Feel My Love Read online

  As soon as we are outside the bar and back on the street, she starts walking to the side of the building to grab her bicycle. “Can I walk you home?” I finally get the courage to say, digging my balled up fists into my pockets so she doesn’t see how nervous I am.

  Even in the middle of the night with the only light coming from a light post a few feet away, I can see her face pale. “Um…” she hesitates “what about Amber? Isn’t she waiting for you back at your hotel?” Oh shit. She thinks I’m still married to Amber? “For some reason I thought you already knew about this. Uh, Amber and I got divorced not long after you left. I’ve been single for the past seven years.”

  Brynn’s eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, but then she pulls them together and looks at me. “Why would you think I knew about that? I haven’t talked to you in eight years, Ryan.” Her voice is getting louder and more choked up, but she turns her face away from me so I can’t see it.

  Brynn turns and starts briskly walking in the direction of her place and I follow a few steps behind while I try to steer the conversation back to a lighter topic.

  I clear my throat and then say “So, I talked to Kara for a minute while you were singing tonight. She’s pretty cool.” I see Brynn’s shoulders start to relax and I slowly exhale the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

  “Yeah, she’s the bee’s knees.” Brynn wipes the corners of her eyes and smiles. “She was my roommate when I first moved out here to attend SDSU and my only friend for a while.”

  I wince at that statement. I was Brynn’s best friend before she left, and when she got here she felt like she didn’t have any friends at all. “She told me that you guys were in a sorority together? Where the hell did that come from Brynnie? You always thought things like that were stupid.” I ask trying to keep my voice light so that it doesn’t seem like I’m making fun of her.

  Brynn starts to laugh at this. Thank God. It’s such a great sound and I don’t realize until she’s done laughing that I’ve missed that sound so much.

  “Yes, I was in a sorority in college.” She says with a smile in her voice. “When I moved out here I just needed a change from the life I lived back home. You know how my life used to be. I used to do everything for everyone else; to please everyone else. One day,” she heaves a big breath “everything just kind of snapped for me and I looked at the direction my life was heading and I didn’t like it. It terrified me to live a life that wasn’t my own. So, I broke up with Jake” she looks at me and smirks. I smile back at her. She knew I thought Jake was a tool and she was too good for him. “I packed my things, and moved down here to start living my life. And I couldn’t be happier. My life is mine and I do the things I want to do. I still do things to help others and make them happy, but I get to do things for me. I’m not married, with kids, and no college education to hinder me. I have so many options open for me at this stage in my life.”

  I know she didn’t mean it as a shot at me, but I take this a bit personally since I had been married, I have two girls, and had to do night school for almost six and a half years to get a degree.

  “So” I say, trying to keep the conversation away from me “the sorority was part of your new life, huh?” She giggles and looks at me. “Yeah, it was. I loved it so much. I made so many new friends and experienced so many things that I normally wouldn’t do. It was a way to step out of my comfort zone, I guess. Kara and I pledged together and then ended up living at the sorority house our junior and senior years. It was a blast. We all still get together once every few months to catch up and chat, even though we graduated four years ago and the sisters spread out around the country for their jobs or their husbands’ job.”

  I glance over at her and she is just glowing telling me about her experiences. I smile and add “Kara told me that you were in a band, too. That’s pretty cool.” Brynn finally slows her pace down so it doesn’t look like she’s going to bolt from me at any second and then looks over at me.

  She clears her throat and then says “Ken’s Mistress.” What the hell does that mean? The question must be written all over my face because she just laughs and then clarifies. “That was the name of our band. We were an all girl band and all of the girls were from my sorority. We just played cover songs at parties in exchange for extra drinks, or in our drummer Kylee’s case, an easy lay from one of the boys on the football team.” Brynn laughs again and turns to walk up a set of stairs.

  We must be at her place already. It’s a simple looking light blue condo a few blocks away from the bar we just left. “So I have to ask, then.” I say and wait for her to turn around from unlocking her front door. “Who’s Ken?”

  “What?” Brynn asks and finally turns to face me with her brows pulled together.

  “Ken’s Mistress? The name of your band? Who’s Ken?” I say hoping that it isn’t an actual person I have to beat the shit out of. Brynn throws her head back and laughs. When she rights herself again, she’s wiping a tear from the corner of her eye and gasping for air. “Ken, as in Barbie’s husband. You know, like a Ken doll.” She clarifies, still smiling.

  I chuckle and try to discreetly unclench my fists. “That’s pretty funny, Brynnie. Did you come up with the name?” I ask trying to prolong this. I don’t want to tell her goodbye. I want to learn as much as I can about her since she seems like a completely different person now.

  She bites her lower lip and nods in answer to my question and then she opens her door wide and lifts her bike up so she can bring it into her living room. Brynn disappears for a few seconds, but the door is left wide open.

  I stay on the porch because I’m not sure I’m welcome and I don’t want to push my luck and have her get pissed at me if I walk in without being invited first. A second later, Brynn’s head pops out from the corner and she says “Are you coming in or not? You’re letting all the bought air out.” She smiles and her head disappears again.

  Chapter 7

  Brynn

  Oh shit. What in the hell possessed me to invite Ryan into my house? Although I’m pissed off at myself for inviting him in, I know why I did it. I still love him and I want him to be a part of my life again, but I’m just not sure he can be anymore. Maybe he’ll just decline and say he has to get going.

  But even as I think this, I turn around and see him walk in and shut the front door behind him. He walks through my open living room, glancing around. It’s a light blue color that gives the open area a light feeling.

  To his right he notices my small, all white kitchen with an island and barstools tucked under. He decides to turn left into my living room where he walks past my now parked bike and around my cream colored couch toward the giant white built in bookshelves that lines the far wall.

  The only thing that breaks the large bookshelves apart is the two doors in the middle of the wall. The door to my master bedroom is on the left and the door to the guest room on the right.

  He starts walking around, eyeing the collection of books I’ve acquired, all of the knick knacks on different shelves, and the many different framed pictures I have. The room is quiet for a few minutes while he browses my pictures, but the silence is slowly tearing me apart.

  “Would you like something to drink? Water? Soda? Beer? Anything?” Ryan turns and raises a brow at me. “Beer?” he questions. “Since when did you start drinking? I’ve never seen you drink a drop before in your life and you polished that drink off at the bar like you were an old pro.” I laugh inside while he’s saying this, but outwardly shrug.

  “Things change, Ryan. I’ve been drinking since I moved out here. I’m not a raging alcoholic or anything, although there have been a few fun nights of over drinking. It just tastes good so I keep it handy. You want one or not?” I ask with a bit of a snarky edge, tired of having to defend myself to him. “Sure.” Ryan says. So, I walk toward him with two beer bottles in hand and notice that he’s eyeing a few different pictures very closely.

  “Who’s this?” he says, pointing to a picture of a chubby little
boy in a sailor suit with light brown hair and enormous green eyes, sitting in my lap. I smile, remembering the first and only time I’ve ever met my handsome nephew in person.

  “That’s my sister Becca’s little boy, Milo. That’s the first time I got to hold my handsome little man. He’s just a little over a year in this picture, but he just turned four a few months ago.” That’s the only time I’ve ever seen him, so the picture is a bittersweet reminder of the family I never see.

  Ryan bobs his head up and down a few times and then says “He’s a cutie. Do you see them very often?” I clear my throat and hand Ryan his beer “Not very often, no.” I say and start looking at other photographs, hoping he gets the hint that I don’t want to talk about my family. He takes the hint and moves on to another picture. He raises his eyebrows, turns his head to look at me and points at a picture of me on the side of a rock face, rappelling down. I have my hair piled up in a messy bun, sunglasses on and a huge smile on my face. I grin recalling when that photo was taken.

  “That was the first time I went rock climbing when I was a sophomore. A guy I was kind of seeing at the time was big on rock climbing and dared me to try it. I did and fell in love with it. I go climbing every chance I get, now. Have you ever done it?” I ask. He just shakes his head side to side and studies the picture closely. “You should try it.” I say “It’s quite a rush.”

  Ryan skims over a few more pictures of me-with all of my sorority sisters at a party, me singing at the bar on an open mic night before I joined the band, and me coming out of the ocean during my first triathlon. “And this one?” He says finally stopping at a picture of me and a few of my friends crossing the finish line of my very first marathon.

  “That” I say with a smirk because I hated running when I was younger and Ryan knew it, “was me crossing the finish line at the San Diego Marathon my junior year of college. I ran it with a few of my sorority sisters and I’ve run seven marathons since that one.” Ryan is quiet for a few minutes, but I decide this time I’ll just let him look without interrupting him.

  When he finally turns, he looks so confused and says “Who are you, Brynnie? You are a totally different person than you were when you lived at home. I don’t see a trace of that girl anymore.” I shrug, and then take a pull from the beer bottle and move to sit down on the couch. “I’m not a different person. It’s just that no one ever cared to know the real me at home. I lived my life for other people at home, so everyone saw the agreeable, quiet, shy girl that they wanted to see instead of asking me who I really was.”

  “That’s bullshit, Brynn.” Ryan says, slight agitation rolling off of him, which startles me a bit. “I’ve known you since third grade. I knew things about you that no one else knew and not once did you tell me that you wanted to run marathons or sing in bars or get your degree in music.” At first, I’m ready to defend myself, but then I get confused.

  “Music? Who says I got a degree in music?” I ask incredulously. Ryan shakes his head and says “No one said it. I was just guessing. You are awesome at singing, so I thought that was what you majored in.” I shake my head, but smile at the compliment. “Okay, so if you didn’t get a degree in music, what did you get your degree in?”

  I set my beer bottle down on the wooden coffee table in front of my couch and cringe a bit. He’d never guess what I actually majored in. “Uh, it was chemistry with a double minor in criminal justice and art.” I smile slightly, and glance up waiting for Ryan to say something, but he has a dumbfounded look on his face like I just told him the moon was made of cheese.

  “Chemistry? What the fuck, Chuck!” he blurts out “You hated chemistry when we were in high school! You even needed a tutor to pass the class. Lucky for you I was a great tutor or you never would have made it.” He smirks.

  I laugh lightly and then say “Well, not to rain on your parade, but I was really good at chemistry. I always wanted to work in a crime lab, like CSI stuff, and latched onto chemistry when I was really young. So I worked really hard and got my degree in chemistry and then started working in a lab right out of college, but it was a bit too tedious, so I quit. My boss loved me so much though, that he told me a job was waiting for me whenever I wanted to go back.”

  He shakes his head and puts his beer on the coffee table so he can throw his hands around in the air for his rant. “So, all that time I spent trying to tutor you and thinking you were never going to understand it; all the time I spent worrying about your mom hating me because you were going to fail that class, was for nothing?” Ryan says, luckily he’s smiling so I know he’s joking with me.

  “Well, uh” I don’t know how I’m going to say this without it being awkward, so I just decide to get it out. “I kind of had a major crush on you back then and wanted to spend more time with you, so I pretended I needed a tutor in a subject I was really good at so I could ogle you while you tried to teach it to me.” I grimace and look down at my hands in my lap and then smooth out the front of my dress, not daring to tell him that I still had that major crush on him.

  Ryan just starts laughing, so I smile and look up at him. “Oh my God, Brynn! You are killing me! So, you’re telling me that you knew chemistry better than I did, and you had me tutor you so that you could check me out the whole time?” he chuckles.

  Well that reaction is certainly better than what I was expecting. “Yeah, I felt bad for a while. There were a few things that you tried to explain to me that were completely wrong, but I had to play dumb, so I couldn’t correct you. Sorry about that.” I giggle.

  Ryan walks over to the couch and sits down next to me and we stare at each other for a few seconds, as if we’re trying to figure each other out all over again. Ryan looks down at my hands, reaching out to rub his index finger along my tattoo, and then back up to my eyes, and asks “So, where are the rest of graffiti marks on your skin, Brynnie?”

  Oh no, even though I have an electric shock running through my body where he’s touching me, I’m definitely not showing him those. I made sure that the majority of my tattoos weren’t visible so most of them are in spots that clothes can cover easily.

  I shake my head at him and say “Most of them are hidden and not many have seen all of them. We’d have to be a lot closer than we are for you to see them.” I smile, but then realize I’ve made things a bit awkward because we aren’t close anymore. If we were in a friendship like eight years ago, I would show him every single one of them, no hesitation, but we aren’t even close to where we were eight years ago.

  I push my loose brown hair behind my ears and think of something to say that won’t make things more uncomfortable than they already are, but Ryan beats me to it.

  “So, how about a movie? We can try to catch up a bit and laugh at a stupid silly movie for a while before I leave.” I look at the clock on the wall and it says 1:15 a.m., but for some reason I am not tired. “Sure” I say. “Why don’t you pick a movie and I’ll make some caramel corn.” I point to one of the shelves he was just standing by to show him where my DVD collection is and make my way into the kitchen.

  On my way in, I think of something to talk about that shouldn’t be too conflicting. “How’s your kid doing? Is it a boy or a girl?” I ask, just realizing that I hadn’t talked to him since he and Amber found out she was pregnant. Then I wince when I think of Amber. If they’re divorced, she probably has the child more often than he does and this could end being a stickier conversation than I hoped it would have been.

  Ryan pulls Three Amigos, my all time favorite, from the DVD selection and makes his way to a bar stool at my kitchen island.

  “Well, I have two girls. They are doing well, thanks for asking.” Wow, two kids. Wait- I thought he said they got divorced right after I left. Did he have another baby with her after their divorce? Or did he knock someone else up? “Two?” I ask, and he must know what I’m thinking because he chuckles.

  “They are twins, Brynn; two girls. Just turned eight a few months ago.” Huh. Two girls. I chance asking him more
about his girls. “So, how often do you see them? Do you get them on weekends or something?” His brows pull together in confusion, but then he nods once, as if he remembers that I know nothing of his life now.

  “Uh, Amber left us all right after the girls were born. She’s never even seen them. So, I get to play daddy and mommy to the girls by myself and a ton of help from our babysitter.” Ryan smiles nervously which confuses me, but spins around to hop off of the bar stool and put the DVD into the player next to the television that sits on the bookshelf, effectively cutting off the conversation.

  I finish making the caramel popcorn and take my place on the couch next to Ryan, putting the bowl of goodness in between us to create a barrier so that I don’t try to jump his hot bones while we’re sitting here.

  We watch the movie in silence, laughing occasionally while I try my damndest not to look over at him, because every time I do, I fall under his spell a little more. About twenty minutes into the movie, when he doesn’t laugh at a particularly funny part, I look over at Ryan. He is passed out with his head thrown back on my couch, so I grab a pillow and blanket out of my guest room closet, take his flip flops off and help him lay down on the couch.

  I stare at him for a moment after he rests his head onto the pillow, and realize that there is so much more to this man than there was the boy I left behind; and I want to know everything about him.

  Chapter 8

  Ryan

  I wake up on Brynn’s couch alone. Shit. I was a total loser and passed out on the couch while we were watching her favorite movie. I lay there for a minute, trying to replay everything we talked about last night. I remember the last thing I said was something about my girls and their babysitter. There is no way I’m going to tell her that her sister Becca is my kids’ babysitter because it seems like she isn’t close to any of them anymore, and I might hurt her feelings by telling her that I have such close contact with her sister.