Choices

She sat alone at the table in the middle of the busy dining room, waiting for Kat to show up.  Out of the blue, she’d gotten an invitation for a girl’s night out, and she gladly accepted, feeling that a night of drinking and emotionally dumping on her best friend was exactly what she needed.  Kat had picked a trendy restaurant with an excellent selection of wines and spirits.  Slowly, she sipped at her first glass of wine, admiring how the dim lighting hit the glass just right and shone through the pale liquid inside.

As she was eyeing the room through the glass and wine, she spotted a figure moving towards her table.  It wasn’t quite the right shape to be Kat though, so she ignored it and continued gazing through the colored lens her drink provided.  The person who had been walking towards her stopped at her table but did not sit down.  She looked up as he stood there, admiring the way his suit jacket fit so nicely.  He had a trim waist and what looked to be a muscular chest as she worked her way up to his broad shoulders.  When her eyes reached his face, she stopped breathing for a few seconds.

She took in his stubbly cheeks, showing a day’s worth of growth around the otherwise neatly trimmed goatee.  She noted the nose, slightly too large for his facial structure, though it didn’t detract from his physical appeal at all.  Her eyes finally locked on his.  They were a rich, warm, chocolate brown, framed in long, thick lashes that were the envy of every woman who saw him.  She remembered this face as if she had last seen it yesterday, though it had been much longer.  Years, in fact.

“May I join you?”  She heard his request but didn’t respond.  -Let him stand there while others in the room watched the awkward exchange,- she thought.  She took another drink from her wine glass, gulping down perhaps more than what was ladylike.  She felt his eyes on her as she turned away from him, still without uttering a word.  Moments passed with him standing at the side of the table, and her occasionally sipping from her glass silently.  Finally, he sat at the table without her permission.

“It’s been a long time,” he said quietly.  Her only response was to finish her wine and raise her arm to order another drink from the nearby waiter.  He could tell by the set of her jaw and the stiffness he saw in her shoulders that she was angry.  He had known there was a chance she might be.  When someone tells you that you will never hear from them again and you then seek them out, there usually is a good chance that they won’t be happy to see you.  He had hoped that she would have gotten over things by this point, but clearly she hadn’t.

He watched silently as the waiter poured another glass of wine for the woman sitting across from him and then backed away from the table.  He cleared his throat and tried to start again.

“How have you been?  I’ve missed you.”  She snorted indelicately at that comment and returned her attention to her wine, slowly swirling it around inside of the gleaming glass.

He didn’t appreciate her obvious disbelief of his statement.  He had always made it a practice to only speak the truth.  He had perfected the art of evasiveness in his quest to always please everyone while sticking to the truth.  Often what he spoke was a technical truth, though it may have nothing to do with the subject at hand.  It was still the truth.  And, damn it, if he said that he had missed her, then he damned well had missed her.

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.  “I’m not leaving until you speak to me,” he insisted.

She looked him straight in the eye and said in a flat, monotone voice, “I have nothing to say to you.”  She continued swirling the wine around the glass, watching the slow motion, no longer meeting his gaze.

He leaned forward again, his shoulders tensed, his palms on the table, fingers spread as if bracing for something.  He was beginning to show his agitation now.  “That’s it?  After all this time, you still have nothing to say to me?  Did you really care so little for me that you could just ignore me for five years, and truly not care why I asked to see you?  Why did you even agree to see me if you weren’t going to talk to me?”

“I never agreed to see you.  I’m waiting for Kat.  Of course, she’s late.  If she’d been on time, I might have been spared your horrendous company,” she spit across the table at him, glaring.  “Now, please leave, so I can try to enjoy the rest of my evening once she gets here!”

“She’s not coming, you know.  She told me that you had agreed to see me here, tonight, now.  I’m guessing she didn’t tell you that I would be here.”  He watched as her cheeks turned red, her jaw tightened, her lips pursed, and her eyes started to spark as she grew angrier at the deception.  She had always hated deception of any kind, whether it was outright lies, omitted information, or his evasive maneuvering whenever she had asked him questions.

She picked up her purse and prepared to leave, but before she could rise, he grabbed her wrist in a firm but gentle hold. “Wait.  Please.  I need to talk to you.”

“As I said, I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then just listen to what I have to say.”

She let out an exasperated sigh, but set her purse back on the table and leaned back in her chair, pulling away from his grasp and folding her arms across her chest.

Satisfied that she would listen, he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together in his lap.  He locked his eyes on his folded hands, not comfortable sharing his emotions, even with the one person whom he had been able to share them with in the past.

“I really have missed you, you know.  I’ve missed having someone who knows me better than I know myself.  I’ve missed having someone to share those inappropriate jokes that I love so well with.  I’ve missed sharing things that were just ours.  Our inside jokes and made up words.”  He smiled, remembering when they had shared all of these things.

He looked up at her, hoping to catch some softening in her features as he called up their past, sharing their best memories.  All he saw in her face as he recounted those memories though was her lingering anger, and eventually, sadness.  The memories of the best time of his life, the memories that made him smile and laugh, made her sad, and that pained him.

He finally fell silent and watched her struggle to keep the tears at bay.  “Do you have no fond memories of the time we shared?” he asked in a low tone, almost afraid to hear her answer.

Before his eyes, the tears in her eyes seemed to vanish back where they had come from without a single one being shed.  She sat up straight in her chair and uncrossed her arms, folding her hands together neatly on the table in front of her.  She looked more angry than sad now.

She started speaking very softly, forcing him to lean in to hear her.  “Is that what you think?  You think that I’ve forgotten the numerous good memories that we made together?  Let me just straighten things out for you.”

She unlaced her fingers and spread them on the table, much like he had earlier; palms down, fingers spread, ready to act as a brace.  She leaned closer to him and spoke more forcefully.

“I remember every single good time we ever had.  I’ll bet I remember more even than you do.  We both know my memory for those kinds of details was always better than yours.  Do you know why those memories make me sad?”

Silently, he shook his head indicating that he did not.

“They make me sad because they are in such sharp contrast to the last memory I have of you.  For three years, we had so many good times.  Happy memories.  And, like much of life, mixed in with those happy memories are some memories better forgotten.  Painful memories.  For three years, mixed in with our happiness are memories of you chipping away at my heart.  Breaking it a little bit every day.  Every.  Single.  Day.  You cut away pieces and threw them aside day after day until all that was left was one tiny shard.”

She rose out of her chair, leaning closer to him across the table now, anger radiating from her in near visible waves.  “And when that shard was all that I had left, and it still belonged to you, what did you do?”

He leaned away from her now, not sure that even leaning back as far as he could in his chair was a safe distance.  She seemed almost ready to explode.  He just shook his head again, not knowing what to say.

“You don’t remember what you did?  Shall I remind you?  I told you that if you chose to share your life with HER, then you would never hear from me again.  I told you to make the decision that would be best for you.  The one that would make you happiest, because I wanted you to be happy.  And you chose HER.  And when you chose HER…this woman that you had known for less than a year…over me…the woman whom you yourself said knows you better than you know yourself…you effectively shattered that one tiny shard that was left of my heart.  I have nothing left for you.”

He found his voice at last and asked, “Don’t you think it was unfair of you to tell me that if I chose her, I’d lose you?”

“No, I don’t.  You know why?  Because there should have been no competition.  You said I was your best friend.  I knew you better than anyone else.  You valued me more than anyone else in your life, right up there with your family.  And you knew how I felt about HER before you two ever talked about being ‘involved’ with each other.”

She raised her right hand and pointed at him, punctuating her next words.  “YOU KNEW!”  She placed her hand back on the table, either to keep her balance or to keep her from reaching out and slapping him.  He wasn’t sure which was the real reason.

“And you still chose to do the one thing that would hurt your ‘best friend’ more than anything else in the world.  I wanted you to be happy.  And you made your choice.  Now you have to live with the consequences.  Are you still happy with the choice you made?”

“Do I really need to answer that?  I’m not happy with not having you in my life.  I want us to be friends again!  That’s why I’m here now!”

“You don’t seem to understand the depth of what you have done.  I can never, ever trust you again.  I can never feel confident that you actually care for me, because when given the choice, you chose to walk away from me.”

She picked up her wine glass and downed the contents before slamming it back onto the table.  “This time, I’ll be the one walking away.  I hope you’re happy with the choices you’ve made.”  With that, she picked up her purse and stepped away from the table.

When she was half way across the room, she turned back to face him, one more thing to say.  “Don’t ever do this to me again.  I told you that you would never hear from me again.  If you force your presence upon me, next time, you’ll be wearing my drink.  Stay.  Away.”

She turned again, not caring that the entire room was watching her exit, wondering what they had missed.