Our First Love (20 page)

I
spent spring break watching nervously as Caleb rediscovered our former life. Karen asked me to spend the break with her down in Orlando, but I passed. I couldn't be away from home for an entire week. Especially not now…he was close.

As much as I hated to admit it, I'd been out of whack since Caleb sent Karen the tulips and since I read his blog about falling in love with her. I couldn't believe that I let jealousy make me want to fight him. Since that day, two incendiary questions held my future hostage. If Karen met and got to know Caleb, would she be more attracted to him? I hated myself for being so insecure about love and women. I'm thirty-five, not sixteen. I should know what I was capable of by now. Which brought up the second question: shouldn't I know what I was capable of?

I read somewhere that dreams were a reflection of our subconscious thoughts, and I hoped that wasn't true. I read Caleb's blog about falling in love with Karen while I was at work the other day, and that night I had a dream that Caleb and I really did get into it about Karen. He didn't back down in the dream like he did in real life.

In the dream, like in real life, I was sitting at my desk reading Caleb's blog. I wasn't surprised that he had fallen in love with Karen. After all, we shared my entire life. Why wouldn't he want to share my love for her? I asked myself that question in real life and in the dream. In the dream, as in real life, the possible answers
had me boiling over inside. It pissed me off that I had to share her with Caleb, and I let myself feel it. By the time I finished reading the blog I picked up my briefcase and marching out of the office. I was ready to tell Caleb how I really felt about him falling in love with my woman.

I was sitting in our driveway before I realized I had made it home. In the dream, Caleb must have been telepathic, because he stood in the window waiting for me with a smirk on his face. In real life, he was standing in the window when I got home, but I don't think he had the smirk on his face or at least I didn't see it. That's why I didn't walk in the house ready to kick off in his ass like I was in the dream. Caleb had the smirk on his face in the dream knowing I was going to read the blog, and he guessed how pissed off I would be, especially after he sent her the tulips. He didn't care though. He was as ready to fight over her as I was.

I hurried out the car and slammed the door closed. Then, without looking up at the window where Caleb was still standing, I walked around the car and toward the front door. Usually, I took my time about unlocking the front door and going inside to make sure Caleb had time to go to his bedroom before I opened the door. In the dream, I didn't waste any time. I had the key out when I stepped up to the door. I inserted the key, turned it, and pushed the door open.

Caleb wasn't in the living room.

I stood in the doorway with the door opened and let my anger build. My anger had subsided slightly during the drive from campus to home, but I think seeing the smirk on Caleb's face reignited it. I took my time about closing the front door, but as soon as it was closed, I turned and announced, “The door's locked!”

Caleb wasted no time opening his bedroom door and stepping into the hallway. “Yeah, it is. And…?” he asked in a sardonic tone.

“And it's whatever you got on your mind, little brother,” I replied and dropped the briefcase on the floor.

Caleb took deliberate steps as he marched up the hallway toward the living room. “Seems like you're the one with something on your mind,” he said.

“Yeah, I have something on my mind,” I responded as I walked toward him.

“Then get it off.” Caleb stepped right up to me.

I didn't back down. “I should get it off, shouldn't I?” I didn't blink as I stared back into his eyes.

Caleb didn't back down either. “I would if I were you.”

“I read your blog,” I told him.

“And?” he asked.

“And she's mine.”

“Says who?”

“I said she's mine. Now, get rid of the blog.”

“Make me.”

I swear I didn't know I was going to swing, but my fist slammed into Caleb's jaw before I realized it. Caleb staggered backward and fell on the sofa. As I stood staring in disbelief, Caleb jumped up from the sofa and charged into me, knocking me backward on the floor. The fall knocked the breath out of me, and I landed on my back with him straddling my chest. I tasted the blood gushing from my lips after he jabbed me twice. Finally, I managed to gather my senses. I grabbed my briefcase, which was on the floor beside me.

“I've been waiting to do this for ten years,” Caleb said, then grabbed my collar. He was about to hit me again when the briefcase careened into his head. He fell on the floor beside me, and I hurried to my feet.

“Get up!” I yelled. “Get up!”

Caleb scrambled to his feet, and as soon as he stood, I tackled
him. We landed on the sofa and the sofa flipped over on top of us.

That's when I woke up with my fists balled up so tight that my fingernails were cutting into my palms. It took more than just a few minutes for me to calm down. I read somewhere that dreams are a reflection of our subconscious thoughts, so I decided not to allow myself to dream anymore that night by taping my eyelids open.

“Ouch!”

That's what I got for running out of paper tape.

Karen was in the faculty parking lot waiting for me when I arrived on campus this morning. She walked up to the car as I got out and jokingly asked, “Who arched your eyebrows?”

I closed the door and pressed the lock button on my keychain.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that,” Karen apologized, then reached for my hand.

I pretended not to see her extended hand. “I have a meeting with Hubert, so I don't have time to walk you to your office.”

She continued holding out her hand. “Nigel, is something wrong?”

“No. I have this meeting and…”

“Don't let me keep you,” she cut in.

I stepped past her outstretched hand and began my trek to the School of Journalism. I hated lying to Karen, but I'd rather lie and avoid her than let her see me like this. Jealousy was making me crazy. I know Caleb hadn't really had sex with Karen, but I'd bet my life that in his mind, he'd been with her every day since he wooed her with the tulips.

Between first and third period, I walked over to the campus parking office and changed my decal back to the School of Journalism's faculty parking lot. When I returned to my office, I listened
to three messages from Karen. Two were left on my cell phone's voice mail. The other was on the office phone's answering machine. The messages were all the same. “Call me when you get a chance.” I deleted the messages and turned off my cell phone.

Karen wasn't waiting for me in the parking lot this afternoon. Her Pathfinder was still parked next to my car, but she was nowhere in sight. I was slightly relieved. As I drove out the parking lot, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw her. She was standing in the shadow of a maintenance building waiting for me to leave.

I had to choose. So I chose the life I couldn't live without and cremated the life that made me want to live.

Withdrawal cravings wouldn't let me sleep. I needed to hear her voice, see and feel her. Make things right again. I conned my fingers into dialing her number on my cell phone, but no matter how much I enticed them with the promise of touching her, I couldn't persuade them to press the send button.

During an interview a few years ago, a local author of self-help books told me that it takes approximately twenty-one days to break a habit. So, in twenty-one days, I would have forgotten her. I looked at the clock; it was 4:30. I reminded myself that I could write day one off if I could make it through the first night.

It finally dawned on me why I fell in love with Karen the moment I saw her at Barney's burial. Her quintessence gleamed like a celestial flare. She was beautiful. Kind. Alive. And she was complete. There was no longing in her heart, because she owned all of her tomorrows. She was alive. And I saw what my world could be like with her in it.

I was content with our life until the possibility of another life dangled in front of me.

Day five and counting.

I expected her to call, or show up at my office, or pull in the driveway and knock on my front door. I expected her to do something. Anything. But she didn't. It's the eighth day and I hadn't seen or heard from her. It's like she said, “to hell with Nigel.” Talk about adding to my insecurity.

Caleb wasn't interested in my day anymore. Most of the time, he's waiting for me to get home so he could quiz me about one of his newfound memories. Today, he questioned me about the weekend when the entire family helped me move into the freshman dorm, Rawlings Hall, at Howard University. It wouldn't be long before he remembered how we died on the shoal of Flatley Creek three years later.

I kept hearing Barney ask me, “Have you ever really loved someone?” Now, I could answer him truthfully. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I didn't want to be the man who sullied Karen's heart, but I had to find a way to stop loving her. I'd convinced myself that I'd done the right thing by protecting my brother and saving our world.

Day thirteen didn't count; I backslid. I had not driven the Lumina in four months, but I decided to take it for a spin after dinner. I must have forgotten to dismantle the car's pre-set programming. On autopilot, the Lumina retraced my voyeuristic passes by Karen's house. I wanted to stop several times, but the car wasn't programmed to turn in her driveway and park. Its settings only permitted it to drive by. I had passed by her house at least eight
times before I remembered how to manually steer the car. I decided not to beat myself up because of my relapse. I decided to redo this day tomorrow, because I don't have the resolve to start over.

It helped when I blamed Karen. It wasn't all her fault. But then again, if she had not come into my life, our world wouldn't be facing extinction, and I wouldn't know how unpalatable love can taste.

Day eighteen. Almost there.

I had to choose. I had to choose. I had to.

Hubert knew without asking. “I'm down the hall if you want to talk about it,” he said during lunch.

“Talk about what?”

“The break-up,” he answered.

“How did you know?”

“The gray cloud over your head,” he responded.

Twenty-one. I did it. I let her go for twenty-one whole days. That means she should be out of my life.

The truth was I would have loved her anyway. Even if I had known what I know today—that she would abscise us and send our world spiraling out of orbit—I would have still walked that contorted line, fought in vain to hold on to her, and lived again.

Loving her did more than change our life. Her love changed everything. Time was no longer an obdurate reminder of our existence. Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Time didn't exist. So, the tragedy of loving her was not all the conversions she brought to our life. The real heartbreak was that even in the absence of time, there was an ending: a denouement that left us with no tomorrows.

I didn't know who I had become, but I was not the man I was before I met her. On the rare occasion when I was able to summon enough courage to look in the mirror, I barely recognize the anguished reflection staring back. His pain felt like mine. And his tears stung the same. So he and I must be…me.

The sun leered like a Peeping Tom through my window this morning. My T-shirt and my boxers were saturated with the anesthetizing sweat of a hangover brought on by way too many cocktails of darkness and excavated memories. And I was tired…so tired that it hurts to simply be. But my heart—against my will—beat the same. Seventy-three. Seventy-four. Seventy-five beats per minute. Meaning, I was still here. Still here. Still here.

CHAPTER 21

E
very spring Nigel and Caleb took turns ushering the hands forward one hour on each of the seven clocks inside their house. They did the same during the fall, except they got to relive the hour they spent waiting to set the clocks' hands back. Last spring, two hours after midnight on the first Saturday in April, Nigel expunged an unlived hour of their life. Two weeks ago, it was Caleb's turn. He began with their official timekeeper, the grandfather clock in the living room.

It was only an hour. Sixty minutes. Three thousand, six hundred repossessed seconds. Hardly enough time to choose and live lives of their own making. But as Caleb circumnavigated the clock's face aboard the minute hand, erasing the hour between two and three, he asked Nigel, “If you could do anything you wanted to during the hour we're losing, what would you do?”

“I don't know,” Nigel answered. “I never thought about it.”

“Think about it now.” Caleb turned and watched as his finger steered time into its scheduled orbit. “What would you do with the hour if you were bound only by your imagination?”