Feel My Love (4 page)

Chapter 5

Brynn

It’s almost midnight, which means that we’re almost done playing for the night.  I saw Ryan at the bar talking to Kara earlier in the night, but haven’t seen him since.  I’ve had to force myself to focus on the songs so that I don’t keep l
ooking into the audience trying to find him. 

A small part of me is afraid that he left the bar with the guys he came with, but a bigger part of me is afraid that he stayed.  I’m not
sure I’m ready to talk to him, and to be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to talk to him because I’m sure I’ll forgive him on the spot. 

Even though it was eight
years ago since I got dismissed, it’s still a fresh wound on my heart, but I’ve never been one to hold a grudge toward people. Life is just too short for that.  I walk up to the microphone and announce that this will be our last song of the night; the still packed bar is a mixture of groans and cheers.  

I walk to the side of the bar and scoop up my ukulele and strum it a few times
to make sure it’s in tune.  Some of the people in the crowd know which song it is, but I walk up to the microphone again to introduce the song to those that don’t. 

I clear my throat and say, “So, for the last song of the night, I’m going to play one of my personal favorites.  This is a happy song called “You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson.”  People cheer while Tommy and Happy walk off stage for the night and Drew walks up next to me and puts his arm around my waist
to help me sing the song. 

After the song ends, pe
ople whistle and cheer.  I turn and smile at Drew, who kisses me on the lips quickly and walks off stage. I pull my brows together as I watch Drew leave, wondering where all of this affection is coming from.  We hardly ever kiss, especially when we’re on stage. 

I put my ukulele back on the side of the stage and grab my bottle of water
off of the top of my piano, but when I turn back around to face the dance floor, Ryan is standing in front of me, smiling awkwardly with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

Shit.  For some odd reason I thought he’d let me off the hook, but then I forgot how well I used t
o know Ryan.  He was persistent and always got information out of me after a while.  When we were growing up, I was a bit of a tom boy and the preppy cheer leaders used to tease me about it. 

Ryan noticed that I wasn’t my usual “happy” self and asked me what happened.  After telling him at least twenty times that it was nothing, I finally gave up and caved.  Since Ryan was so popular in high school, he used his charm and got the cheer leaders to back off, which they did.   At least they did when he was around.

I walk to the end of the stage toward the stairs with Ryan on following alongside me.

I am
trying so hard to think of some way to get out of having a conversation with him, but when I meet him at the bottom of the stairs and he looks so hopeful, and also so damned good looking, I decide that it couldn’t hurt to just talk to him for a half an hour or so. That’s not enough time to go into deep details of our lives and me to fall more in love with him than I already am, right? 

I’m smiling a
s we walk toward the back to find a table, slowing while people are hugging me and telling me how much they love my voice.  A few men are kissing my cheek and pinching my ass, but my smile fades when I look at Ryan sitting at a table, his face is bright red and his hands are clenched in fists; knuckles white.  

I glare
at him questioningly, wondering how he can possibly be upset when he was the one that dismissed me so long ago.  His wife was somewhere in this city waiting for him to return to a hotel, instead he’s taking a seat across from me at a small table in the back of a bar.

Before either of us can get a word out, Kara comes ove
r to our table, pushing her short blonde hair behind her ear, and hands me a tumbler of Crown and Coke.  “Need anything else, Brynnie?” she asks, looking at Ryan.  “Nope, I’m good.  Thanks Kare.” I say and glance back to Ryan who hasn’t taken his eyes off of me. 

I take a sip of my drink through the small red swizzle straw, trying to find a way to compose myself and think of something to say, but Ryan beats me to it.  “You have a tattoo?” he asks incredulously. 

The sleeves of my white cardigan are pushed up to my elbows and I look down to the inside of my left arm where the word
Enough
spans the length of my wrist and is inked in bold black letters with small doves flying around it. 

“Yeah, that’s one of them.
  It was actually my first one.”  “One of them?” he says with one eyebrow raised. “How many do you have?”  I look down at my drink while I count all the different tattoos I have. 

Final
ly I look up and say “I have thirteen different ones, but I was going to get another one in a few weeks. I’m not really superstitious, but thirteen tattoos just doesn’t sit well with me.  I need another one.”

“Wow. I can’t bel
ieve you have one, let alone thirteen of them.  I always thought you hated them” he says, shaking his head while one side of his mouth is pulled up.

“No, I always wanted to get at least one, but my mom never liked them.  She told me that no one should put graffiti on their temple.”  I
sneer and pull my brows together just a bit thinking of the disgust on my mother’s face when she would see people with tattoos. 

“What does it mean?” Ryan asks, pointing at my wrist.  I clear my throat and answer him as simply as I can. “It means that no matter what anyone
else thinks of me, I am enough.” I look away before I can get emotional.  I got that tattoo with my parents in mind. 

After a minute of uncomfortable silence, he mumbles,
“So, what does your mom think of all of these tattoos, anyway? I bet she just loves them.”  He smiles at me trying to lighten the mood that settled over the table, but that was one topic that sits heavy with me. 

When I told my parents that I didn’t want to live at home, didn’t want to marry Jake, and didn’t want to start a family as soon as possible, they fr
eaked out. I told them that I had received my acceptance letter from SDSU and my father simply told me that if I left I was not welcome back into their home or their family.  I would be considered a disappointment to the family name and neither he nor my mother would settle for that.  He said it with such simplicity that he may as well have been discussing the weather. 

I haven’t spoken to either of my parents in almost eight years.  My younger sister,
her husband and their little boy have only been down to visit once, but I still talk to her at least once a month to check in on them. I only talk to my sister about her and my nephew. 

I have told her over and over I don’t want to know anything about our parents or anything that is going on back home.  I’ll never go back there, anyway, so what is the point of keeping up with the stupid small town gossip.

I never talk to anyone about my family problems, so I look up at Ryan and say, “She hasn’t seen them. “  I quickly glance away and wave to a few people I knew from college, still sitting around finishing their drinks before they leave the bar, while I’m trying to come up with anything to say to get off the topic of my family. 

“So…” I drag out the word.  “How have you been? What’s new with you?”  Ryan could tell I was uncomfortable.  He smile
s and looks at me for a minute before he answers.  “I had no idea you came here, Brynn.  Why did you leave everything behind and come here?” 

I just look
at him and shake my head slowly, trying to fight back the tears that have mysteriously appeared in the corners of my eyes.  My legs are bouncing and my bottom lip is trembling.  I had asked myself those very questions for the first few months of moving out here, but having this man I used to think was my whole world ask them seemed to punch me in the gut.

“
I didn’t leave anything behind.  What did I have to wait for back home?  My life belonged to everyone else back there.  I didn’t have anything that was mine. I just needed to live my life for myself, Ryan.  I am, now, and I’m happy and my family is happy for me.”  I give him a sad smile and take a deep breath to keep the tears from spilling over. 

I finish my drink in record time and look back to Ryan.  “Well, it’s been nice seeing you again, but I should really get going.  I have a lot going on tomorrow and I need to get some sleep.” 

I stand up, turn to Kara and wait until she looks at me, and blow her a kiss letting her know I am leaving for the night.  She pulls her brows together and nods her head toward Ryan behind me, silently asking me if everything is alright.  I nod and turn back to Ryan, hoping that he is done with his interrogation and can’t see that I am lying to him about my family’s acceptance of my move, trying to hide my weird lip pull that happens when I lie to people.

Chapter6

Ryan

I know she i
s lying to me; her lip would always pull up in a small wince when we were younger if she lied to me.  I just couldn’t figure out why she was lying about seeing her family.  I still speak to her family.  I live down the street from her parents in the house she grew up in. 

Her sister,
Becca, has been watching my girls for me since they were little.  I know she hasn’t been back once since she left, but no one in her family would ever tell me where she went and when they had last talked to her.

I stan
d with her hoping to prolong our time together.   Brynn steps forward and hugs me awkwardly, as if to say goodbye.  I hug her back as tightly as I can with the odd position her body is angled in and take in a deep breath of her beautiful, loosely curled hair. 

She smells like oranges, just like she did when we were younger.  After she pulls back she looks around the emptying bar, as if searching for someone; I’m just hoping it isn’t that guitar player.

“Where’s Kyle?  I saw you sitting with him and Mike and wanted to say hello to them.”  Brynn says.  “Oh, uh, they left about an hour ago.  Most of the guys were trashed and then Kyle’s fiancée, Lola, called and told him she needed some help with a last minute wedding thing.  I think she thought we were at a strip club and didn’t want him there so she came up with some bullshit excuse to get him home.”  I smile. 

Kyle was whipped when it came to Lo.  She
says jump and he does it.  “That’s too bad.  I was hoping to have seen him before you all went home.  Why is the wedding out here, anyway?” She says with a confused look on her face. 

“Kyle moved out here about a month ago to live with Lo.  They met at some convention he had to come out here for and he did the back and forth for almost two years while they decided where they wanted to live.  San Diego, and Lo, won.”
 

As Brynn finishe
s listening to my explanation, she nods and then starts heading to the door as if ending our conversation.  What she isn’t counting on is that I am following her.  I’m not about to let her walk out of my life as easily as I did before.

As soon as we a
re outside the bar and back on the street, she starts walking to the side of the building to grab her bicycle.  “Can I walk you home?”  I finally get the courage to say, digging my balled up fists into my pockets so she doesn’t see how nervous I am. 

Even in the middle of the night with the only light coming from a light post a few feet away, I c
an see her face pale.  “Um…” she hesitates “what about Amber? Isn’t she waiting for you back at your hotel?”  Oh shit.  She thinks I’m still married to Amber? “For some reason I thought you already knew about this.  Uh, Amber and I got divorced not long after you left.  I’ve been single for the past seven years.” 

Brynn’s eyebrows sh
oot up in disbelief, but then she pulls them together and looks at me.  “Why would you think I knew about that? I haven’t talked to you in eight years, Ryan.” Her voice is getting louder and more choked up, but she turns her face away from me so I can’t see it. 

Brynn turns and starts briskly walking in the direction of her place and I follow a few steps behind while I try to steer the conversation back to a lighter topic.

I clear my throat and then say “So, I talked to Kara for a minute while you were singing tonight.  She’s pretty cool.”  I see Brynn’s shoulders start to relax and I slowly exhale the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. 

“Yeah, she’s the bee’s knees.” Brynn
wipes the corners of her eyes and smiles. “She was my roommate when I first moved out here to attend SDSU and my only friend for a while.” 

I wince at that statement.  I was Brynn’s best friend before she left, and when she got here she felt like she didn’t have any friends at all.  “She told me that you guys were in a sorority together?  Where the hell did that come from Brynnie?  You always thought things like that were stupid.”  I ask trying to keep my voice light so that it doesn’t seem like I’m making fun of her. 

Brynn starts to laugh at this.
Thank God.
It’s such a great sound and I don’t realize until she’s done laughing that I’ve missed that sound so much.

“Yes
, I was in a sorority in college.” She says with a smile in her voice.  “When I moved out here I just needed a change from the life I lived back home.  You know how my life used to be.  I used to do everything for everyone else; to please everyone else.  One day,” she heaves a big breath “everything just kind of snapped for me and I looked at the direction my life was heading and I didn’t like it.  It terrified me to live a life that wasn’t my own.  So, I broke up with Jake” she looks at me and smirks.  I smile back at her.  She knew I thought Jake was a tool and she was too good for him. “I packed my things, and moved down here to start living my life.  And I couldn’t be happier.  My life is mine and I do the things I want to do.  I still do things to help others and make them happy, but I get to do things for me.  I’m not married, with kids, and no college education to hinder me.  I have so many options open for me at this stage in my life.”

I know she didn’t mean it as a shot at me, but I take this a bit person
ally since I had been married, I have two girls, and had to do night school for almost six and a half years to get a degree.

“So” I say
, trying to keep the conversation away from me “the sorority was part of your new life, huh?”  She giggles and looks at me.  “Yeah, it was.  I loved it so much.  I made so many new friends and experienced so many things that I normally wouldn’t do.  It was a way to step out of my comfort zone, I guess.  Kara and I pledged together and then ended up living at the sorority house our junior and senior years.  It was a blast.  We all still get together once every few months to catch up and chat, even though we graduated four years ago and the sisters spread out around the country for their jobs or their husbands’ job.” 

I glance over at her and she is just glowing telling me about her experiences.  I smile and add “Kara
told me that you were in a band, too.  That’s pretty cool.”  Brynn finally slows her pace down so it doesn’t look like she’s going to bolt from me at any second and then looks over at me. 

She clears her throat and then says “Ken’s Mistress.”
What the hell does that mean
?  The question must be written all over my face because she just laughs and then clarifies. “That was the name of our band.  We were an all girl band and all of the girls were from my sorority. We just played cover songs at parties in exchange for extra drinks, or in our drummer Kylee’s case, an easy lay from one of the boys on the football team.” Brynn laughs again and turns to walk up a set of stairs. 

We must be at her place already.  It’s a simple looking light blue condo a few blocks away from the bar we just left.  “So I have to ask, then.” I say and wait for her to turn around from unlocking her front door.  “Who’s Ken?” 

“What?” Brynn asks and finally turns to face me with her brows pulled together. 

“Ken’s Mistress? The name of your band?  Who’s Ken?” I say hoping that it isn’t an actual person I have to beat the shit out of.  Brynn throws her head back and laughs.  When she rights herself again, she’s wiping a tear from the corner of her eye and gasping for air. “Ken, as in Barbie’s husband
.  You know, like a Ken doll.”  She clarifies, still smiling.

I chuckle and try to discreetly unclench my fists. 
“That’s pretty funny, Brynnie.  Did you come up with the name?”  I ask trying to prolong this.  I don’t want to tell her goodbye.  I want to learn as much as I can about her since she seems like a completely different person now. 

She
bites her lower lip and nods in answer to my question and then she opens her door wide and lifts her bike up so she can bring it into her living room.  Brynn disappears for a few seconds, but the door is left wide open. 

I stay on the porch because I’m not sure I’m welcome and I don’t want to push my luck and have her get pissed at me if I walk in without being invited first.  A second later, Brynn’s head pops out from the corner and she says “Are you comin
g in or not?  You’re letting all the bought air out.”  She smiles and her head disappears again.