Page 27 of Tangling Hearts

“Chai Latte!”

“Excuse me.” Annie looks at Rebecca with kindness. “It was good to see you again. If you’ll excuse me.” She glances back at me to let me know she wants me to talk to Rebecca, take however long I need. I’m stunned, but grateful. Would I have done the same?

“Let’s go outside.”

Rebecca lets me guide her out the exit, blinking back tears as we go. She looks up at me when we get to the sidewalk.

“That’s not really what you wanted to say, was it?”

She smiles the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “No… but I changed my mind. You looked so happy. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”

“You couldn’t have.”

She smiles with a weird faraway look in her eyes. “Mmm.”

“We had some really great times.”

She’s looking past me to someplace in her mind, to a better time. “Yeah. We did. Thank you for those. You really made the time fly.”

I reach out for her arm. “Rebecca, you’re beautiful and---”

She pulls away, shaking her head, eyes flashing. “Please don’t, Brendan. I don’t want to hear that.”

“What do you want to hear?”

She sighs, staring at the traffic. “That I meant something. That I changed your life in some way. That you care. That it wasn’t all for nothing.”

I look up into the sun and take this in, thinking of her. “I do care. You did change my life. You were the only woman I’ve spent that much time with. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t care about you. I grew up with you.” She rolls her eyes, looking away over a raised shoulder. “Seriously. Look at me.” I reach out for her hand. “I’ve watched you; your grace, Rebecca, and the way you talk to people, the way you’re helping the world – you’ve showed me what a good person is.”

She stares at me, fresh tears rising. “Thank you. I really needed to hear that.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “I hope you’ve found what you’re looking for, and that you stay happy.” Letting it go, she quietly says, “For what it’s worth, I love you.” I watch her walk to the edge of the sidewalk and hit the button for the light, a chapter of my life ending, the pages turned with every step she takes away from me.

With one last look over my shoulder, I walk back inside and see Annie sitting at a table, faced away. If it had been me in her place, I would’ve been at the window, but I’m glad she wasn’t. I lower myself slowly into the seat beside her and she watches my face as I pick up my coffee. “Have you checked the times for movies?” I ask, lifting the lid to blow away the heat.

Both hands are around her cup and she waits for me to look at her again before she asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah. It was weird, but it's good it ended well. Thank you for not being insecure about waiting.”

She shakes her head against an ironic smile. “You think I wasn’t insecure?” Her gaze slips left and she makes a comically pained face, but then shrugs. “But it’s between you and her. I just had to wait and see what happened. Let it play out as it would. Which was very, very hard.”

I put my coffee down and lay my hand on the table, facing up. Her hand slides across my palm and she grips my wrist. I go with this and grab hers, too. “You keep surprising me.”

She leans in. “Well, then we’re even. You’re the biggest surprise I’ve ever had.”

A feeling waves through me as I look at her, and I look to our hands, because it’s too much for me to meet her eyes right now. “Okay. Even.”

We stay like this for a while, drinking our coffee in silence and listening to the other conversations around us, never letting go of our grip. Time passes and neither of us feels like rushing it or filling the silence. When we eventually rise, I take her empty cup and throw them both in the recycle-bin. She waits, calm and peaceful. We walk out with me leading the way. At the cross walk, we wait at the same light I watched Rebecca walk to. It strikes me that this little strawberry-blonde is my new chapter, or maybe a whole new book. I look down at her, thinking something made me get Mark out of the house that night, something made me not want to go into Knockout, something told me to try someplace new. Something made us meet, and I think that something is fate.

“Hey.”

She looks up and smiles. “Hey you.”

I lean down and kiss her. The light changes, ignored. She slips her fingers into my hair and I hold onto the small of her back and open her mouth with mine, tasting her. “Chai Latte’s are sweet,” I say against her lips as they spread into a happy smile.

She murmurs, “Mmhmm…”

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