Red Tail Lights

”I'm looking at you through the glass...
Don't know how much time has passed
Oh, god it feels like forever”
Giovanna stared at the TV while she lounged on her couch, watching Fuse’s Hitlist. She hadn’t done anything but this so far today, and she wasn’t planning on doing anything until she had to go to work later on tonight. Her son Bentley was at her mother’s for a play-date sleepover last night, and would be doing the same again tonight because she had to work overnight again. She hated her job, and she hated that she never went to college, and now it was biting her in the ass, hardcore. She was stuck working two jobs, one as a waitress during the day, and at night she stripped for her money. She knew it wasn’t a way to be living, but there’s no such thing as a job in this recession. She did want to go back to school, but having Bentley and trying to work was too hard. She was already twenty six years old, and the field she wanted had absolutely no job openings, even in a good economy. Harper wanted to do photographic journalism, but even in a steady, stable economy it was impossible to find jobs, regardless of the horrible economy the country was in.
Giovanna loved her son, many who knew what she did for a living might think otherwise. But she did, he was her light, her world. Everything she did, she did it for him. All she could ever think about while she was standing on the stage by the pole, was that once she was done she would get to go home to her beautiful brown eyed, brown haired son. Whenever someone asked her what she did for a living, all she would tell them was the waitressing part. She wasn’t lying, just leaving out an important part.
As Giovanna listened to the music pump through the speakers of her TV, she caught herself staring over at the picture frame that sat on the side table, of her and Brian in high school, before she began college and him and the boys began their musical dream. They really were a great band, Giovanna listened to them on almost a daily basis, but Stone Sour was the number one song on the soundtrack of her life as she stared at the picture. It all seemed so long ago, but it also felt like just yesterday. Brian and Giovanna were happy, at least, she thought they were. They had managed to last two years into Giovanna’s college career, and then things started going south for them. They were constantly fighting, Giovanna was always sick and always snapping at Brian, she didn’t know what was wrong. Until one day she realized she was a week late with her period. She thought at first it was just all the stress from Brian, but soon she realized she wasn’t that stressed anymore. She was forgetting what it was like to be stressed, in fact, she was anything but. She was beginning to have fun at school again, until that day she decided to go take a pregnancy test and find out why she was so late. That day, she found out she was pregnant. She knew it was Brian’s, she hadn’t slept with anybody else except him, and he was her first and most recently her last. She knew it was his, and she also knew she’d never see Brian again. They had broken up, and Brian and the boys had made it big finally. They were on tour, and Giovanna didn’t want to ruin Brian’s fun. She figured she’d tell him when she saw him around, but that never happened.
Giovanna constantly thought about Brian, he was always on her mind; she couldn’t get over him, no matter how hard she tried. She tried dating other guys, but most just ran off once they heard she had a son. And it’s not like Bentley was young, he was six, and you could bet if you didn’t know before hand, he would tell you exactly how old he was, and hold up his fingers too. Giovanna was only 20 when she had Bentley, but she had the maternal instincts of someone twice her age. Her mother even believed that she was more mature than her actual age, and that it was a shame she had to leave school so early, but she understood. Her mom’s been pushing her to go back ever since, but Giovanna just can’t seem to find the time or money.
Giovanna decided that she needed to go food shopping, so there were actually more than chewy bars and other random things in the apartment for Bentley and herself to eat. She dragged herself upstairs to take a quick shower and change out of her sweatpants into jeans, a beaten up Motley Crue shirt and a pair of worn out old black Converse. She grabbed her bag off the counter, walked out the door and headed to the supermarket.
Brian finally had to chance to be home for more than two weeks and figured he needed to go get some food to keep in the house so he could actually cook himself dinner every now and then, instead of living off pizza and fast food joints. He dressed into one of Zacky’s Vengeance University brand shirts, a pair of dark wash jeans and slipped on his new black nikes. He grabbed one of the many baseball hats he owns out of his hatbox and felt ready to go. Throwing his wallet in his back pocket and grabbing his keys to his car, he walked out the door locking it behind him.
Brian’s iPod was synced to his speaker system and kept it on shuffle, never knowing when it restarted itself, if it even has considering he has almost 15,000 songs on it. Of course Brian had his own band on there as well, why would he make the music he does if it’s not something he wouldn’t listen to himself. But today it seemed as if his iPod felt to be in a Goo Goo Dolls mood. ‘Slide’ came on, and all he could think about was Gia. It had been their song throughout their relationship, and now it’s hard for him to listen to it. Normally he just changes it, but today he left it. He had actually been thinking about Gia a lot lately, and wondering how she’s been doing. He actually did miss Gia; he had just up and left her. He didn’t really give her a reason, except for the whole long distance garbage. He had heard through the grapevine that she dropped out of school because she ended up pregnant. It bothered him every day wondering if it was true, and if it was true, he wanted to know if the child was his. And that’s if she had even kept it, Gia wanted to go somewhere in life, she always said she wanted to work for Alternative Press and live her dream of following bands on tour and being able to write about them. But if she had kept the child, she would of abandoned all of her dreams, just for the child. Gia was selfless like that, if someone needed her, she gave them her all.
Brian pulled into the parking lot of the supermarket, put his car in park and walked towards the doors, grabbing a shopping cart as he went in. He wore sunglasses to avoid too many people coming up to him and asking who he was, he wanted to make this quick and painless.
Giovanna got out of her car and locked it as she walked towards the sliding opening doors and grabbed a shopping cart as she walked in. She walked around the store, gathering what she needed and in a daze of her trying to remember what she needed to get, she slammed right into someone else’s cart.
“I’m so sorry” he said reaching out his hand to prevent anything falling out of either cart. While his arm was outstretched, Harper couldn’t help but notice the ‘1’ tattoo on his thumb.
“Brian?” Giovanna asked still staring at his hand.
Brian took his sunglasses off allowing him to see who it was that knew him. Giovanna.
“Hey Gia” Brian smiled, knowing he was still the only one who could get away with calling her that. Maybe the Goo Goo Dolls was a sign, I’ll have to thank the musical Gods later Brian thought to himself.
“Even after all these years, you’re still the only one who can get away with calling me that, how you been?” she laughed. “I saw you guys really took off, you guys working on anything new?” Giovanna didn’t want to talk about her, she didn’t know if Brian knew she had a kid, and if he did, he wasn’t going to find out it was his.
“Yea, we actually just got back in the studio again. But, I was talking to Kail the other day, she said you dropped out of school?”
“Yea, I uh, I ended up getting pregnant and as you know, I don’t believe in abortion so I kept him.”
“How old is he?” Brian asked trying to put together the pieces
“Six” Giovanna answered. As soon as she answered him, she wished she would have lied and said a year younger. But, maybe he won’t figure it out. Yea right Gia, you know Brian’s smarter than that.
“That’s nice” He said with a smile, “What’s his name?”
“Bentley” She replied simply.
“That’s a really nice name. What made you think of it?”
“Honestly Bri, I have no idea” she laughed. But she did know why she chose Bentley, it was the name Brian had always wanted to name his son if he ever got the chance to have one. Little did he know, he did have one.
Brian simply nodded, remembering the conversations that he and Giovanna used to have when they were still together, back when they were close and had deep meaningful conversations.
“Do you have a picture?” Brian asked wanting to know what he looked like.
“I don’t have a picture Brian, I have too many pictures” She laughed pulling her phone out of her bag. Bentley did look like Brian, but he also looked like Giovanna. She pulled up a picture of Bentley, and showed Brian, his face lighting up with a smile.
“He’s absolutely beautiful, Gia. Congratulations” he smiled.
“Thanks Bri. But, I should get going. I have food shopping to finish and I gotta go get Bentley from my mom’s once I’m done. It was nice seeing you Brian. I’ll see you around” Giovanna said and began to walk away.
“Gia! Wait!” Brian yelled catching her attention.
“Yea, Bri?” Giovanna asked turning around to look at him and stare into his gorgeous brown eyes.
“Would you wanna maybe go grab lunch or something tomorrow?”
Giovanna thought it over, knowing she wasn’t over Brian and she did want to be with him. She wanted a solid family for her son, and for it to be with his father, not someone who pretended to be his dad.
“I’d love to Brian” she smiled
“Awesome, do you still have the same number?”
“Yea” She nodded, “Wait, you still have my number?” She asked with a puzzled face.
“What can I say? I can’t let go of the past”