Just Before You Go

We pulled into Huntington Beach just before noon. The bus was abuzz with exhausted murmurings and the distinct cluttered sound of people gathering up their belongings. It was strange to see the bus so emptied; it was, for the first time in months, entirely clean. There were no books with bent pages laying around, no empty bottles and cans littering the counters. Everything was as it had been when we’d set out on the second leg. Unused.
Jimmy bounded passed me, flashing a quick smile as he hurried down the steps and out into the world. Brian was close behind, toting a couple black duffels and a cigarette hanging between his teeth. With a deep breath and a long, exaggerated last look, I bid farewell to my mobile home. I tossed my bag over my shoulder, slipped my sunglasses onto my nose, and trotted out behind Brian.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have shocked me, but for whatever reason, it did—there, nestled beneath Brian’s strong arm, was Blair Peterson. Her bags sat at her feet; her green eyes hidden by a pair of Ray Bans. The anxiety began to pump its way into my chest. We’d been home for thirty seconds and she had already affixed herself into my life again.
“Did you call a cab?” I asked Jimmy flatly.
His brows furrowed themselves, “No, not yet…We usually hang around for a bit. Parking lot beers, man.”
“I’m tired,” I informed him.
Brian sighed, “Aria, it’s the last time we’ll all be together. Can’t you just enjoy it?”
Jimmy widened his eyes as if to reiterate Brian’s sincerity.
“Sorry,” I muttered sheepishly. “I’m just…excited to get home.”
“Yeah, it shows,” Brian grunted, earning himself a jab from Blair.
Maybe I should have been touched that she was all but defending me, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I was weirdly irritated. I didn’t need her help.
“I’m going for beers,” Brian announced, planting a quick kiss atop Blair’s head before strolling off.
Jimmy looked between the two females left in his presence, the tension mounting with every passing millisecond. I knew he was caught in the middle, and I knew that he was conflicted. I just didn’t care.
“Aria,” Blair piped up, her unwavering confidence resounding in her sing-song voice. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
I looked to Jimmy who stared back with expectancy. With one little toss, my bag plunked itself next to Jimmy’s feet. Without a word, I followed Blair out of Jimmy’s ear-shot. She lit a cigarette, letting the smoke meander its way between us before dissipating into the thick California air. We walked for a few minutes, shaded by palm trees and tension.
“What’s up?” I asked finally, the awkward pull finally proving to be too much.
She bit at her lip, flicking the ash from her cigarette with her thumb, “I get the sense that you don’t like me.”
The anxiety pinched inside my ribcage.
“And I can understand why,” she continued slowly. “It might be as simple as you think I’m a piece of shit human being…Or it might be as convoluted as you don’t trust me. Which is fair, I guess, given that you don’t know me.”
I took a big girl breath, “That isn’t for lack of trying…”
“No,” she agreed with a nod. “It isn’t. You’re right. So…I’ve been thinking a lot about the best way to go about this. Obviously we’re going to be in each other’s lives for the foreseeable future—”
“We really don’t need to talk about this, Blair,” I informed her impatiently. “I don’t see the point.”
She sighed, “The point Aria, is that we love the same human…and everything that’s happened, it’s putting a strain on him. We owe it to him to try to fix that. Don’t you think?”
I couldn’t bring myself to respond.
Blair took a long drag of her cigarette before sliding her sunglasses into her hair and settling her dismantling gaze upon me.
“My parents died when I was eight,” she spoke calmly. “My dad was piss drunk and drove off the road. Their car flipped six times before landing in a ravine. I’m told they died on impact…I don’t talk about them because I can’t. I know that I come across as pretty apathetic. And I am, I guess. But it isn’t because I’m so above emotions that I don’t fucking have any. It’s deeper than that…It’s something I inherited from their deaths.”
“Blair,” I tried but she continued without giving her name a chance.
“My favourite band is Linkin Park, which I know seems like a run-of-the-mill choice, but I love them. I also love Billie Holiday and Bright Eyes and The Beatles. I have a collection of Yellow Submarine collectibles…I own all of their vinyl, which I inherited from my mother. Her name was Anna.”
She lingered over the name, as if she could taste the dust settling atop her tongue. In true Blair fashion, she dusted it away with expert precision.
“My favourite movie is Stand By Me. I own two copies of it. Don’t ask me why, I just do…My favourite book is The Great Gatsby. I love fucking anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I own a hard cover, gold-inlaid, beautiful copy of Gatsby, though. It was my dad’s and he used to read it…over and over again. It still has all his little notes in the margins...He was a journalist...And he loved to read. I can remember him sitting on our porch, sipping at lemonade and reading The Great Gatsby for the thousandth time. I asked him once why he liked it so much…He’d literally finish it and then start over again. And he told me it was because it was about undying love. It was about finding your place in the world. Beyond all of that, though, he liked it because he knew how it ended. He liked to know how things would work out.”
Her sincerity caught me entirely off guard. I studied her as the pain mounted itself across her perfect face. She looked burdened in a way I’d never seen before.
“I read it for the first time when I was fourteen,” she continued. “But hated it until I was eighteen. Now, I read it every year in May.”
“I’ve never read it,” I whispered awkwardly.
She half-smiled, her eyes searching around for any signs of the past, “I’ve never owned a dog. I’ve never had a cat. I had a fish once when I was ten…It was a goldfish and its name was Buddha. It fucking died while I was at school and my aunt flushed it down the toilet. It took me two years to forgive her.”
I’d had a dog and a cat growing up.
“My first tattoo was the one on the back of my neck. Tyler has the same one…He drew it—the original anyway. It’s supposed to represent our friendship…and it’s place in this world. I’m the head and he’s the heart. The jar is our fucking life. We’re hardwired into one another and I keep him grounded. Our relationship isn’t a mystery to us. We know how toxic it is. But…beyond that, it’s incredibly fulfilling. I love Tyler more than I could begin to explain. He’s a piece of me. A part of my fucking soul.”
I nodded along, unsure what to say. But she fell into a lull, begging for some sort of acknowledgement.
“Why are you telling me all this?” was all I came up with.
She exhaled deeply, “Because you seem to have a curiosity about me…and I’ve ignored it. And I think that’s how we’ve gotten ourselves into such a fucking mess. I don’t trust many people, Aria. I don’t. I don’t like to open up or have people know shit about me…I like to keep my life private. It’s not as…together…as it may seem. I’m not who I pretend to be. The shit I’ve endured…the things that have happened…They have prices. They’ve taken tolls on the way I look at my life now. And it’s been pretty bleak for a long time…I have a borderline problem with drugs…Borderline. I don’t let people in. I don’t really care about most people at all.”
That was hardly news to me.
And then she added solemnly, “I fight like hell every day to hide that I’ve given up.”
I swallowed hard, “I don’t know what to say…I’m sorry…”
“I’m going to be straight with you, Aria,” she told me, flicking her cigarette to the concrete below. “I’ve been on a weird path. And I’ve gotten complacent with the darkness that is my life…And then I met Jimmy.”
The unfiltered rage bubbled and pooled beneath his name coated in her voice. A part of me knew she was trying to bridge a gap; I knew she was trying to make amends. But I could not spare myself the jealousy. I couldn’t.
“He’s a part of my soul, there’s no question about it. I love him more than I think I’ve ever loved anyone before…He makes me feel better about myself; about the world. He brings out this newfound piece of me that I didn’t even know existed. And…I know that the borders got a little mudded…and believe me, I’m fucking sorry about that.”
“You’re sorry about that?” I scoffed accidentally.
She nodded, “I have to live with it too, Aria. You do understand that it isn’t just you that was hurt by that night, right? I wounded a very important person to me. I didn’t think he’d ever forgive me.”
“And what makes you so sure he has?” I quizzed.
A light smile played at her lips, “Because he loves me.”
My face was flat, clearly not the reaction she’d been searching for.
“There’s no love without forgiveness,” she informed me. “And Brian loves the shit out of me.”
I raised an eyebrow, “You really think he’s over the fact that you slept with his best friend?”
She nodded firmly, “Yes.”
“What kind of relationship is that?” I hissed. “If he really feels nothing about your betrayal then I don’t see how that translate into love, Blair. I don’t see it.”
She clenched her fists together, “And what, Aria? You think that the way you’re handling it is better? Not just for your relationship, but for you.”
“What do you care about me,” I challenged.
“I don’t,” she half-laughed. “You’ve made it clear that you aren’t something worth caring about. And yet, I’ve overlooked every single shitty thing you’ve done to me. Stealing my shit, all of your pointed comments, your weirdly sinister and, honestly, a bit morbid curiosity about the trauma in my life…Most importantly, though, I’ve overlooked the fact that you don’t have the balls to talk shit to my face. You whisper about me behind closed doors, trying to stir up trouble and fuck with people’s feelings.”
I opened my mouth to respond but she quickly stopped me.
“I’ve always had the decency to say things to your face,” she said bluntly. “I’ve never tried to separate Jimmy from you. In fact, I’ve encouraged him to tolerate your fucking bullshit because sometimes you seem to make him happy. But if you think for one second that I’ll let you drag him through the mud the way you have been, you’ve got another thing fucking coming.”
I sensed that the olive branch she’d extended had been effectively snapped in half. Her eyes bore into me with a fiery passion. The passion was drenched in my fiancée’s love.
“Well,” I said, “he’s marrying me. Not you. So…He can’t be that unhappy.”
She pursed her lips, shrugging her shoulders, “I hope you’re right, Aria. Because he deserves better than that. He deserves someone that loves him the way he can love. He deserves to be forgiven.”
“You do understand he’s a liar,” I grunted. “Right?”
“Maybe to you,” she replied softly. “He’s never been dishonest with me. We’ve never felt the need to lie to one another. And I know that our friendship seems to threaten you…But it shouldn’t. If you’re so confident in your love for one another, then you have nothing to worry about.”
I snarled, “Well, I do worry, Blair. It wouldn’t be the first—or second—time that you slept with someone else’s boyfriend.”
She took a deep breath, giving me an odd nod, “Okay, I think this conversation is about done. I tried, Aria. And if you ever come around and decide you want to give this another go, I will never turn you away. Things will be much easier if we don’t hate each other. Jimmy deserves that effort.”
“You don’t get to decide what Jimmy deserves,” I informed her.
Pulling another cigarette from her pack, she gave me one last shake of her head, “You’re insane, Aria. I really think you need to give yourself a hard look in the mirror before you find your life has imploded...Because I get the sense that you won’t understand why. It's a fucked up thing, to watch your world burn. So...I hope you figure out what you're doing before it's too late.”
Blair turned herself from me, lighting her cigarette as she trailed away. I stood firmly planted into the cement, my eyes burning holes into her tattooed back.
“You know,” I called after her, loud enough that I didn’t care who heard. “You talk a lot about the love you have for Jimmy.”
She turned to face me, her head tilted with curiosity.
“You hardly mentioned Brian at all,” I hissed. “That should tell you something.”
Blair smirked, eying me up with utmost sympathy, “Really, Aria…A good, long look.”
And with that, she disappeared back into her own life. She patted her hand lightly atop Jimmy’s chest as she strolled passed him, settling into her place by Brian’s side. I stood dumbfounded and offended, unsure how to proceed.
But my options were swiftly removed as Jimmy made his way over to me, curious and cautious.
“Everything okay?” he asked me slowly.
I shook my head, gritting my teeth, “I’m going to go to Jen’s okay? I’m…I’m tired and I just want to get out of here.”
“I’ll come with you,” he suggested lightly.
“No, no,” I rushed, waving him off as I fell into step to apprehend my discarded bag. “You do your thing, Jimmy. I’ll just…I’ll call you later.”
He faltered, “O…Kay.”
“Tell Blair thanks though,” I grunted, grabbing my bag as I judged out my escape route.
“For what?”
I sighed, “For making me seriously doubt you.”
“Aria, the only person—” he tried but I wasn’t ready to hear it.
“I’ll call you later,” I huffed, using my better judgement not to look up at him.
Blinded and outraged, I tore off into the world.
There’s no place like home.

Notes

Fuckin' Aria.

xx