~ Volume One ~
She smiled over her coffee as she listened to the little girl behind her explain the meaning of love to her mildly attentive mother.
“It’s like when Daddy takes me to the zoo, and when Grammy brings us presents when she visits, and when Ruby licks my face,” the young girl said, her pigtails dancing as she spoke animatedly. “It’s like that, Mommy. When someone does something because you like, not because they do.”
“ Mmm, that sounds right, Sam,” the twenty-something working businesswoman answered. She was scanning the newspaper, looking for something, clearly not interested in her daughter’s four-year-old insight.
“The ice cream man in our neighborhood loves me, the hot chocolate girl here loves me,” she sang on as she stirred the whipped cream into her hot chocolate, occasionally dripping some on her yellow dress. The lady in the suit next to her obviously had no idea about the spilling, or if she did, cared nothing of it. Nevertheless, little Sam was clearly happy with her idea of love and how many people seemed to show it towards her.
Alexis Black watched on as the oblivious mother and daughter enjoyed their time together in totally different ways. She knew that this was probably a temporary event; soon the mother would pay attention to the child again and love her as she always had, dismissing the chatter that she had not heard as unimportant observances made of a four-year-old’s hot chocolate. But somehow, bizarrely, Alexis could not seem to shake the thought that her relationship with Brandon had been very similar to that of the mother and daughter as she could see them in this particular moment. Unfortunately, she thought, in their situation this way of relating to one another was not temporary; it had taken up the majority of the way they spent their time together.
As she realized this and contemplated it, Alexis felt guilty that she was the distant counterpart in the parallel and Brandon had been the child with the silly ideas that she so often dismissed. Just as the child would love her mother, he had loved her in a clinging sort of way that was less natural outside the mother-child relationship, she admitted, but she had trouble letting him go. He had been mostly a safe choice at the time she agreed to go out with him; he wasn’t the most attractive man she could be with, but he was sweet and would always care for her, and with his family money would have had no trouble doing so if they were married, she knew. She felt guilty even now for thinking about how she had known the whole time that she could probably never actually marry him.
Every time Brandon had brought up the future she had nodded along, agreeing with his ideas just enough to keep him at bay, but also spoke up enough about how they both still needed more time, so that he would “not rush things, when they had the rest of their lives to be together”. That’s what she had said to him, over and over, until finally one day, he decided that she would say yes if he asked in just the right way.
Her one saving grace in the situation was that she had seen it coming. She had been able to save him some of the embarrassment. But it still made her hold her head in shame to think that she had led him on up to that point. Sure, she had kept him from getting on his knee in front of everyone at the gala they had attended, but he had already told some friends he was going to ask and they were “sure that after three years together” she would say yes. No one had doubted her complacency, but they thought it was a choice that she had decided to stick with. She had known better, but still had let it go on, thinking she could maybe avoid marriage altogether somehow.
She had been selfish, she knew, and had spent some time hating herself for what she had done to Brandon,
She smiled over her coffee as she listened to the little girl behind her explain the meaning of love to her mildly attentive mother.
“It’s like when Daddy takes me to the zoo, and when Grammy brings us presents when she visits, and when Ruby licks my face,” the young girl said, her pigtails dancing as she spoke animatedly. “It’s like that, Mommy. When someone does something because you like, not because they do.”
“ Mmm, that sounds right, Sam,” the twenty-something working businesswoman answered. She was scanning the newspaper, looking for something, clearly not interested in her daughter’s four-year-old insight.
“The ice cream man in our neighborhood loves me, the hot chocolate girl here loves me,” she sang on as she stirred the whipped cream into her hot chocolate, occasionally dripping some on her yellow dress. The lady in the suit next to her obviously had no idea about the spilling, or if she did, cared nothing of it. Nevertheless, little Sam was clearly happy with her idea of love and how many people seemed to show it towards her.
Alexis Black watched on as the oblivious mother and daughter enjoyed their time together in totally different ways. She knew that this was probably a temporary event; soon the mother would pay attention to the child again and love her as she always had, dismissing the chatter that she had not heard as unimportant observances made of a four-year-old’s hot chocolate. But somehow, bizarrely, Alexis could not seem to shake the thought that her relationship with Brandon had been very similar to that of the mother and daughter as she could see them in this particular moment. Unfortunately, she thought, in their situation this way of relating to one another was not temporary; it had taken up the majority of the way they spent their time together.
As she realized this and contemplated it, Alexis felt guilty that she was the distant counterpart in the parallel and Brandon had been the child with the silly ideas that she so often dismissed. Just as the child would love her mother, he had loved her in a clinging sort of way that was less natural outside the mother-child relationship, she admitted, but she had trouble letting him go. He had been mostly a safe choice at the time she agreed to go out with him; he wasn’t the most attractive man she could be with, but he was sweet and would always care for her, and with his family money would have had no trouble doing so if they were married, she knew. She felt guilty even now for thinking about how she had known the whole time that she could probably never actually marry him.
Every time Brandon had brought up the future she had nodded along, agreeing with his ideas just enough to keep him at bay, but also spoke up enough about how they both still needed more time, so that he would “not rush things, when they had the rest of their lives to be together”. That’s what she had said to him, over and over, until finally one day, he decided that she would say yes if he asked in just the right way.
Her one saving grace in the situation was that she had seen it coming. She had been able to save him some of the embarrassment. But it still made her hold her head in shame to think that she had led him on up to that point. Sure, she had kept him from getting on his knee in front of everyone at the gala they had attended, but he had already told some friends he was going to ask and they were “sure that after three years together” she would say yes. No one had doubted her complacency, but they thought it was a choice that she had decided to stick with. She had known better, but still had let it go on, thinking she could maybe avoid marriage altogether somehow.
She had been selfish, she knew, and had spent some time hating herself for what she had done to Brandon,
Similar Books
