The emptiness of my bed is amplified even more by the fact that the blue light is still on, the music playing softly in the background. I walk throughout my apartment, looking for any trace of her. There is no overnight bag, not so much as a bobby pin, and even more, there is no note. There is just this coolness that causes my body to shiver. I look out my window and her car is gone.

  I return to my room and pick up my phone from the speaker cradle. As I wait for her to answer her phone, the voicemail comes on, so I call again. The same thing.

  Sitting on my bed, my head resting in my hands, I watch the rising of the sun through my bedroom blinds.

  So this is how it ends. In the words of Junot Díaz’s character Yunior, I realize that this is how I will lose her—and there are no words for how much it hurts.

  8

  No Rhyme or Reason

  The hardest reality to face once you have fallen in love with someone is that you were the other guy. I was only there for a limited time to fill a void. This situation is not so uncommon, and there are even other people out there who thrive in these scenarios.

  I wish I were one of them.

  My mind races through the list of songs that songwriters have articulated on this subject so well throughout the years.

  “Everything I Miss At Home” - Cherrelle

  “No Rhyme, No Reason” - George Duke

  “Secret Lovers” - Atlantic Starr

  “As We Lay” - Shirley Murdock

  And the list goes on and on with songs on the other side of the 1980s. These songs do well because there is a need for them. I feel as though I could write a few of them right now myself. The only thing that I imagine would be worse than what I’m feeling is if I were her boyfriend and she was experiencing all of this with some other guy.

  I try her on her cell phone again later in the day, and when she doesn’t answer, I realize I have no one to blame but myself.

  I met Maya Smith because she used to work at a diner I frequented back when I was living in my grandmother’s basement. I was a long way from my current weight, and my self-esteem needed a bit of work, but she was kind to me and that went a long way.

  I would order the weekly Salisbury steak special with mashed potatoes, and she was always my server. Then one day while I was using the restroom at the restaurant I overhead someone robbing the restaurant through the restroom door. I was so worried about what could have happened to Maya that I burst through the door and just happened to slam the door into the dude holding up the joint. He dropped his gun, and I threw myself on top of him until the police came.

  It was the only time in my life where I ever felt like a hero, but even that meant little to me, especially when compared to the fact that Maya was now interested in me. As any person who has seen the movie Speed already knows, relationships built around intense action fail to hold up over time. Maya and I were no exception.

  Marcia, on the other hand, is the first woman who was ever drawn to me without the need for some dynamic outside factor. That made this experience feel very different. I wasn’t a hero; I was just a guy she was drawn to for whatever reason a woman can be drawn to a man, and she was a woman I was drawn to, although I would have, at any other time, have viewed her as being outside my league.

  I look at my cell phone, hoping to see any message from her. I even go so far as to troll her Twitter account, just to make sure she’s actually alive (she is). And even though I know she has forty-eight hours left on her Rumspringa, I know in my heart that we’re over.

  I consider calling J or Ran, but I’m afraid I will get an “I told you so.” I also think about calling Cool or Dizzy, but I know that they are both in love with women who are in love with them and talking with them would only depress me further.

  I feel so down and out that I could kick sixteen bars on Pharcyde’s “Passing Me By,” a song where all of the members of the group lament their bad luck with their love interests. I think about that last verse where dude sends the girl a love letter that comes back three days later “Return to Sender.” If my memory serves me correctly, Dizzy wrote a letter for Lailah when they were on the verge of ending their engagement. If I thought it would help, I’d do the same.

  My only hope is that Marcia will contact me once she and her boyfriend have reconnected after the Rumspringa. But how likely is that? They have fifteen years of something. The question is will that fifteen years of something trump our nearly two weeks and the promise of a future built on those weeks?

  When I lie down on my bed and close my eyes, I replay each moment we spent together. I see her smiling, laughing at my jokes, watching movies with me, eating with me, and playing Jeopardy with me as we tag team while watching the TV show. But those moments when we were intimate burn the freshest in my memory, and that alone makes me feel some optimism about our future.

  Still, I have not heard from her all day, and if tomorrow is the same as today, I doubt that optimism will remain.

  The Rumspringa has officially ended, bookending the most amazing moment in my life between two invisible, seemingly arbitrary, boundaries that I had no role in erecting.

  The only equivalent I can think of for what I have experienced is having been dumped. Granted, that would not be a first for me. Maya left me. But this feels different.

  I wasn’t in love with Maya. Even now, it’s hard for me to admit I’m in love with Marcia, especially given the length of time we spent with each other, but sometimes your heart is oblivious to the calendar. I read somewhere that often times the short relationships are the most intense, and based upon this experience, I have little choice but to agree.

  How a person knows that he loves someone is a peculiar thing anyway. I imagine for many guys it is not that different from my situation. Some people you love and others you don’t. It isn’t a meritocracy thing where a woman has to earn a man’s love with loyalty or pampering. It’s just something a man knows. That’s the reason why I was afraid of Marcia initially—not that I loved her then, but I knew she was a person who could potentially bring that out of me.

  I wonder if her boyfriend, Von, felt that way about her fifteen years ago. My guess is that he didn’t, or he wouldn’t have gone along with this Rumspringa thing.

  When I try to think about this situation from Marcia’s perspective, I can only see one thing: time in a relationship is an investment, and this much time has to pay off some kind of way. That’s the only way I can wrap my mind around the fact that she hasn’t left him for me. She is protecting her investment. The funny thing is that men don’t tend to think that way at all. So while there is a part of me that hopes that she gets what she wants (because you want that for people you love), there’s another part of me that doesn’t want her to get what she wants. I almost feel guilty about that.

  I look at my phone and consider attempting one last call, not remotely concerned about how thirsty I might appear, but I decide against it. Instead, I check her Facebook page.

  According to her profile, she uploaded a new photo today, and it’s one of her and Von. As I look at this dude, I scratch my head at what has attracted her to him. He is a really tall, light complexioned guy with a nose that looks like it’s been broken a few times. His eyes look like they are bulging from their sockets, and he has a scraggly, unkempt beard. She is standing next to him, wearing that sweet smile that I have come to think of as my smile. Beneath the photo is the comment “I said, ‘Yes!’” That’s when I examine the picture more closely.

  Is that what I think it is? A fucking ring? Seriously?

  I stare at that picture for a few minutes, my body a hollow shell of where passion once resided. I need more than ever to talk to her.

  I send her a quick direct message to her inbox.

  There are only two words: What happened?

  9

  All's Well

  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.

  “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.

 

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