When You Come to Me, Page 2

  This time, Natalie nodded.

  “She’s pretty too…beautiful…blond hair, green eyes, slim figure, athletic, smart, fantastic smile…my sunshine.”

  “Oh.”

  “Three years,” the Pretty Boy stammered. “Three years I’ve been with her…loved her, dealt with her, made her cry, made her laugh…she wants to marry me…I don’t want to marry her…I don’t think I-I ever did…as much as I love her…I don’t want to marry her…I don’t want to marry my Sophia…”

  The Pretty Boy sunk his head low, let out a low, grumbled belch, and ran his thick hand through his ravenous hair, and it fell back into his face, shielding those remarkable blue eyes.

  And suddenly, without warning, the Pretty Boy jumped up from the bed, and his expression changed completely. There was a smile on his face as he stood in the middle of the room, looking at her. He startled her when he lunged out toward her, took her by the hand, and guided her off of the bed with him. He leaned in close to her face, his breath, hot, reeked of alcohol, and he mumbled, “Come with me…I don’t want her to see us.”

  In a flash they were out of the house, the moisture of the night and the heat hit Natalie Chandler’s face coolly; he was still holding her hand.

  She didn’t know his name! What was she thinking? Was she that stupid? Clearly, surely…

  Hadn’t her mother warned her about this? Going off with strangers? Being alone with boys period? Clearly, surely…

  And yet, there she was, allowing this white boy to pull her down the street, her head still throbbing wildly, the moon, full and luminous above their heads.

  He was much taller than she originally thought; had to have been at least six-foot-three. And he certainly looked much older than twenty-one.

  They ran down an incline towards another dead end road, an embankment blocked off by a fence of maples, dripping wet. He guided her through the trees; across a long expand of mushy ground, until they ended up at a small body of water. He stopped. He was still holding her hand.

  They were both out of breath, he stared blankly before him, the small ripples of the pond, smeared in the moon’s glow, rolling forward against the balmy breeze.

  He dropped her hand and he collapsed against the ground, slightly slanted into the water, and he leaned back against his arms.

  “I come here all the time,” the Pretty Boy began, still trying to catch his breath. “To think, to breathe, to get away from Sophia.”

  Natalie didn’t answer. She still stood in the spot in which he left her, still stood her distance.

  Silence again.

  He startled her when he reached for her hand again and pulled her down onto the ground, into the wetness.

  This boy had lost his mind! Her butt was wet, she was cold, it was the middle of the night, and she had never felt further away from home than she did that night.

  He didn’t look at her.

  “Brandon Greene,” he said. “My name is Brandon Greene. Junior. My major is Business Administration. I’m from Saratoga Springs, New York. And it’s my birthday…”

  “Happy Birthday…”

  He looked at her. His eyes appeared amazing in the cool glow of the moon.

  “You’re a freshman, right?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You have that look in your eyes. That innocence. You’re beautiful…fucking beautiful. And I’m trying not to look at you. I’m trying to stay faithful. I cheated on Sophia once. Freshman year, right after we started dating. I don’t even remember that girl’s name.”

  “Natalie Chandler,” she whispered, turning her round brown face away from his.

  “What?”

  “My name is Natalie…”

  She turned back to him.

  “Oh, so you do speak.”

  “Of course I speak.”

  He sloppily extended his hand to her. “Nat—Natalie…nice to meet you…sorry about the beer bottle…welcome to UGA…”

  Sweet Savannah and the Midnight Hour

  HER MAMA called her that morning and it made her late for her first class.

  "How are your classes? Are you getting along with everyone? Grandma sent you some cookies...did you get them? Were they still fresh? Are you keeping your room clean? Hold on, Maya's here, she wants to talk to you a minute..."

  Natalie figured that by choosing to go to school in Athens, she was just far enough away from home to get the sense of independence that she longed for. Moreover, the city possessed the security of remaining within a southern atmosphere. It wasn’t that she was afraid to venture toward a new society altogether, as Sidney had decided to do when she moved to New York for a couple of years; she was, simply put, too afraid to venture that far away from her family. She ultimately believed that, if something happened to them, they would be too far out of reach.

  Set beneath the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains, the college town featured a fully restored downtown, dotted with pretty baby magnolias and myrtles, and row beyond row of antebellum homes, hidden beneath graying Spanish moss.

  The warm Georgian weather placed her outside, more often than she would be at home, sitting in a porch swing set beside her dormitory, swinging gently, reading a book.

  She’d chosen Biochemistry at UGA because they’d given her the most money; a point she spent many days arguing with her mother about.

  "There are plenty of good schools in Atlanta, Nattie," she'd said. "You can commute back and forth and you won't have to worry about staying in one of those God-awful dorms...just consider it..."

  She'd desperately attempted to finesse the conversation. She told her mother that although the potential of her being out of her element would be great, the university provided an excellent change of pace for her. She argued that the student population, predominantly white, predominantly conservative, predominantly southern Baptist, would provide her with an open-mind, would force her to step outside of herself. She rarely saw white people in Decatur. There was an understood separation between her world and theirs.

  She was excited about the library job she’d found in early September, working as a page three times a week. Working in this venue allowed her to maintain the focus needed for her rigorous workload as a biochemistry major, and with its convenient location on campus (just a few paces down from her dormitory), it allowed her, one without a car, to get away from her loud roommate and her pompous boyfriend. It was a quiet place of refuge, giving her just enough money to feel comfortable buying groceries each week, and just enough to where she could buy that new shirt that she wanted a the mall or that missing piece to fix her computer.

  She was given the duty of maintaining the business books on the eighth floor, a subject that disinterested her incredulously. She couldn’t fathom anyone on earth being interested in reading about marketing ethics, research and development and financing basics, for pleasure. Yet, much to her own surprise, within the short span of the three weeks she’d started working there, Natalie Chandler was slowly learning the database by heart, and when, by some unlucky chance, a student came up to her and asked about a book’s location, she was able without hesitation to point them in the right direction.

  She experienced her first midterm crisis in early October, just two days following her eighteenth birthday, with three exams in the span of three days, and by her Friday afternoon shift, one cold day, she discovered a quaint corner on the other end of the advertising shelf, curled her slender brown body into a ball, and fell asleep on the floor.

  She was awakened suddenly, completely unaware of how long she’d slept. She aimlessly reached up and lunged out at the figure tapping her on the shoulder. She felt two hands grabbing at her arms as if to stop her flailing, amidst her hazy vision. She blinked her eyes twice, felt breath on her face, and caught eyes with the same blue-eyed Pretty Boy from the party. She sat up slowly, he removed his hands, and she heard him sigh, and with one swift movement, he helped them both get to their feet.

  “Of all places,” he said, clearing his throat, shoving his hands
deep into the pockets of his light-washed jeans. She’d forgotten how tall he was; a spectacle, surely, with his t-shaped body structure, immediately suggesting to her that he was an athlete at some point in his life.

  “I’d tell you the same thing,” she replied.

  Natalie dusted herself off, cleared her throat, finger-combed her long, coarse hair, and moved past him. She walked toward the small, tan cart of accounting books, and began shuffling through them.

  “Brandon,” he called after her.

  She looked in his direction, found his preppie attire amusing, and said, “What?”

  “Brandon Greene is my name,” he began. “Just in case you forgot…”

  She internally admitted that she hadn’t, and had surprised herself at how many times she sat in lab and thought about her funny interaction with the drunken white boy celebrating his twenty-first birthday, how often she thought about those eyes of his. He consequently became the most interesting thing she’d seen at eighteen thus far.

  He said his name in a way that brought forth the idea that he was placing himself, slowly, subtly sure, in her life, quietly establishing that this would not be the last time that she’d see him, as if such a random thought existed. She wished, examining his casual stance from top to bottom, that he didn’t smile at her in such a friendly manner, and she wished that she had something clever to say, that would serve as a blockade to keep him from entering her life, learning more about her. Her only hope was that he’d simply grab a book and walk away.

  “Natalie,” she told him with a heavy sigh, returning her focus to the books.

  “I didn’t forget,” he laughed.

  Funny he said that, considering how long it’d been since they met, considering his level of intoxication that night. But then she thought about how long they sat by the pond that night, how they sat in silence, watching the moon, how, with some strange feeling accompanying her thought, she felt that he understood her, asked nothing more of her than just her company.

  “You look hungry,” he told her, approaching her slowly.

  “Can’t,” she said, clearing her throat. “I have to work…”

  “And what time do you get off?”

  “Six o’clock,” she said with a sigh.

  She watched him check his watch and say, “Hm, that’s funny…because it’s six-thirty…so…do you always sleep through your shift?”

  #

  They approached a green Ford Explorer, parked on the side of the library and he let her in first, shutting the door behind her. The sun was setting to the right of the sky, turning its hue into a milky coral. He entered behind the tan wheel thereafter, fumbling with his keys.

  "So, where are we eating?" she asked.

  He looked in her direction and grinned. "Don't know, really...most times I just like to get in my car and see where my subconscious takes me..."

  She figured he would say something like that. She didn't have the brainpower to respond in a witty way.

  He took off in the direction of downtown. She couldn’t really afford going out to dinner. She’d made a pact to herself to not spend money on trivial things. But she felt that this Brandon Greene was a different breed. His appearance gave way to his fortunate financial upbringing. He wore a crisp buttoned-down sky blue shirt, rolled at the sleeves, bringing out the color of his eyes. And the smell of his proximity caught her attention…the freshly scented cologne.

  His appearance, in addition to the music that came out of his stereo, was most certainly a lot different than the white boys she saw around her parts. He exuded a special air of sophistication, old-world handsomeness; his black hair parted and styled and gelled just right, his beige skin a rather warm complexion.

  #

  “Jack and Martha Greene,” Brandon told her over cheeseburgers downtown. They watched the sun set over the magnolias that lined the street; the breeze was light, the sky a fiery red, the sound of the traffic, whirring by slowly, minute chatter surrounding them. “That sounds very pretentious doesn’t it?”

  Natalie nodded. “Sounds very white,” she said coyly, licking ketchup off of her brown fingers.

  He laughed. “Yea, that too.”

  Brandon Greene's strong northern accent, reverberating off the depth of tone in his voice, didn’t seem to be affected by southern culture and its heavy drawl. It was more articulate, sharper, more refined.

  The level of comfort she felt around him was alarmingly instant, and she arched her eyebrow at the feeling that this oatmeal-skinned northerner was an old friend, someone whose smile she’d always loved, because it always eased her.

  “Helen…Helen Chandler.”

  He looked at her, as though he were waiting for her to continue. “So…there’s no father?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Nope. Hasn’t been since I was a child. Mama kicked his alcoholic behind out and that’s the last that I saw of him.”

  She realized then that that was the first time she’d spoken of her father since it happened…to anyone.

  He didn’t say anything, only nodded.

  “Brothers or sisters?” she asked him, catching the light of the fading sun along his cheek.

  He wiped the remains of spilled mustard from the noticeable cleft in his chin and said, “Three brothers…I’m the youngest…Mark, John and Matthew…I’m the only one that wasn’t named after a gospel.”

  She giggled.

  “Spiritual?”

  “Hardly…Catholic by birth…parents kind of strict, turned me off of it as I got older. Still believe in God, though.”

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “God-fearing girl…”

  “I can tell that…that’s not what I meant,” he told her. “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “Um, two sisters. Maya, the youngest and the coolest and the prettiest, and Sidney…who’s older than me, who’s more of the homemaker type, lives in Columbia…can cook up a storm. I chose to stay closer to home.”

  “And that’s because…?”

  “I love my mama…”

  “A good reason,” he said. “So, I’m guessing that you’re her favorite?”

  “Arguably so…”

  “Oh, of course. Middle name?”

  “Savannah.”

  “’Natalie Savannah…let me guess…it’s your grandmother’s name?”

  “Nope. It’s where my mother was born. And it’s Spanish…my…my father was Dominican.”

  “Ah! So close,” he said with the defeated snap of his fingers.

  “And your middle name?”

  “David…no real significance…except for the fact that…“

  “That it came from the Old Testament…” Natalie finished for him, smiling.

  “Precisely! Couldn’t escape it.”

  They ended up walking down a quiet sidewalk after dinner in silence. She was surprised that he was so willing to pay for each of their meals. His instant generosity was duly noted. With the sun completely hidden, and the moonlight prevalent, Natalie Chandler and Brandon Greene, reveled in their newly formed alignment, while she became a walking paranoia, expecting all eyes to be on her and this Caucasian boy, questioning why they interacted then. The chilly breeze brought the her closer to him, and Brandon, broad-shouldered and vertically intimidating, became a good source of warmth.

  He looked down at her as she rubbed her hands up and down her arms.

  “I’m sensing that you’re cold…”

  Natalie nodded, laughed a little. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to put clothes on when you leave the house?”

  Yes, she felt shameful. The day had been warm and she’d stepped out of her dorm room that afternoon before work, with nothing more on than a small, fitted t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

  Brandon Greene clicked his teeth, rolled his big blue eyes, and removed his black nylon jacket from his shoulders.

  “Here,” he offered to her.

  “I’m fine,” she told him.
>
  “You’re shaking,” he observed. “Take the jacket…”

  She huffed, took it from his hands and wrapped the garment around her slender body that smelled strongly of him, and laughed inside at its size and the way it loosely hung off of her dainty shoulders.

  “Great, now I can freeze…”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling the jacket closer to her body, grinning.

  “So…you can be funny too?”

  “When I want to be,” she admitted, sucking in her bottom lip slightly.

  “I didn’t take you for a funny girl…”

  “Like I said, I can be when I want to be...and you don’t know me…I could be the funniest person you’ve ever seen…”

  “I find that hard to believe…funny people can’t be quiet people…and you are definitely a quiet person…”

  “You don’t know me…” She repeated it this time, hoping that he allowed it to sink in.

  “Hell, that doesn’t matter,” he told her. “It’s in your eyes…”

  #

  He offered her ice cream at Sarah’s on Birch Tree, and following several refusals, she gave into those blue eyes, hidden beneath a flap of black hair caught in a whirring breeze. And they sat on a bench beneath a streetlight, the air, cooling, Brandon’s warmth nearby, the smell of food, filling her nostrils.

  Brandon’s cellular phone vibrated then, and after saying, “Excuse me,” politely, he flipped the device open, cleared his throat and answered, “Hello? I’m downtown…on Birch Tree…yes…yes…I’m with a friend…why does it matter who I’m with? No, you don’t know who this friend is…no, it’s not a girl…yes…yes, Sophia, my God, yes…[Brandon shrunk into a little ball then, his broad shoulders rolled forward, indicating that he was most certainly getting an earful]…Sophia, I…yes, Sophia…I will pick you up in a little while…I don’t care…I don’t care if you stay the night…don’t you have class in the morning? Holy shit, Sophia, I swear…okay…okay…we can talk about it in a little while…yes, I promise…I’ll call you when I’m on my way…yes…Goddamnit, Sophia…yes…I—I love you too…goodbye…”

  When he replaced the phone in his pocket, he looked at Natalie.