a month later, I was on my way to the
Palmetto
State
.

             
“What’s funny?” I heard a voice come from out of nowhere, forcing my thoughts to a screeching halt.

             
I jumped slightly and sat straight up in my chair, just as a slender figure was planting his feet in the center of my office’s doorway.

             
Anthony stood about six-foot-one, had olive skin, jet black hair and soft, brown eyes. He was model-like handsome, someone who naturally commanded attention whenever he walked into a room. I had worked intensively with him on a case for the last several months, and even so, his attractive self still made me nervous and slightly awkward in his presence at times. It’s funny how many things I could actually drop, spill and ruin in one minute with him. That being said, I really got the impression that he had no idea just how attractive he was because he was also witty and smart and sweet. And he seemed to possess this certain silent courage in the face of adversity – this I had noticed early on in our working relationship, and I had admired him greatly for it. Best of all, Anthony hated politics, and while I loved learning about the law and how to apply it to my future cases and career and all of that, I could live without the politics. A lawyer who despised politics was hard to come by, and I had immediately seen Anthony as
a pleasant breath of fresh air.

             
“Oh, nothing’s funny,’ I said, shaking my head and still smiling.

             
Anthony looked at me sideways. And I quickly connected the dots as I started to emerge from the place I like to call, My Own, Little World. Did I just tell Anthony Ravenel that I was laughing at something that wasn’t funny? Yep, I’m crazy.

             
“I mean, I’m not laughing at anything. Well, I guess I am laughing – but at nothing in particular,” I eventually spit out, trying my best to recover.

             
I noted that I should add
speak uncontrollably
to the list of things that I could do, without even trying, to embarrass myself around Anthony Ravenel.

             
I smiled at my own ineptness and trudged on.

             
“What are you still doing here?” I asked him.

             
“I just had a couple of things to finish up,” he said. “I’m on my way out now. The real question is: What are you still doing here? The weekend started, oh, two hours ago,” he said, glancing at his watch.

             
My smile grew for an instant and then faded.

             
“I know,” I said, looking back down at my computer’s screen. “I know, but I’m going to have to sit tonight out. I’ve got some catching up to do.”

             
“Oh,” he said, sounding defeated. “What about tomorrow night? You doing anything?”