It takes Marcia nearly two weeks to respond to my Facebook message, and her response leaves too much to be desired:
When he came back, he told me that this experience taught him how much he loved me and couldn’t be without me. He proposed to me on that first night. I can’t afford to look back now. He is my future. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I hope that you find the kind of happiness that you so richly deserve.
I stare at the message, incredulous. I wonder for a moment if an engagement ring could so easily cause a woman’s brain to be hijacked. Everything that we did and experienced would suggest that there was no way she could go through with any of this. If I were a betting man, after that first week of our being together, I would have easily gone all-in.
How could she have given so much of herself to me in such a short period of time for it not to mean anything? We were lovers on every level. There is absolutely no logic in any of this, but when it comes to emotions, I’m guessing there rarely are.
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“You should listen to the song ‘Reasons’ by Earth, Wind & Fire. It might put some of this stuff into perspective,” Ran says.
“Isn’t that a love song?”
“It sounds like one if you’re not paying attention. Think about it, dude. ‘We’re in the wrong place to be real.’ There’s not a happy ending to that song, but Philip Bailey sings the hell out of it in a way that makes you think the opposite. I once heard him say that people would have that song performed at their weddings. Even he had to shake his head on that one.”
I sigh. “If I listen to that song, I’d probably be even more depressed than I am now.”
Ran scoots his office chair closer to mine and leans in, so as to not be heard, and says, “You know I’m your boy, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, consider this: you’ve been reeling from her being gone longer than you were actually with her. You think it might be time to move on?”
I shake my head. “I just don’t get it.”
“See, one of the things about brothers like you is that you’re too logical. You think that things have to make sense, that motivations have to be understood. I mean, don’t get it twisted. There’s definitely a merit to that with some things, but love is an emotion and many women are guided by emotions, not necessarily logic.”
“But isn’t that sexist?” I say.
“I don’t really think it is. I’m not talking about all people of any gender, but to ignore the psychological differences between the sexes could result in serious misunderstandings, your situation for example.”
“I think I liked your Earth, Wind & Fire recommendation better.”
Ran nods. “Yeah. People tend to associate me with musical references.”
No shit, Sherlock.
I look at the clock on the wall across the room. It reads 4:55 p.m.
“So what do you have planned for tonight?” I ask.
“Dinner with the family. Maybe we’ll go catch a movie.”
“Well, give my best to Lauren and Zoë.”
“Will do,” he responds. “And Chuck?”
“Yeah?”
“Chin up, dude. Life goes on. There’s something much better for you waiting around the corner.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I respond.
He smiles and nods, then packs up his bag, pats me on the shoulder, and walks away.
I turn to my desktop and start shutting it down. I have no plans for the evening, and I am in no hurry, so I take my time organizing the paperwork on my desk so I can get off to a clean start tomorrow morning.
It feels like Dizzy and Lailah got married a long time ago and that my relationship (if you could call it that) was during another lifetime. In the weeks since Marcia left, I have lost interest in following her on social media or attempting to call her. For me to continue snooping around would only confirm that I have in fact turned into a creepy guy. I refuse to go there.
I pack up my backpack and head for the exit door. As I walk past one of the cubicles on the way to the door, though, I see a picture of Princess Leia in her Jabba the Hut slave costume posted to the wall of someone’s cubicle. My mind immediately goes back to Marcia, and I see her standing there in that small motel room in Daily, Mississippi, modeling her bra and panties set for me. I smile.
By the time I step out the front door and onto the street, traffic around Euclid and Moreland is pretty thick. I know if I hop in my car right now and start trying to drive home I will get stuck in traffic, so I walk around the corner, just off of Moreland, and have a seat on one of the benches. I pull out my headphones, plug them into my phone, and pull up some Robert Glasper on iTunes.
I watch people walk by and wonder where they’re headed. Are they headed to meet loved ones or discover new ones? That’s always the question when you see people coming and going: Where? It’s a simple question, but the answer can tell a person so much. The fact that I am headed home to my apartment says something about me. The funny thing is that I have been doing this very thing ever since I moved out of my grandmother’s basement, but only in these past few weeks has doing this felt like a lonely activity. Missing someone can totally transform how everyday things appear.
Once several songs have played, I take off my headphones and place them back in my backpack. As I stand to leave, I feel a hand press on my shoulder, and I jump instinctively.
“Chucky,” I hear her say, and for a moment, I consider not turning around.
When I finally turn around and see Marcia’s face, I am not sure I want to hear anything she has to say.
I look at her, but I don’t say anything. In all of the time I had been replaying the possibility of something like this happening, I never considered the possibility that I would feel anything less than happiness from seeing her face. As I look at her now, all I can think is that she chose him, not me.
“Chucky, can we talk?”
I nod and slide over on the bench.
She sits down next to me. It takes me a second to see that she is not wearing that ring from the Facebook photo.
“Let me start off by saying that I’m sorry,” she says.
“Sorry for what?” I say sarcastically.
“So it’s going to be that type of conversation?”
“I’m just saying. There’s so much that I don’t know about all of this, so you’ll have to be a little more specific,” I respond.
“Fair enough,” she says, chuckling nervously under her breath. “I thought a long time about whether or not I should even come down here and put myself out there like this.”
“Putting yourself out there? What do you mean? Is it over with Von?”
She places her hands together and nods her head, looking away from me.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Do you really need to know the details?”
“Nope. But I’d still like to hear them.”
She laughs. “I can’t just tell you that it didn’t work?”
“Let me ask you this: if the tables were turned, would you feel comfortable with that answer?”
“I see what you mean,” she says. She looks down at her hands for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Well, he kept sneaking around trying to see several women he had met over the break, and when I called him on it everything went to shit. I gave him back his ring. It’s over.”
Serves you right, I think. Instead, I hold my tongue.
“So do you need my blessing or something?” I say.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Marcia, why are you here?”
She looks shocked by my question, and I can tell that she never really considered the fact that I would not fall readily into her arms. Now there is an awkward space between us.
When she finally speaks, her voice is soft, weak. “I was hoping that maybe we could start over.”
“Answer me this: if he hadn’t cheated on you, would you have come back to me?”
Her shoulders rise and fall as she inhales and exhales. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Probably not?” I repeat incredulously. “How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Hurt, maybe.”
I look away for a moment, unable to face her.
“That’s not a bad thing, though, Chucky. I’m a loyal person when I’m in a relationship. I am always a ride or die woman. When you and I were together, I was committed to only you, but when the Rumspringa ended, I had to be loyal to my boyfriend. If you were my man, I would have been loyal to you, too.”
As I listen to her, I reabsorb just how strange this situation was to begin with. She gave me much more than she had planned to give, and I was happy taking that. But when she went back to her boyfriend, I could only deal with my hurt feelings, never really trying to understand how she could leave me. I had assumed it was easy for her to do, not that it was necessary for her to do.
“How do I know you wouldn’t leave me for this dude?” I ask.
“Chucky, never in my life have I felt as conflicted about someone as I have you. If I had had my way, I would have only been with you.”
“I guess what I’m trying to understand is this: do you want to be with me for loyalty’s sake, or do you want to be with me because of love?”
She smiles. “That’s easy. It’s because I love you. And, as you already know, I’m not obligated to say or feel that.”
“That’s it,” I say. “I don’t want you to suffer through a relationship with me simply out of obligation. If you believe in what we have, that’s good enough for me.”
She nods her head, absorbing this. “I feel you.”
“So you’re saying that you really want to be with me?”
“Yes. What about you?”
I stand and reach for her hand. In that moment I want to tell her yes, but the word gets stuck on my tongue, and as I swallow, it ebbs back down my throat, trapping itself my chest. I don’t know what to think as I stare at her.
I can feel my heart thumping in my chest, the bruise from these past few weeks still throbbing. Her eyes slowly widen from my silence, and she starts to withdraw her hand.
“Come here,” I say, taking her in my arms and holding her. She melts against my chest. “Let’s get out of here.”
~ fin ~