Sound Bites. Rachel Burke K

David, right now, at this moment in my life. And with my new outlook in mind, I went right from the airport to his house to surprise him.

       I surprised him all right.

       I strolled in his front door, through the living room, down the hallway, and threw open his bedroom door, not expecting what was waiting for me on the other side.

       I stood there in a momentary lapse of paralysis, taking everything in, as David’s eyes stared back at me in horror, followed by another pair of eyes. Eyes that belonged to someone I loved and trusted more than life itself. Eyes I knew that, no matter how many times I stared back at them, would never look the same again.

       Somehow, after gathering the scattered pieces of my brain and piecing them back together, I managed to unbuckle my feet from the floor and back away from the deluded scene that was unfolding before me. My legs guided me in the reverse direction as the outline of their figures became smaller and smaller.

       And then I did the only thing that I could manage to do in my state of shock. I ran.

       And I never once looked back.

      ***

      “Did you have any idea that was going on?” Dylan asked. His back was propped against the living room wall, eyes trained on the ceiling, like he was trying to visualize the horror show I had just laid out for him.

      “Not a clue.” I thought back to all the times David had hung out around the house with Justine and me. Sure, they got along great, but I’d never picked up on anything that revealed it was more than purely platonic.

      “Why don’t you call your friend and talk to her about it?”

      I shook my head. “I can’t. Maybe someday, but right now I can’t.”

      “Understandable. So, what’s up with this David guy? Did you have any idea he was like that?”

      I forced a sad smile. “I thought he was perfect. And up until that happened, he was.”

      “How so?”

      I paused, considering. “Well, I was sort of a late bloomer growing up. I dressed like a boy throughout most of high school, so I didn’t exactly have many boyfriends.”

      “You?” Dylan looked at me skeptically, eyeing my hot pink Victoria’s Secret yoga pants. “Miss California? I don’t believe it.”

      “Trust me, if you saw pictures of me from freshman year, you wouldn’t recognize me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But anyways, I always felt like sort of an outcast. All my friends had boyfriends in high school, and I was so jealous. I didn’t have a boyfriend until senior year and his idea of a romantic date was smoking pot in the woods together.”

      Dylan’s lips curled upward. “Sounds like my kind of guy.”

      “Oh, I’m sure you guys would get along great,” I joked. “So, after dating more or less the same kind of guys in college, I met David.” I smiled nostalgically. “I know it sounds stupid, but I’d always wanted to be with someone who had a romantic side. David wasn’t afraid to be affectionate in public, or surprise me with gifts, little things like that.”

      “Well I bet those other guys wouldn’t have hit on your best friend when you were out of town.”

      “That’s the other thing.” I lay back on my couch and propped a pillow under my head, looking sideways at Dylan. “Why her? Of all the girls in the world, why Justine?”

      I had gone over it in my head a million times, and could never come up with an answer. Growing up, Justine had always been the cooler, sexier, more adventurous one, teaching me how to dress, where the parties were. It was like she had got a head start on life, and I was just a little Catholic school girl trying to keep up. But as we got older, I found my own sense of style, my own major, my own career. And finally, someone who I thought loved me for who I was.

      Dylan’s face darkened, and he looked at me with a faint sadness in his eyes. “You know, you can torture yourself with these questions all you want, but you’re never going to know unless you ask the people who have the answers.”

      I shrugged. “I’ll talk to Justine eventually. But as far as David goes, it’s probably just as well because we were totally different. He’s a sports fanatic, I’m a music fanatic. We didn’t really have much in common.”

      Dylan cocked his head to the side. “Then why are you so hung up on him?”

      “Dylan, something tells me that Christina isn’t much of a music fanatic herself.”

      He threw his head back and burst out laughing. “Touché. Although, between you and me, I don’t exactly envision Christina as someone who’s going to be around for the long haul.”

      “Yeah, any time I tried to talk to David about music, he just didn’t get it. When I was in L.A., I landed a writing internship for a magazine, and they assigned me to research some of the most popular bands of the twenty-first century. I couldn’t even think of one. If you asked me to write about the most popular bands of the eighties or nineties, I could name twenty off the top my head. But when I tried to talk to David about it, he couldn’t have cared less. I want to be with someone who understands me, who sees things from my perspective. Or someone who at least cares enough about me to try to understand.”