“Well, darling, we’d better be going. I have an early plane to catch tomorrow morning.” Cameron lays his hand in the small of my back, and I try not to push it away when I notice Xavier watching.
“Nice to meet you, um, I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name…”
“Xavier. Nice to meet you.” He turns back to me and I have no choice but to meet his look. “And um, Maly-er, um… I will be in touch, very soon.”
“I’m s-sorry?” I stutter, I can’t think of a reason I would put either of us through this again.
“For his apartment design, darling,” Cameron says, shaking his head at Xavier and rolling his eyes as if to lament over my forgetfulness.
“Oh, um, yes, of course.” No. There’s no way. I’m going to have to find a way out of this.
Xavier locks his eyes with mine for one last moment before he flings himself into the crowd, and it’s only seconds before he’s swallowed up by the bodies in tuxedos and silk.
My breath doesn’t return as fast as I hope, but Cameron’s hand on my back is now a source of steadiness.
“Hey, he was kind of a strange guy. What were you two talking about?” he asks as we step out into the night.
I take a breath before answering.
“He just mistook me for someone he used to know.”
But she doesn’t exist anymore.
Him
“I’m not Malynda anymore.”
Her voice loops over and over in my head. The same voice I remember, saying words I don’t understand.
What is happening? How did the day turn out to end like this? I lean back, as far as my leather recliner will let me, staring out into the moonlight-washed Manhattan skyline. Has she really been out there this whole time?
I down my drink and reach for the decanter for another.
The burn as it cascades down my throat only gives me a temporary respite from the torturous thoughts in my head.
Where have you been, Malynda? What have you been doing?
And with whom?
She can’t really be with that… that suit.
My involuntary chuckle surprises me as I catch my own reflection in the glass; as suited up as a man can get.
God, she looked so beautiful.
More beautiful than I could have ever imagined her. More beautiful than I remember.
More beautiful than that first day at the lake.
More beautiful than standing in front of that paint chipped wall, eyes full of possibility.
More beautiful than all the ways I’ve imagined her since.
“Hey.” A deep voice startles me out of my musings. I look up and Kaine is standing there staring down at me, no doubt not too happy with the scene of me hugging a scotch decanter
“What the fuck, man? How did you get in here?”
“Please. Why do you think I co-bought this building with you? So I could come and check on you when you go off brand, like tonight. What the hell was that all about, Xave?”
I empty my glass down my throat before I answer. “It’s Malynda,” I finally say, emphasizing every syllable.
“What’s Malynda?”
“Her. She. It is Malynda.” I don’t want to say the moniker she’s hiding behind. I refuse to. “The interior designer.” It takes him a moment, but the pieces finally fit together in his brain.
“Shit. Isabella is Malynda? Are you sure?”
I catch his surprised gaze and let him read my eyes for a moment.
“Shit,” he says again and reaches for the scotch decanter in my hand.
“Yeah.”
“But… How… Did… Why…”
“Exactly, I’ve been asking myself the same questions. I don’t have the answers yet, if you come across them let me know.”
He pours himself a glass and tops mine up. He knows now isn’t the time to be curtailing my alcohol intake. “What are you going to do?”
“I could stand up in the middle of a fundraising dinner at the Plaza and declare a woman mine by outbidding everyone else by 300%.”
“Well, you’ve already done that.”
I just shrug. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
“Don’t give me that, you know what you’re going to do,” he responds to my silent answer.
I laugh into my glass. He wouldn’t be Kaine if he didn’t know me so well.
“Don’t be stupid,” he continues. “You don’t know what happened to her before and what’s brought her here. Give her some time and space. She’s probably as freaked out as you are, but she’s not going anywhere.”
I watch my reflection shake its head.
“I believed that once before. And she did. She disappeared off the face of the fucking earth, man! I don’t want to give her time or fucking space! That’s all she’s had for… for… FUCK! I want here her. Right now! Telling me what the hell happened!” The recliner screeches against the floor as it’s pushed back when I jump to my feet, a white-hot rage suddenly rushing through me. Before I can stop myself, my scotch glass flies across the room, smashing against the window. We watching the crystal shatter and fall onto the floor in a pile of glittering shards. “Fuck,” I say again, dropping back down into the chair, head in my hands.
“Xavier,” Kaine says, I think, but I can barely hear him. My mind already rushing back to the past. “Xavier,” he says again. But I’m already lost to my memories.
***
12 years ago
On a perfect late spring day in Maine, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
The sun dissolves the clouds that crowd the sky during most of April and May, and the sky hovers like a pristine royal blue canvas over our heads. The rivers and lakes come alive with the awakening of nature around it, refreshed from the deep winter sleep.
There is a scent of hope in the air.
Like today. Today was a perfect late spring day in Maine.
With her.
It’s early evening by the time I’m walking home after spending the afternoon after school with Malynda. I’d gone to the basketball courts, not knowing if I’d see her, but there she was, already working on the mural when I showed up.
“Want to see?” she’d asked, after about two hours, coming over to sit by me.
“No. I’ll see it when it’s done.”
“Might be awhile. I don’t know if it will ever be done.”