K. Bromberg: Hard Beat

Stella’s sigh pulls me from the images of blood-soaked camouflage and the sound of gunfire. I know she hates when I get all lawyer-ish on her, as she calls it, and so that’s why I phrased my comment that way, needing to get us back to what has been our norm over the past decade.

“Never mind. You, Mr. I-fall-in-love-with-everyone, would not understand what I’m talking about,” she says with a roll of her eyes, but I can tell something’s bothering her.

“I don’t fall in love with everyone. I prefer to call it infatuation.” I try to lighten the mood by bringing up one of our long-standing conversations.

“Ah.” She laughs aloud. “But it’s such a short, slippery slope for you… one that lasts a whole two dates before you hit the barrel of love.”

“Barrel of love?” I can’t help but laugh at that, even though I don’t appreciate the comment. “Fuck. Am I really that pathetic of a sap?”

Stella stares through the darkness before turning her face to the city beyond us. “No. You’re not a sap… You just have a good heart.”

“That’s what it’s called nowadays? I guess I’d better work on changing that.”

“No, it’s endearing. This big alpha male with a soft heart. You’d never guess it was there beneath all of that testosterone.” She falls quiet again, and I know whatever is bugging her is just beneath the surface, and yet here we are speaking about me. She reaches out and grabs my hand. “Don’t ever change that, Tanner. Someday someone is going to appreciate that in you. Your quick love and big heart.”

My mind immediately thinks to crack a joke about something else that I have that’s big, but when I recognize the conflicted sorrow in her eyes, it dies on my lips. “What’s going on with you, Stell? Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing.”

Fuck. The most dreaded words in all of existence for a man to hear other than “I’m fine.” “I’m not buying it. What did you mean about a once-in-a-lifetime?”

She refuses to look my way, so I poke her side until she starts talking. “I meant that one person that you’re supposed to be with forever. The person that you’re fated to love.” She falls silent as she peers over the steam of the coffee cup to the city down below. “What if you’ve met that person already and screwed it up somehow? Or even worse, what if you met that one person but just at the wrong time in your life?”

I stare at her profile for a bit while I ponder what she’s saying, taking in the slight upturn of her nose, and find comfort in the familiarity of her beside me. Is she right? It’s not like I’m old, but I’m not getting any younger either. My life is transient at best and a mind fuck at its worst… but is there really such a thing as a once-in-a-lifetime? “There has to be more than one person in the universe you’re fated to be with. That’s just cruel if the powers that be only give you one shot, you know?”

“Yeah. I guess.” She sounds less than convinced.

When I see the glimmer of tears welling in her eyes, I reach over and squeeze her hand. Who knows what’s going on in that mind of hers? After all this time, if I can’t figure it out, I know to stop trying. Her stubborn ass will tell me in her own time, when she wants to.

But when she doesn’t squeeze my hand back, I scoot next to her and put my arm around her, pulling her in tight to my side. “Well, we both know that I’m not your once-in-a-liftetime,” I tease with a laugh and press a soft kiss into the top of her head, but for some damn reason I question my own statement.

“We were a hot mess, weren’t we?” She laughs softly as my mind flickers to the year we dated only to find out we were miserable as a couple. Explosive tempers leading to hot sex may be memorable but definitely not sustainable. How we broke it off but then were forced together because of our careers and in the end found out we could be incredible friends to each other.

“The Dynamic Duo.” I reiterate Rafe’s nickname for us, photographer and reporter, best friends and confidants. She looks up to me and holds my gaze through the night’s darkness. “What?” I ask, trying to figure out what her expression is saying.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if my being here, living this life we lead… if I’ve ruined my chances for it, that’s all.”

“Stell.” I grab at straws to comfort her about a topic that makes me feel completely awkward. And even more disconcerting are the thoughts her damn question has stirred in my mind. She’s my best friend. After a decade she knows all of my quirks, my pet peeves, everything… What would happen if we tried a relationship now?

I bite back the laugh at the thought. Stella is like my sister, Rylee, to me. Well, all except that Stella and I had sex way back when we were actually dating.

But the thought lingers in the back of my mind, what if we are right for each other but met at the wrong time? A backfire on the street down below has the both of us flinching, our instinctive training to duck at the sound of gunfire taking over.

We laugh at how ridiculous we look and how only here, only with us, would this be normal. “Look,” I tell her, “if in ten years we are still nomads, still single, then we’ll revisit this conversation.”

“What about it?” she asks, her eyebrows narrowing as she tries to figure out what I’m saying.

“If we are each other’s once-in-a-lifetime.”

Her sharp inhale makes me realize what I just said, the stupid inferences she could make from it. But at the same time, when she laughs, I hear her nervousness, and the look in her eyes is so real, so vulnerable, that when I glance down to her lips, I’m forced to swallow over the lump in my throat.

It has to be the moment, a simple slice of time when two friends who have lived a lifetime together as a result of their volatile careers fall into that trap of need mixed with comfort and a splash of loneliness. The minute I lean forward and brush my lips to hers, I hate myself for it, and yet at the same time, the immediate recoil I thought would happen on my part doesn’t happen. It’s just a whisper of a kiss, but my lack of reaction scares the fuck out of me.

I rest my forehead against hers. “Sorry,” I murmur, my hands threading through her hair.

“Well, that wasn’t exactly the birthday present I was planning for you tomorrow, but…” Her voice fades into a laugh.

“I told you I don’t want anything,” I say to squash that argument again, but then feel the need to repeat it. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. After ten years, that’s the only time we’ve ever crossed that line.” The heat of her breath hits my lips and tempts me when I’m never tempted by her.

“I guess we have ten more years to see if it happens again.” I can hear the smile on my lips in my tone, and even though we both are in agreement that what just happened shouldn’t have, we sit in the darkness for a minute – foreheads touching, lips so close – almost as if the both of us knew what was going to happen the next night.

How this moment was going to be the lasting memory I would use to get me through the darkness her death would bring.

“Here’s to you, Stell,” I say as I lift the bottle of whiskey up to the sky and take a long pull on it.

The circuit of thoughts that has etched a goddamn groove in my mind starts again. Hell yes, I loved her… in my own way. I just wonder if her absence has made me read more into that emotion than it really was. People place those who die on pedestals, forget their misgivings with a bat of an eyelash, and become more connected to them since they can no longer tell them what they feel. Is this what I’ve done to Stella and our friendship? Is this why I’ve held tight to this last kiss we shared even though it was a stupid move?