As I Breathe (One Breath at a Time: Book 2) (22 page)

-18-

Judgment Day

Months later, headlines hit the newspaper. Jordan Ramsey was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. However, in my opinion, he deserved more than just time in prison. After the trial, once the dust settled, my thoughts were more rational than ever. The sordid truth came out, and I realized he was an awful person. Sick. Unfortunately, I was never woman enough to apologize to Storm for accusing him of framing Jordan. How could I have been so mean and selfish?

During the trial, I reamed Storm up one side and down the other. I blamed him for Jordan’s troubles and for destroying my love life. Storm didn’t take my irrational behavior so well, but as the selfish teenager that I had become, I didn’t care how he felt.

As a child it was great to have him around, but as a young woman it was time to unleash the beast in my head. I couldn’t deal with him anymore. I wanted to have a normal life, to allow things to unfold according to my destiny. Even if that meant bad things might happen to me. I didn’t want Storm’s protection anymore.

I wanted friends that didn’t call me a freak behind my back because they had caught me talking to myself. I didn’t think that I physically looked like a freak, quite the contrary, but when you are caught talking to yourself—hey, if the shoe fits, wear it! Some kids called me Sybil while others referred to me as Shirley. Shirley Mason was who the fictional character
Sybil
was based upon. The best name the mean kids called me was Eve, from the famous movie,
The Three Faces of Eve
. I supposed this one was the most apropos because my last name was Eden. Being called names was very hurtful growing up. I blamed Storm for this, too. Damn, I was awful toward him.

I needed to escape from Storm once and for all. Early in the spring, prior to Jordan’s trial, I had received a full scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles—so much for NYC. In the end, I was grateful I decided to attend UCLA. Getting out of New York City would be good for me. Being away from home would give me the flexibility to do what I wanted to, without my parents right around the corner. It was time to cut the apron strings.

However, the thought of taking Storm to college with me was out of the question. An angel simply would not fit into the weekend activities that I was planning on. It was also time for Storm to let me grow up and move on.

I was certain there was some other more deserving little girl that needed a guardian angel. After having his voice living in my head for eighteen years, it was beyond time for him to go. He’d served out his angelic duties on my behalf. Besides, I was tired of feeling like a freak in a carnival show.

A few years prior to my master plan, after my first fight with Storm, I had Googled, “Spirits 101” and read an article:
How to get rid of spiritual deities—of any sort, evil or good
. The best advice that I found was to simply
rebuke
it.
Can it be as simple as this sounded?
I wondered if rebuking him would turn my hair snow white. I decided it was only worth the risk as a last resort.

When the day came that I executed Storm’s eviction papers, he didn’t take getting kicked out of my life—or my head very well. He didn’t give in without a good fight either. At first he would appear out of nowhere—he stalked my brain like the wolf in the story,
Little Red Riding Hood
. He started with the whispers, which culminated into demands. I’m sure if he had teeth, he would have gobbled me whole.

Storm must have sensed I was going to ask him to go, I remember it well. Moments before our last real conversation, he went as far as trying to melt me with his seductive voice.

Seductive voice?

He used every dirty trick that hid beneath his wings.

It came as a shock when I noticed his hypnotic smoky voice. He could definitely stop any woman dead in her tracks. Immediately, I spun around looking for the source. Then I realized it was Storm. Did he always sound as if he could ignite a fire with his low husky voice? I’d never noticed before. His voice paralyzed my footsteps in midair.

The mellifluous tones that numbed my mind almost prevented me from following through with my intentions. Second thoughts swarmed in my head, I could live with this voice for the rest of my life. My femininity was captivated for a few seconds. It was the first and only time that I
really
wondered what he looked like in terms of a man.

My imagination stretched a bit too far. What if he was tall with dark hair, gorgeous features, and ripped with muscles? Eww, to think of him in this way made me shudder. He wasn’t even human. And, if he could be—forget about it—he was my guardian angel…
I think
.

“
So, are you wondering what I look like again?”
The warm sensation of his deep voice throbbed clean through me.

Shit, I forgot he could hear my thoughts now. Lord, he heard that one, too. I am so screwed.

“No, not at all. I’ve never given a thought to what you look like. Seriously, I couldn’t give a crap,” I said aloud, lying.

“
Hold up Little Lady, you did once years ago. Remember when you asked me what I looked like, and I said what does it matter, and then you asked me if I could see you, and if I thought you were pretty—don’t you remember that?”
He had a memory like an elephant. I giggled out loud when a ludicrous vision of him packing a big trunk popped into my head.

“
What’s so funny?”

Heat rose to my cheeks.

“Yeah, yeah, I forgot. So what! That’s normal. I was a kid then. Kids are curious about things they can’t see,” I argued, trying to make a point.

“
Is that so? So, either you’re still a kid, or you’re just a curious woman now.”
Storm chuckled like an arrogant, self-assured jerk.
“Because what you were just thinking was different than when you asked years ago. Your thoughts gave it away. You’re very curious about my physical features. I can tell.”

I gaped in utter disbelief; he was putting me on the spot. I couldn’t stand that he could hear every one of my thoughts. Nothing was private. Nothing!

What should I say back?

Storm said,
“I heard that. Just say what it is you want.”

“
Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I think you probably look like a dwarf, or worse yet a leech with one eye...a beast of some sort. On the other hand, you behave like a disembodied devil without a soul. Why else have you been afraid to tell me the truth about who you really are? I mean there is no other explanation as to why you have been keeping everything a secret from me all these years.” I breathed a breath of air. “Speaking of years ago, as a matter of fact, you’re the one who said you kind of have a body? What the hell doesn’t that mean? How does someone
kind of
have a body...and where is it? I mean, it’s not in my fucking head, right? So what are you, a troll, an alien with big eyes and long fingers, or a bug, or a parasite stuck in my head?”

“
No, you are so far off. As a matter of fact—I look like, well, as you would say, I’m a ten, then multiply that by infinity and—”

“
Yeah, sure...how about real characteristic instead of numbers. What color are your eyes. Hell, do you even have two eyes? What about fingers...toes?”
A long beat passed. There it was again, that old silence between us.

“
I can’t tell you. I cannot cross that line.”

“
I knew you wouldn’t tell me. More games. I’m not a child anymore, so quit playing games with me.”

“
No, you’re certainly not a child anymore, but you’re too big for your britches.” He laughed, I didn’t.

“
For such the scholar you’ve masquerade yourself to be—Mister know It All, for your information, that’s not want a
woman
wants to hear.”

“
God, Brielle, there are reasons for everything that I do,”
he said. His voice was drenched with authority, turning serious, matching my mood. “Can’t you ever just let it go?”

“
No I can’t. Tell me. Tell me now!” I barked. “I want to know everything about you.” And I did, starting with what he looked like.

“
Brielle, darling. I want to tell you so much. I just can’t,”
Storm responded, and his breath fell languid.

Then the moment came where I had finally had enough of his crap, and frankly, and the lack of his reasons why just didn’t make sense anymore.

“Just forget it. I will rebuke you from my head forever. I rebuke the day you moved into my head. I rebuke knowing you. You can multiple that by ten.”

“
That’s my line.” He tried to soften me.

“
Mine now,” I gritted out angrily.

I banished Storm in every way I thought possible, and then went the distance by completely ignoring him the entire summer. It wasn’t easy, and I knew the end was near.

He would call out to say:
“Hello Brielle, thinking about you. Please, reconsider what you have done.”
I didn’t even snap at him. I gave him no dominion over me. Eventually he got the message.

Then, one day I realized he was gone. Weeks had passed by without even a hello. His breath vanished, and my head was quiet for the first time in decades. Months and months rolled by, still not a word. Sometimes I ached for his return.

Eventually, it seemed that his voice was the equivalent of a lingering pimple, it appears out of nowhere, and then one day you wake up and it’s gone. No scars or terrible photos to remind you that it had ever been there in the first place.
A pimple.
Wow! That was a lame comparison to my life with Storm.

It seemed sad that I didn’t have any evidence of him ever being my friend. There wasn’t anything tangible proving he ever existed. Most people had something—a photo, a card, a small token of something from someone they had spent most of their life with. I didn’t even have an image in my head of him. He was only a voice.

I assumed that Storm had gone back to wherever it was he had come from. Perhaps he retreated back into my imagination—just a figment of nothingness. Gone like the wind was my imaginary friend, turned angel, then protective father, and finally behaving like a jealous boyfriend. He had vanished.

Sometimes when I was alone at night, I would reminisce about my time, and the years I had spent with Storm. I would go as far as calling out to him in the same way he did me, just to say, “Hello, I am thinking about you,” but he never answered.

I soon regretted my selfish and mean behavior towards Storm. I wanted to apologize for being so awful, but it was too late. Although I couldn’t blame him for disappearing, my behavior was simply deplorable. It was too late to undo my damaging words...it was done.

There was a tally of mistakes that I had committed. To err is human. If that was the case, I was unfairly beyond human with Storm during my teenage years. Surely, he’d had enough of my shit! In the end Storm never returned. Over the years, my thoughts about Storm faded and became fewer and farther between until I rarely gave much thought of him at all.

-19-

Moving On

It was near the end of my first year in college that I finally decided that my major would be journalism and creative writing. When I came to this conclusion, the first person I wanted to tell was Storm. After all, he had inspired me to write stories, much like the ones he used to tell me.

I had grown up so much by the time college ended. I started hanging out, dating, and even imagined that one day I would marry Spencer Reed. Remember him? Who would have thought I had fallen for the same four-eyed boy that Nuilley and I used to make fun of back in junior high school. Remember, Storm thought he was great, too.

Spencer traded his glasses for contacts, and his bright orange hair chilled out to a nice shade of sexy brown curls, worn clean cut, framing his gorgeous face. He grew taller, broader, and his dark-green eyes sent warm waves rushing to my heart. He also traded his love of computers for me, or so I thought. It turned out that he wanted to pursue a career in acting, which was a far cry from the life of a computer geek.

Life was nearly perfect…nearly. I had attended UCLA for almost three and a half years when Spencer moved out to Los Angeles. It was almost love at first sight, as Storm described, when we ran into each other at a local club called Zen.

We dated for six months while he attended acting classes and hustled tables and, unbeknownst to me, a few aspiring young actresses, too.
Damn him!
We had our ups and downs, but when I came to think of it, our time together tilted toward mostly downs. This was because I refused to give him all of me, at least, the part of me he wanted the most, my virginity. If oral sex doesn’t count, that is—going all the way was the one thing I managed
not
to do with Spencer.

Looking back, the best dating advice that I’d remembered Storm had given me was, “to wait” until after I met the guy’s mother. Storm said, in most cases, how a man treats his mother is an indication of how he would treat you. Spencer didn’t speak too fondly of his mother, but despite this, he planned to introduce her to me after we graduated, although that never came to fruition, One night I caught him red-handed with a not-so-well-known actress in the backseat of a limo outside of the Rose Bowl. They were in the middle of the deed. Apparently, she thought he was a young movie producer.
Dumb ass!

Nonetheless, my heart had been broken. I eventually moved from Los Angeles back to New York City, but unfortunately that was not before Spencer had crushed my spirit.

One night something Storm had said during a time I was barely listening had come back to me. “
Love is amazing when the one you love, loves you back
.” How true his words were—his words of wisdom. “
When you fall for someone, love can divide like a reckless wave in the sea. Two paths don’t always weave into one parallel journey. Instead, sometimes they reach a fork in the road.”
I realized had reached that place in my life; it was time for me to carve out my own destiny. I left my loving family, my few friends, a broken heart, and the city I adored behind. Paris, the city of lights was calling me home.

-20-

Bonjour!

In the poorly lit stairwell of the old brownstone where I had recently moved into, I paused for a moment, as I always did, gazing out of the expansive window that was aligned perfectly with the staircase.

Raindrops spun downward like tiny silver stars colliding into the glass before they melted away. The view from the large window framed the tall glass-and-metal apartment building on the opposite side of the narrow road.

My neighbor and career sponsor, Mr. Sidney Piccart, a retired Hollywood movie director, who mentored at the American Books and Film University of Paris, lived in the apartment two flights below me. He had told me that once upon a time our building’s view used to be that of the Eiffel Tower. How lovely the view must have been of the lights against the darkened sky.

Mr. Piccart and I had become fairly close friends. He had trouble climbing stairs, so I usually went down to his apartment in the late mornings to share a café au lait, a delicious French cruller, and energetic discussions of old Hollywood and all of the glamorous scandals of that era!

On one of those mornings, he and I began talking about real estate in Paris. Mr. Piccart voiced his opinion—he never had a problem speaking his mind.

“
Brielle, it just makes me so angry that those damned developers moved in and built their modern monstrosities, destroying the classic view of the city for all of us.”

“
Why did the city allow this?” I asked.

“
Well, in its original state, it was actually a much shorter building—badly disfigured during the war—a lot of people lost their lives in that old building. Shortly, thereafter, Hitler turned it into a work shop for his cause.”

“
Oh dear...you mean...no.” I frowned.

“
Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it anymore. My family resided there for quite some time. Thank God, they escaped. Well, some of them anyway.” He took a long pause. The corner of his lips tilted downward, and his tone was laden with sadness. “It’s too painful,” he sighed.

“
I understand. I am sorry.”

“
It’s alright. Just a shame, a crying shame what happened in that building. Nobody, not even the best architects, was able to restore the damage done there.” Mr. Piccart shook his head. “Not because they couldn’t,” he coughed, his words hinged as if he was going to cry. “Too many lost souls would’ve been disturbed in the process of a resurrection. So, they laid a new foundation and just started fresh. I wish the council had voted for a park instead. You know—a monument of some kind would have been more appropriate.”

I could only imagine what it was Mr. Piccart didn’t want to share. I had never dealt with death in the magnitude that he had, apart of my grandmother passing away.

The closest act of war I’d ever seen was the fall of the twin towers on September 11
th
. 911 will never be forgotten. Fortunately, my family lived uptown in NYC. Although I was quite young at the time, I could still remember the devastation, the loss, and the grief in the faces of many strangers. It really impacted our entire nation.

Whatever it was that Mr. Piccart had experienced, growing up in Europe during World War II, would have been beyond the average person’s comprehension. My parents did a great job sheltering us from harm. Unfortunately war, death, and good ole’ taxes are not prejudiced against any of us. Life sure is fragile, more so than glass.

I am not sure if I would’ve wanted to hear first-hand details of what happened back in Mr. Piccart’s time, but I had to agree with him, it really was a shame to have lost the view of the Eiffel Tower. Of course, it was one I had never seen from my windows as Mr. Piccart once did; I am sure it was spectacular.

For a single girl, on my own in Paris, I had a pretty snazzy home—a one bedroom, with a living room big enough for a dining table. Thick ornate crown molding lined the high ceilings and a modernized kitchen. An extra-large bathroom still in serious need of an update was my only issue with the old place. In the back of the flat, there was a small den where I spent most of my time writing. Off the den was a quaint terrace, secured with iron belly railings, where I’d sneak an occasional cigarette when my nerves got the most of me. It was a non-smoking building.