Page 5 of Lying Hearts
Chapter Three
The Old Brendan
Summer. One year ago. Before my last year of college. San Francisco. Age: twenty-four. Living with the girl of my dreams. Making sandwiches on a Sunday. Happy as a clam before it gets yanked open for the treasure inside… that used to be only his.
Ihear the door open and call out to the only person it could be, “Hey babe! I’m in the kitchen.” Sara doesn’t respond, which isn’t like her. I pause with the knife stuck in the mayonnaise jar. “Babe?”
She appears around the open refrigerator door, looking worried, her sweet brown eyes darting from me to the two plates, then back to me. Her 5’2” frame makes her always have to look up when we talk, giving her the illusion of being tiny, but my Sara isn’t tiny. She’s the type of girl other girls want to be. She’s extremely confident, really pretty and a little prone to entitlement issues. I couldn’t love her more. “I don’t want a sandwich, Bren. I just ate with Laurel.”
I look down at the ham and cheese fixings, pick up the bread that was meant for her and drop it onto my plate. “Boom. Problemo solved.” I say this with the voice I always use to make her laugh, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me with an unreadable expression. “You okay?”
Picking up her honey-colored hair, she begins to braid it while listlessly staring off. “Yeah. I’m good,” she whispers, and walks off into the living room.
Something isn’t right. I can feel it. Mentally, I review our recent conversations, as well as her schedule, searching for what could be upsetting her. I know she was talking about how summer has been boring. How she’d wanted to go away. That’s probably it. Well, I can fix that. I’ll take her for a drive down to Santa Cruz. She loves that place. An image from the last time we went there pops into my mind, of her holding my hand, the sun shining in her hair as she smiled up at me and said, “do you know how much I love you?” Then she’d popped a too-big cluster of caramel corn in my mouth and laughed when it gave me chipmunk cheeks. “You need more!” I’d let her shove more in while I made cartoon-like grunts with eyes as big as Beeker’s. Her laugh is everything I live for.
That’s what I’ll do. I’ll take her back there. Help her snap out of whatever’s dulled her out.
With my sandwiches towering, swaying on the plate and fit for a giant, I join her in the living room where she sits in her long white summer dress, her legs tucked underneath her on the couch. Her eyes flit up for a half a second and take in my feast. “Be careful not to get any of that on the pillow,” she says, half-heartedly, as I move said flower pillow out of the way.
“I’m already moving it. I know how you feel about these things.” These pillows have long been a source of fun for us. She bought them when we moved in despite my begging her not to. They’re the shape of different flowers, girly and ridiculous. With over-the-top delicacy, I place it next to her. “There. Now it’s safe.” Usually my ribbing her about them gets a smile, but today, nothing. With her hair hanging in one long completed braid, she plays with the end of it, her expression still blank.
I start chowing. The TV is off and the clicker sits on the coffee table, ignored. I’m happy to just sit in silence with her. I put my bare feet on the coffee table and don’t notice as she looks at them. I’m too immersed in my massive ham and cheese… and the knowledge I’m about to make her day with my plans. So good.
Talking through a mouth full, “I know what will make you happy.”
“Taking your dirty feet off the coffee table?” she asks, staring at them.
I lift them up, “Sorry,” put them on the floor and adjust my pants to accommodate my jewels.
She looks at the thick end point on her hair, toying with it.
“Let’s go to Santa Cruz.” I wait for her inevitable happiness, but see only a flicker of recognition that even she heard me. A zombie would show more enthusiasm. From the corner of my eye, I watch her. The look on her face is telling me something is rotten, and it isn’t this ham, though I’m beginning to lose my appetite now. I muscle through bites, wondering if I should explain how Santa Cruz is awesome and she will again love it. Even scarfing down a couple potato chips does nothing but make me feel ill. She’s not looking at me. She’s not watching TV. She’s not talking about her girlfriend’s relationships. Something is definitely wrong.
“Babe?”
She looks at me like she forgot I was in the room. “Huh?”
I pick up the half of sandwich I’d made for her, just in case she was hungry. “I saved a half for you. No mustard or tomatoes.”
She looks at it like it’s the saddest thing she’s ever seen. “You’re so nice, Brendan. You’re so good to me.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
“Well, I love you.” I say with a shrug, and hand the sandwich to her. She takes it and stares at it like she’s never seen one before. “It’s a sandwich, babe.” Nothing. No smile. What the fuck is going on? I’m all ears and curious as hell.
She picks at it while I wait. “Bren, I want to go to NYU for college next year.”
I frown, confused. “New York? Isn’t it freezing in New York?”
She puts a tiny piece of whole wheat in her mouth, chewing on more than the bread. “Yeah. But the drama department there is the best.”
“Julliard’s the best. Or Yale,” I argue.
Irritated, she throws me a look. “Neither of which are SF State, by the way. And neither of which did I get accepted to, either.”
I scoff. “Yeah, but you didn’t get accepted to NYU either. I mean, you’d have to apply…” I stop talking. “Wait a minute. Did you apply to move all the way across the country, and not tell me?”
Her brows crisscross. “I didn’t want to tell you unless there was something to tell.”
I stare at her, mouth gaping big enough to fit a flying saucer. Jumping off the couch, I blow up. Completely lose my shit, pacing. “What??!! You applied to move and you didn’t even tell me you were thinking about it?” Stopping cold, I turn to her. “We tell each other everything. You wanted that! So why did you think keeping this one to yourself, something that affects both of us, was the way to go?”