One Life To Live

I walked up the stairs feeling only a single drive that propelled me forward. A drive that was leading me blindly to Melanie – I needed to know. The rumors and people tiptoeing around me (especially Paul) were just enough to make me want to beat down a door. I was so sick of it and I needed to hear the truth from the source – I needed her to tell me she was seeing this guy. I approached the last step and was finally on her floor. In the middle of the hall, there was a group of giggling blonde girls who quickly quieted down once I turned their way. A sly smile crossed the tallest girl’s face, and she spoke, “Can I help you?”

I shook my head, dismissing them as I made my way to B129, Mel’s room. One of the braver girls called out, “Looking for someone?”

I stopped outside of Mel’s door. Suddenly I felt a twisted smile develop on my lips and I said, “Found her.”

There was a murmuring, and I picked up some of the words being thrown around behind me – ‘Why is he at Melanie’s door?’, and ‘is he sure he has the right room?’ My eyebrows raised in intrigue when I heard that. So Melanie didn’t seem like the party girl type, apparently. They certainly didn’t know the half of what Melanie’s been up to lately. Now at least there was gossip spreading about her and me. We were old news as far as Melanie saw it. Depressing thought, but then again, that’s what I’ve been used to.

I knocked three times on the wooden door that had a white board attached on the outside that read: Beth and Melly’s room!  , written in purple marker. I had to chuckle a little – every time I saw the word, Melly, I always thought or said it in a southern voice. The door creaked open a moment later, and there she was – the blue-eyed blonde I expected to see, a laundry basket hanging off her right hip.

Shock spread across her features, but she regained a deadly composure a minute later giving me a wary look. She spoke, her voice clipped at me. Apparently she was agitated seeing me here. Didn’t surprise me. “Can I help you?”

I continued through the dorm, seeing a cluster of magazines pilled on a nightstand – Cosmopolitan, Glamour, In Style, any you could name. Right next to that was a notebook stuffed with Post-It notes, pages of paper folded together in fourths, scrawling filling the notebook-lined pages, and a pen that lay strategically over the top of it as if to hold it all together.

I was feeling eerily calm and even lazy at this point which was quite the contrast since I’d been screaming at poker night last night. I backed away from the nightstand, and met her studious expression. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“And what would you want to talk to me about, Lance?” She questioned, eyeing me. Her voice was seemed to hold bravado, but then again not so much as I analyzed it.

I watched her silently and didn’t answer for a few moments. “Are you seeing Greg Luca?”

Her eyes turned disbelieving. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Are you?” I insisted.

Her mouth opened, and then closed like she was deciding whether or not to tell me. Her honest side won out. “What if I said yes?”

My tongue slid across my front teeth in consideration before I spoke. “What if I said you’re making a huge mistake?”

Just like I had thought, that one statement enraged her more than if I would’ve called her a thousand bad names. Her face flushed – but not the sweet, endearing blush I’ve seen before. It was a red hot, steam-shooting-out-of-her-ears flush. “How dare you! What gives you the right to insert yourself and judge a nice man—”

I snorted, “Nice.”

Her eyes flashed, looking regal and elegant, and her fists tightened in anger. “How can you come into my house—”

I cleared my throat, “Dorm room, actually.”

“Whatever! How can you come in here and slander my choice to see a man that has neither lied to me, nor has kept a huge secret about who he was to me?”

I raised my eyebrows. “How can I? That’s what you want to know?”

“Yes!” Her arms flew up in the air, clearly irritated.

I closed the distance between us, and stared into her shining blue-green eyes. “You know how I can? Because I don’t give a shit how sweet he is. I don’t care about his squeaky clean résumé. He is nothing to me – I want him out of the goddamn picture, you see?” I was on a roll, nothing could stop me now – she was going to listen up, and she was going to listen good. “Because I can’t rest until you’re mine again, Mel. I don’t care what it takes. I can’t go a day without thinking what it would be like if we were together again. Yeah, I lied to you. Yeah, I work for the Mafia. Yeah, I’m not the guy who leads a perfect, by the book life, or who can whisper poetry in your ear just to please you. But I’m the guy who will love you more than anyone could ever dream, Mel. I may be goddamn selfish for saying it, but it’s true. I just want you, Mel.” I paused, looking at her.

For once, Melanie Cavlavier was speechless. I could’ve gone my whole life without seeing someone look at me that way. Like I was the reason for hours and hours of misery and sadness. No one ever looked at me in such an emotional way before.

“I know I’m the last person you want to see right now.” I hesitated. “But you’re the first person that’s ever slammed a car door shut on me, Mel. And you’re the first person who has ever made me want to drag you back into my car and talk some sense into you. You can’t imagine how much of an asshole I felt when you found out the wrong way. I wasn’t trying to lie to you, Mel. I just…didn’t know how to tell you. Everything was fine; everything was good until…until you overheard us. I didn’t know how to get you involved in something that is so opposite of what you are. You were too important to me to get you wound up into this life of mine…Yet I can’t let you leave it. You have no idea how much you’ve affected me, sweetheart.”

Her lower lip trembled, and she shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth,” I shrugged, even though my shoulders were straining too tight to be nonchalant. All my nerves were on edge. “And you know what? You still love me too.”

Her jaw hardened as she tried to pull herself together. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, Lance. Sometimes it takes much more than love to make a relationship work. And it looked to me like you were plenty fine with your relationship status at the party, Lance.” She diverted her eyes for a minute before returning them back to me.

I stood there, my jaw ajar. “First of all, you’re the one who went off with Greg before I even made a move on Maria. So I have no clue where you’re coming from. And you want to know another thing?” I closed the distance between us and her head tilted up a fraction to stare at me. “I brought her back to my room and told her to leave within ten minutes. I gave her fifty bucks for a fuckin’ cab ride home, Mel. So no, I didn’t do anything with her.”

Her eyes flickered down to my shoulders as she said her next words. “That’s beside the point. What I’m saying is, we’ve never tried to be friends. And I think it would be-would be better for the both of us if we…if we tried to be friends and didn’t get our emotions involved.”

I threw my head back and laughed harshly. “Friends? Wow, Mel you really are over me, aren’t you?” I shook my head, staring into her eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? I could never be, ‘just friends’ with you.” I glared at her, my anger picking up. “But then again, now that you and Greg are so infatuated with each other, it’s real easy to toss me aside isn’t it?”

She stared up at me with malice in her eyes. A red flush spread up her neck. “What do you want me to do, Lance? Run back in your arms?”

I huffed. “That would be the point, yes.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

“And why not?” I dragged my index finger down the length of her chin.

“Why not?” She scoffed helplessly, and her eyes were begging for me to understand. “Lance, God. Do you how hard it was for me? Do you how painful it was to break up with you? I was just about to turn around and come back in your car when I left. But no. I forced myself to keep walking.”

She paused, her eyes watering. “I knew I couldn’t-couldn’t handle it. I knew it would be the so easy to give in and be with you just because. Ignore the problem and just be blissful being with you. But then when you would get your arm cut open like the night you came to my place-” I winced at the memory. “-that I would think of all the bad things you would go through with a job like yours. I did, Lance. I thought about them that night.”

I took this in. “Mel, my job is separate from my life. There is my personal life and there is my work. You are in my personal life. You don’t need to worry about what I do for a living.”

She just looked at me, defeated. “Lance, I don’t think you get it. I am the kind of person who would want to know everything about the person I’m with. You can’t keep your job from me. It’s part of you. It would be part of me.”

“We’ll figure that out when the time comes. I just want you, Mel. Nothing will ever be right in my life if you aren’t in the picture. It hasn’t been right since you left me. You can’t honestly say that you’re ready to move on – to Greg, of all people.”

Her lips parted. She looked at me, her eyes afraid of the truth there about everything I said. There was a vulnerability there that didn’t know how to respond to my last sentence. I took that as I victory. She wasn’t sure at all about Greg, I noticed. Just by that look in her eyes. I would be the one to prove to her that she was still in love with me. That she still wanted to be with me. That’s what I would prove to her tonight.

I brought my hands up to cup each side of her face, while her eyes glistened and closed, tears now running down her face. I used my thumbs to brush them away, and dragged my hands down to her waist to pull her body against mine. I bent my six-four frame to rest my forehead against hers. My lips closed in on hers, and I tested the waters – my lips tasting hers thoroughly while I deepened the kiss, soaking up the ecstasy of the moment. When I felt her respond just as intensely, I dragged my lips from her lips, to her smooth, rosy cheek, and finally stopped at the beginning of her ear. My hands slid up her back, and I could feel the tension laden in her muscles. “You need to let go.” I whispered. “Let go, and let me make sweet,” I paused, planting small kisses on her earlobe, “sweet love to you.” I brought my lips back over to rest right over hers, my nose brushing against hers. “How do you feel about that?”

As those words left my mouth, something inside her cut loose as if she’s been waiting to hear them this whole time, which surprised me. Her taut grip around my neck slacked and her delicate arms went limp, resting on top of my shoulders. Her body sagged in defeat against mine, and I gathered her up in my embrace, pressing my lips hotly against hers. A thought in my head clicked on a light bulb, and I finally realized that I had her back in my arms. Not just in my arms but I had her back.