A Bonfire
Jeff was watching television when his blackberry rang a few minutes before midnight. He picked up the phone and answered before looking at the number.
"Jeff!" a voice called on the other end.
"Troy?" Jeff asked.
"We're having a bonfire. You should come out."
"A bonfire?"
"Yeah, on the beach." Troy was shouting. The russle of wind muffled his voice.
"Why a bonfire?"
"Well, we were watching..." Troy began, but he was cut off by Jeff.
"Of course, always something. You know Troy, I think I'll sit this one out. It's a little late."
"Jeff!" Troy called.
"You guys have fun. Try not to do anything stupid."
Troy did not respond. A different voice spoke on the other end. "Jeff, I'd really appreciate it if you came."
Annie. Jeff sat back in his couch. They had not spoken in weeks. She tried to cling to what they had left, and Jeff walked away. It was not worth saving, or, at least, that's what he kept repeating to himself.
"Look, Annie, I'm sorry," were the only words he knew how to say. How could he explain it? What was there to explain?
"Jeff, it's not about that." She yelled, trying to speak over the russling wind. "We're over, I know," she paused, "it's Britta."
"Britta?" Jeff leaned forward.
"Yeah." Annie spoke. "She's here."
"Okay. I'm on my way."
Jeff slipped on a pair of his jeans. On top he wore a long black shirt, and his leather jacket. Blackberry, wallet, matches, keys. He pressed the button for the elevator; anticipation grew inside him.
Britta left on the last day of third year. The group shared their usual good-byes, promising to continue the weekly pot-lucks throughout the summer. It took two weeks for them to notice her absence. Two weeks before anyone tried to call her. Her phone number was unavailable. They visited her apartment, only to find her gone. Her landlord told them she moved two weeks before. Her twitter was deleted; they received no replies from her email. She was gone.
Her exit shook the study group. Their conversations always devulged into speculations and accusations. The pot-lucks were cancelled. Few spoke to each other. Jeff visited Annie's place a couple of times when they were dating, and he could feel the change in the apartment. Troy blamed himself, and Abed was incapable of consoling his friend. The house was quiet, eerie. Jeff disliked dropping by. He insisted Annie come to his place when they were together.
Jeff drove slowly. His hands clenched the wheel, and the anticipation dissipated. What was he going to say? He did not know.
The beach was clear. A bitter fall wind cut through the air. Jeff zipped up his jacket, and walked down the slope towards the sand. Three silhouettes stood around a large pile of wood. The moon reflected off the water.
"Jeff!" Abed greeted, noticing his approach.
Annie ran towards him, but stopped herself before giving him a hug. Jeff flashed her smile, and rubbed her shoulder.
"I thought you said there'd be a bonfire. All I see is a bunch of sticks." Jeff commented.
"It's harder than it looks," Troy spoke, looking over the pit. He'd grab a piece of driftwood, and, with a thought, rearrange its position in the stack. He resembled an artist, attempting to realize his vision: a windy evening beachside avante garde drift wood sculpture.
"We had it burning for a moment, but the wind blew it out." Annie observed, her voice soft.
Abed stood stoically, watching Troy's movements like a hawk. "Movies usually start with the bonfire already started; Days of Heaven, Hangover II."
"Don't worry, we'll figure it out." Troy stated, his focus concentrated on the wood.
"Cool, cool." Abed spoke.
Jeff turned his attention away from the pile of sticks, and looked around the beach. Details were hard to distinguish in the dark. Shapes faded into each other. "Is there anyone else here?" he asked.
"Britta's here. Shirley needed to sleep; she spent the night with her kids. And we did not call Pierce." Abed spoke, matter of fact. Troy kept his gaze forward on the driftwood, rearranging.
Annie walked close to Jeff, her mouth near his ear, and she whispered "Britta's over there," she pointed her finger towards the slope Jeff walked down from his car. A small shadow sat in front of the lights from the city. "She showed up earlier today at our apartment. She and Troy spoke for a minute, and then she left. I think Troy invited her out here, but he hasn't said a word to her since we arrived."
"Okay," Jeff said, watching the lone figure. "I'll go talk to her."
He stroked Annie's shoulder again, and walked towards the slope. Britta sat on a set of stairs heading up to the parking lot. She wore one of her leather jackets, and black jeans. A case of beer nestled beside her side. In her right hand, she held an open bottle; a couple empties littered the stair below her.
"Hey," he said, sitting on the stair.
"Hey," she replied.
"You want a beer?" She asked.
"Sure."
Britta handed him one from the pack. Jeff stared at the girl intently. It was like looking at a ghost. He was convinced he'd never see her again. But, there she was in her leather jacket. She was thinner. Her cheeks were jaunt; the strands of her hair tangled at the side of her face. Jeff opened the bottle, and took a sip, feeling nervous.
"I knew you would come." She said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Did you want to see me."
"Yeah." She said.
"Can I ask where you've been?"
"No." Britta took her cigarettes from her pocket, put one in her mouth, and struck a match. She stared forward, towards the others. The three of them were forms in the dark; shapes far from their humanity. The bonfire was only a pile of sticks; not really a bonfire at all. Britta exhaled, smoke escaped her mouth.
"You're smoking again?" Jeff asked.
"Yes. Trading one addiction for another."
She continued. "You ever go to a beach bonfire before?"
Jeff stared at the beach. "No, I never have. In high school, friends of mine used to talk about doing one. It was part of our plan for the summer, after we graduated."
"What stopped you?"
"I never spoke to them again after graduation." Jeff turned towards her. The tip of her cigarette glowed orange. "Have you ever been to one?"
"No. We used to talk about it, back in some of the co-ops I lived in. But, like all anarchists, they were all talk, and no action. Well, if you don't count some of the effigies we burned at protests."
"I wouldn't."
"Neither do I." She sighed. "I heard about you and Annie."
"How?"
"Troy mentioned it earlier today, in passing. I'm sorry it didn't work out."
"Don't be," Jeff said.
"What happened?"
Jeff leaned backwards, and stared into the sky. A couple of stars broke through the light pollution, and littered the overcast. "We both expected separate things. I think Annie wanted someone strong to lean on. A big man to support her: a prince charming, or her father. And, I couldn't be that person. The relationship got toxic, and then I left. Simple. This is the first time I've seen her since."
"Does the study group still meet at all?"
"Not really. I've been avoiding them to be honest, well, Annie at least. Pierce and Shirley have been pretty busy with their new business, they just don't have the time. And..." He paused, and looked at the woman sitting next to him. The cigarette was held between two fingers on her left hand; her gaze was upwards, towards the sky he'd been watching.
"And?" Britta asked, expecting Jeff to continue.
"It was just not the same without you there."
Britta snorted, as if annoyed by the suggestion. "Really?"
"Of course."
"Well, I'm sorry for any affect it had on you," she spoke coldly, distant. She was like a shadow in the dark, one of the nondescript figures standing around the blank bonfire.
"I've been alright, even with the Annie thing. The person you should apologize to is Troy. He was pretty beaten up over your disappearance."
"I already apologized to him, earlier. I didn't expect he'd react that way."
"How did you expect he'd react?" Jeff asked.
Britta was silent and stared away from him. She finished her beer, tossed the bottle towards the beach, and grabbed another from her case.
Jeff watched her movements. His friend, who was, until an hour ago, gone. She sat quietly, fading away; barely beside him; barely there at all. A phantom had returned, not Britta; at least, not yet.
"Britta," he said softly.
"Yeah?"
"Where have you been?"
She took a large swig of her beer, then rubbed her eyes. The muscles on her face tightened. She tried not to let Jeff see. But, the pain was clear, even behind her palm.
"I've been running away," she mumbled.
"Running away from what?"
"I don't know. From my life; from the group; from my father; from myself." Her lips convulsed. She tried to remain calm, blank.
"From your father?" Jeff asked, confused. "Did something happen?"
"Yeah. The fucker's dying."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Don't be. I can't wait for him to die. Then I can start forgetting him."
"Britta?"
She coughed. She grabbed the pack of cigarettes and lit another, illuminating her face for a moment. In the light of the lighter, Jeff noticed a tear crawl down her face. She turned away from him. "I've tried to get that bastard out of my head since I was 16. Maybe once he's gone, I'll actually be able to."
"It does not work like that Britta. My father's been gone my whole life, and I've never been able to get him out of my mind. How much longer does your dad have?"
"I'm not sure, my brother emailed me in the spring about it. I haven't checked the thing in weeks, and my phone's been disconnected. He may have already went."
"Did you not visit him?"
"Nope." She laughed, in an attempt to let out some stress. The cigarette rested between two of her fingers, slowly burning out.
"Why not? Aren't you afraid of never reconciling with him?"
"Reconcile? Hah!" She spat. She took an exaggerated swig from her beer. "I gave up any hope of reconciliation when I dropped out of high school. My father's the most stubborn man who ever lived. He refused to ever accept anyone else's perspective on things. Jeff, I was molested when I was eleven. The man in the dinosaur costume hired at my birthday had loose hands. And my father never believed me. 'I didn't see anything', 'the man seemed nice', 'Daddy knows best' and the rest of the bullshit. When I was 16, and he shouted in my face that he knew there was nothing wrong with me, I was just a stuck up kid who loved to talk-back, that's when my father died to me. After that, he was just a bastard, nothing more and nothing less."
Britta brought her shoulders up, and looked towards the dark water. Jeff, feebly, tried to extend his hand to her, try to console his hurt friend, but he pulled back at the last moment. With a breath, he asked, "So, if you didn't visit your father, where have you been?"
"Around. I've been staying on friends' couches, or sleeping in my car. I went back to New York for a while, before heading to the North-West. I wanted to be alone, mostly. Away from everyone. Tried not to become a burden on anyone, not anymore."
Jeff grabbed another beer from the case. "Why did you leave? We could have helped you Britta. We fought through a lot the past couple of years. How could people's couches be better than the group?"
"Do you really think you could have helped?" She breathed deeply. A bitter wind cut between them. Jeff shivered; Britta stayed still, cold. "You and Annie were falling into each others' arms. Shirley and Pierce were working all day on their new shop. Troy and Abed were happy living in their fantasy dream land. There was no place for me. My entire life I've joined groups, and then been slowly pushed out of them. The girls in high school had no interest in me; the boys only wanted something to fuck. Hell, even the anarchists kicked me out of their group for not being anarchist enough, and they cared more about the drugs than they ever cared about the politics. They just wanted an excuse to kick me out. Everything's better without Britta."
"Come on, the study group was different."
"No. No it was not. I've lived through it too many times. You all pretended you cared, but those were only words." She coughed, a guttural reaction. "I'm tired of words. I'm tired of all that pretense. This was not something which came out of nowhere. It built over months. During third year, I went on these long benders; weeks I filled myself with alcohol. By the end of it, I started taking roxies, and, and." she breathed. "Look, I'm a mess. I've been a mess. And despite all of your pretty words, Jeff Winger, none of you cared. No one even noticed. You were all separating yourselves from me, so you could make a clean break when I went off the deep end. I just pre-empted that, and left before you had a chance to blame me."
"Look, Britta, maybe we could have been more attentive. But, we were all going through a lot then. The expulsion affected all of us hard. That doesn't mean we didn't care. We cared. Just look at Troy, he was distraught after you left."
"Troy doesn't care. He never did. Troy just thought I'd sleep with him. That was all."
"I don't think that's true."
"Maybe it isn't true!" Her voice cracked. She spoke in a fragile tone. A glass case about to shatter; the thin barrier under pressure, trying not to break. "Maybe it's just the lie I tell myself so that I don't blame myself for everything. Like I said, I was on these benders. My mind was this muddled disordered cluster of anxieties. I needed to leave. None of you liked being near me. I was ruining all the fun, all of the situations I was in. So maybe I made this big excuse of you all hating me, hoping I'd leave. That way, it wasn't really me choosing to leave at all; I was merely following through on your desires. My father was dying, and my friends hated me: a good excuse to leave."
She continued. "You know what? It's funny. I really thought I was doing you all a favour when I left. I was saving the study group from Britta, the fun vampire. And, maybe everything would still be a mess if I stayed, or it'd be worse, but, it does not seem like it helped at all." She chuckled. "It's just like me, to screw everything up. I thought maybe this time it'd be different. If I left, you could be happy with Annie, and Troy and Abed could focus on their fun. How could I have known Troy was going to act that way? I mean, now, it seems obvious. But, to be honest, I really thought Troy only wanted to sleep with me.
She inhaled from the cigarette, and played with it in her fingers. Smoke crawled out her mouth, and she rubbed the side of her face. She continued: "I may have forgotten people could be in love. Like, it's just this foreign concept you find in children's movies and Hallmark cards. It's not real. It's just a big lie adults don't concern themselves with. I gave up on the whole concept. I think..." she held her head in her hands. She tried to hold back her emotions, and hide from Jeff. The cigarette burned between her fingers. She began to speak, her voice strained: "I put to bed any notion I had of romantic love when you left me at the Transfer Dance. That part of me, the meagre hope I had of finding someone who could love me back, died. If you couldn't love me, after all we'd been through, then there was no one for me."
"Britta..." Jeff tried to speak.
In a flash, rose swaying flames flared up on the beach before them. A channel of white smoke fluttered in the wind, dancing around the sand. The light of the pit illuminated the beach; the three blank shapes in front of them regained their humanity: Abed, Annie, and Troy, celebrating the eruption. The threw their arms into the air. A real bonfire burned on the beach.
On the steps, warm light flickered across their faces. Jeff could see Britta in detail; the phantom exposed as a fraud, for she was real the whole time. Britta. A half-smile was trapped on her face. Her eyes looked hollowed and vast. The gaze she gave Jeff pierced deep inside him. A couple of tears streaked down her face. The fragile shape shattered; the weak anxious dream of hers, of collapse, realized. And, as she broke down before him, in the light of the fire, he looked for words to speak. The proper answer to her honesty. But, he knew no reply. All he could do was stare, dumb, at the woman, her tears, and his own life in her gaze.
"Why did you come back Britta?" His voice was emotional. He'd been affected by her words.
She stared forward, toward the fire. Little orange reflections were held in her eyes. Her voice turned neutral, cold, from Jeff's change of subject. "I don't know. I don't know. It was a mistake. I was doing better, and, maybe I wanted to run away from running away for once. But, this was a mistake. I'll probably leave town tomorrow, once I see Shirley."
"No." Jeff's voice was stern, commanding.
"What?"
"No." He repeated. "I'm not letting you go again. Maybe you're right. Maybe we were bad friends before. But, I want another chance. I don't want to let this go." In the light of the fire, Jeff's voice cracked. The facade he always kept around himself, with his relentless hair trigger charm, and surface cheer, broke down into the anxious boy hiding obsessed with his deep seed fear of an endless loneliness. He talked close to a collapse; each word was delicately spat out on a string dangling over top of the deep emptiness he felt in the centre of his being. "I've been really messed up since you left. I know I said I was alright, but that was a lie. Everything with Annie's been a mess. I've been a mess. And I don't want to let this go. I don't want to let you go."
"Jeff?" Britta sounded confused. Her eyes were wide. Her break down momentarily halted.
"You're right, at the end of third year I was obsessed with Annie. My whole being was directed towards her, in some kind of absurd sense that she was the answer to my problems. I could be made whole if she were with me. Instead, she tore me apart further."
He breathed deeply, trying to concentrate his thoughts. "Ever since the Transfer Dance, I saw Annie as a clutch. When I felt trapped, lost, after I walked out on you and Slater, and I kissed her, she felt different. Like she could fix me. But, really, instead of fixing me, my fixation on her just delayed me from actually facing myself. She was not helping me, she was helping me mask my problems. And, I realized this after we got together, and you left. When you disappeared, I really thought about what happened to us: what I did. I played back all of those times we shared together; I couldn't get you out of my mind. I couldn't face the things I'd done. And, all of the sudden, Annie just became this girl who distracted me from you. She was my distraction from how badly I fucked up with you. And, when you left, she was no longer enough."
Jeff sighed deeply, and felt a lone tear escape his eye. The string was taught; he dangled over his own well of anxiety he kept hidden. "I had these dreams. Oh god, I had these dreams. I'm sitting alone in the study room, and you're books are at your spot. And I sit, and wait for you to come back. And I wait, and I wait, and I wait, until I started to beg, and I start to yell, but nothing changes, you never come. Your books just lay there, and I'm sitting there alone. Or, we'd be lying together on my bed. It's the morning, and the sun's warm on us. Everything's quiet, and you're pregnant, and I, and I... I want to touch you so badly, but I don't, because I'm afraid to wake you, so I lie still, watching you breath, and I..." Jeff moved his hand over his face, wiping away a couple more tears which snuck by him. "And then I wake up. I wake up. And you're gone. You're so gone. Completely gone. And I'd be sleeping next to Annie. And I'd hate her, so deeply in those moments. A terrible hurtful hate which just boils in me, because she's the reason I ignored you for so long. She's the reason I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. But, that's not true, I was the reason. It was my fault. And I'm so, so sorry, for everything."
Britta held her head in both her hand; sobs slowly poured out from her. After a moment, her voice croaked, and she begged: "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I don't want to lose you again. I know you're messed up: this jaded manic depressive activist, but I still like you. I still like you! I don't want you to go."
"What do you mean?" Tears started to roll down her face. They sparkled a light orange from the reflection of the flames.
"I mean I want you to give us one more chance, give me one more chance. We won't be able to fix everything, but, maybe, we can try? All I know is that I can't stand the idea of you not being a part of my life. It sickens me. And, know that you've come back, the last thing I want to happen is to see you leave again."
Britta did not answer. She sat quiet, collecting her emotions. Her shoulders shook. The warm light of the fire, threw orange streaks across their faces. Jeff felt like he sat on a cliff. He'd always been the one to walk away, when things got serious. He felt suffocated at the suggestion of proximity. But, in the past couple of months, he had not forgiven himself for the way he acted at the Transition Party. And, now, he sat just like Britta, staring at the edge of his being, relying on the other to catch him.
"Hey, you two!" a voice called from the beach. Troy stood at the bottom of the stairs. "Are you going to join us at the fire, or not? No point coming to a bonfire, if you're not around it."
"Yeah, okay," Britta called down. She stood up from her spot, and slowly walked down. Jeff stayed still, and watched as she moved. Reluctantly, he followed suit.
The flames of the bonfire stood a couple feet tall. The bitter fall wind continued to blow: pushing the flames in circles. Britta took a place next to Troy on a log. Abed sat alone on the ground, and Jeff joined Annie on the other log. The fire was warm, but the swirling smoke made it hard to breathe. Near the light, the stars became harder to see; their needle point dots muted in the sky.
"I'm surprised you were able to get it to light," Jeff commented.
"Yeah," Troy spoke with pride. "It was tough. But, we were too awesome for it."
"Turns out," Annie added, "if you add enough lighter fluid, anything will catch."
Through the fire, Jeff stared at Britta, and she stared back at him. Her gaze was hollow once more: a piercing, uncomfortable, honesty in her eyes. He stared straight back. The wind picked up, and the flames were thrown nearly horizontal. It would blow out soon. The passion would be brief. A small lie in the air. In their stare, they tried to pretend it was different. It could beat the weather; it could survive. But, they both knew, deep down within them, that it was a matter of time. A quickly fading flash, instead of a slow burning home. It was a sad little joke shared between them. Or, the only glimmer of hope they knew they could hold onto. Britta nodded her head. Jeff tried to smile.
...
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Author's Notes:
I wrote this story on a bit of a whim, so it's less refined than many of my other ones.
In the story, I borrow and steal from the short story "Landscapes with Flatiron" by Haruki Murakami and the movie Before Sunset by Richard Linklater.
I hope you liked it!
Please Leave a Review.
Thanks. BJ.