The Second Time Around

Copyright © 2011, Nikki B. Lourie if you are reading this work on any other domain than Inkitt, it has been plagiarized.

“Stop doing that!” he yelled, walking behind her to snatch up the clothing she was steadily throwing out of his bag that he had left packed on their bed.

“You’re not leaving,” she gritted out through clenched teeth as more tears streamed down her lovely chestnut cheeks.

“Brigitte, get out of my way.”

“No!” she screamed, holding up his bag and emptying the rest of its contents on their bedroom floor. “You’re not leaving me!”

“Damn it, Brigitte, I don’t have time for this!”

“Why are you doing this to us?” she asked as her eyes clouded over with fresh tears.

“Because I don’t love you anymore,” he choked out, feeling his throat painfully constrict as he uttered the lie.

“Caid, look at me and tell me that you don’t love me anymore.”

He huffed instead, snatching his bag out of her hand to jam his haphazard clothes inside. He zipped it shut, turning to walk away from her until she grabbed his bicep, pulling him back towards her.

“You can’t say it, can you? You know why? Because you’re a damn liar!”

“I don’t have time for this, now either you move or I make you do it!” he threatened, taking a menacing step towards her. She took two more expectantly waiting for him to force her out of the way.

“Caid.”

“Don’t you see that I don’t love you? I haven’t for some time now and we’ll be fooling ourselves into thinking that this relationship was actually going somewhere. It’s over,” Caid said, holding his liquid gold eyes with her own dark browns. Her lips trembled and he almost lost his resolve.

“You don’t love me?” Brigitte weakly asked, inching closer until her breasts were making contact with the front of his chest.

“No.” Their eyes remained connected for what seemed like an eternity before she lifted herself on tiptoes to kiss him. He responded, in spite of himself, gripping firmly onto her full hips while she wrapped one arm about his neck and used her free hand to push his sandy brown hair out of his face. She always loved his hair, especially when he had decided to fit into the stereotypical cliché of the lone, working artist who also happened to be a rebel to society.

Her long, slender fingers had been occupied many nights, stroking his long, silky strands as he surged deeply inside of her while telling her how much he couldn’t live without her. How would he forget all of this? How would he be able to erase the taste of her now that she was forcing him to have one final sample of her before walking out on her for the rest of her life?

This wasn’t what he had planned at all.

According to how he had pictured it, today was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. He would have taken her to a five-star restaurant to celebrate her twenty-sixth birthday, accompany her back home for the hand-made, chocolate and raspberry birthday cake he had spent weeks practicing how to bake just to surprise her; and just before they would turn in for the night, he had planned on surprising her with the five-carat, white diamond ring with the matching locket, filled with their picture, that he had saved up for almost six months to purchase for her.

Instead, he was breaking her heart, more like ripping it out, in order to keep her safe and away from the vindictive, dirty hands of his malicious parents. Brigitte was his all and they were taking her away from him. She had been there for him a year ago when his older brother, and best friend, had died from brain cancer. She had answered her door or her phone when he needed her to because his nights felt too lonely and cold.

She had accepted him with open arms without asking questions, especially when he would shower her with gifts that she knew that he shouldn’t be able to afford because he was a struggling sculptor. All the while, he kept parts of his personal life private: like how his parents were one of the wealthiest people in the state of New York, how they had manipulated him and his brother their entire lives and he’d ran away to Philadelphia to escape from it all. Neither did he tell her that they cut him off because of his rebellion nor that they were now threatening to ruin her life if he didn’t lose all contact with her.

And that he couldn’t do to her. His Brigitte had no family, no people she found worthy enough to call friends and being a waitress in a grimey diner didn’t earn her much money either. If only he was financially stable, then he would have been able to tell his parents to screw themselves and not worry about the fact that his mother had bought the entire neighborhood complex and was threatening to evict everyone to demolish it and build a shopping center; or that his father was willing to pull strings to leave her legally broke and homeless. Or worse, missing if his son refused to comply.

No, he loved her too much to do that to her, but damn it all to hell if it wasn’t hurting...more like killing him inside to see her this way. His Brigitte was a gentle woman. She didn’t know how to be angry or how to hate. All she ever did was love even when others hurt her and he had promised himself that he wouldn’t be one of those people, yet here he was shoving her away from him, making her stumble and fall to the ground and cling to his leg as he dragged her fighting body with him towards the door.

“Caid, please, I know that--”

“When will you get it through that thick head of yours that it’s over?! Did you really expect for me to bring home some poor, black girl to my parents?” That broke his heart to say and apparently hers as well from the pained cry she released as she disentangled herself from his appendage. He wanted to tell her that she should know better. That he could give a rat’s ass what color she was or how much money she had. She had been his only light of sunshine since his move to Philly two and a half years before. If she hadn’t looked behind his façade of nonchalance and found that all he really needed was a friend, they wouldn’t have connected so much or become so attracted to each other that it felt like an eternity when they separated for the briefest of moments.

No, he didn’t correct himself. Instead, he watched her ball her long legs up into her chest and heave sorrowful tears onto her knees as she wrapped her arms around them to console herself. Instead, he pressed on, fighting against the severe urge to vomit the black coffee he had drank, to gain courage, before storming into their home to tell her these lies. “I mean, look at this place! I can’t do this anymore. It was a mistake for this to even happen and I don’t know what I was thinking. It was fun while it lasted, Brigitte, but you need to get over it. You’re a big girl now.”

His legs felt like lead as he dragged them to the door away from her. “Why?” she asked through the sea of tears. “Why!” she shouted when he refused to respond, only slamming the door behind him to rush down the steps of their first-floor apartment, catching himself before he smashed his face on the black and white tile floors when his tears blocked his vision and he tripped.

He was crying. Even harder than the day of his brother’s funeral. It hurt. His heart was aching and shattered, but that was nothing in comparison to the destruction he had caused Brigitte, on her day of birth, of all days. Now she would detest the day that she was born because it would forever be a reminder of what he had done.

He had to stop, dropping his bag once outside to grip his aching stomach. He literally felt violently ill and ready to pass out from it all. He stayed hunched over, not caring whether or not the other pedestrians regarded him strangely as he cried his heart out until he couldn’t breathe. Then, before he could change his mind and run back up those stairs to throw his arms around her and tell her that he was full of shit, he snatched up his bag, found his way to his car, and began to drive as far away as possible. Away from the only woman he had ever and would ever love.

He drove until the shabby apartments turned into small businesses then modern houses, tears still impeding his vision. He wiped his eyes clear in time to find a frightened mother snatching up her toddler who was running into the street after his red ball. Swerving wildly to the left to avoid them, he ran the red light, unable to stop his car from careening into another.

It’s funny how everything goes in slow motion the moment your life is about to end. Caid felt himself ascend then as if in some awkward, low-budget Lifetime movie, he watched as the stunned mother clutched her toddler close to her chest while her eyes and her mouth gaped open at the scene transpiring before her.

If you’ve ever had an out of body experience, maybe it wouldn’t be weird for you to witness your own death, but Caid watched helplessly as his car hydroplaned into the air after colliding with a black Cadillac Escalade before slamming down three times as it rolled over and over until coming to a complete stop. The impact was so great that even the Escalade had severe damage, that he didn’t know a 2001 Chevy Equinox could cause, as it flipped over into a ditch and laid upside down while frantic bystanders rushed to call for help and emergency vehicles.

He felt his body descending closer to the scene of the accident then he was there, standing right before himself as a bloody, mangled arm fought against weakness to pull the ring and locket out of his stained and glass-torn, Spring jacket. He watched himself wheeze for breath, fighting to take one last glance of his love to ingrain her features into his mind for eternity so that when he was burning in hell, he would find some semblance of peace.

His golden eyes rested on her smile, so adorable and full of light that even if you were having a horrible day before, she would brighten it for you. His hands tangled into her thick, straight black hair as she smiled up at him, would be the last memory he had of her. His Brigitte.

Squeezing the locket and the ring in his blood-covered hand, Caid saw the light slowly fade out of his eyes as he gasped his final breath while choking on his own blood. “Brigitte,” would be the last word that would ever slip from his thin, pale lips. And with his final ounce of energy gone, his arm fell limply out the window, still clutching onto his final treasure. He was gone. He watched himself die with the blaring of sirens to welcome his exit.

Caid turned as the cars literally drove through him to the scene of the accident. They had to turn both cars over in order to get to the victims and he saw as one of the firemen used the “Jaws of Life” to cut the top off of his car to reach him. However, by then they realized that it was far too late, hoisting his lifeless body onto the gurney to load him in the first ambulance while the second team of paramedics worked frantically to resuscitate the man in the other vehicle.

After getting a faint heartbeat, he too was loaded into an ambulance then rushed off to the nearest hospital. For some reason, when you die or have near-death experiences, they say that you see a bright white light calling you to go home. Well, he saw no lights save for the fluorescent bulbs of the hospital lights as he followed his own body to the hospital morgue. To him, time seemed to stand still though everyone about him was moving in a fast pace. He was merely an invisible onlooker who had no say so in what he was doing or where he was going.

He should have been wondering why he was still stuck on Earth. Maybe he would become a restless spirit for the rest of eternity, but his thoughts were easily forgotten as he watched the arrival of his parents, witnessed his father clutching his heart at the news that his son was now dead and actually smiled when his mother fainted. Even though it involved his death, Caid knew that they deserved this punishment for all of the wrongs that they had committed.

His smile turned into a light chuckle which upgraded to outright laughter as he held his stomach to contain it all: the irony, the animosity, the anguish; he was so through with it all that he preferred to laugh about it than to reason it out.

“Have you ended your fun yet?”

The laughter stopped. He straightened himself, turning cautiously to the voice. A voice that disappeared the same day that his brother died. Their eyes met, his filled with confusion, his brother’s filled with amusement.

“Corey?”

“That’s me, little bro. What are you doing here?” he asked, placing a gentle hand on his brother’s shoulder.

“What does it look like? I’m dead. Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“No,” Corey told him, shaking his head. It was uncanny how he looked exactly the same as he had the last day he had seen him in the hospital alive, only healthier and much happier. “Not dead, Caid, only in limbo.”

“What? What are you talking about not dead? I just saw the doctor tell Mom and Dad that I’m dead. Look at my clothes, they’re covered in holes and blood,” he pointed out, even holding up his tattered t-shirt for his brother to inspect.

Corey laughed still shaking his head, “I’m glad to see that you’re still the same.”

“What are you doing here, Corey? Is this heaven? Am I in heaven?”

Corey laughed again, wrapping an arm about his brother’s shoulder to turn him towards The Light. It was beautiful, peaceful, and beckoning to him. His body was ready to gravitate to it, but his brother placed a firm hand on his chest and shook his head once more. “Caid, today is not your time. I came because I was sent to tell you to go back. You don’t belong here...at least not yet.”

“But, I don’t understand.”

“Go back, Caid, I’ll be waiting for you when you return.” With that said, Corey gave him a hug then gently pushed him away, watching his body fall down until it disappeared.

Everything disappeared. The Light, his brother, the hospital, then it all turned black as if he was being swallowed in by darkness. And just when he was about to suffocate, his brother’s hand reached out and gave him one more push and with a painful grunt, Caid felt himself land hard.

“Doctor! Someone call the doctor! He’s finally awake.”

The voices echoed, bouncing around painfully in his head as he squinted his eyes against the brightness of the light.

“Adriano!”

His eyes shifted as he took in the beautiful woman hovering above him. She was obviously the motherly type, looking down at him in shock and disbelief, but there was no hiding the love in her eyes as she continued to call out to him and gently laid her hand on his face as her blacker than night hair fell forward to shadow her bluish-grey eyes.

“I’m so happy that you’re awake, Adriano. We were all so worried. Don’t you worry, Mamma’s gonna take great care of you,” she promised with the hint of an Italian accent, squeezing his hand tightly and caressing his cheek reassuringly as it all faded back to black.