“How long has it been? Fourteen, fifteen years?” he furrows his brow.
I reach back into my memory, but my thoughts are unfocused and erratic. It’s the Brad effect. I’ve always been weak within the vortex of his presence.
“It’s been a while,” I agree.
I try to do the math. It seems like forever, yet it feels like no time has passed standing here with him. The nearness of him can still affect me.
He lifts his wrist to glance at his watch. When did people start wearing watches again? Funny how things come back around.
He looks me up and down. “You look exactly the same.”
“So do you,” I say despite his weight gain. He always did appreciate good food.
“I wish we had time to catch up, but I’m driving back to San Diego, and I have to get going.”
He sets his briefcase against his leg and pulls out his wallet. The glint of a simple gold band on his finger catches my eye.
“How long have you been married?”
He shrugs with a beguiling smile as though I’ve caught him doing something wrong.
“About fourteen years, so it must be fifteen years at least since I’ve seen you.”
“I guess so,” I answer now more fervently attempting to do the math in my head. “Kids?”
“Yeah, two. Like you.” He holds out his business card. “Call me so we can catch up. I’d like to talk when we have more time. We should talk.”
I shake my head. He’s married now, and I can’t let myself get sucked back into the Brad vortex. It took me a long time to get over him. I don’t want to risk my heart again. It had never been safe around him. No, I’ve learned my lesson.
“It’s nice to see you, though.” I quickly turn to flee back to my seat before I have the chance to hesitate.
It always amazes me when I have the mettle to walk away from him. Leave the past in the past, especially when it’s painful. Don’t open up old wounds. Run, Forrest, run!
“V.” He grabs my arm using the nickname he’d called me, which causes a trace of affection to surge through me. “Why can’t we be friends? Give me a call. Come on. We need to talk, V.”
His touch feels familiar yet strange, and I resist the automatic impulse to respond. Like a magnet, my body is drawn to his. It had always been like that with us. It had always seemed beyond our control.
How often do you feel that with someone? For me, Brad was the only one. No one else came close. Not even my ex-husband. But Brad isn’t mine anymore. It didn’t work between us and now he has a wife, a family. Walk away, I tell myself urgently. I take the card he proffers because I know he’s tenacious and give him a weak smile. He always gets what he wants.
He glances at his watch again and leans into me.
“You’re still sexy.” His words tickle my ear and sends a rush of exhilaration through me.
Yeah, right. In my baggy sweatpants and T-shirt. But I believe him because our chemistry is still undeniable.
The crowd parts for him, and he disappears into it. Like he’d never been there. Like a mirage. Like a flash of lightening straight into me. Brad. Brad. Brad. Those blue eyes. That teasing smile. My every breath sighs his name. How can he have such an effect on me in just minutes? Thus is the power of Brad.
I return to my hard gray plastic seat by the window in the puddle of yellow sunlight forgetting to buy a snack. On the way, I fling his stupid card toward the garbage receptacle that sprouts fast food wrappers. It flutters stubbornly to the ground. I snatch it up and look at it as I sit, my heart beating his name.
Fletcher Construction & Renovation
Bradley Fletcher – Director of Sales
That charismatic smile and ability to bedazzle and persuade make him a born salesman. I’m curious if his parents are still investing in properties with him. They’d completely financed him in the beginning – when he was with me. They’d propped him up and given him a financial cushion. They’d indulged his little hobby to buy and renovate houses probably never expecting him to build it into a viable business. They’d assumed he’d get tired of the grueling physical labor and uphill battle of sales and follow his brothers into college, into real careers, but they’d underestimated his ingenuity and charm. He could influence people to do what he wanted them to do. He relished the challenge of it, the wheeling and dealing, the negotiating. It was a skill set he naturally possessed. He had the cool confidence and affability that made it easy for people to trust him and made it hard to say no.
His parents had never approved of me. They thought I wasn’t good enough for him because I didn’t have a degree or impressive job. Neither did he, but they wanted someone who would elevate his status. Definitely not me – a divorced woman with kids, and five years older at that. Someone who would never provide him with his own biological kids, though at the time, he wasn’t sure he wanted any. Does his wife meet their criteria? I don’t think he would’ve married anyone who didn’t. She must be educated and accomplished, most likely from a notable family, probably gorgeous because he could interest a woman who checked off all the boxes. But does he feel the same magnetism we’d had? Does he really have it all?
I stare out the huge plate glass window at a plane taxiing up to the gate. The seats around me have filled, and I clutch my shoulder bag in my lap like a life jacket rescuing me from sinking into an undertow of the past.
I can’t focus on the math, but I’m certain he hadn’t wasted any time getting married after our breakup. I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that he’d gotten over me so fast. Could he have married the same woman who’d left him that breezy message on his answering machine one Sunday morning after I’d quietly slipped out of his king-sized bed?
My stomach still knots at the memory of hearing a chirpy female voice making plans with my boyfriend. Had that one instant changed everything? If I hadn’t heard it, would things have turned out differently? Would I have happily persevered in that obviously dysfunctional relationship until it had crashed into reality? Or had I been too hasty? I could’ve been wrong. Maybe things would’ve worked out if I’d hung in there longer.
“She’s a friend,” he’d immediately asserted, brushing it off. “Really just a client.”
But I knew him by then. Deep down I knew he could easily lie or bend the truth to benefit his own ends. That’s the way he was and that could be why he always got what he wanted. He was ambitious and dogged and a bit ruthless, and I found it kind of sexy and admirable at the time because I didn’t know how to get what I wanted.
I get out my phone and text my friend, Marcy. She knows the whole story, and it will blow her mind that I ran into him.
OMG! I ran into Brad at the airport. Crazy, huh? I wait a few minutes for her response and smile when I get it.
Tell me!
I text back the bottom line. Looks great. I hate him. Married. Kids.
She texts. What a jerk. Don’t you even.
I frown at the phone. No way. Married!
There’s commotion around me. People are lining up to board hurriedly pulling luggage and kids behind them. I stand up, shift my bag on my shoulder, and send one last text. Boarding.
After I find my cramped seat on the stuffy plane, I curse him for still being in my head. Brad. The perfect man who got away. The one I lived and breathed and wrapped my life around. The one I’ll always compare others to. The one who swept me up like a hurricane, swirled my senses, and never gave me quite enough of himself.