Page 3 of Slow Burn
2
BRYNN
I am almost positiveI packed my bags six times. Maybe eight. Just to unpack them the moment I was given an excuse to stay. Any excuse, I would take it and drag those pricey Louis Vuitton’s back from the door and unpack them all over again. But, those excuses were heading into bullshit territory now, just shy of four months later. I’d take them while they were coming, though.
“You can’t leave until we hit all the museums.”
“Can’t go back to Boston until you’ve hit Navy Pier.”
“We should go to the festival next weekend, so don’t go home yet.”
Either Lola Byrne—my best friend for most my life—knew I didn’t want to go back to Boston or she selfishly didn’t want me to go back. I could deal with a selfish Lola. Because, I knew Lola being selfish with me, if that were truly the case, benefited me.
Besides, we could blame our selfish excuses on valid life shit. The two of us had been inseparable once, never went a day without talking or seeing one another. We even had a plan to go off to college together, dorm together, experience life together. Until six months ago, it had been years since I’d even talked to her.
Our plans had gotten derailed by two men. Mine, by accident. Hers by choice. Then life took us on two different rides, so far from our plan that neither of us knew how to get it back on track. At least not until Chicago.
Though temporarily derailed, I got my plan back on track by going to school at 25. It was harder than I expected so when I saw a skype call during a particularly rough study session, I didn’t question who was on the other end. One call got the rest of my plan back on track.
“Brynn. My China Doll.” Within moments, it was like the four years since the last time I’d heard Lola call me lady friend had never happened.
One five hour skype session turned into a call every night for a week. Then phone calls every day, texts in between and, eventually, I made a trip down south for her wedding. Well, her second one.
Lola Byrne reminded me of who I wanted to be once. Because she wasn’t the girl I had once known, but the girl she was always meant to be. Not their wilting Violet, a sheltered puppet her calculating family tried to destroy. But bright, loud, bubbly, vibrantLola. The girl I knew was always there.
That’s the girl I followed to Chicago after another Skype session that reminded me I wasn’t who I wanted to be. Because, Lola wasn’t Violet anymore and that was okay. I wanted to be Brynn again, the one I’d been before I’d let one mistake throw me so off plan. I thought by going to school, pretending to figure my plan out again, I was okay again.
Then I watched my best friend get married to the man who had saved her. Who had loved her for the loud, bright, outside-the-lines woman she was. And I watched the amazing group of friends she’d made embrace her, and then me, and I realized I didn’t have to be the girl I’d been parading as for so long. I could be me. And people like Lola and her friends Gigi, and Charli, would like me for just who I was.
“We doing dinner tonight?”Lola was shouting now as I wandered around the upper loft of the converted old fire station that was she and Gigi’s studio.
Lola was bright, with fading purple and teal hair, a glowing smile and a bright yellow sundress. Her round belly looked like a sweet lemon drop. The real Lola, she always glowed, even when she was Violet. Even when her family did everything to dim her light. Now though? Now pregnant, married, and blissfully happy, she positively beamed sunlight.
Today, her short dark hair was almost free of the teal and purple. Hunter had kind of forbidden her to dye it since they found out about the baby. The lingering color was Kool-Aid, her go-to in a crisis. Kept her vibrant look and smelled yummy too. The sunlight shone in behind her as she bounced around barefoot, a paintbrush in her hand as she moved around an easel.
“We can always do dinner, Midge.” I sat on a stool watching her, my knee bouncing anxiously as Britney Spears blasted through the studio.
“With the girls?” Lola arched her brow, her chin tucked over her shoulder to gaze back at me.
“Yes, with the girls. Your girls are my girls now. In fact, they are my only girls, besides you.” I reach my arm out, smoothing my hand over her bump before she prances away.
Truth is, Lola was almost always my only girl. We came from wealth and privilege and neither could have been more miserable about it. We spent our summers avoiding the ridiculous parties and social functions. Instead, we hit the beach and talked about our futures away from that bullshit. We had that plan, of course.
The plan changed but now, with us reunited, it seems like it can get back on track. Parts of it, at least. We can’t dorm together and form an anti-sorority sorority, and we can’t backpack like broke college students in Europe. There won’t be talks about our classes or the hot professors.
This is better though, what we get to have now.
Because this is real, and honest, and full of joy and all the light that was dimmed for so long. That plan we had was glittery and golden but now, now it’s real and we can make it whatever we want. I haven’t made the time to tell Lola about the Brynn she once knew, and how she, like the Violet I once knew, is gone now. But, in time.
For now, we visit museums and talk about her bundle of joy while I accept the excuses to hang out in Chicago longer. Lola doesn’t know I don’t have a job or a sweetheart waiting at home. Doesn’t know that the truth of my situation back East is a lot more complex than I’m ready to get into just yet.
Because, the last thing I want to do is tarnish the image the only person I have left has of me. Lola believes her bestie Brynn is a recent college graduate, who will break into the Architectural world because of her talent, and not her last name. That’s the girl I planned to be.
Instead, I made one wrong choice, with the wrong man, on one life-changing night. I can’t say I’ve paid for that choice or that night as much as I feel I owed. Probably why, while I may have gone through the motions the last few years, seemingly getting my plan back on course, I can hardly say I’ve enjoyed the ride.
“They like you. I mean, of course they do, who wouldn’t? But, I mean theyreally likeyou and that’s awesome because now I have a gaggle of bitches. Life is good.” Lola spun towards the bright red and green canvas she was working on.
She wasn’t wrong. But, she wasn’t exactly right, either. Life was good. It just wasn't the kind of good I felt ready to settle with. I delayed my trip back home half a dozen times. Because I wasn't ready to go back and accept that the life waiting there for me was all I could have. Not when I'd had the briefest glimpse of something better here.
