heart. I close my eyes to block out the noise and the sights of the city because I only want to feel him. Somehow, I just know that this is it. Our make or break moment. For good this time. I just wonder which way it will turn out…
Chapter 28 – Brandon
I spend the next few days throwing myself into my new business venture. As I do it with all my heart and soul it doesn’t feel like work. Even the stressful bits aren’t hard to do because I’m so damn desperate to get things done. I love it. Every day I realize more and more this is just what I want to do. This is me. Finally I feel like myself.
As I bang on the door to the motel room which has almost become like a second home to me, I’m bursting with things that I want to tell Lola… but all of them fall apart on my lips as the door swings open and I see what’s going on inside.
“Are you packing?” I ask while peering behind Lola. The mess that’s been all over the floor is long gone now and already I miss it. “What’s going on? Are you moving hotel?”
“Actually…” As she speaks she can hardly meet my eyes. My chest runs cold as I get a horrible feeling that I’m not going to like this. “Dad wants to go back home. He’s finished his treatment with the doctor for now, I’m sure he’ll have follow up appointments, but…” She shrugs her shoulders regretfully at me. “For now he wants to go back. I have been calling you all day long, you just weren’t answering your phone.”
I grab my phone out of my pocket and stare at the screen. Thirteen missed calls and four text messages stare back at me, all containing the terrible news I can see in front of me. “Oh God, sorry I’ve just been so busy today. In meetings and things. I didn’t look at my phone.” I shove it back in my pocket and shake my head as I realize that the missed calls aren’t the most important things. “You’re leaving? Today?”
My heart thumps angrily, my stomach turns over and over in a frantic, confused manner, my head spins. How can I make this not be the truth? What can I do?
“I have to, Brandon,” she tells me sadly. “My dad needs me at the moment. I might be back soon, especially if the record label stuff works out, but I can’t just leave him.”
She’s right, I know she is, and I also realize that this doesn’t spell the end of us, but that doesn’t stop any of the anxiety from coiling around inside of me. I’m so damn scared to let Lola go. I don’t want to spend another year without her. I can’t do it. I won’t survive.
“How are you getting back?” I gush. “What’s happening? What time are you leaving?”
“We’re headed to the bus stop now, I’m so sorry Brandon, I honestly didn’t want you to find out in such a brutal fashion.”
Her eyes are so full of hurt, it breaks my heart. I can see that she doesn’t want it to be this way, but she feels like this is what she has to do. I could just step back and let her do her thing, but the idea of the separation kills me.
“Okay. Don’t go to the bus stop,” I tell her sharply. “Not yet. I’ll… I’ll take you back. I’ll drive you, it won’t take me long.”
This causes her to widen her eyes in shock. “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve got all your own stuff going on. You’ve got your business and all your meetings… I don’t want to get in the way of anything.” She steps forwards and takes my hands in hers. “I know you have your own thing going on at the moment. I will be back, this isn’t goodbye. This is just me doing my thing while you do yours. Our lives are both crazy at the moment. It’s just a bit of a timing thing. It’s certainly something that we can overcome.”
I can’t stand it, her words are killing me. Logically I know that everything she’s saying is right and that of course we’ll be fine at the end of it, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I pull her to me and run one hand up the back of her neck until it knots up into her hair, then I crash my lips into hers and I kiss her hard.
“I don’t want you to go,” I murmur into her mouth as we pull apart. “I can’t stand the idea of being without you.”
“I know, I know,” she agrees. “I can’t stand it either, but what else can we do?”
The words bubble up inside of me, I can’t seem to stop them from falling out of my mouth. I don’t think that the timing is right, but that doesn’t seem to matter. “I love you,” I whisper to her, so quietly that only she can hear.
“You do?” she gushes to me. “Because I love you too. Really and truly.”
“Then get your things. I’m driving you home.”
There’s no way in hell I’m going to let this wonderful woman get the bus. She needs to go home, fine, but I’m taking her. Then maybe on the way we can both really think about how we’re going to make this work. It’s an hour to an hour and a half. Plenty of time for me to come up with the right plan for all of us.
“Hold on, I’ll go and tell Dad.”
Lola’s father doesn’t even bat an eyelid when he comes to get into my car, but I’m not too surprised. He seemed to know how deeply me and Lola felt for one another before we even knew it. I mean, I knew it but it’s taken this moment for me to feel it as deeply as I do now. I know with absolute certainty now that I would die without Lola in my life. I just need to find a way to make this work. Bad timing or not.
***
I drive on autopilot most of the way to Lola’s home. None of us talk, I barely even look where I’m going, I’m just trying to work out how me and Lola can keep being in one another’s lives. Right now, I need to stay in the city while I get my business established, and Lola needs to be between the two. Maybe we’ll just have to spend some time apart in the beginning. I don’t know. We desperately need a plan.
“Oh wow.” Seeing Lola’s little cottage at the edge of her farm brings all the old memories flooding back. Every meal, every kiss, every shared look. It all makes me feel so many overwhelming emotions at once. “It doesn’t look any different.”
“Doesn’t it?” Lola leans out the window sleepily. She’s drifted in and out all the way home, which has made it easier for me to remain silent. “I suppose not. This is the town that never changes. Always the same.”
“Well, until I came along,” I tease her. “Then everything changed.”
“And not all for the better.” She raises her eyebrows and smiles at me. “But mostly.”