On the Back of the Breeze
Sadie Boatright
“Stop! Just stop it!” a small voice reverberates through the tiny apartment. It is the first thing she says once she drops her hand from her mouth, containing all of her ugliest words.
“Please, I’m just trying to explain.” The desperation rolls off Cameron’s lips, ready to drop to his knees.
“There’s nothing to explain, Cam. How could you?” Her words hung above him like a water balloon waiting to be popped.
“We didn’t plan for it to happen- she just came by to-”
With the raise of a single hand his words came to a halt in this throat.
“I think you were pretty clear in explaining the events leading up to the moments that you screwed my best friend,” she said, wincing at the reality of the words.
He didn’t know which hurt worse, the daggers coming from her eyes or her words. He couldn’t bring his chin high enough to meet her blazing eyes, wishing the tears would put out the flames that grow behind them. Though broken inside she stood tall, as tall as 5’4 inches could, and tense. A face that used to signify comfort, joy and love now acted as an impenetrable shield, protecting what little lies left behind it.
“That’s what I thought.” She walks quickly past him, sweeping her long brown curls out of her face, heading for the door.
“Where are you going?!” he calls after her, though he didn’t blame her for trying to get away, he wished he had the same luxury.
She paused with one foot out the door. The crisp fall air tries to soothe the fire burning inside her, kissing her damp cheeks, the sensation sending a chill down her spine.
“I need to think, Cam. Alone.”
All he could do was stand as she walked out the door.
“I love you, Simone,” he says to the door
“I love you, Simone.”
Simone made it around the corner from Cam’s apartment before she was brought to her knees by the ache in her chest. She wrapped her arms around her knees, wishing she’d thrown on a hoodie, but going back now would ruin the power of her exit.
“I love you, Simone.”
The phrase stuck on a loop in her head. She finally gained enough composure to walk, hoping if she kept a pace quick enough, it would keep her warm. Had someone been sitting in that Volkswagen Bug across the street they probably would have been frightened by the sight of her. A messy girl in her 20s running away from her boyfriend with streaks of mascara decorating her face. Thoughts consumed her head, thoughts of how the hands that once made her feel so safe now seem cold and dangerous. How the lips that had spoken words louder than Cam could ever say them have now poisoned every word he’d ever spoken. She wiped her mouth where she felt the poison lingering from their last kiss.
That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that it wasn’t a stranger’s body that had laid under her boyfriend that night. It was Sloan, met in the 9th grade and promised then and there to be best friends forever, Sloan. Not that she was fond of the idea of her boyfriend cheating on her by any means, but at this moment she would have found the pain in her chest to be slightly more bearable knowing that the woman involved hadn’t been the same woman who spent every Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthday at her table. They shared an apartment for Christ sake! Every happy memory she had of the only people that felt like home to her turned to black. She could feel the blood that pumped through her broken heart all the way to her fingertips, as they violently tapped on her screen.
It wasn’t until then that Simone realized just how far from the apartment her thoughts had taken her. She turned around while the line continued to dial on the other end. Though she wasn’t sure what she was planning to say to Cam, who was most definitely waiting up for her, she wasn’t stubborn enough to stay out in this cool air while she figured it out.
You’ve reached the voice mailbox of–
Simone calls again.
She puts the phone to her ear and gets startled when headlights begin to turn down the street from behind her. She’d almost forgotten that the world didn’t only consist of her and her shitty best friends.
She listens to the dial tone and continues walking when she realizes the car never passed her. The headlights still cast her shadow in front of her. She wants to look back but instead just slightly tries to increase her pace. When she picks up speed she realizes the car matches her tempo. She moves quicker and quicker until she breaks out into a sprint. Suddenly all of her seemingly world-shattering problems disappeared into nothing. She came up on the corner and banked left into a large shadowed figure and the car came to a halt. Her scream was muffled by a white cloth and large firm hand. In her last breath of consciousness she found herself straining to call out for the guy that deep down she knew she loved.
Cameron
“We understand you’re Ms Foster’s boyfriend, is that right?” the taller of the two men asks me.
“Yes. I am.” I bit my tongue, but I had much more I wanted to say. But the less I cooperate the longer this would take, and as much as I wanted to lay my fist into the sides of their faces, I knew I was only wishing it was me on the other side of my fist.
“And we also understand you were the last person she was seen with that night. Is that correct?” I didn’t appreciate the judgment in his tone, as if I actually had a hand in–. My thoughts relapse, and my throat tightens at the uncertainty of what happened to her. I never should have let her leave my damn apartment. I don’t care that Hudson has a practically negative crime rate. How stupid am I, to let the love of my life just walk out of the apartment in the middle of the night, vulnerable and emotional. Because of me.
“Yes.” A tear rolls down the side of my cheek, I don’t bother to wipe it away, I let it fall til it magnifies on the sleek shiny table in front of me.
“The neighbors say they heard some shouting coming from your apartment just a few minutes before Simone went missing. Can you tell us what that was about?”
“We were having an argument, a passionate conversation. We were both upset and hurting. But it wasn’t violent, and I would never do any–” My voice cut out and more brothers and sisters began to join the once lone tear on the table.
“Son, we understand you’re upset. But we have to dot all the i’s and cross every t, and unfortunately you’re not exempt from such questioning until we say so,” the shorter one says in a way that felt like it came from a father.
“I cheated on her.” The room stayed silent, my uneven breaths the only sign of life in the room. “I cheated on her and that’s what I was telling her that night, and…and sh-she was so upset and betrayed and she said she needed to clear her head and she needed to be alone to think. And I let her. I let her walk right out the door. I should have stopped her.” Silence.
“I should have told her it’s dangerous, I should have told her to be careful, don’t go far, I should– I shouldn’t have cheated.” I beat my fists on the table trying to push right through the metal.
Still silence is the loudest person in the room.
Until the cop finally says, “Listen, there’s no predicting these kinds of situations. And the quicker you answer our questions, the quicker we can find out what happened to your girlfriend, alright?”
I wiped my hands down my face and nodded my head.
30 minutes of questions later:
“Last couple questions here, son. Could you tell us what your girlfriend Simone was doing in Riverside on Tuesday October 16th at 9:33pm?”
“Uh, no. Simone checks in on her father in Elmsdale every Tuesday and Thursday night after her shift at the hospital, then goes straight back to her place cause it’s a closer drive. Maybe that was the closest gas station she could get to?”
“If her father lives 15 minutes East of Hudson, what would make her cross town in the opposite direction for gas to go back across town to stay the night at her place?”
What the hell was this? There had to be some logical explanation. My mind ached at the idea that it may never be explained.
“This is absurd, you think my girlfriend was some sort of criminal? You think she was out on the weeknights, what, moving drugs for people? I just spent the last 30 minutes explaining the kind of person she was, is. And you think that sounds like someone capable of getting caught up in whatever this is?”
I’ll be damned before they accuse my Simone of this juvenile behavior. Although I must admit, I have no idea what she would be doing in Riverside, even if it was just for gas.
“The fact that it doesn’t match up with what you’ve told us about her is exactly why we are looking into it. But before you go…” The tall one stands up and the short one follows suit. I then take my stance meeting their eyes “We’re gonna need the name of the young lady you had an affair with.”
I stare back at them.
I let out a sigh.
Sloan
“Sloan Jacobs. Senior undergrad in Finance at Hudson University, and president of the Environmentalist Club,” he said without even looking at the file. Had he memorized it?
I didn’t know if that was supposed to be a statement or a question that I was supposed to confirm. I nod my head softly to let him know it’s me. They watch me intensely as I spin the ring around my pinky finger. I feel like I’m gonna explode or something and I didn’t even do anything wrong. Well, I mean I did something wrong but, I mean sleeping with your best friend’s boyfriend is fucked up but it’s not against the law, they can’t put me in jail for being a shitty friend. And even though my brain knew the reality, my body didn’t get the memo, which seems to be the trend.
“We understand you’re Simone’s best friend since childhood, yes?”
“Yeah,” I say, deflated and relieved to hear his use of present tense.
“And we understand you haven’t been in contact with Ms Foster in about a week?”
I nod my head. After I betrayed my best friend I told her I wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t a complete lie, I felt sick to my stomach. So I was going home for the week and doing classes online. I got back to Hudson the night she went missing and didn’t find out til the next day, Lionel called with the news.
“Hi Lionel, how is everything?”
“Hey sweetheart, any chance you have time to come by the house and talk with me today?”
His voice was missing his usual charisma. Maybe he knows what Cameron and I had done.
“Yeah. I left town to see my family for the week. I got back the night she went missing.”
“Well, we found Ms Foster’s cell phone at the scene of the kidnapping. The last two phone calls she made were to you, both went unanswered.”
My heart dropped into the bottom of my stomach. Guilt moved through me like a pac man, just eating away. I was the last person she called for help. If I had answered her call, would it have saved her from God knows whatever she’s going through right now?
Our apartment had been so quiet I’d heard a vibration coming from the kitchen. I retrieved my phone from the bottom of my purse.
*Missed Call Simi*
I hovered over the notification. Should I call back? Cam told me he was going to tell her and I assumed he’d already done it, and I assumed she’d stay the night at his place, which is why I came back tonight. But I’m not ready to face her even if it is over the phone. My thoughts were interrupted by the second call.
*Simi*
I watch it ring, staring at the profile picture of us at the carnival, her face painted with a butterfly and mine a tiger. Lost in the memory I didn’t even realize the phone had stopped ringing.
I paced back and forth for several moments in my kitchen rehearsing my lines. Do I answer unassumingly? Do I let her speak first, she’s probably gonna go off as soon as I pick up.
I finally work up the courage to dial back.
The dial tone grows louder with each ring.
Guilt floods over me when I hear the automated message:
“You’ve reached the voicemail box of–”
I’d give anything for her to have picked up that phone.
“Yeah I didn’t answer her calls because– well I didn’t know…” Tears started streaming in. “I thought she might have been upset with me so I didn’t– I should’ve.” I sobbed, not even into my hands, just sobbed, so deep I wasn’t sure if I’d draw my next breath in time.
“Just relax, Ms Jacobs. We’re not accusing you of anything. And uh, Cameron already told us why you and Simone may or may not have been on good terms,” the shorter, less attractive officer said with a hint of fatherly disappointment in his tone. “But we do need to try and piece together if this was unlucky or if Simone got herself into something unwise, and if you know why she may have called you that night.”
“I know that she was calling about the affair,” I said through my sniffles. It was bad enough I was going to have to come clean about this, but having to share it with two strangers, men at that, was just rubbing salt in the wound, but I guess that’s what I get.
“Right. Well, aside from you being her last call, we’d like to know if you could give us any information on why Simone might have been in Riverside about a week ago?” they asked, leaning in to the question.
“Riverside? Simone doesn’t even know anyone in Riverside. Hell, she barely knows anyone. She has me, Cam, her dad, her grandfather and that’s really it. Some work and school acquaintances but she’s never mentioned hanging out with anyone from or in Riverside. You’re sure it was her?”
My question was answered with multiple images of Simone pumping gas at the Speedway in Riverside. Wearing her hair in that updo I’d taught her, it took her so much effort that she said it was only for special occasions. What special occasion was going on in Riverside?
I’m sure her father will know the explanation for this.
Lionel
“Mr. Foster,” he said with a firm handshake, “we’re very sorry about your daughter, sir. And I want you to trust we’re doing everything within our power to find her and who is responsible.”
“Thank you, both of you. My little girl, sh–she’s all I got left, and she’s a good girl. She doesn’t do nothin’ wrong. She’s the top of her class, she keeps good company, she’s a nurse for crying out loud…she spends her days helping people. That’s who my little girl is. Someone took my baby girl and I expect you to continue with this until she is found and the bastards responsible are put behind bars for the rest of their lives.”
I’ll be damned if these two goons think that I trust them to find my little girl on their own. But I know how this goes, they say they do everything in their power because they can’t promise me that they’ll bring her home. But me, I’m a man of my word and I promised my baby girl I’d flip this Earth on its axis before I’d let anything happen to her. So I’m gonna find her, I’m gonna find her and I’m gonna bring her home myself.
“You’ve already told us the kind of girl your daughter is, everyone we’ve spoken to thus far has said the same thing so we understand why this may come as a surprise to you. But do you have any idea,” he slides three fuzzy images my way, all different angles of my baby girl pumping gas, “why Simone would have been in Riverside on the night of October 16th?”
“Uh, to get gas. All due respect, if I have to do your jobs for you gentlemen, why should I trust you to find my daughter?”
“Sir, please. We understand she’s getting gas, but other sources are telling us your daughter has no business in Riverside, even gas, given that there are three gas stations within a 5-mile radius of where your daughter claims to have been this night.”
“And where would that be?”
“With you, sir.”
Grey
I hurry down the hall. Tears are already welling in my eyes, fury and sadness do a tango between my head and my heart. In my rush, I was able to make out a pretty young girl, whom through my blurred vision I almost mistook for–. I let out a sigh. It’s been over a week and she hasn’t returned any of my calls. I knew it was gonna scare her off, I should have waited to tell her.
“I really think you should turn in and get some sleep before your shift tomorrow, Sim,” I say. Selfishly I’d stay on this phone as long as she’d wanted, but I know how she’ll get if she doesn’t get her sleep.
“I know,” she says regretfully. “I wish I could’ve stayed at your place tonight, I just want to be with you. Just lay next to you and not my phone. But I get it, you’re Mr. Volunteer Firefighter.” Her chuckle is cut short by her yawn.
I don’t know about good guy, but it didn’t stop my heart from taking an extra beat. I can’t describe the feeling I got knowing she saw me that way. That anyone saw me that way.
“I love you.” Each word lifted a weight off my chest as they moved off my lips. The bricks slowly pile back on when I’m met with silence on the other line. Immediate regret. I love her, but what kind of moron tells his girlfriend he loves her for the first time over the phone? But I just couldn’t wait to tell her, it physically hurt to hold it in. I bet her hand covered mouth like she does whenever she’s overcome with shock.
“Grey… I–I wanna talk to you.” I can hear her smile. “I wanna see you, I’ll call you when I get off tonight.”
She never called. At first I thought that maybe it was a lot to process. That she needed time and wasn’t ready to talk that night. Or maybe she got tired after her shift and got home and went straight to sleep, that’s not uncommon. The drive to Riverside is just far enough to feel like a chore when you’re already dead from a 10-hour shift. But after a couple days I thought she’d full on ghosted me. I even drove by her house, her car is still there, so I don’t understand why she wouldn’t at least call me back. When I got the call to come to the police station, my heart sank. I didn’t want to believe that something had actually happened to my girl, I couldn’t stomach the thought of someone–.
Alongside the girl, was an older man with a great head of hair for his age, and a murderous look on his face. I’d hate to be the one who crossed him.
I’m met by two detectives who look like they’re straight out of a movie. The tall one, with peppered gray hair, seems like he probably got a lot of women in his day, although the lack of a ring on his finger tells me the fun didn’t end there. And his trusty sidekick, the short one who probably won his wife over with his personality and dependable nature.
“Mr. Bennet?”
I respond with a nod.
“I’m detective James, this is my partner detective Kelly.” They both give me a firm handshake and I enter the room.
I take my spot at the table, a singular metal chair at a singular metal table and across from me two more metal chairs.
“So,” the unmarried one says, “we understand that you and Ms. Foster know each other? We found recent phone calls back and forth in her call log.”
“No,” I reply simply. Because we weren’t. “We’re more than friends. I love her, I’m in love with her, and we’re together.”
The shock on the partners’ faces tells me they don’t know I know.
“I’m sure you think I’m crazy because she has a boyfriend. I know that. Cameron, Mr. Daddy’s money, know-it-all. She and I were just friends… but when we became more than just, ya know, she said she was gonna to break it off.”
“Ok…so how long have you and Ms Foster been seeing each other?”
“On and off for a few months, but we got serious in these past three weeks.” I think I’m blushing.
They asked me a bunch of questions about where I live, which really seemed to be a piece of a puzzle they needed. I’m sure she’d been spotted in Riverside and no one can figure out why. I let a grin escape and they continued to ask how often she came to my place, how often I went to hers, which wasn’t often given that my apartment was slightly nicer and my bed was slightly bigger. They even asked me if she knew anyone who might have wanted to hurt her. I simply replied with, “Definitely not. Simone’s not the kind of girl to make enemies.”
“Welp. Thank you, Mr. Bennet, you’ve been most cooperative and helpful. However, we need to stress that since you are in fact the reason Ms Foster has been spending time in Riverside, this gets us nowhere with finding what may have happened, or why.”
3 Weeks Later
The autumn leaves taunt me, the beautiful orange and yellow tones are a trojan horse for what we forget is the truth. It’s dead. The moment that leaf fell from the tree and danced on the back of the breeze on its way to the ground, it was dead. But there is beauty in its dance to death I suppose. The crisp fall air nips at the back of my neck the moment I step out of my car. It wasn’t until right now that I realized I’d never met her father. She said that she couldn’t bring just anyone home and that she wanted to be sure about us before I met him. Never did I think these would be the circumstances in which…what do I even say? How do I introduce myself?
“Hi Mr. Foster, I’m your daughter’s ex-friend with benefits, turned the relationship on low until she found the right time to call things off with your play pretend son-in-law?”
Probably best to just say friends, as much as it pains me. I wait in the line of people paying respects to Mr. Foster and Cameron standing next to him like a son. I feel guilty for feeling anything other than sadness. Because I am sad, I’m more than sad. I’m shattered. I feel like I’m just walking around as a shell of myself, without the only person who was able to actually make me feel like life was worth living. But I’m more angry than anything. Angry that we didn’t have enough time together, angry that I never got to meet her father, but most of all, I’m angry that all of that was taken away because that pretentious moron let her walk away. That he stood there and watched the woman he’s supposed to love just leave in the middle of the night. My blood is boiling by the time it’s my turn to pay my respects. I’d ignored the pictures and memories they’d had of her on display. The anger I’d felt for not being able to be in a single picture here almost overcame me when I remembered all the moments I cherished with her that only she knew about, and her memory extinguished my flame. I’m suddenly brought out of my thoughts by a familiar head of hair. Though it was tied back into a bun, I’d somehow recognized it, and the man underneath. The murderous man from the police station was Simone’s father. He looks so different from when I’d last seen him. Disarmed, and hollow.
“So sorry for your loss, Mr. Foster.” I’m embarrassed by my sweaty palm, but I doubt he’d even noticed.
“Thanks son, were you a friend of my daughter’s?”
“Yeah, we– we were friends from work,” I choked out.
“Well thanks for coming,” he said, trying a smile.
I continue with the flow of the line and Cameron sticks his hand out in front of me, looking for a handshake.
“A friend of Simone’s?” he asks me, having fully heard my conversation with Mr. Foster.
“Yeah…” I shake his hand, more aggressive than firm.
We were more than friends! I wanted to shout, I loved her, and she loved me!
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around,” he adds.
Is he seriously doing this right now? Playing jealous boyfriend at his– at Simone’s funeral service! She’s laying not even five feet away dead in a fucking box and he’s worried about–
Rage clouds my judgment and knowing what this might do, I did it anyway and replied.
“Oh yeah…” I walk swiftly into the church dipping my middle finger softly into the holy water, making the sign of the cross. “I live in Riverside.”