Hallelujah

I sat quietly at a table in the food court, customary sunglasses covering my wandering eyes as they followed mall passerby. I was utterly invisible, just another plastic woman surrounded by bags of new designer clothes and shoes. Thin perfect women walked by on the arms of male models. Ugly women sidled into the mall food court to fulfill their cheesecake and fries cravings. Frazzled moms sat at tables, doing their best to get their balls of joy to shut the hell up and eat their McNuggets. I sat alone in the back tables, surrounded by a writhing mass of humanity as I ignored my strawberry shake. This was Southern California; people-watching at its best. Two tall women, loaded down with at least five bags each, came around the corner and sat on a bench about twenty feet away from me, just outside of the food court seating. One flipped her brunette hair over her shoulder, the other repeated the movement with her blonde tresses. It struck me that not only were they twins, but that I knew them very well.

It was Val and Michelle who sat laughing at their own private joke, enjoying their own perfect lives. As I watched, two tall, built men, tattoos and muscle shirts included, walked around the same corner the twins had. They managed to squeeze onto the bench with the women and peck their significant others on the lips. I was suddenly stabbed in the chest by a violent twinge of jealousy. My life was still far from perfect. I had no one here to go shopping with, nor had I a caring boyfriend.

I tore my eyes away as my phone rang, picking it up with a sullen,

"Hullo?" I really wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone right now. I wished the person on the other end of the line sudden unconsciousness.

"Cady? It's Aria."
I blinked, pulled the phone away from my face and glanced at the time. It was five in the afternoon in Washington DC.

"Oh. Hey." I said quietly, concentrating very hard on the Formica table in front of me. "How are you?"

"Good, great. Just decided to call and annoy you."

"Ha. I'm too distracted to be annoyed..." My eyes drifted up to the bench again, aware it was now unoccupied. I felt strangely happy at their departure. Perfection had left me to my own devices yet again. Thank God.

"Cady--- CADY! Are you listening to me?"

"Huh?" I hadn't known she was talking. I apologized and asked her to repeat herself.

"I said I got into Johns Hopkins! I'm officially in training to be a dead people doctor as of next month!"

I smiled, happy that things were at least better on the other side of the country.

"You're really in medical school? Have a great time with autopsy, hun. I feel sorry for all those corpses already." She laughed dryly and continued talking. I added a falsely bright "Cool!" every once in a while, an "Uh-huh," thrown in to show I was listening. I felt quite horrible wanting someone to be as miserable as me, so it was better just to act excited. I was excited for her. My ridiculously brilliant, amazingly funny, metal-obsessed friend was making something of her life. Whereas I was sitting in a mall food court wishing I was someone, she was someone. Lucky her. Now I have another person to be jealous of.

"Alright, well, I gotta go. Hope things are awesome where you are."

"Yeah. Bye ya, dummy."

"Bye!" She hung up with a click and I laid my head on the sticky plastic food court table. I wished I was as tall and pretty as the Dibenedetto twins, that I had a man again, that I was smart enough for the ivy leagues.. anyone or anything to fill these moments with more than just jealousy and envy. My phone started to vibrate again, bumping into the top of my head a few times before I bothered to press the 'talk' button.

"Hullo?" I asked, voice muffled by the table.

"Cady?" It was a deep male voice I knew well. Brian was on the other side of the phone. I groaned internally.

"What." I sounded as whiny as I felt.

"Where are you? I just saw your car in the mall parking lot. Actually... I'm leaning against it now."

"Not at the mall. Went home," I lied.

"Without your car?" He scoffed.

"Yep... took a cab back," How would he know anyway? I had my own tiny apartment, my own shitty little life.

"Are you okay?" He sounded concerned. Fuck. I didn't want this right now. I just wanted to be alone. Why did he always have to stick his head into my life when I was miserable? I heard him murmur to Michelle to keep walking, he'd catch up to her in a minute, babycakes. That knife of jealousy ripped into the tissue of my heart again, causing me to bite the inside of my lip hard enough to taste blood. "Cadybear? You there?"

"Yeah. Sorry. I'm fine,"

"Are you sure?" He sounded like he didn't believe it. I wouldn't have either. "I'll come over if you need me to." I cringed away from the phone.

"No. Stay with your girlfriend, Bri. I'm fine, really."

"You're not fine." He sounded sure. It scared me how well he could read my voice over the phone.

"Am too."

"You want to talk or something? I'm slowly getting better at the whole listening thing."

I chuckled before sighing heavily.
"Brian."

He mocked my sigh and said,
"Cady."

"Why do you care so much? We're just friends." That knife was stabbing me again, cutting deeper and deeper.

Without so much as missing a beat he responded:
"I care because you're a good friend and you sound really down."

I snorted.
"I'm always down."

"Yeah. But you shouldn't be."

"Bri-"

"What?"

There was so much I wanted to say. Twelve different sentences lined up in my head. "Tell everyone I said hey," I said lamely, stating the least malignant of them all.

He sighed in a defeated way.
"You know it drives me crazy when you do this... And I'll be by around seven whether you want me there or not." I heard a click and the line went dead. He'd hung up on me. Asshole.

He did come around at seven exactly, let himself in with the spare key I gave him (the only key I'd given out), and plopped down on the bed next to me while I stayed wrapped in a ball of bedsheets.

"Cady?"

"Mmph."

He pulled on my shoulder until I was laying on my back while he sat at my waist. I stared into his deep chocolate eyes and said nothing. What could I say? Break up with Michelle right now because I like you a little more than I should? Make Val die so I can take her place? (Alright, in retrospect that last one is a little horrible.)

"Are you going to talk to me at all?" Brian wondered. I shrugged. The jealousy wired my mouth shut, made me fight against the hand on my shoulder. I gave up trying to turn away and just turned my head away. A hot tear slipped from my left eye and disappeared into my hair. "Cadybear," he whispered. I didn't move.

Matt didn't love me. Brian cared about me but that was the extent of it.

"Cady." He repeated, louder this time. I sat up and hugged him tightly, pressing my face against his neck as more tears pushed their way out. He was silent for a long moment. "Don't cry. I never know what to do when people cry." I sniffled loudly, inadvertently taking in a strong whiff of his musky-sweet cologne. He rubbed my back with his knuckles, not knowing what else to do.

I looked up into his eyes, wiping away the pointless tears. It was nice to have someone to lean on for once, but..
"Brian. Please, just leave... I'll call you tomorrow. I promise." His face was only a few inches away, making the indecision even easier to read. His lips went into a hard line and he exhaled through his nose.

"There's no way you can tell me what's bothering you?" You and Matt being happy with your girlfriends is what's bothering me. I shook my head, knowing he'd obey my request. He pecked me lightly on the forehead and let go of me, slipping off the bed and standing up. Brian paused near the door to my bedroom and turned back, smoothing his shaggy hair down with one hand.

"You have no idea how crazy this makes me, how crazy you can make me, Cate... You better call." I shrugged, repeating that I would.

"Go home to Michelle and forget about me. Seriously, she's gonna think we're fucking or something." Brian rolled his eyes and walked out.

"Bye, Cate." He paused again without turning around, his voice echoing in the hall. "And for the record, what I'd do to you would take a hell of a lot longer than ten minutes."

"I'm sure." I whispered, laughing with no sound. It's my saddest laugh, really, too close to a sob to count.

Will I be seeing you tomorrow?
Will I be seeing you again?
God knows we've said so little.
I'd go so far as to call you a friend.

But there's something in your ways,
It keeps me vying for a connection.
And I know you feel the same.
it's become a two-way addiction...

I curled back into a ball of sheets as the knife kept at me. His footsteps stopped.

"I said bye."

"Goodnight, Brian."

~*~
The memory was antagonizing me while I did my dramatic makeup. I shrugged and swiped off a ruined line of liquid liner off my top lid. It's very hard to make a solid line when your hands won't stop shaking.

To think that was four and a half years before now, before I gave up on being anything to Brian and watched the on again-off again romance with Matt and Val whither up and die for good. Then the day after that, I went over Matt's house to help him drink off his troubles. In short, we got wasted and fucked for a night. When I woke up in his bed, I decided to stay. Then came Matt and I, the infamous warring couple. It just took a while.

I never really understood why they'd liked me, the sad little bitch, so much.

Come on and give me your heart.
Write it on the back of my hand
and say it's forever.

Come on and give me your heart...