Please, for the love of God, please be that. Running my hand down the back of my head and then over my neck, I add, “I’m sorry if I … I’m just, sorry I mistook you for someone else.”
I’m ready to turn around. Ready to say goodbye to her and every wild thought I ever had about the girl who stole me away that night years ago, until she reaches out for me.
She did that.
Her hand on mine. It’s the first touch we’ve had in years and it lights a smoldering fire within me that starts to burn hotter and brighter.
But just as a flame singes the flesh, she rips her hand back when I turn to ask what she wants.
“I … I have to go, I’m sorry.” That’s when I see her hand, her ring finger without a single piece of jewelry on it.
“You just got here.”
Both Griffin and Renee are silent.
“I just have to go right now.”
“Maybe …” she pauses and licks her lower lip, still not admitting that she is who she is. “Maybe I can see you soon.”
With Renee in tow, the two leave, and I watch as Rose, or Magnolia, whatever her name is, glances behind her.
Griffin asks the words that resonate in my own mind, “What the hell is going on?”
Magnolia
Just breathe through the little whistle. I give myself the command again and the silent relief of air doesn’t do a darn thing.
“You have to breathe in through your nose and then exhale through your mouth,” Renee tells me, lost in her phone and not even bothering to look up as she speaks.
She’s the one who gave me this necklace, a rose gold simple chain with a pretty and chic silent whistle on the end of it that matches the color of the chain. It’s quite stylish, but it’s supposed to be calming me down.
In through my nose, out through my mouth as I stare at the computer screen for the third time, attempting to pay attention so I can put a sticker on the right piece for Martin.
I’m a wreck. Crying is useless and I don’t want to, but my goodness, my heart won’t stop racing. I just needed time to collect myself, that’s exactly what I thought I was doing. Back on the restaurant porch, on the walk back here and in the hour that has passed since then.
That’s what I do, I take time and I process everything. And now that I’ve done that, I have collected a mess. I am in a horrible mess and I have no idea what to do other than to pray that this is a dream, nightmare, or both. Or that he will suddenly vanish and I won’t have to face Brody anymore for as long as I live.
Which … breaks my heart just a little. Maybe a bit more than a little. Maybe it hurts a lot to even think that years ago when I searched for him and prayed for him to come save me, he was nowhere to be found, and now he shows up?
I used to dream about him and the way he was with me, so sweet and charming, just so I could sleep at night. Because somewhere in the world was someone else who might think differently about me and about my little Bridgey. It was long ago, though; it feels like a lifetime ago. How awful is it now that he’s here and all I want is for him to go away?
He looks the same, handsome and charming with a roughness about him … the images of him at the bar, of us years ago, come to mind. Of the bed he took me in … My memory did not at all do that man justice.
Sucking air in through the whistle and blowing it back out again, my shoulders rise and fall chaotically. I will not cry, but I don’t know what else to do.
“It’s for your parasympathetic nervous system, you have to breathe through your nose.” Renee keeps her place in the corner of the art gallery, eyeing me pointedly as she readjusts on the floor so she’s now cross-legged with her back leaning against the wall. She shouldn’t be here and I should focus on working. But Brody shouldn’t be here either! That’s all I keep thinking. What the hell is he doing here?
Ripping the whistle out of my mouth and making my way to her, past the easels and paintings, I finally come close to the edge of losing it. “You know what I’m not parasympathetic to?”
With the ring of the bell on the door to the gallery, my mouth slams shut, my hands fold politely in front of me and I welcome Miss Jones to the gallery. My smile is fake as can be and I hope she can’t tell. I pray she doesn’t know anything is wrong, but I would be a fool not to think the entire town will talk and by tomorrow rumors will have spread like wildfire.