::one breath::
Author:ca
Rating: g.
Notes at End
After
There was a song playing on the radio that wasn't quite familiar. Something almost melodic came over Bron, and she swayed slightly, as she packed up the last of the man's things in a box. He had come to live with her just before the engagement.
The engagement.
Bron turned the ring on her finger. It was beautiful, simplistic and sparkling.
It mimicked her.
She did not know that.
The last of the boxes was placed on the veranda, ready for collection. Her small house felt cold, and even as she house-hunted alone, for something that would not be bursting at the walls with memories, she still felt the cold.
The cold of the water that had immersed them both, and the cold of the loss.
The phone rang, a noisy jitter to invade the calm.
"Hello." Bron reached over a hand to turn the music down.
"Terri?" Bron said. Since the break-up between Terri and Malcolm, and the quiet divorce of Rose and Mitch, Terri had been distant, coldly clinical and rather evasive at work. Bron was surprised at the phone call.
"I'm fine." Bron fought to stop the tremble that threatened to open the floodgate of the tears that she had already cried. Too many tears, and not enough memories.
"I'll call if I need anything." Bron hung up slowly, the kind words Terri had spoke, still ringing inside her head. She turned the music back up, willing the emptiness around her to go away. She felt slightly hollowed, as if a piece of her had died, or had been lost, and never replaced. She was an unfinished jigsaw puzzle of sharp corners and complex patterns.
She was a woman dealing with loss.
She was a woman dealing with the loss of someone who had died trying to save her.
There was a familiar song, but she couldn't place it, a long-forgotten left-over from childhood. The words swum through her tired brain, over and over until a roaring cacophany was all she heard.
She turned the music off.
There was only silence.
Later that Afternoon
A hazy, ink-filled night was slowly creeping over the city. The sound of sirens became more ominous, and cut through the darkness with a sense of emergency, and hope.
There was another phonecall, a cancellation of a quiet evening, a double shift to be worked. Bron sighed as she hung up, still wrapped in the blanket of loss, although managing to fit her head through the space the blanket left to the World outside, where she could get a breath of fresh air. Was it her fault he had ended up where he did?
She didn't like to think so, she knew no one else thought so, but still, the grief hung, constant and stifling, a cloud over her, coursing through her and silently berating her, hanging at the back of her mind.
A yawn, another, softer now. The approach of darkness. All over the city, lights blinked briefly before they flashed on, chasing the darkness away from the safe cavern of space, making the shadows darker, longer, more menacing.
Bron didn't bother with the lights.
She sat in the darkness, in the cold quiet house.
The music was off. The tv was silent, as it was so much, now that he wasn't here.
There was a blanket at the end of the couch, it was soft and blue and comforting. It was the first blanket Bron had ever bought, the first step to the independance she had craved, after she had moved out of her house, the house that, also, held so many unhappy memories.
Bron stretched out on the couch and pulled the blanket up so that it nestled around her ears. She tried to make her mind go blank, but still it thought.
Sometimes she thought thinking was a curse.
Hours later, Bron was still on the couch, immersed in her own subconscious, dreaming of an ending where things might have turned out differently.
Instead of the water being freezing,it was lukewarm.
Instead of the current bumping them into a rock, it drifted them briskly past it.
Instead of Bron's unsteady balance, and terrifying fall headlong into the icy-water, she stayed, firmly clinging to the boat.
Instead of being short one life jacket, they were fully equipped, and the man across from her was wearing one.
Instead of jumping to the bank alone, he was there with her, helping her out like the true friend he was, and would always be in her heart.
The door rattled as a key turned, and Bron awoke with a start.
She pushed her hair back as she sat up, still clutching the blanket.
"I didn't think you'd still be up." Ben came to sit beside her.
"I just..." Bron trailed her sentence off, not sure of the middle or the ending, only knowing the start.
"Bron." Ben cupped her face in his hands, and she looked at him, at the eyes that she could never grow tired of, of the countless emotions that bubbled just below the surface.
"Ben, I'm okay." But she didn't struggle to pull away.
"Bron. It wasn't your fault. Nothing could have changed the fact that Scott went after you in the river. He knew the risks." Ben's words were true, and they sounded clear and convincing.
She knew he was hurting as well, so she wanted to believe.
She wanted to let it go, but she couldn't. Not yet.
Tomorrow she would go to the memorial service being held at the river.
It might start healing some of the scars.
With Ben's arms wrapped tightly around her, lying on the couch with one of his large, gentle hands stroking her hair, Bron felt safe and loved, and she took a deep breath.
One breath in the memory of one of the best friends she had ever had.
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Disclaimer/ Legal crap: *sigh* Not mine, doubtful they ever will be. Just borrowing, will be sure to dust them before I put them back on the shelf. :)
Notes: This took me about fifteen minutes to write, in a moment of sudden inspiration (I wrote it just after I finished reading No Name (hehe) by Bridget, which happens to be a great story *smiles to Bridget*. Hopefully it's not too unrealistic, I thought if Bron and Scott lived together that long, she'd feel an attachment to him... Or osmething like that. And I know Ben would be hurting as well, but I kind of made him do the stereotypical -male- thing and not show it. Hehe, sorry Ben.
Dedicated to P.H. who decided the next life was better than this one.
Feedback: As always, I love it/crave it/absolutely want it! lipglosser@fudge.com
ca
lipglosser@fudge.com
http://ca.rocks.it