“No, please, you are the world to me. You are my whole world,” he pleads.
I rip out of his hold. “Well, apparently your whole world has way more people in it than I anticipated.”
“Don’t do this,” he says. “Don’t walk away from me, from us. We’re so good together, so fucking good.”
I fire back at him. “It was all a damn lie! There was nothing real or good about it!” I start heading back into the bar.
“Please!” he yells louder. “There was never a lie, there was only the truth. What we have is the truth. I can’t do this without you.” His face seems to shatter before my eyes. “I thought maybe you could understand,” he adds that in a small voice.
I pause at the door, feeling bitterness snake up my throat. “The only thing I understand is what it’s like to be in her shoes and what it’s like to be charity. And that’s enough understanding for me.” I open the door and pause, realizing I’m about to do the hardest, most painful thing.
But the right thing.
“I’m sorry, Bram.” Hot tears prick at my eyes and I try to steady my voice. “This is going to break Ava’s heart. But we’re moving out tomorrow. So we won’t be your charity anymore.”
I step inside the bar and lock the door without looking back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nicola
Ava won’t stop crying.
I should have lied. I should have told her we were just going away for a short time. I should have told her we would see Bram again.
But I couldn’t. The lie would hurt me to say, to even thinking about, and over time it would ruin her.
It was best for us both to be ruined up front.
After I returned home from the Lion, my heart was a bleeding mess in my hands - condemned, unsafe, unstable. The sight of my own apartment – of Bram’s charity – was enough to make me sick, so I immediately began packing.
I packed all through the night, with music blaring. I never answered the calls or the knocks at my door. If Bram was yelling at me, I didn’t hear it. If he was reunited with the woman and his son – his son – I didn’t know it. I went on like a demon, until dawn broke the cityscape and my entire apartment was packed in every spare box, suitcase and garbage bag I had.
There were a lot of garbage bags.
What I really wanted to do was find a place to move into while Ava was gone. I was delusional. I don’t know why I thought that would happen, why I had the idea that maybe my mother could drop her off in a whole new life. She would never have to see our old place again.
But I had everything packed, no place to go and no car to get me there even if I did.
I called my mom. I explained what happened.
I did it without crying. I thought I was so brave.
My mother came over and the minute I saw Ava’s face, I realized I wasn’t brave at all.
I was a mess.
She looked around the apartment in confusion. She didn’t understand and no matter how I tried to explain it, there was no right answer to what was happening.
I didn’t want to blame it all on Bram. I didn’t want her to hate him even though I was starting to believe that I did.
Ava doesn’t hate. She doesn’t have it in her. She just gets broken, like a porcelain doll.
To make matters worse, all the emotions she was feeling, the rejection, the discomfort and the pain of losing the things she loved, made her feel dizzy.
Sick.
She threw up and her blood levels were all over the place.
I’d never felt so alone, even with my mother there, trying to get the proper food into her, water, insulin, balance. I knew Bram was next door. I could hear him, but I would never ask for his help again.
Luckily, just as we were about to take her to the hospital, she pulled out of it.
Then the tears came.
They haven’t stopped.
I’m at my mother’s house, sitting on her sofa with my legs curled up under me, sipping tea. It’s picture perfect but I’m a raging torrent inside.
Ava is beside me sniffling, wiping her nose on her arm, on me.
I can only hold her. I can only tell her it will be all right, even if I don’t believe it. It feels so futile, so useless, yet I keep saying it anyway.
Kayla has offered her apartment to the both of us. So has my mother. But I still have a job – and a promotion – so I’m going to stay with Kayla in the city. Ava and I will be squished into Kayla’s den, but it’s just temporary and I think Kayla needs some help with her rising rent costs herself. Linden and Steph offered their place too, but I can’t look at Linden right now. He reminds me too much of his brother. He has offered to move my furniture out of the apartment and put it right into storage until we find a place of our own and get started. That generous act, well, that reminds me of his brother also.
Ava shifts in my arms and looks up at me with big wet eyes and there’s so much hope in them that it makes me want to cry. Because I pray that the hope isn’t misleading.
She lost Bram who had become her father figure whether I wanted it that way or not.
I lost my heart.
I loved Bram.
I loved him.
His smile, his jokes, his generosity. His lips, his eyes, his jaw. His attitude, his good nature, his humor. His ease, his height, his body. His ambition. His adoration. His devotion.
He looked at me like I was magic.
I started to believe it.
We were magic together.
And I still loved him.
After everything, how can I not?
How can I stop?
But this love is what’s making me collapse inside.
Second by empty second.
Brick by heavy brick.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bram
Six Weeks Later
“You know, I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I am.”
I hear Taylor’s voice from across the table but I’m not really listening. There’s a song playing in this San Bernardino strip-mall café, the volume too low and it’s bugging me that I can recognize the beat but I can’t hear the lyrics.
“Bram,” she says softly and finally I look at her.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry about the way things happened with Nicola,” she says and that name feels like a fist in my heart. “I shouldn’t have shown up at your door like that. I didn’t think that…”
“You didn’t think that I’d have anyone meaningful in my life,” I finish absently. I twirl the watch around my wrist and give a melancholy shrug. “I don’t blame you. And please, there’s no need for you to be sorry. I’m sure I had it coming. Karma has a sharp eye, you know.”
She nods. “I know. But it’s been so many years and…I really didn’t have the right to show up like I did.”
I sigh. She says this but I know she thinks its justified and she’s probably right. When someone has been wronged– when someone else has fucked up so much that their debt will never end – there’s really nothing they can do that’s ever uncalled for, ever too much.
I don’t blame Taylor whatsoever. She was watching the news and suddenly there I was, the baby daddy she tried so hard to forget. She doesn’t tell me this, but I bet she wanted to throw rocks at her TV, perhaps burn it. She at least screamed and cursed it, I know that.
Then motherly instinct took over and she piled Matthew into the car and drove up to San Francisco to see the man she tried to pretend never existed.
I know she only came for the money, though she tells me that wasn’t the case. She said it was about seeing me through new eyes. I was successful and ambitious and, more than that, I was virtuous now. I was the opposite of the man she hated. I had proven that I could get my life on track and actually make a difference in other people’s lives, not just my own.