“I was at a club with Skye, that’s where we were going yesterday. I was dancing alone in the middle of the floor and some skeeze-ball came up to me and tried to grope me in the bathroom without my consent.”
“Oh darling! Did you call the police?”
“No, this guy saved me.”
“Now you tell me exactly what happened.”
I sighed, no
t wanting to tell her the story but the need to get it off my chest took over and I continued.
“This guy kept trying to get with me in the bathroom…sexually you know? All of a sudden when I was telling him to get off
, some guy I met in a coffee shop opened the door and beat the slime ball up. He brought me home and everything, but then left this morning.”
“That sounds like a man you need to be with, someone who will do anything for their woman.”
“I’m not really looking to be saved. I can save myself you know. I have done it for the last three years and I think I’m doing pretty well.” There was clear annoyance in my tone, but for some reason Rita was laughing.
“Sometimes
, Harper, we need someone to lean on. Someone who can share in our love and help us find each other. Sometimes, we need to share our souls with another to find ourselves.”
“Are you even married?” I asked with bitterness in my tone. As much as I loved Rita, who was she to give me advice about falling in love? I don’t recall her having any kids or even a husband, so what made her tell me that I had to “share myself” with anyone?
“Lemme tell you a little somethin’ about myself Harper Mae before you come around here with that little attitude of yours. I was in love once myself. I was married ten years ago to a man who I despised. He worked far too much, slept with far too many women and hated me as much as I hated myself. I found myself falling for my best friend. He came over and loved me with every ounce of his body, holding me while I cried about the loveless marriage I was in. And I loved him too. I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone in my life, but I was scared.”
“Did you cheat on your husband?” I asked.
“I wasn’t cheating on anyone who I loved or who was in love with me. Sometimes love is deeper than what your brain tells you love is. Real unrequited love is something that cannot be explained in words or pictures or movies. It’s something so ordinary that it becomes extraordinary. But I was scared. I was like you, I was scared of falling for someone that wouldn’t be able to pick me up after I left my husband.”
She took a moment to grab a tissue and slightly dab her eyes, which were now filling with puddles of tears.
“My marriage was horrible, but it was routine and I was scared that if I broke that routine, something would change. I didn’t like change. In fact, changing my life was not something that has always been easy for me. I was scared that if I just picked up and left the love I had for John, my best friend, would fade away and we would fight just as passionately as we loved.”
Rita’s eyes
could no longer contain the puddles; heavy tears rolled down her lovely face. I ran to get her more tissue as she continued.
“I told him to leave and never come back. He fought and told me that
he would never leave me and that he wanted nothing more than to be with me. I couldn’t do it Harper. I couldn’t leave the man I had created a life with, even though that life was horrible. I couldn’t let John inside my heart and take it with him. Well, John never left. He kept fighting for my heart and I kept pushing him away, even yelling at him. It was one night when I found my husband in our bed together having sex with another woman that I realized I couldn’t be with him either. This marriage was hitting a brick wall and it almost became embarrassing for me to be with him when everyone knew what he was doing behind my back.”
“I picked up and left them both, not able to give my heart to John because it was
just too fragile. I was too afraid of him breaking it. Then there was the man who I hated. Who broke the vows we had made so many years ago. The risks and pain were not something I was going to put myself through any longer, so I packed up my two suitcases and brought $400 with me to San Diego. Here I have been ever since and it has been the biggest regret of my life to leave John.”
“Do you speak to him ever?” I asked.
“Who John? No, don’t know what happened to him. I never looked back when I left. But I think about him every day and I think about how amazing our love was. That was ten years ago Harper. I haven’t dated anyone since, because quite frankly, I left my heart ten years ago with John.”
“You aren’t curious about what happened to John when you left? Don’t you want to know if he found someone else?"
"'Course I'm curious, but I've got to pay due to my mistakes. What happened to me in the past ain't nothing but my fault. I don’t want to hurt John if he moved on and has his own family now. My presence in his life will only be a remembrance to the times we had. That memory is something that I know both of us keep very close to our hearts, but have to move on from."
"Wow." I was speechless. In a sense, I wanted to hug Rita so hard to try
and help her ease the pain she experienced from her past, but I knew I couldn’t. She left a life where she would be flowered with love in order to better herself, but found that bettering herself made her alone and miserable.
"I'm not as miserable as I was, you know. In my marriage, I was a sad young lady. I didn’t do anything out of the house and tried desperately to cling onto something that wasn’t working.
How does the saying go? If it’s been broken for too long, don't bother fixin' it."
"But aren’t you sad and alone now? No offen
se…" I asked.
"Sure I'm alone here, but I have my home, my books, my store
, and my friends. I have moved on from the life I thought I had. My heart still lies in the south with John, but my real life is here. Sometimes we just gotta wake up in the morning and face reality no matter how bad you wanna spend the day in bed," she said while fixing herself in the small handheld mirror we had behind the counter. "Anyways, the bottom line of this story is that sometimes we love someone so much that it hurts to love them. Sometimes it's unexplainable why someone walks into your life. Most of the time it’s at a moment where we desperately aren’t looking for someone to save us, but they happen to understand that deep down we need someone to share a life with."
"The take home message from all of this is that you need to follow your path. No matter where life takes you, there is a reason for that path
, so you follow it. Follow it all the way home Harper. Do this and you'll find your rainbow. Hey, maybe you'll even be greeted by a lucky pot of gold!" She said and smiled for the first time in the conversation.
"Thanks Rita. I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you in the past
and even more so for my attitude earlier. I was out of line. Thank you for telling me that."
"Yeah, I know I'm
just some old lady telling you a wise old tale but I can see you have a past Harper. There is something deep that lives inside you and one day that something is going to come out and hurt you. I just want to make sure someone who loves you will be by your side."
"Hey now, let
’s not talk about love. This guy just helped me one night."
Rita winked at me and said, "Alright enough of this crying stuff
! Let’s get to work. We gotta get some customers in here otherwise I'll go crazy!"
I gave Rita a surprising hug before she jumped down. We silently stood there connected in a very intimate moment
. When we backed away from each other, I quickly got to work making signs for marketing the store. I helped a few customers during the afternoon and right around 5pm--closing time--the chimes from the door alerted me of a customer.
"Harper Mae, where the hell did you go last night?!" Skye came barreling into the store with her blonde hair in a sleek ponytail and wearing her day-after-partying outfit and equip with a large bottle of water and oversized sunglasses.
"Some people are working here you know”
"Who wo
rks anymore? Loser," She said as she winked at me, knowing her work ethic was slim to nothing.
"Are you here to shop or are you coming to collect me after leaving me alone at the club last night?" Man,
I was in bitch mode because even Skye shuttered at the attitude I had with her.
"But, didn’t you leave with sexy coffee shop guy? He was absolutely bea-u-tiful last night!" She said clearly brushing off the attitude that laced my voice.
"No…well…it's complicated."
"Ohmigod you slut! I am so glad you did. Was he good in bed? I bet he has a great dick with that body of his. Ugh, if you do your fuck and dump thing with him, I'll ac
tually be a little disappointed," She said all too loud for the work place.
"Will you hush please?" I asked. "We are in public ya' know?"
"Pish-posh. Let's go out. I want to tell you all about my night with Jayson. He is just…swoon. Absolutely no other word to describe him than that."
"Let
me ask Rita if I am good to go," I said just as Rita was walking towards me.
"You've done more than enough here Harper, you can go. I'll see you Monday morning." She always gave me Sunday off to recover
, the day of rest and relaxation.
"Yay! This is just perfect then. I wanna go to that new sushi pla
ce up the street. You're coming," Skye commanded.
"Let me just grab my stuff,
" I said as my stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten anything all day and the five cups of coffee I had were making my stomach do flips. I went to the back office and grabbed my stuff, shoving everything in my oversized Michael Kors bag. Before leaving, I fixed my hair and makeup and replaced my jeans with a black striped maxi skirt and a tank.
"Ready babe?" Skye asked
, almost too eagerly. I'm sure something she cannot wait to tell me happened last night with Jayson.
"Let
's go," I said dreading the fact that eventually I would have to tell her what happened last night with Ryder and with the guy at the club.
We walked down the street to a small sushi restaurant that overlooked the ocean and sat at a table outside on the porch of the restaurant. The sun was just going down and the sky had streaks of purple and pink sifting through the blue.
I took in the luxurious view. I loved this city.
"You know why my
parents named me Skye right?" She said, noticing that I was glancing up towards the sky.
"No, how come?"
"I guess they had been trying to have a baby for a long time and when they saw me for the first time they thought I was more beautiful than the sky at sunset, hence the name Skye." I knew Skye's parents were divorced but had been married very young. She rarely talked about her childhood and said it was filled with fighting and divorces. Her mom had been remarried four times and was on her fifth marriage. Skye's biological father was some famous movie producer and although he loved Skye, he was always busy with his new family in Los Angeles. He set her up with a trust fund and she had been on her own ever since. She rarely talked to her mother, but I guess at one point her mother and father were very much in love with Skye.
"Anyway, you want to hear what happened last night with me and Jayson?" asked Skye.
"Sure."
"Well, it was so perfect. When you went dancing, we kind of hung out by the bar just talking,
well as much as we could over the music. Then, out of the corner of my eye I look at the most beautiful man who is approaching me, so here I am having to make a decision about Jayson in a pinch and then that man came close enough and I recognized him from the coffee shop!"
"Ryder…"
"Yeah! Exactly, it was Ryder! So anyway, I pointed him to you on the dance floor…sort of…well honestly completely disappointed that he only had one goal in mind: to meet you. He was a total hottie. Suddenly, I knew I was only attracted to one guy. That made me realize that I really do like Jayson! I can totally see myself falling for him. Isn't that something Harper?" I was proud of her. She normally liked to make out with a bunch of guys in the same night so the fact that she had eyes for just Jayson was something new for her.
"I guess, I always knew that you would meet someone perfect. He really is your compliment and he totally adores you. I don’t
even mind hanging out with him." This was all true. I wished desperately that Skye would settle down with someone considering it’s all she has been talking about. Although Jayson was quiet, he did everything for Skye; it's all I could hope for her.
"Anyway, we took the limo back to my pla
ce and we spent the whole night wrapped up in our sheets. He lit candles all over so there was a slight glow, but it was super romantic. We fooled around and stuff, but there was passion behind it. He said he didn’t want to go all the way because he didn’t want to ruin a good thing. Can you believe he said that!?"
No I couldn’t. What guy doesn’t want sex?
"Uh, no," was the only response I could muster without being offensive.
"Well he did. I think I am really falling for him Harper."