Past Imperfect (15 page)

“All taken care of,” he says, grinning at me.

I move closer and say in a low voice, “I don’t have a change of underwear. I’m okay with wearing the same bra, but I don’t have an extra pair of panties in my purse.”

He leans in, our noses almost touching. “I went to Victoria’s Secret and picked you up a little something. Size small.” He winks.

“How do you know what size panty I wear?”

“I may have snatched a pair or three of yours and kept them as souvenirs.” I give him a pointed look. “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not like I have them on, at least not right now anyway. Come on, let’s go check-in.”

Our room is gorgeous with honey-colored wood floors and furniture, decorated in rich earth tones. The inn backs up to the woods filled with pines and moss-covered old oak trees. The entire back wall of floor-to-ceiling windows makes it feel as if we are in a big luxurious treehouse. It’s breathtaking, secluded, and peaceful. After putting our one piece of luggage away, we head out to explore the gardens, starting with a carriage tour that travels through the lush woodlands and around the banks of the flooded rice fields. We stop and eat the picnic lunch that the inn packed for us and then leisurely stroll hand-in-hand until we come up on my favorite thing, the joggling board. It’s in the same exact spot it had been in when I was a child. I climb on and a huge smile immediately breaks out across my face as I begin to bounce.

“Come bounce with me.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice. Bouncing with you is my favorite thing to do in the entire world,” Brad says, as he straddles the bench, facing me.

“Why is it that everything out of your mouth always sounds so sexual?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes, bouncing, and taking in our beautiful surroundings. I scoot closer to him, brush my lips on his, and whisper against them, “Thank you for this.”

“You’re more than welcome,” he whispers back.

I pull away slightly and look out at the pond. “This is my favorite place in Charleston. I used to come here a lot with my mom.”

“I know.”

My head jerks and I look at him in confusion. “How do you know? I don’t remember talking about it.”

“I saw the picture on the bookshelf in your office of you and your mom in front of the Middleton Place House. You look really happy in that picture, so I figured…”

I don’t let him finish his sentence before my lips descend on his. All at once, my tongue slides into his mouth, my hands travel up his muscular arms, over his shoulders, and into his messy hair. I hear and feel a deep growl vibrate from his chest, causing me to pull him in closer. When I pull back, both of us are gasping for air.

Looking into his beautiful sapphire eyes, I feel my tears building. “No one has ever done anything this sweet for me.”

“I want to spend a lifetime doing sweet things for you.” He leans in and places soft kisses along my jawline to behind my ear, and whispers, “And to you.” I feel his smile against my neck.

I playfully shove him away. “Leave it to you to make this tender moment sexual.”

“Hey, I’m not the one shoving my tongue down throats.”

“Touché.”

Turning away, I straddle the bench, leaning against his toned chest, as his arms wrap around me. My eyes close as I tilt my head back and focus on the feel of Brad and the sounds of nature.

“Mabry?”

“Hmmm.”

“Tell me about your mom,” Brad says, his voice low.

I keep my eyes closed and force my body not to react to his words, but I can feel myself stiffen and move away from him. His hold tightens around me. He’s not going to let me avoid this.

I clear my throat and ask, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything or as much as you want to tell me.”

I open my eyes and look straight ahead. I’ve never said a word to anyone about my mom. People knew the story about how she died, but not from me. I take in a deep breath. I’m not exactly sure how much I can tell him. He deserves the entire story and the truth, but I don’t know if I can give him either.

His lips lower to my ear. “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me anything.” The hurt in his voice causes my chest to cave in and I know I have to do this. I have to give him this.

“She was a great mom. She was fun, caring, and made sure I knew how much I was loved every day.” I pause, trying to contain my tears. “She loved to sing. She couldn’t carry a tune, but that never bothered her. When I was young we would play tag in the backyard. Did you ever play that?”

He tries to pull me even closer and whispers, “Yeah.”

“Momma made up a song called, ‘You’ll Never Get Away’. It was the same line over and over. She’d start out singing it really slow and as she got closer to catching me the song would speed up.” My voice strains slightly as I attempt to sing.

“Oh, oh, you’ll never get away,

Never get away,

Never get away,

Never get away,

Never get away…”

“Then one day she stopped singing, and smiling, and caring about anything or anyone. She stayed in her dark room most of the day.”

“Where was your dad?”

“He worked a lot. I would hear them sometimes at night in their room. He’d start out asking her nicely to take her medicine and encourage her to get some help. She would cry out and these gut-wrenching sobs filled the house. Daddy would get frustrated and angry with her and then he’d give up. I’d hear the bedroom door slam shut followed by the front door. And I was left there all alone to listen to my mom until he came back home.”

“Did your dad ever do anything?”

“He let her disappear.”

Tears streamed down my face and my body trembles. I feel Brad’s lips touch my neck. “You don’t have to tell me anymore.”

“It was like that for two years before she slit her wrists. I was the one who found her.”

“Fuck.”

“She didn’t even leave us a note. She just left me and Daddy.”

“I’m so sorry, baby.” Brad’s voice cracks.

“People should always leave a note telling you why they did it. There’s nothing worse than someone you love leaving and not telling you why. I miss her so much.”

Brad’s arms lock around me. Sobs take over my body, and my heart and soul shatter. The urge to bang my head grabs me. Without thinking, I rear my head back, except instead of slamming against a cold solid surface, I make contact with a warm strong man who catches me as I fall.

I was sitting in the parking lot watching as all the people filed into the campus chapel. I’d been out here for an hour, but hadn’t been able to leave my car. The Hyams family, along with the university, had planned a memorial service here for faculty, staff, and students. It had been almost a week since Becca’s death and I was still in shock. I hadn’t left my place, not even to go to class. People who thought we were a couple just assumed it was because I was too upset by her death. I was upset, but not for the reasons they thought. Becca and I were far from being a couple. We were barely friends. The fact was, while she was alive, I never gave her much thought. I didn’t even really think of her during sex. Sometimes she was a model, sometimes a movie star, and sometimes she was even Amanda. It was rare that I actually screwed Becca.

I hadn’t slept since that day. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her dark green ones looking up at me, lost and alone. I’d racked my brain trying to remember if there had been any signs, but I came up empty every time. Then the realization hit me. Becca could have been wearing a huge sign that read,
I’m Committing
Suicide
Tuesday at 8 pm,
and I wouldn’t have noticed. I didn’t care about her. I treated her the exact same way I treated every girl who had ever been in my life. The reason I liked having her around was because she did my errands and didn’t ask for anything. In return, I fucked her when I needed a release, simply because I was too lazy to go out and find another girl that I was actually attracted to. I had been inside of her and yet all I knew about her was that she got the wrinkles out of my shirts and made a mean pot roast. I knew a few things about the other girls I had been with, but the only reason I knew things about them was because they talked, some nonstop. Becca barely spoke and as usual, I never asked any questions. Disappointment and shame flooded me. I knew I wasn’t the most caring person in the world, but I hadn’t realized I was becoming one of the coldest.

The night I left her, I wanted to get away as quickly as possible all because I didn’t feel like dealing with the tears that were headed my way. While I was sitting across from my mother pretending to listen as she droned on about work, my thoughts weren’t on Becca, they were on the cute little blond waitress. I turned my back on her and left her alone. I’d become numb to my pain and loneliness, while Becca’s pain finally consumed her. She believed her life was disposable and then threw it away. I was to blame for that. I did the same thing to her that had been done to me all my life. I treated her like she was nothing, an inconvenience, a mistake. The last few people walked up the steps to the chapel and entered. I had to go in, I owed her that much.

Getting out of the car, I felt a tingling in my hands as I adjusted my tie. My stomach quivered and my breathing accelerated while I reached into the back seat and grabbed my jacket. As I approached the door, I hesitated for a moment before finding the courage to enter. Once inside, I stood frozen, looking at the somber faces in the packed chapel. I had no clue Becca even knew this many people. The place was quiet, except for the cries up front from her mother. You could tell she was trying hard to hold them in, but they kept escaping. I found a seat just before the preacher took the podium.

He talked about what a good person and daughter Becca was. Next, the head of the Art Department got up to speak. She talked about Becca’s love of art and what a great student she was. That, while at Duke, she volunteered for an art therapy program for special needs children in the area. As she spoke, I noticed that several paintings resting on easels were placed around the chapel. They were mostly abstracts. I knew Becca was an Art major, but that was all. I didn’t even know she painted.

Speaker after speaker talked about a warm, sweet, shy, and giving young woman. When Stephanie spoke, she could barely hold back the tears as she remembered stories from her childhood growing up with Becca. She talked about how courageous Becca was and how she had to overcome so many obstacles in her life. I sat listening intently to every word, finally taking the time to get to know Becca Hyams.

The last two people to approach the podium were Becca’s parents. My breath caught as I looked into the grief-stricken eyes of her mother and the vacant gaze of her father. I had never seen two people so broken in my entire life. I had also never seen two parents who loved their child as much as Mr. and Mrs. Hyams.

As Mr. Hyams stepped closer to the microphone his eyes were downcast. His hands shook as he clutched something that I couldn’t see. Clearing his throat, he began, “My wife and I want to thank each one of you for coming here today to say goodbye to our daughter.” His mouth trembled and his eyes filled with water. “It’s never easy losing a loved one. I’ve lost both my parents, grandparents, and a few friends over the years. The pain that you feel is intense because you’ll miss them. The frustration is overpowering because there’s absolutely nothing you can do, except adjust to a life without them. But when you lose your child…” The tears spilled over and onto his cheeks as his chest heaved deeply. “…Just the thought of a child dying before their parent is so excruciatingly painful and devastating. I guess no human was able to get past even the thought to try and assign words to these feelings when it actually happens.” He looked down at the object that he’d been tightly holding. He raised it up and out facing the mourners. It was a stone the size of his palm. Gazing at it, he continued. “Becca was always an artist. This is a present she made me for Father’s Day when she was seven years old. She painted orange tiger paws all over it. We were big Clemson University fans. So much so, Becca used to say, if any of us got cut we would bleed orange.” His eyes immediately shot up looking at the audience. The sudden realization of what he just said hit him. Becca had slit her wrists. A shudder visibly ran through his body. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and stepped back from the podium.