“If you’re really a mean person you’re going to come back as a fly and eat poop.” – Kurt Cobain
Julie turned to face me as she reached the door.
“Thanks, Brayden. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“You bet.”
She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed me softly on the cheek. Her scent lingered for just a moment as she spun around and made her way into the hallway. I watched her hips sway back and forth as she made her way to the elevator. She was a beautiful young woman. There was no doubt about that. She turned and gave me one little wave before she was gone.
As soon as I clicked the door to my condo shut, she started.
“A little young for you don’t you think?”
I paused, staring at the back of the door, wishing for a moment that there was a mirror there so that I could see the look on my own face. I waited. But it didn’t come. Maybe it was finally over. Maybe I had finally moved on. I searched for the anger, but it wasn’t there.
“Well she is young, Melanie. I wouldn’t know about the rest.”
I turned and walked past her without bothering to give her a second glance. I walked into my loft and toward the kitchen suddenly feeling the need for a drink. I opened the fridge to take a quick inventory. There were the fruits and vegetables I liked. The chicken breast thawing for the dinner I was no longer in the mood to make. Yogurt, milk, energy drinks and beer. I grabbed one, just one, of the seven bottles left from the case that I had purchased almost a month earlier. It was a far cry from the pace I had set during the first year after my divorce.
I heard her following me. The click of her heals the exact opposite of my bare feet. I opened the bottle and set it on the sparse stainless steel counter top. I opened the cabinet door to place the bottle cap in the trash, exactly where it should go. Everything was in its place. Like it always was. Orderly. Neat. Clean.
I made my way to the living area, crossing an invisible line delineating the large open spaces. Kitchen, dining room, office, bedroom, gym, living room. The furniture was all top of the line but could never be confused for a matching set. The living room was no exception. Two stiff black leather lounge chairs on one side, separated by a metal end table, and crystal based lamp. The chocolate leather oversized loveseat was next, fronting a huge 60″ LCD and a glass topped wooden coffee table. But the recliner was my favorite. Plush tan leather, big enough to hold my 6′ 4″ frame. It was definitely comfortable enough to sleep in. Nothing matched, but nothing looked out of place. Each piece called to me when I purchased it. Everything had a story. Everything was me, so it fit. Everything except her.
“Not even going to offer me a drink?”
It was the first time I really stopped to look at her. She showed up unannounced. It was the first time I had seen her in eight years. I was honest enough with myself to admit she looked good, beautiful even. But, then again, she always had the looks. It was her other qualities that I had trouble with.
“I wouldn’t want you to get the impression that your presence was welcome. You’re not my guest. If you want something, you can find it yourself.”
I watched her spin on her heals and head back to the kitchen. I had missed that ass. It was perfect, after all. She knew it, too. Which is why, as she was at that moment, she most often wore a skirt that said, ‘Yeah, I know you’re looking’.
I allowed my eyes to wander from her sexy ass to her long, toned legs, to the straps around her ankles, to the four inch heels of what had to be her very expensive shoes. I let my primal urges rule the moment as I imagined her bending at the waist was more for my pleasure than to search for whatever she was looking for. I was waiting for the longing to set in, a reminder of the pain and heartache that always came with being forced to look at something that wasn’t yours anymore. Something that had been taken. Stolen. Lost. What I felt instead was something all together different. Pride, maybe? It was definitely more of a, ‘Yeah, I’ve fucked that’ kind of a moment.
She returned having found her signature wine glass and Chardonnay. Her eyes were calm, coolly hiding her true intentions. For the first time that I could remember that realization didn’t frighten me.
“You look good, Brayden.”
“I feel good, Melanie.”
The chess match had started, and it felt good to not be on defense right from the outset.
“You’re not even going to ask me why I am here? You’re not even a little bit curious?”
“It’s not that I’m not curious. A person can never have too much information.”
Her tell tale smirk told me that she thought we were on even ground.
“It’s just that I don’t give a shit.”
Even in the most surprising situation, Melanie had an uncanny ability to maintain her poker face. I had firsthand knowledge of that fact, so it felt good to see her slight wince, even if it only lasted a second.
She turned to face my wall, an eighteen foot length filled with of framed pictures of my journey. It was a floor to ceiling reminder of how I had gotten here and the lessons that I had learned. Rock bottom. That’s the name for it. I had heard it mentioned. I certainly had never felt it. But that is where I started. Right after Melanie divorced me and destroyed my life.
***
I won’t lie and say that ours was the perfect marriage. It wasn’t. We struggled mightily in the beginning, mostly because we didn’t have any more than twenty extra dollars between us at any given moment. Still, we were young and hopeful and impulsive and committed. Our marriage didn’t fail early on because we didn’t believe that was even possible. After all, soul mates never gave up on each other. So memories and moments were created, like searching for loose change in the couch so that we could scrounge up enough to split a fast food meal and have enough left over to share a cupcake on our first anniversary. Or the time we made our first Christmas ornaments from paper and crayons and hung them on the fake tree that we found in the trash behind our apartment. When Melanie had them laminated before our second Christmas, I loved her even more. And more every year we placed them on the tree.
Still, even when you love someone, they can be annoying. Melanie had a habit of re-organizing things. She’d remove and replace all of the utensils in the kitchen or the spices in the rack or everything in the hall closet, in a pattern that only made sense to her. Just when I had gotten used to the new configuration, she would do it again. It was a small thing, and wouldn’t have even been a thing, except that once she was done, she couldn’t remember where anything was.
“Hon, where are the scissors?”
“In the drawer somewhere.”
“They’re not where they were last week. Did you move them?”
“Probably. I can’t remember. Just keep looking. They are here somewhere.”
I would often have to go and buy a replacement of whatever was missing, if I needed it with any urgency. Sometimes it would be weeks before things showed back up. And we were broke, so any extra expenditure was a problem. So, yeah, it was little annoying.
More often than not, though, I never thought about our lack of funds though. Probably because of the sex. I only had a hard-on anytime she was in the room. She was as insatiable as I was. If we had five minutes alone anywhere, at any time, we were more often than not in a state of undress. I loved the sound of desperation in her voice when I was holding out on her.
“Please, Brayden. Pleease… Oh, God. Let me come. I’ll do anything you want. PLEASE!!!”
Then, after her arched hips fell back to the earth, I would stare at her exhausted body and watch her while she recovered. She was perfection with a slight sheen of sweat on her gloriously tanned skin. Her body was young and tight and soft and voluptuous, an impossible combination of femininity and sexuality.
And I loved her ‘looks’. The one that announced long before her clothes came off that I was getting laid was my favorite. The one with her on her knees with her lips holding onto my cock as she pumped her hand frantically to earn her reward followed close behind. The over-the-shoulder look of surprise that came when I was pounding her into orgasm and started to play with her ass was also in the running. And I never tired of her crystal blue eyes.
Memories. Those were the important things.
After the dust had settled on our divorce, and I had placed the cap back on the bottle, I had my first epiphany. Those hard years, when we never knew where the money for next month’s rent would come from, showed me that, together, we could survive even the worst situation. For Melanie, they were a nightmare, never to be lived again.
At any cost.