Unsettled (13 page)

AS I LOCKED THE
front door, my blood turned cold. I noticed a reflection in the doorway mirror and instantly recognized the physic as none other than Damon. Damon Williams—the man who took my heart, ground it up, and threw it to the sharks like chum. He wasn’t supposed to be in town for another three weeks.

Damon was standing in my living room reading a magazine from the coffee table selection. I attempted to slow my beating heart to squelch the instant anxiety that the sight of him caused. My eyes began to rove over his frame, evaluating his appearance. His style choices hadn’t changed much since the last time we saw each other. He was wearing a navy knit polo that showed his muscles, slim straight leg jeans, and low-top boots. As I stood near the door discreetly assessing him, Jay and Alex rounded the corner, indiscriminately chatting about the latest movies in theaters. Their talking broke my silent reverie. Damon realized I was standing in the room when he looked up to address them. Jay and Alex abruptly stopped speaking, and an awkward silence fell over the room as if they were waiting to see how our interaction would unfold.

Damon broke the eerie silence first. “Mystic…you look good. You haven’t changed a bit,” Damon said in a surprised and nostalgic voice. His compliment fell on deaf ears.
Everything changed for me the day I met you,
I mused.

My body contorted into a defensive posture as soon as I heard the pet name he’d given me. It bothered me that he insisted on calling me that.

“Damon,” I replied curtly, nodding my head. I reminded myself that I needed to put on my big girl panties.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“I’m well. I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” I said innocently. I tried immensely hard to keep any condescension out of my voice, but I wasn’t succeeding. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect that Damon may be in my presence longer than initially planned. I walked past him to the kitchen, to put my pizza in the oven.

“Oh yeah…my medical training conference wrapped a few days early, so I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to spend more time with Jay,” he said.

“Hmm…well that’s nice,” I lied. I shot Alex and Jay a look of disdain. Did they know he was coming early? Bad thoughts filtered through my head as we continued with our sterile conversation.

“Yeah he called this morning, B. I guess we had the dates wrong,” Alex said, worry plaguing her features. I felt horrible that she was in the middle of something that really was between Damon and me. I could tell she and Jay felt uncomfortable.

“Well, I had a long day. I’m going to turn in for the evening. You guys have fun,” I said, turning from Damon. I walked through our small living area toward my safe haven.

“We’re going to catch a movie. I’d like it if you joined us, Mystic,” Damon said. His general air of confidence riled my emotions.

My shoulders began to quiver, and my breathing became dogged. Hearing him use his old term of endearment for me nearly ripped me apart. Still facing my room down the hall I said with rage building steadily, “Damon, my name is Brooklyn. It always has been.”

“I thought you liked that name?” he asked confused. “Our time together in New York is one of my fondest memories. I remember how much you loved…” he continued. “We should get together while I’m in town. I remember how much you like to go to the beach…Virginia Beach isn’t too far from here, right?”
What the hell!?

In that moment I morphed into the person that Damon ultimately left in the dust years ago—but full of rage. I couldn’t believe his bravado—waltzing into my peaceful space, drudging up memories like nothing happened, nothing changed, after all this time. How dare he come into the place that I had attempted to keep sterile and serene of him, and taint it with his reminiscent bullshit!

Instead of continuing to my room I turned around and marched directly in front of him, my chest heaving in and out. Our faces were close enough to touch but not quite. I looked Damon squarely in the eye, hauled back my hand, and slapped the self-assured grin off his mocha face. I was pretty sure the slap was heard all the way in L.A. Damon’s face transformed from smug security to astonishment. All my feelings of heartache were at the forefront of my mind. My body wasn’t my own.

“You asshole!” I screamed, shattering the silence in our house.

“Shit!” Damon exclaimed, palming his face.

I heard Alex suck in a deep breath. Out the corner of my eye I saw Jay approaching me cautiously, “Brooklyn, maybe…”

“Stay out of it Jay,” I warned. I turned my attention back to the man in front of me.

“My life has been upside-down since the day you stepped into it! I’ll be damned if I let you breeze into my home and make light of the desperate, dark hole you left in my heart …and don’t ever use that nickname with me again. Mystic is gone,” I fumed, “and all that remains is a broken shell.” I hollered. Looking at his face made me relive all my heartache. I pulled my hand back to slap him again. He stopped my blow and my breath hitched.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked, befuddled. “And stop trying to slap me.”

“When you left me you didn’t just break my heart, you fucking destroyed it. While you were screwing your pal in New York and hatching a plan to end our relationship, I was in Los Angeles under the impression that we were headed toward marriage,” I said, yanking my hand out of the hold he had on my wrist. “For so long I could never figure out what I did to deserve such an underhanded betrayal. I actually wondered if I just wasn’t good enough for you.”

“That wasn’t it Mystic. Things were complicated…it was a difficult time.”

“You want to know what was difficult for me, Damon? Digesting the fact that the love of my life was able to walk away from me so easily. The day that you left that stupid voicemail, I opened my eyes a little wider. I was never the one with the issue, it was always you,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “You weren’t ready for the type of love and commitment that I was so willing to give. You melted my heart, built me up and then left me for dead. So fuck you and your self-righteous bullshit! I can never love anyone else how I loved you—and to think that I actually thought for a millisecond that you had the capacity to be a great father to our baby!”

Once the words slipped out of my mouth there was no taking them back. My secret was out in the open—and I didn’t even care. A sea of red fogged my mind and the image that I’d dreamt about for the last four years drifted into my mind. It was time that he knew how much he’d changed my life.

“Brooklyn, what are you talking about?” he said, searching my eyes. “What baby?” Shock was written across his face. I turned away to head to my room. I felt Damon’s hand grasp around my wrist, attempting to turn me to look at his face. I didn’t budge.

“Let me go, Damon. I’ll never forgive you. We’re past the stage of two old friends on the porch shooting the shit. Any relationship or friendship we ever had ended long ago—and by the way… it was a girl.” Damon released my wrist as if his hand had been electrocuted. I stormed off, passing Alex and Jay’s stunned faces on the way.

I leaned against my bedroom door, trying to grab my bearings. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. My chest heaved in and out. I hadn’t planned on unleashing on Damon that way. My mind was besieged with thoughts of the little girl I had lost. Grief swallowed me as my mind took me back to the memories of my miscarriage.

“Brooklyn?” Alex lightly tapped on my bedroom door. I cracked the door slightly.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she responded. “Can I come in?” she asked, gauging my demeanor.

I pulled the door back and she walked in, closing the door behind her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, joining me on my bed.

“Yes…no…maybe.” I responded, dashing a tear from my eye.

“What was all that out there?” she asked, pointing in the direction of the living room.

“I don’t know—I really just remember my hand burning from the slap,” I offered lightly.

She engulfed me in a tight hug. “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me…about everything?” she asked, releasing me. I laid my head on her shoulder as my silent tears streamed down my face onto my shirt. After a few minutes I broke our quiet to answer her question.

“At the time I thought I could handle it on my own. I thought I had handled it. Then I saw that familiar look in his eyes in the living room—the same one he used to give me when we were together—and the rage just overtook my body. Maybe some of my anger is misplaced—we were both irresponsible that night,” I said, taking a deep breath. The therapist that I saw after it happened told me that the more I talked about the miscarriage, the easier it would get. I had never shared my secret with anyone aside from Danielle.

“Remember when he surprised me by coming to Los Angeles for the weekend?” I asked.

“Yeah—” she responded quizzically.

“Well I found out I was pregnant about a month afterward. The minute the stick turned pink my world fell apart. At first I was distraught because life as I knew it was over—I knew I didn’t want to have an abortion. The only person I told was Danielle.”

“I wish you would’ve told me Brooklyn. I would’ve supported you, no matter what.”

“I know Alex. I wanted to, but things were so fucked up at that time. Plus, I wasn’t showing much so it was easy to keep my pregnancy to myself. Danielle took me to my first OB/GYN appointment, and the ones after that. After three months, I still hadn’t figured out how to tell Damon—but he ended up saving me the hassle when he confessed to cheating on me with some bitch in New York that he worked with.

“What a fucking asshole. I just can’t believe he did that” she said.

“Believe it. He gave me some belabored story about how his dick fell into her because of all the stress he was under, and how it meant nothing—how he just needed to be with someone who understood the monumental amount of stress he was under.” I blew out an agitated breath at the memory of our conversation.

“His monumental amount of stress,
really?
” she asked, agitated.

“After we got off the phone I went into the shower to cry my eyes out. I ended up slipping and landed on my stomach. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Then I started spotting—but according to the books I’d purchased, spotting was somewhat normal so I ignored it. But one night I woke up in a pool of blood. My stomach was contracting horribly. I called Danielle, and she came to take me to the hospital. The ER doctor told me that they couldn’t find her heartbeat. The doctor explained that my fall likely caused a hemorrhage, which led to the miscarriage. I was devastated. I had never prepared myself for the reality that something like that could happen,” I let out a deep sigh.

“All these years I’ve blamed Damon. If he hadn’t cheated I wouldn’t have been upset that night—maybe I wouldn’t have slipped in the shower while I was mourning our relationship and lost my baby. I guess tonight I just wanted him to feel a fraction of the hurt that I’ve been living with for all this time.” I sighed, twisting the blanket in between my fingers.

“Oh my God---I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Well you hurt him all right Sugar Ray,” she joked. I laughed at her reference to the famous boxing legend. I knew she was just attempting to lighten the mood—I guess that’s why we were best friends—neither one of us really knew how to deal with emotional turmoil.

“Yeah—the slap wasn’t intentional, but the truth was long overdue. I knew seeing him wouldn’t be easy…” I said, blowing out a breath, “but I guess it was time that he understood just how badly I was marred from our relationship.” I breathed. “And you know what?” I asked.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m glad I did it,” I smiled weakly. For the first time in a long time I didn’t feel plagued with angst. I’d finally opened the lid to Pandora’s box. Damon no longer got to walk around in a bubble like everything was right in his world.

“Me too,” she sighed. “When you first broke up I felt like you painted a rosy picture in your mind where you’d collaged all the happy times together and blacked out any of the day to day bullshit that you dealt with. Remember the time you had pneumonia and Damon couldn’t meet us at the hospital because he wanted to attend that random guest doctor’s lecture on campus? That was the hugest display of selfishness I’d ever seen, but I held my tongue because I knew how you felt about him—even if it was hard for you to acknowledge it. But now I know why it has been so hard for you to let go—everything you’ve endured is a hard pill to swallow,” she said, blowing out a deep breath. She pushed herself up off the bed.

“Well, at least now you don’t have to look at him every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He decided to stay in a hotel. I think he’s just as surprised as we are about your revelation. Jay just left to drop him off.”

“Oh…is Jay upset with me?” I asked, concerned. I didn’t want Jay to suffer for something that had nothing to do with him—but I was definitely glad Damon was gone.

“At first neither one of us knew why you were so upset—but now we get it. Don’t worry about him—he’s fine.”

“Okay—my hand hurts,” I moaned, regretting my physical attack. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said.

“All right,” she said, leaning over to hug me again. “Do you want me to make you something to eat?” she asked.

“No, I got pizza while I was out. Too bad I don’t have an appetite anymore. I’ll be fine, thanks,” I said, looking around my room for my pajamas. All I wanted to do was unwind my emotions for a while.

Alex, was just outside of my door now. She stopped and turned to face me, “Hey B.”

“Yeah?” I answered listlessly. I was exhausted.

“I love you. I’m here if you want to talk,” she whispered, her voice cracking a little. The door closed and I was left to my thoughts.

10