Title: There's Joy in Sadness
Date: March 3rd, 2011
She stood on the balcony, overlooking forests of pine and poplar slowly vanishing under the thick, fluffy white blanket of snow that had been falling tirelessly for several weeks now. She was wearing that burgundy sweater I’d given her years ago for her birthday, just a few scant days before her strict parents had discovered our relationship and banished her to her uncle’s home in some ass-backwards corner of some Russian-speaking country. I wanted to make a crack about how much weight she’d gained since getting hitched, but I decided against it. It was too soon for that, and I needed to save something for my encore performance.
Nicotine filled my lungs and I exhaled slowly, the smoke from my cigarette vanishing when a particularly strong gust filled the loft of my cottage. On the hearth, orange-gold flames crackled and sparked and danced with the wind. I stubbed out the last ashy dregs of the unfiltered cancerous stick on the table in front of me before reaching for my glass of whiskey and draining it.
“Why’d you come back, Bianca?” My knee cracked as I stood up and walked over to my liquor cabinet in order to pour myself another drink. “I mean . . . shit, it’s been seven, almost eight years now.”
The only response I got was her hugging her arms to her chest and staring down at her feet instead of the forest. I rolled my eyes at her childish antics and asked myself yet again why I’d ever found her attractive in the first place. I drained my second whiskey and stared at the ice in the glass.
A bit of time passed -- enough that the fire had burned down to a few dying flames, prompting me to add another log. I was just about to turn around and demand that she leave my sanctuary when I finally heard my name called softly.
“I came back because I’m miserable, Sarah” Bee finally whispered, her breath hitching ever so slightly as she fought to control her tears. “Look . . . I screwed up. I listened to Mom and Dad and ignored your phone calls and burned all your letters. I came back to apologize, see if you’ll forgive me . . .”
“And?” I lit up another cigarette. “I ain’t gonna do it, Bianca. If you wanted forgiveness, you shoulda gotten it seven years ago when I was still naive enough to believe you deserved it.”
Bianca Danvers had been my best friend and the only rock I had to cling to when my parents jumped off the wagon and back into their wine. Then her parents, thinking that I was a woman of loose morals and looser undergarments, sent her away. At first I was dilligent, writing to her, emailing her, texting her, and doing everything in my power to keep in contact because I needed her unconditional friendship like a drowning man needs air . . . then she stopped answering me.
After six months of constant letter-writing (her email and text inboxes were full) I just stopped trying. There was no point in trying to keep something alive that was obviously rotting on the side of the road.
“I do gotta hand it to you, Mrs Mortenson,” I drawled slowly as I walked to my desk and removed a file folder bearing her maiden name, the name I’d grown up calling her. “You've got a hell of a lot more balls than I gave you credit for. You didn’t honestly think that after I made my name known in the literary world that I wouldn't try to track you down? You really need to make your Facebook page friends-only, sweetheart, I was at your goddamn wedding. How is Gregori, by the way? Still the tanned Italian hunka-hunka-burnin’ love who swept you off your feet and put a ring on your finger?”
Finally, the bitch began to sob. She sank to her knees, held her head in her hands, and rocked back and forth as I put away her file and fixed myself another whiskey.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “My parents, everything, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Sorry might have fixed things when we were teenagers, but we’re both adults now,” I sighed, taking pity on her and relenting. Fat, useless people were ugly when they cried like two year olds being weaned off bottles. “You left me with nothing. I tried for months to contact you for months, Bee, because you were the only one who stuck with me through all that shit with my family . . . But hey, I guess I gotta thank you. Without your abandonment, I wouldn’t be planning a world-wide book tour for Exempt. Now stop crying on my carpet and get off my property. We’re finished here.”
