I Call Him Brady (16 page)

             
I spun around in my chair searching the room, shaking my free hand around frantically as if I could magically summon someone out of thin air that way. There was no one. Jessa was playing in her room and she was the only person still physically present in my life.

             
With the butterfly brick in my gut now being tossed around against my insides, I let the menu replay before selecting the call back option. It rang three times and then –

             
“Thank you for calling the Mercado Galleria of Art and Photography. This is Sharon.”

             
“Hi Sharon,” I squeaked. “This is Embers Fillios. I’m sorry I haven’t returned your call before now, but I’ve switched phones and I haven’t been using that number.” Like she really needed to know all of that. “Anyway, you said something about a check in your message?”

             
“Oh, Embers, yes. I’m so glad to hear from you. Yes, we have a check here waiting for you. Also, we were wondering if you would have some time to sit down with us to discuss the possibilities of another showing. Perhaps this time we could even include some original paintings? I mean, if that is something you would be interested in doing. As I understand it, you prefer not to work on canvas. Is that correct?”

             
My head was spinning. I wanted to ask her to repeat herself, preferably more than once, but I didn’t. Mostly because I was afraid I might vomit if I opened my mouth to say anything.

             
“Mm-hm.” Was about all I could manage just then.

             
“Oh. Well, that would be fine, too. I mean, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of demand for your images even in print. Not that we were surprised. We had fully expected the show to sell out.”

             
The brick lurched upward, cutting off all connections between my throat and my stomach.

“What?”

“I said, we weren’t surprised when your show sold out. Although, I have to admit, even we didn’t think it would happen so fast,” Sharon chatted on as if this sort of news was completely normal. I guess it would have been in her world. It absolutely was not in mine.

“You’re saying all of my prints sold?”

“Every last one of them. In fact, we’ve had several requests for other pieces, which is why I’m so excited to finally be speaking to you again. We attempted to contact you through Mr. Cole, but I’m afraid he was only able to refer us to the same number we already had on file for you.”

The information was barely sinking in when Brady’s name was thrown into the mix. And why wouldn’t it? This conversation would never have even taken place if it hadn’t been for him.

“Oh, just…it’s…I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

“Completely understandable. I mean, how could you when we were calling the wrong number this entire time? Just to make sure it doesn’t happen again, why don’t I go ahead and get all of your current information from you right now?”

I nodded. Then realized she couldn’t see it. “Yeah, that works.”

I spent the next twenty minutes on the phone with Sharon giving her every way imaginable to contact me and setting up a time to sit down and discuss possible future art shows featuring my work. The entire conversation made me continuously question whether or not I was actually just dreaming. This feeling only intensified when she ended the call by telling me the amount of money I was to expect in the mail via check within the next few days. Fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars. My entire
life I’d never seen a check with that many digits on it. Certainly not made out to me.

My fingers shook as I scrolled over the screen of my phone, struggling to call May back like I had been instructed to do.

My chest heaved up and down with each breath I sucked in and then blew back out in a choppy squeal.

“Is that you? Or have a herd of guinea pigs hijacked your phone and prank called me?”

“It was the art gallery.” Breath in. “They had a check.” Breath out. “For Four-“ breath in, “teen thousand dollars.” Breath out.

“Shut the front door!” A second later I heard Marshall cry out in the background and assumed May had punched him in all the excitement.

“I know.” My hyperventilating was now transitioning into more of a weeping. “Why does he have to be so fucking wonderful? My life was ‘Brady Free’ for all but a split second and now I can’t shake the Brady out of it.”

“You need to get him back.” It was an order. May liked giving those out.

“No. I can’t. I won’t. Look at the amazing things he’s done for me. Everything he has to offer. What do I bring to the table? A crazy sociopathic ex, a small child and a food truck, that’s what. It’s not a fair trade.”

“I knew it. I knew that’s what it would all come down to. You don’t think you’re good enough for him.”

“Because I’m not!” I shouted. “I’m a mess. It took three years for me to get a handle on my life again after Austin. And that’s in the normal world. In Brady’s world, I’d never cut it.”

“No fucking kidding. You think I don’t know what your life has been like? I was there for all of it, remember? I
saw what being with that piece of shit did to you. And then I watched as you pulled yourself back out of the darkness he had kept you in and into the light.

“I’m sorry you think you have nothing to offer. I’m really fucking sorry you think you can’t hack being a part of Brady’s life. But mostly, I’m just sorry that you’d rather try to hack it in your own without him.

“You’re fucking miserable Embers and I would bet you any amount of money, he is as well. You think you’re doing Brady some sort of a favor by sparing him your drama? You’re not. All you’re doing is hurting him. You want to bring something to the table? Bring yourself. That’s all he wants anyway.”

The line went dead. May’s way of ensuring she always had the last word in an argument. Not that she had needed to hang up on me. I had nothing to say anymore after that.

hit.” I turned the page. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

I threw the magazine proof my agent had sent over containing my most recent interview across the room. Not only had they not left out the questions regarding my relationship with Embers like I’d asked them to, but when I had refused to answer those, they had taken things a step farther by doing their own research and publishing whatever snippets they had been able to find on her.

              I grabbed my old phone from the desk and stared at the screen. I had to call her and warn her. It would be wrong not to. I wasn’t too worried about Austin’s reaction this time around, but I had no idea how this might affect Embers.  At least the last time the paparazzi had posted pictures of her, they hadn’t known who she was so they had been unable to publish her name, let alone anything else.

             
This wasn’t exactly the case now. This reporter had dug deep and pulled up everything from her name to the fact that she was an identical twin and that her father had died in action overseas.

The bit about him being a war hero hit me particularly hard. It seemed weird to learn something so personal about her through some stupid magazine. After all, I had held her. Had breathed her. Had fallen into the depths of those beautiful grey eyes and gotten lost in the allure of her devastatingly haunted soul. In some ways I had felt like I had seen all there was to see of her.

              Truth was, there were a gazillion little details about Embers and her past I had never had a chance to discover. And now, most likely never would.

             
I couldn’t accept it.

             
My finger hovering over the call button landed on the screen and pressed down.

             
I had barely moved the phone up to my ear when I heard May’s voice booming back at me.

             
“It’s about damn time.”

             
“May?”              “Who else?”

             
I held the phone up to make sure I had dialed the right number. “I don’t know, Embers maybe?”

             
“Yeah. Because she didn’t totally know that you would end up calling sooner or later. Personally, I thought it would have been sooner actually.”

              This conversation was already way off track and I hadn’t even started yet.

             
“Listen, you are welcome to lecture me later, but right now can you just put Embers on please? It’s important. Tell her I’m not calling to try and stir things up, I just need to tell her something…completely unrelated to our break up and the fact that I think it was a huge mistake.”

             
I heard May moving and assumed she was going to find Em. Then I heard a door shut and May came back on the line.

             
“What’s so important?”

             
I really wasn’t in the mood to have her sister play mediator. “Can I just talk to Embers please?”

             
“No. You can’t.” She wasn’t using her ‘I’m a hard-ass and I make all the rules’ voice but there was still an undeniable finality in her tone.

             
“Why not?”

             
“Because she’s not here. Or, I’m not there to be more exact. I’m in Detroit. Embers basically kicked me to the curb two seconds after you were gone.”

             
I fell back into the sofa. “What are you talking about?”

             
“Relax. Unlike with you, she is still speaking to me. But it’s fair to say that she pushed me out the door for the same reason she insisted you walk out.”

             
I snorted bitterly. “Oh yeah? And what reason is that?”

             
“Because she thought it was best for me.” She sighed loudly. “You have to know that she pushed you away because she thought it was the right thing to do.”

             
“Really? Because I got the feeling it was more out of fear.” All of my pain turned to solid anger. I never would have directed it at Embers, but May was another story.

             
“No shit she’s afraid. Aren’t you?”

             
May’s question caught me completely off guard. “Well, yeah. I’m fucking terrified. Difference is, the idea of being without her scares me a whole hell of a lot more than anything else.”

             
I could sense May’s increasing annoyance over having to spell everything out for me, even through the phone line. It was really kind of remarkable.

             
“Of course it’s less scary for you to stay. You have a hell of a lot less to lose, not to mention, a pretty high success rate in everything you do. Imagine being Embers and thinking everything you touch will turn to shit. Then imagine finding the most amazing gift, the most spectacular thing, and it’s better than anything you’ve ever conjured up even in your wildest of dreams. Would you keep it even if it meant you would likely destroy it? Or would you let it go, guaranteeing it remained perfectly beautiful the way it was?”

             
I tipped my head back against the cushion and stared up at the ceiling. For a bossy girl who swore like a sailor, May had annoyingly raw insight. “I’d let it go.”

             
“Exactly. So would Embers. Austin may have triggered the whole thing, but the truth is, she was never going to just be happy with you. The road to her broken heart is paved with assholes ranging from drunks and drug addicts, to liars and cheats, to full blown sociopaths who enjoy nothing more than an all-out mind fuck that will shatter your insides and leave nothing behind but an empty shell. You’re going to have to build your own fucking bridge to cross them all and when you get to where you’re going, you’ll still have your work cut out for you.”

             
I couldn’t tell if she was giving me insider information to make things easier or if she was actually trying to talk me out of wanting to be with Embers.  If it was the latter, she was wasting her breath.

             
“I don’t care what it takes, May. I want her back. I probably don’t deserve her any more than those other bastards did, but I need her. I need to love her. It’s not in me to stop.”

             
May was quiet. I started to think maybe I had said too much. Turned into too much of a fucking sap in front of her. She’d probably lost all respect for me after that last bit. I considered following it up with something a little more rational when I heard her inhale preparing to hit me with the next big thing.

             
“Why?”

             
“Why what?”

             
“Why do you need to love her?”

             
A million reasons swirled at the top of my head. None of them seemed big enough. Important enough. Believable enough. Except for one.

             
“Because now I can’t be who I was without her.”

             
It was Leo’s third night working the food truck and, as expected, she had fallen right into place with everything. Her and Grilla had already had it out and established their new ranking, which much to Grilla’s annoyance still left him dangling at the bottom of the food truck chain. I on the other hand, was pretty relieved to see him get knocked down a few notches again. His constant jokes about us being partners now had started taking a turn for the serious. Needless to say, I was not looking for a partnership with Grilla of any kind. Sure, he could rock the grill like no other, but that was where my affections for him came to an end.

             
“These hours wearing you out yet?” I looked out to my right and could already see the sun creeping up in the distance.

             
“Are you kidding? I’m getting more sleep now than I have since before I got pregnant.” Leo popped her head out from behind the magazine she was reading and laughed, “Apparently now that I have a
real
job, William has no problem stepping up to the plate and taking care of the kids in the morning while I get a little shuteye. Honestly, I should have done this years ago.”

             
“If only I had known,” I giggled. Our exit was coming up. I managed to switch lanes just in time to get off.

             
“Holy Batballs!”

             
“What?!” I almost drove off the road I was so startled by her outburst.

             
Leo held up the article she was reading for me to see.

             
“It’s you!”

             
Shit. It was. Two seconds later my hazard lights were flashing and I was pulled over on the shoulder. The instant I shifted into park, I ripped the magazine straight from Leo’s hands.

             
“What is this?” I screeched.

             
“An interview with Jack Cole. He’s promoting that new movie he’s got coming out,” Leo grumbled while examining her hands for paper cuts. “I take it this has something to do with the thing you don’t want to talk about, but now you’re going to anyway?”

             
“Yes,” I moaned as I flipped the page only to find more pictures with my face in them. Only these were even worse. These were ones with Brady. It was the first time I’d ever seen a picture of the two of us together. It was weird. We looked good together. Happy. Really, really happy.

             
Aside from the fact that they had printed a great deal of personal information about me, Brady had made no mention of me or our failed love affair in the interview. I had mixed feelings about that.

             
“I’ll just be over here. Staring out the window. Waiting. Whenever you’re ready.” Leo began to whistle softly for effect.

             
I tore the page containing the images of Brady and me from the night of the art show out of the magazine. Then I threw the remaining pages back at Leo.

             
“I’m in love with Jack Cole.”

             
“Who isn’t?!”

             
“Alright then. I’m pretty sure Jack Cole is in love with me.” I waited for her reaction.

             
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Leo pulled her feet up onto the seat and crossed her legs. Once she was settled in, I began my crazy sordid tale while she listened intently, never once so much as opening her mouth to attempt to interrupt me along the way.

             
“…Now he’s back in LA and I’m here and even if I wanted to, I can’t do anything about it. It’s too late.” I threw my hands up in defeat and let them slam back down on the steering wheel. A stupid gesture that hurt my hands more than it emphasized my point.

             
“Why is it too late?”

             
“What do you mean?” Wasn’t it obvious?

             
“I mean, are you dying? Is he marrying someone else? Is the zombie apocalypse putting an end to the world as we know it? Why is it too late?”