Extraordinary Love

Chapter 17

Song: Yo (Excuse Me Miss) by Chris Brown

Christopher

This couldn't be happening, not when everything was going so well.

When Chris saw Robyn, all he could see was every bad decision, every hopeless thought, every long sleepless night and every substance he had tried to use to wash away the pain.

He saw her mouth form words but he couldn't hear anything she said. Or anything for that matter. It felt like waves were crashing over him, one after another beating into him. He looked around and everyone's eyes were on him, waiting for him to react. His chest tightened up. Before he knew it, he was backing up and then he was in the crowd of people on the dance floor and then on the sidewalk outside of the club. He was trying to remember where his car was when he felt a hand on his bicep.

"Chris?! Chris, what's wrong? Talk to me. Are you okay?"

He looked at the panicked look on her face and thought about how crazy he must look right now, running out of there like a kid in a haunted house.

"I will be, once I get away from here. Can we go?"

Aaliyah nodded her head.

The car ride was silent other than the sound of Chris breathing heavily. Slowly, both his breathing and the car came to a stop. He found himself parked in front of his art gallery. He wasn't sure what had brought him here but it was good to see something familiar.

Chris unlocked the front door to the gallery and walked inside. Their feet echoed with each step, making the room feel even larger than it already was. Chris led Aaliyah by the hand into a room in the back. It was his studio, where he created his artwork. He flicked the lights onto a dim setting. She looked around the room. She probably had a thousand questions running through her mind but she waited for Chris to speak.

"Aaliyah, I just-- Listen, I don't want to scare you away, okay?... And I don't even know how to begin to explain what happened tonight," he grabbed her hands. "But I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know how much tonight meant and what you did for me and I know I fucked it up—"

She squeezed his hands back.

"Shhh, Chris, don't even worry about that. It's okay," He was shaking his hand. She grabbed his face to look at her. "It's okay. Whatever this is, is obviously much more important. The way you reacted tonight... I've never seen you like that. Until then, I thought that you were absolutely perfect in pretty much every way. It's kind of nice to know that you're human like the rest of us. And just start with what you feel like you can tell me. I know. I know how it feels. Everything I've been through, I've just bottled up. I've been through countless conversations in my head. I practice in the mirror, in the car, in the shower, to try and open up, to say what I wish I could say to you. But when I see you I just can't get my mouth to form the words. So I know what it's like."

He couldn't shake that feeling he had but he would try to push it down. He looked around his studio, to the corner with his works in progress.

"I've been thinking for a while about how to tell you. I thought about doing it in parts because it's a long story. Segments, like a comic book."

"Whatever helps you, Chris." She nodded.

Chris walked over to the works in progress corner and pulled a big canvas out from under the tarp. He walked it back over to the other side of the room and propped it against the wall. He sat down on the floor in front of it. Aaliyah hiked up her skirt and took a seat next to him. Chris unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt.

The canvas was about forty-eight inches by sixty inches. It was a happy scene that reminded Chris of much simpler times.

"It was my freshman year of college and I met her in my communications class," he looked at the scene of him and his ex-girlfriend in a classroom. Chris was in the foreground, half turned around and blowing a kiss to his ex in the row behind him. She was rolling her eyes back playfully. They were blindly mad in love. At least, Chris was.

"I met Robyn on my first day at UCLA, which was eight years ago. I remember that she was late and when she walked in, I knew just how small Tappahannock really was. I had never seen anything close to her back home. I thought that they must make them differently in Cali until she spoke. After the class, she asked if she could see my notes to copy down what she had missed. She had these bright green eyes that reminded me of my mother's and an accent I had never heard before. She was exotic and until then, I was provincial. She was a rare breed."

"I tried to speak to her again in the next class and looked at me like we had never met. She wouldn't even give me the time of day. She treated me like this little nerd that had a crush on her. I was a kid, straight out of high school and she was twenty going on twenty-one. She was beautiful and well known around campus and I was fresh meat and didn't know anyone. The only way I could get her to even look my way was to make her laugh, so I did every day. I bugged her every time I saw her, telling her corny jokes or picking with her and capping on anything and everything and eventually it paid off."

"Robyn asked me one day after class if I was going to this Halloween party held at one of the frat houses. I had no idea what party she was talking about but I didn't want her to know that and this could be my chance. So I told her of course and asked if I'd see her there. She replied 'maybe' and that she was looking forward to seeing my costume."

"Finding the party was easy because there were flyers up all around campus. It was picking a costume that was the hard part. But in the end, I decided on a white tee, black pants and shoes, a fedora, and a white glove: Michael Jackson."

"I showed up at the frat house and found Robyn inside with a group of her friends. She was dressed as Cleopatra, like long straight hair and dark makeup around her eyes that made them even more striking. Before either of us could even say anything, the niggas were trying to clown my outfit. Talking about, 'This nigga think he Michael Jackson, huh? Why don't you show us some dance moves, Mike?' Thank God I can dance. I hit the leg kick, the little figure eight dance and a smooth moonwalk right in the middle of the room. I could tell that Robyn was impressed. Her whole demeanor towards me changed that night. She was finally interested in little Chris Brown. She asked where I learned to dance; if I took dance classes. She finally saw me for real. Robyn was the life of the party. She was vivacious and had fun and everyone loved her and until then I had just kind of watched from afar. But here I was now next to her. A broke little boy from Virginia, not interesting enough to be worth her time."

"From there on out, she talked to me in class without me having to bug her first. She asked if I was going to events and what I had did the day before. She gave me her phone number and we were friends on Facebook. We were friends but I still needed to work up the courage to ask her out. I thought about how to do it without coming off corny. I wanted to be cool in her eyes. So we were sitting in class one day and talking and she was laughing at everything I said and it seemed to be going really well so... I just asked."

"And she looked at me and just really looked at me for a few seconds. I was worried she was going to say no. That she was trying to come up with a way to let me down easy. But then she said, 'Friday. Pick me up at 8. I'll send you my address. Don't be late.' I took her ice skating; she had never been. We went on a few more dates before I asked her what we were doing and we made it official, or so I thought."

 "I started to notice that something was off. We had been together for months and I never saw her friends. Hadn't been introduced to even one. She had no interest in meeting any of mine. She dodged every attempt I made to introduce her to my mother. She started to snub me again in public and before I knew it, the only time we'd see each other was when we were in class or alone. If we weren't in a dorm room, it was like she didn't even know me. I just didn't have a good feeling and I didn't know why. I could feel her starting to pull away from me; losing interest. We had gone from talking every day to barely talking at all. That was the beginning."

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