Romance: Love Left Behind - A Mystery Romance: (Romance, Mystery, Mystery Romance, Romantic Suspense) (10 page)

Their lips met again.  When they pulled away they made eye contact, searching for any sign that the other might be lying.  But within each other they found only the truth.  Holding hands under the table, they began to plan their route for the rest of the day.  Exploring the multitude of stores and tourist attractions around Times Square was first on the list.  A little later in the day, Ben wanted to take Starla over to Union Square.  It was one of his favorite spots to visit in all of New York City as there was always something going on there.  They could grab a late lunch or a slice of pizza in the late afternoon and perhaps end the night at a Broadway show. 
The Lion King
was playing on Broadway and it was supposed to be an absolutely spectacular performance.

But as they stood up to go about their day, Ben spotted a familiar face across the street.  He tried to quickly duck his head but to no avail.  Under his breath he started spitting out curse words.  He broke away from Starla, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

“What’s wrong?” Starla asked, confused at the change of pace.

Right then, Mina Gurkiri strode up to the table with a challenging look resting on her face.  Her usually engaging red lipstick looked like poison. 

“Ben?” she asked.  “I thought you were still in New Jersey.  You didn’t call and tell me you were back.”

“Hey baby,” he said.  He walked forward and gave Mina a tight hug.  She pecked him on the neck.  Ben could feel the angry and hurt vibes being shot at him by Starla but it was a strange situation and he wasn’t sure how to handle it.  “I’m just back for the day.  I brought my old friend in since she hasn’t been to the city before.”

Mina mostly detached herself from Ben, though she kept one hand on his waist as a sign to Starla.  “Oh?  Are you not from around here?”

“I’m from New Jersey,” Starla said.

“And you’ve never been to the city before?”  Condescension dripped like syrup from Mina’s lips.  “What a pity.  Are you poor or something?”

Starla’s eyes grew wide at such an offensive and bluntly delivered question.  Even Ben looked shocked at the delivery from his normally politically correct girlfriend.  As Starla struggled for words, Ben tried to make the situation better and answer for her.

“Mina,” he said haltingly, “that’s not really an appropriate question, is it?  Starla’s had a hard life.  Between her sister dying and her abusive relationship…”

Starla screeched like a banshee, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.  Now it was Mina’s turn to look surprised.  The love triangle stood around the table now all unsure of what to say or do.  Starla felt exposed, like she was standing naked in the middle of Times Square with everybody watching her.  It was a less-than-comfortable feeling, having her dirty laundry aired out to her lover’s girlfriend. 

Finally Mina stepped back from the table, careful not to trip in her Jimmy Choos.  She gestured wildly in the air and said, “Whatever.  I can’t deal with this right now.  I have a really important meeting to go to.”  Grabbing Ben by the collar of his t-shirt, she yanked him in a planted a series of ferocious kisses on him.  “Call me later and let me know when you’re coming back, okay?”  With that, she sped off, walking as fast as a socialite in five-inch heels could possibly move.

Starla and Ben stared at each other, neither knowing what to say.  Looking like she was about to burst into tears at any moment, it was Starla who said, “I’d like to go home now.”

With both of them marinating in uncomfortable silence they headed back towards the car, the mood of the day ruined by the inevitability of surprise. Neither party spoke on the car ride back into New Jersey, not even when the car got stuck in ridiculously backed-up traffic.  Starla watched the inhabitants of other cars inching past her.  In the back of a red Chevy Camaro sat a small blonde girl.  She held a ratty doll in her hands, pressing the figure against the window and pulling it away.  The gesture was so simplistic but it made Starla want to cry.  That little girl and her doll reminded Starla of herself – looking out into a wonderful world of opportunities but unable to move.

They shuffled along little by little.  The traffic between New York and New Jersey was ridiculous.  It was amazing the amount of people who were always coming and going, always running somewhere, despite the time of day or night. 

It was Ben who eventually broke the silence with two simple words.  “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”  Starla wasn’t going to let him go that easily.  The events that had transpired that afternoon just about broke her heart all over again.  She was going to hold Ben accountable for his actions and teach him that he couldn’t play with the emotions of others as willy-nilly as he was.

“Don’t be like that,” Ben said.  “You know what I’m sorry about.”

“I want you to say it.”

Ben cleared his throat.  “I wasn’t going to break up with her in the middle of Times Square, Starla.  Don’t be silly.  I told you that I’m going to end things with her and I will.  You just have to give me time.”

Starla shook her head.  She felt tears lighting at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over.  But she didn’t want to cry.  This was not the time to be weak.  So instead she balled her fists in her lap, squeezing her fingers down until they ached.

“I’ve waited for you my entire life,” she told him.  “You’re the one that left.”

It sucked, having the blame constantly placed on him.  Although he acknowledged that he was the one who went off to find a better life, he didn’t think that he had ruined everything by doing so.  After all,
he
was the one with a successful career. 
He
was the one with a gorgeous apartment above Central Park and
he
was the one who had a normal, functioning, healthy relationship with someone else.

Ben said cruelly, “I may be the one that left but you’re the one who chose to stay behind and do nothing with your life.  You keep telling me that I left you behind but what you fail to realize, over and over again, is that I asked you to come with me.  I begged you to come with me in high school.  You said no.  So maybe it’s time to sit back and think that you’re the one who fucked up, Starla, not me.”

A sob escaped her mouth.  Starla grabbed the volume dial on the radio and cranked it up so that Ben would be unable to hear her crying.  She pressed her face to the window and let her tears snake down the glass. Everything that Ben had told her about loving her was most likely a lie.  Her morality and her loyalty had been compromised.  It broke her heart to think that she was such a terrible human being, the kind who cheated and not only ruined her own relationship but someone else’s as well.  And she did it because she trusted someone that she should have never trusted in the first place.  It was an all around disastrous situation.

The radio station was playing country music, songs with a sad twinge that spoke about lost love and failed relationships.  Neither Ben nor Starla liked country music but neither of them bothered to change it.  They just needed something to fill the silence and to distract them from everything that had just happened.

It blew Ben’s mind that, in a city of ten million people, he would see the one person he wanted to avoid that day.  He couldn’t believe that Mina just happened to be walking past the very spot where him and Starla had been eating a hotdog and discussing their love lives.  It could have been divine intervention.  But if so, that meant that the relationship between Starla and him wasn’t meant to be.  He didn’t really want that to be the case.

The drive back into Bellen was the longest one hour and fifteen minutes that either Starla or Ben had ever experienced.  Once in town, Ben figured they needed to talk it out, figure out where they stood.  He turned down the volume of the music and asked Starla what her opinion was.

“I can’t wait for you anymore, Ben.  I can’t be your chick on the side or whatever.  Maybe us reuniting and getting physical and all of that was just stupid.  We’ve been ignoring the facts.  You have a girlfriend and I have a boyfriend.  And you’re going to move back to New York City.  That’s the way it is.  It was stupid for either of us to think that this would end well.”

“But we could do a long-distance relationship,” Ben countered.  “And it’s not even really that long.  I’d only be a train ride away.”

“You have a girlfriend.  I saw her today.  Did that not embarrass you the way it embarrassed me?  Oh my God.”

“I told you I’d break up with her for you.”

“But you didn’t,” Starla responded despondently.

Ben pulled the car into a parking spot by the park.  They sat there for a few moments listening to the idling of the car engine.

“Maybe you’re right then.  Maybe we should just be friends,” Ben said, staring out into space.  “Maybe this was all just a big mistake.”  He turned towards her and, rather than hugging her, stuck out his hand for a handshake.  “Friends?”

With just a grunt of displeasure, Starla unbuttoned her seatbelt, threw open the car door, and stalked down the street.  Ben had to unbutton his own seatbelt so that he could lean over and shut the car door.  As he watched Starla returning to her boyfriend, Ben sighed.

Women were just so complicated.  He didn’t understand them at all.

2014 – Ben

He knew there was something wrong as soon as he opened the door to the apartment.  Something just felt off.  He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was, but the feeling in the apartment was…too still, maybe?  When he dropped his bag to the floor, where it landed with a resounding clunk, there was some movement in the bedroom.  A flurry of muted whispers, some soft footsteps.  The door to the bedroom opened and Mina strolled out.  She was wrapped in the red silk robe that Ben had bought her last Valentine’s Day.  Strangely enough, her hair was done in a messy bun on the top of her head.

“Baby!” she exclaimed, walking forward and embracing Ben.  “I didn’t think you’d be home for another few days.  Is everything okay?”

There was a false cheeriness to her voice, an uncomfortable sparkle in her eyes.  Ben replied, “Everything is fine.  I was just tired of being home.  Spending all that time in Bellen reminded me of why I left.  So I came back here to you.  Where I belong.  That’s what you reminded me when you saw me before, right?”

“Of course, baby.  I’m –” Before Mina could finish her sentence, there was a loud crash from the bedroom.

Rather than go see what it was, Mina tried to get a tighter hold on Ben.  Her arms squeezed around him, attempting to keep him in one place.  “Don’t worry, Ben.  I left the window open, something probably just fell.  Don’t –”

Alarm bells were sounding in his head.  He pushed against his girlfriend’s arms, gently extracting himself from her grip.  As he moved to walk past her and see what was going on in the bedroom, Mina jumped in front of him, trying to stop him.  She grabbed at his arms and his waist.  Ben was too strong, though.  He moved around her, pushing her off him as he went.

On the bedroom floor lay the waste of the green lamp that had sat on their nightstand.  The lackluster green ceramic was shattered in chunks across the floor, leaving a trail of green-gray dust in between the pieces.  There were slits in the lampshade from the broken glass of the light bulb.  Small spots of dark blood also dotted the lampshade.

It was the sight on the bed that was even more shocking.  Jack Halloway, another reporter for the station where Mina worked, was sitting on the bed clutching his bleeding foot.  He wore no clothes except for a skimpy pair of gray boxer-briefs, and his brown hair was tousled.  Behind him, Mina’s clothes were thrown across the bed, including her pink lingerie set.  An open condom wrapper rested haphazardly on the pillow, reflecting the light shining in from the window.

Jack looked up when Ben entered the bedroom and said, in a choked voice, “Can you get me some gauze and a bandage, man? I stepped on that glass.  I think the cut is really deep.  It won’t stop bleeding.”

Ben was shocked.  “Are you kidding me?  You want me to get you a bandage?”

“Man, please help me.  I’m not good with blood.  It hurts too, it hurts real bad.  Please help.”

“You were just in here fucking my girlfriend and you want me to help you?  Fuck you, Halloway.  I hope you bleed to death.  You’re just lucky I’m not over there kicking your ass right now,” Ben spat across the room.  Jack Halloway looked up, momentarily stunned.  Even Ben was amazed at the animosity in his voice.  But in what world did Jack Halloway think he was going to get help from the scorned boyfriend?

Mina came scurrying into the room, her cheeks bright red.  She rushed to the bed and handed Jack some gauze, whispering sweet nothings all the while.  When she was convinced that he was going to be okay and that he could take care of his foot for a minute, she turned.  There was fear in her eyes but also something else that Ben couldn’t quite place.  It was a haughtiness of sorts, a defensiveness.

She walked towards him and took his hand in hers.  He wanted to pull away.  He wanted to hit her, actually, but he knew he couldn’t do that.  The betrayal was not palatable to him.  Soothingly Mina pulled, leading him out of the room, settling him onto the couch in the living room.  She sat next to him, sinking into the cushions.

“Now I want you to listen to me,” she said.  “And I know you don’t want to listen to me right now, but I need you to just hang in there and hear what I have to say.  Okay?”

“Don’t touch me.  Don’t you dare touch me.”

“Fine,” Mina said, removing her hands.  She held them into the air, a sign of surrender.   “Fine, I won’t touch you.  But you need to listen.  I know everything, Ben.  I know you still love her, that Starla girl.  The way you look at her…you’ve never looked at me like that.”

Ben wanted to protest but Mina shook her head, holding up a finger to silence him.  “You told me about her a few times.  You always referenced her as that lost love from your childhood.  Maybe I thought you’d change and finally love me the way you loved her.  When we moved in together, I thought that was it.  But seeing you and her the other day made me realize that you never stopped loving her.  And that’s not fair to me.  Because now I feel like I’ve been waiting around for all of these years for someone who will never love me the way I need to be loved.  I cried for a long time after I saw the two of you together and then it dawned on me that if you were looking at her that way, you had to be sleeping together.  That’s when I got angry.  I’ve been lied to, led on, and then cheated on?  That’s not how my life works.  That’s not supposed to be what I go through.