Beautiful Liar Read Free Page A

grill and Aiden instantly lights up.
    “Tun” he squeals trying to wrap his tiny hands around his huge ones. “Hey buddy.” He ruffles his hair. “Happy Birthday!”
    “How old are ya now? You have grown an inch since I last seen ya.”
    Aiden smiles a lopsided grin to match the one I have seen countless times coming from Brody. He is following Turner outside on his heels like he is his shadow.
    I notice Marla looking weepy.
    “Don’t start, not today.”
    “Seeing how his face lights up when he is around him, I can’t help but wonder if I made a mistake in the advice I gave you.”
    “Hey, it was my decision in the end and I stand by it. People are starting to arrive. We can talk about it later, okay?”
    She starts to cry. Shit! I wanted today to be a happy day. She has been doing this a lot lately. For some reason or another she has it in her head that, she needs to find Aiden a daddy before she dies.
    But she needs to realize Aiden has a daddy. I just choose not to include him in our lives. It wouldn’t be fair for me to reach out to him now, especially with all the troubles he has. News like this might push him completely over the edge. And I don’t plan on her dying anytime in the near future.
    “Marla, I know you want what is best for us, but I don’t need a man to be happy and neither does my munchkin.”
    “I know that, but I just want better for him than what Jim and I gave you. I promise to be on my best behavior, but you’re a fool if you can’t see the way that man looks at you and Aiden. I can see it! I don’t care if you are just friends or what his plans are! Sometimes life has a way of deciding things for you.”
    “Turner and I are only friends, and I intend to keep it that way. Besides, I. Am. Not. Ready!” I stress each word, enunciating them slowly, hoping she gets the point. Subtle and minding her own business is not things she does well.
    “It’s been well over two in a half years Darby! I know you are hanging on to that fantasy in your head that some day you will tell Brody the truth, but life is passing you by. Don’t miss out because you are too busy hanging onto wishes on stars about what ifs!”
    She slowly makes her way out the door leaving me to simmer over her statement. What she doesn’t know is that though it’s true that I haven’t spoken to Brody since we broke up, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been emailing every so often. I have never replied to a single one of them but that hasn’t stopped him from sending them.
    In fact I received his latest one a few days ago. Marla thinks I get all the information about him offline, but I hear it from him through his emails. At first they started out telling me how he was sorry, for his behavior when we broke-up. He told me all about his new friends in college and all about playing baseball for his dream team.
    Then they turned into almost a journal of sorts. He began pouring his heart out to me about everything he was going through, from the pressures of trying to be the best, to falling in love again. That was the hardest to read. It was so hard at first not to reach out to him, to send one reply, hell just to say anything at all. When I lost Brody it was like losing half of my heart.
    Marla is right though, I have held onto hope that someday fate will cross our paths again, and he will forgive me. I have typed him the same email a hundred times. The first line is always the same, with me answering the one question he asks at the end of each message.
    Brody: How do you keep on going on with your life? Because I live in the space between yesterday and today. Darby, I live in my dreams with you.
    Me: I hold onto hope that one day all the stars will align and you will become mine once more. That’s what has kept me going Brody, the promise of you….
    But every time I hit delete, I can’t ever bring myself to press send. I should have deactivated my email long ago, but it is almost like a drug for me, my very own Brody fix.