Beyond the end

Dark

Brandon knocked on the door of his old apartment hoping to find Steve. The drive around in some way had cleared his ideas, he regretted the snap of anger and the words that had slipped out of him like a river.
He was supposed to go home, talk to Kelly and fix things.
"What are you doing here?" Steve asked him by opening the door.
"Going around," he replied by entering.
Steve looked at him strangely and Brandon felt compelled to give an explanation "I had a fight with Kelly."
"Ah welcome to the Club"
"Why did you fight with Kelly too?"
"Ehhhhh.. no with Clare but Clare is right"
"As a long time to change"
"Yeah," Steve said.
"Do you have anything to drink?" Brandon asked
Steve pulled up his eyebrow, Brandon had a strange, mist and angry aura.
"Of course"
He walked up to the refrigerator and opened it, grabbed a couple of cans and handed them to Brandon.
The foam went up quickly as soon as the cans were opened.
"What happened to you?" Steve asked.
"I agreed to take the break to hold the kids and let her have the conferences and organize classes for the university. I owened her in some way. And it was fine at first, I mean, I got away with it"
"Mmmhhh" Steve muttered while sipping the beer.
"From the office they let me know that there will be promotions and staff cuts and there is no criterion, who inside and who outside. Just now that I have taken this break. I love this job and you know how much I care about it."
"And Kelly knows that?"
"No, I wanted to leave her quiet and I tried to hold on. Not to make her understand anything. But then I got a big news and I thought it could be my chance. I tried to tell Kelly that we need help. Nothing important, someone who keeps the children for a few hours a day at least to allow me to work. I would have committed to coming back first to do everything I can. But she started that I wasn't at the pacts, and then today while you called me Sammy fell and his lip swelled. When she saw him, she overeacted. As if accidents never happened to her. But the fact is that stress has overwhelmed us. She is never there when she is there she is nervous and intractable. I am no longer able to tell her the right thing. I gave up. Here's what. I left the house and here I am"
"WOW," Steve said sarcastically, "and I thought I had a bad day."
Brandon smiled bitterly "it's so frustrating when you can't talk to the person next to you, Tonight I was convinced to tell her everything that I also needed space and that we could still work but she got even more angry and I broke up and said something I didn't have to say"
'Like?'
"Let it go"
Brandon was staring at his beer and didn't talk for the next five minutes that Steve let pass at the bottom he too had his troubles.
"What happened to you?"
"Last night I was with Valerie and Clare"
"Don't tell me you did a three-some thing," Brandon smiled, striving to bring out some irony.
"Eh not really, three minus one and that one was Clare"
Brandon laughed in a hysterical way without taking his eyes off the beer .
"I can't believe it, but you're really a moron."
"Eh yes"
"And did she find out about you?"
"No, I had forgotten how smart and intuitive Clare was and so she made Valerie believe that I had told her and me that Valerie had told her, the result is that we both confessed."
Brandon was still laughing.
"Clare and I are not together," Steve continued, "not officially at least and then I didn't really have a full relationship, we were drunk."
"And that would be the justification you told her while her father is intubated?"
"No, I saved it"
"Steve I think Clare has other problems now"
"Already what a timing I've had huh?"
"Not bad"
"What should I do Bran?"
Brandon drank the last sip and put the can on the table.
"Talk to her and take your responsibilities"
"How are you going to do with Kelly?"
Brandon didn't answer, he took back his jacket and walked towards the door under Steve's watchful eye.
Ecuador.
Dylan returned with Xavier, he had been to the bay, he had seen a dilapidated new structure to put back in place. He had looked at the projects. Talked to the engineers. His new project. A new home for kids and a cultural or research centre for marine environments.
She looked for Brenda in every room, as enthusiastic as a child.
"Hey wonderful," he told her as soon as he found her in the bedroom with her phone in her hand.
Brenda smiled at him.
"What happened?" Asked Dylan "problems?"
"No" shook her head Brenda "no problem was Kelly. She and Brandon had a fight and Brandon left the house, she didn't know who to call and called me because she forgot we're here in Ecuador."
"A serious thing?"
"I don't know, I wouldn't say, Sammy had a small accident at the airport"
"What?" Dylan was alarmed.
"Quiet nothing happened, in short, he hit the ground and when Kelly saw him he overeacted against Brandon. Anyway they have been in tension for a while, Kelly told me that she was often unhelpful and busy and he may have suffered from it, so much so it's true that he left home"
"How did he leave home"
Brenda hurried to specify "in the sense that he left the house tonight after the fight but I hope he'll be back"
"Are they seriously in this situation? I knew about the trip to Catalina and that it had gone very well. I had no idea."
"They're fine," Brenda said, "just maybe it's a period. Catalina's was a parenthesis to try to make both of them relax. Having young children and a career is not that simple"
Dylan approached her, hugging her from behind.
"We don't have these problems," Dylan whispered naively.
Brenda stiffened instantly..
"No, I didn't mean in that sense Bren" hurried to justify himself but Brenda had now let go and turned around.
"Bren sorry, I didn't mean it like that"
"Of course it's not a problem," she replied,
Dylan watched her move inside the room.
"I wanted to talk to you about one thing, I actually wanted to wait until I went back to the United States to see how I can do it but maybe I'd better tell you now"
"Tell me what?"
"I would like to adopt Blanca"
Brenda pulled it out without warning, so much so that Dylan was impressed.
"Blanca?" He asked.
"Yes. It's on the list of international adoptions and the last one didn't go well. She is a wonderful little girl and we have so much to give, we have no money problems and we can love her like two parents."
"Of course," he replied, "she's a wonderful little girl, but I thought we had taken the path of trying to have a child of our own."
" What if it didn't come? Have you ever thought about it? If this is our destiny? And why can't we give this little girl a future?"
"I don't know Bren, you get out like this after a day I'm out, do we have to make a decision tonight? Do we have to end up like your brother and Kelly?"
"What do they have to do with this ?"
"You're right, sorry, they have nothing to do with it."
Dylan approached Brenda and hugged her in that special way that only the two of them had. Caressing her hair and passing the fluid energy of their love from one of their heart to the other.
"We can talk about it again, okay?"
Brenda didn't answer, closed her eyes and let Dylan touch her. SHe let himself be dragged by him.
The promise they would talk about it again calmed her down. That was enough.
Los Angeles
Brandon returned home really late. The lights were off probably everyone was sleeping and who knows if Grace had been making a fuss because he wasn't there. What an jerk he had been, he should never have gone out. That wasn't how he wanted to deal with things. He threw the keys on the table and went to the kitchen. He took some water from the fridge and noticed an envelope for him resting on the table.
BRANDON.
He took it and read it carefully.
I know you're angry with me now, but you don't have to think that I don't love you or that there is something irreparable between us, because I love you and because I think we've been through enough together to have raised the limit of the irreparable beyond the border that we have in front of us today. But this evening I realized that we both need our spaces so that we don't have to hear you say that it was a mistake for you to come back from Washington. I'm sorry I put my dreams before yours, My work before yours, as if I had no responsibility, I'm even more sorry I didn't understand in what you were going through. And despite this, you took it aside for me. We are both important. Betty told me what's going on in the office. I called her to find out if you were there or if she had seen you. I wish you would have told me, that you would open up to me. I guess you did it to protect me. Don't believe I didn't feel guilty about Grace, Sammy and you too. For all the times I haven't found the words. For all the times we have argued and for the tension, because I felt exhausted, for the euphoria of being a woman free to do what I wanted, finally, but the truth is that by the fact I am not, and not because you ever prevented me, but because I have commitments, I have two children, What is right? What is wrong? As much as love still weighs on the balance of the wonderful things we have, the fact is that I don't want to continue like this, I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning and see that we are not able not to fight and that sex is all we have left. It has never been like this for us.
I am overwhelmed by doubts that it may not work, even in the autumn.
I leave you the space you asked for and please respect mine. Time to clear up our ideas. You can see the kids whenever you want. There is no problem with that.
Brandon put down the note and stared the dark.
Alone.