Chapter 2. X Is the Loneliest Letter
I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were.
/Dido/
…x…
"I don't know what to do," Lucas drops a sigh into his plate and it swirls with noodles in his soup, following the movement of his spoon.
He doesn't even expect Mouth to be able to tell him what to do.
His friend reaches across the table and puts more soy sauce on his own noodles, stirring them around with the chopsticks. Lucas idly notices that, while Mouth is a professional, he himself has still not mastered the art of eating with chopsticks. They're of course staying in the same hotel: it's the only one in town. It is ostensibly air-conditioned, but the dining room is only cooled by ceiling fans going at a pace that makes Mouth's longish hair blow around his face and stick to sweaty skin. There is an ancient, noisy window unit in his room that he's set going as soon as he got back, in the hopes that it would be cool enough by time he's eaten to maybe get some sleep. His skin feels dirty even right after he takes a shower. The air everywhere has an unpleasant thickness to it. Still, it's a little cooler then Brooke's apartment and he again wonders what makes her – how can she possibly – live like that.
And – surprise – it is still raining.
"Do you have any idea what's going on?" He asks, not for the first time. "What does she even do here?"
"Brooke works here," is Mouth's apathetic answer, and it's quite clear that he won't say much more.
"Yeah, but what does she do? I've seen some papers around, drawings, even, and wow, she's gotten so good, but none of them were designs, and…"
"Look, Lucas, whatever you need to know about Brooke, ask her yourself. I'm not really in the position to tell. Besides, I don't really know all that much." And he doesn't. Mouth doesn't know because both he and Brooke remind each other of Tree Hill and of people they left there, for better or for worse, and they, neither of them are the same people anymore, he's not the same, thanks for asking. He doesn't say that – thanks for asking – or even imply it, but Lucas doesn't need to be guilted to feel guilty. Not at the moment, anyway.
"How are you?" is belated, but still appreciated.
Mouth just nods.
"Is life more good or bad?" Lucas is asking, now curious.
"It's sixty-five to thirty-five, I guess, with good on the winning side." Mouth answers after considering the question for at least a minute, and Lucas figures those are good odds. "And you should know that Brooke is not the person you used to know. Neither are you, from what I can tell." He nods tiredly.
"I just don't understand how it got so bad, how we lost touch so bad that I didn't even know she's alive. How it came to the point where we didn't even… I don't know if you know this, but before she left… Well, I think, the reason she left…" There's a pitiful sigh now, hanging off the wall between himself and Mouth, and Lucas wonders briefly if maybe a similar wall has been there with Brooke without him even noticing. If he's build the same retaining wall from Peyton.
Bar a single post-school meeting, which happened about a year after their graduation, lots of senseless pondering and some M-rated details, Mouth knows his history with Brooke Davis, romantic and otherwise, pretty well. He has his own perspective on it even, having been Brooke's confidant and for a while there her best friend. And Lucas wants to try bouncing his thoughts about the matter off of someone who's a little objective and quite knowledgeable. To his sheer astonishment, it is Mouth who starts talking about Brooke again, not himself.
"She's… kinda depressed."
Well, duh. That's exactly why Lucas is so confused.
"And when she's depressed… Brooke's not Peyton." And Lucas knows that better then anyone. "She doesn't need… when Brooke's depressed, she doesn't want to lean on people, she just wants to be on her own." And Mouth makes a little sense, but then he doesn't know what Lucas knows. Things about Peyton and Brooke – lots of things – that are private, that he doesn't want to talk over with himself, let alone anyone else.
"Maybe if I could…"
"I don't think she really wants to talk to you, Lucas" Mouth suggests.
Lucas drops his spoon into his soup angrily. "Well, what then? What am I supposed to do? I mean, you got me here, so you tell me what to do now!" Lucas likes feeling angry. It's the most uncomplicated emotion of what he's feeling right now. It's the only reaction that makes sense to him at this particular moment.
"I figured you would want to know she's alive. To see it with your own eyes. The rest is up to you." And Lucas doesn't need to be on the ground to admit he's defeated. At least not at the moment.
They cool off for a couple of minutes, and then talk about their travels. Lucas tries to be pleasant and friendly, cracks a couple of jokes. Afterwards, he calls Haley. Thanks God for Skype.
"What would you want me or Nate to do if you were depressed?" he asks. There's a silence on the line.
"I can't afford to be depressed. I have Jamie and a hundred twenty seven kids who have no idea of life or English Literature. And of course Nathan, who isn't that much more mature most of the time." There's a slight pause, then Haley asks, "Where are you calling from?"
"I'm in Vietnam. I'm not sure I can pronounce the name of this place right, Dai something. It's hot and raining like you wouldn't believe. Trust me, Seattle has nothing on this place. I doubt I'll ever dry off."
"Vietnam?" she doesn't really sound shocked, just somewhat resigned. Lucas spent most of these past months traveling from one exotic location to another trying to put as much distance between himself and his home as he could. "Did you talk to Peyton?"
And he's tired and pissed at hearing the question over and over again. "No, and I'm not going to. Not at the moment and probably not this month, Haley, and I would really appreciate it if you dropped the subject. You've done enough pushing, don't you think?"
Peyton is a very sore spot, still. That whole proposal encounter, engagement and wedding left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth; it is a place in his memory he doesn't like to have to go to. He rubs the spot on his third finger where the ring should be and wonders how things can go downhill so fast, crash so hard, marvels that his hand is so evenly tanned it's impossible to even notice that the ring was there. Perhaps a comet was a right metaphor to use after all, what with it appearing for the shortest time and fading without a trace, returning to its normal state of a block of ice. He also wonders how everyone and even Peyton herself wished to be compared to the sphere of frozen gas randomly rotating around bigger objects in space. A very, very sore spot, indeed.
"That's not fair, Luke," Haley sounds pained, and he sighs in resignation. "I can't help but worry about you."
There's static on the line and he allows himself to drawn in it for a moment, feeling the tiredness creep up his forearms and shoulders. "Rock and a hard place, huh?" As his best friend chuckles humorlessly, Lucas continues, "I didn't ask you to take sides, Hales. Remember, when I left, all I asked of you was space."
Haley sounds stern suddenly. "Well I didn't quite imagine your time/space continuum would be that relative. Almost five months, Luke, and you're on the other hemisphere, I just thought you'd punished her enough." The last thought itself infuriates Lucas, and he has to take a deep steadying breath before he can talk.
"This is not about punishment, Hales. I'm a strong believer in Karma now, after all, I have to be. Think of it as a… sabbatical. And anyway, not the reason I'm calling at all. Are you pregnant, buddy?" she laughs at the abrupt and light change of subject, and he has to smile for the first time in a long while now. She isn't, so he fills her in. "Brooke's alive. She's here, in Vietnam."
"Brooke?" her voice hitches. He waits for his best friend to come around, grasp the concept and finish her incredulous squealing and goes on. "Mouth found her. He's here, too, sort of. I went to see her today. She's alive, I wouldn't say she's peachy or extremely healthy, but she's alive. And apparently, we were the only ones who presumed that she was dead. Hales, did we actually call anyone when we saw the news? Her mother, her office?" Because beats him, he's been trying to remember for hours now, and he can't.
"I… don't think so. Oh my God." They are both silent for a moment, contemplating the fact. "And what is she doing in Vietnam?"
"I don't have a slightest idea. But she's not doing so well from what I can tell. She's so… different." This newly minted Brooke 2.0 might as well have come from another planet, for all that he knows and can understand of her now.
"Oh…" Yeah, oh. "What do you suggest we do?" He wishes he would know what to answer to that. So he tries to sound his most assured.
"It doesn't seem that she wants help, at least not from me. So I don't know what to do, but I'm not gonna leave until she at least talks to me." He was going to, really, was going to let her have it her way, work it out herself since she so obviously didn't want him anywhere near her, but then she whispered that confession through the door. And if Brooke Davis missed him, too, Lucas doesn't know what else to do but stay.
He expects a smart advice on how to handle that conversation, so he's stunned into immobility when Haley asks in a quiet, serious tone, if she should come out there and help him. Tears burn in his eyes, and he almost says yes. 'Yes, yes, yes, please help me, buddy, the way you used to!' But then he remembers Nathan, and Jamie. He can't drag Haley away from her family. Brooke might go easier on Haley then himself, but she wouldn't be any more open. Brooke isn't one to divulge her secrets when she doesn't want to. At least she wasn't.
"Thanks, Hales, but I'm probably better on my own. Just… I'll visit her again tomorrow, maybe I'll find something out. I'll call with the news. Kiss my nephew for me, 'k? Love you, bye."
The air conditioner in his room labors noisily, but the temperature is still at least eighty five when he goes inside. His bed is lumpy, and he doesn't care to look too closely in any of the dark corners.
In the middle of the night, the sudden silence wakes him up. He lays there for a long moment, startled and dizzy, until he realizes it's a power cut. The only sound is the insistent rustle of the rain. Rising, he opens the French-style windows into the night. The town lays in darkness, bare of the city lights he's now so used to. For a moment the air outside feels almost cool against his face. Staring into the black, he reaches for a smoke and searches his pockets for a lighter, and wonders what happened to Brooke, and why he cares so much.
…x…
Brooke is convinced Chinese had a torture exactly like this, the meticulous dripping sound driving victims insane.
How is it even possible that something burns in this constant rain, she wonders.
Sweat trickles from her armpits, and down her back, making her squirm. The ceiling fan only seems to accentuate the terrible heat. Between that, the smoke from the street and a dull throbbing heartache that's possessed her since Lucas' visit, it is almost impossible to get a breath.
After Brooke's sure Lucas left, she goes out for some food. The market place, with its medley of vivid aromas and stinks, is almost outside her door. She'd wondered, as she first moved in this room, how she will stand the noise just on the other side of the thin wooden slats. But now, perhaps she likes it. It is company of a kind.
Music by someone old and long dead drifts from her beloved laptop, voices scratchy and tinny at points. She finds a bowl and chopsticks and a soup spoon made of china they use here, and sets if not an attractive table, at least a neat one.
The pho steams in the center. She's sweat-streaked, and regards the hot food with apprehension, not sure if she can quite eat. Brooke knows she has to support herself or something, but doesn't really comprehend why. But, she figures beef broth doesn't kill you if tsunamis and assaulters can't.
She hasn't yet figured out the extent of her own frailty. She is plenty strong enough to go about her routines, but she fails to move the table more to the left. She's managed to live through a meeting with Lucas, but doubts that she'll be able to go to Tree Hill and face everyone in their natural habitat. Frustrated, she goes to the shower and stays in the bathroom for a very long time. When she emerges and notices her body in the mirror, she's pleased: hair combed, skin reddened where she's scrubbed at it. She feels healthier, better. She feels good enough to call her best friend.
Brooke knew she'll have to the moment she identified a person occupying her doorframe as Lucas Scott, even more so when she realized she was dead to her past in more meanings then she intended when leaving town.
"Hello…" Peyton's sleepy sigh travels through satellites, outer space and Brooke's speaker. It is suddenly that much more impossible to draw a single breath. Brooke swallows a tight ball of emotions suddenly lodged in her throat, swallows again because it's this stupid heart of hers and it refuses to move.
"Hey, P. Sawyer," her voice scratches through the lines as a paring knife would, all slicing nerves and edge and pain. She does, however, feel slight satisfaction when she hears a loud gasp and a scared, exited whisper of her name.
"Yup, it's me, alive and kicking, and before you ask, Peyton, I didn't know you considered me dead. I didn't mean to confuse or mislead anyone, and I'm sorry if I did." Brooke's happy to have gotten it off her chest.
"If you did? Brooke… You have no idea how hard it was without you," Peyton's voice is strong and confident as usual, and she draws comfort from it as vampire would suck blood off a pretty little virgin. Brooke doesn't think there's anything in the world she's missed more then this comfort, "and so much has happened. Listen, Deb talked to us after you left. I'm so… We're gonna have a very long, very serious talk about it when you get back. When are you getting back, Brooke?" The questions are missiles aiming faultlessly at her heart, it seems, for Brooke can feel the impact of every syllable reverberating in her chest.
"I'm… I don't think I can, Peyton. Not now." Possibly not ever. "I miss you, but I can't."
There's never been a silence that painful in zeroes and ones, Brooke recons. Then Peyton starts to talk, and Brooke wishes they were back to that silence she hated just a few seconds ago.
"Lucas is divorcing me, Brooke. And I'm not even sure if I want to fight it, anymore. And things have been so horrible for me. You have to come back, because I need you. I need you and there's no one else." It shouldn't hurt her as bad, shouldn't be a surprise that they got married, but it is somehow. "I'm so sorry, Brooke, I want to tell him that and he doesn't want to hear it. Lucas ran away from the country to not listen to me, and it hurts so much."
"I know it does," Brooke whispers in the phone. The man who could have been her lover and could have been hers stands between them, before her, and it breaks another chip off their friendship. She doesn't know how much of it is left in her heart.
Before a nine-year-old inside her who swore to protect her tiny and vulnerable curly-haired friend can answer for her, Brooke sucks in air, loudly. "It hurt me more, Peyton. I wish you'd care about that." She hangs up before anything else can be said, cutting off enough ties that she gets more time for her redemption, for the peace she strives so desperately to find.
She is. Hurt more then she's ever been. When Peyton's voice trembles and breaks down at the mere mention of Lucas' name, she sucks it up and keeps her bottom lip from trembling.
She accepts her obvious love for him like a penitent sinner accepts a cast stone.
Brooke's about to start her crying exercise when her phone rings, and her breath hitches. It's unlikely that Peyton can (or would) just redial, yet a part of her is still terrified of reprisal.
"I'm halfway through avenue Montaigne and I have my heart dead set on faubourg St-Honorẻ, and just because you gave up shopping… damn it, I shouldn't have worn these pants. The underwear is really riding up."
Brooke, despite the worst of moods, has to at least snicker at that. Her heart lifts suddenly and soars with gratitude almost to the point of bursting. "Oh my God, is my favorite slut actually wearing underwear?"
"Tell ya what, BFF. If ya ain't wearing it now, I won't ever again," Rachel suggests, and Brooke can almost picture her other life, the one she had just a year, or even two, ago. She used to love faubourg St-Honoré, staying on Montmartre just because there aren't many things quite as serene as Sacré-Cœur early in the gray Parisian morning. Brooke still dreams of Paris every other night, and does her hair in a French twist the next morning.
"Well, I am just fresh out of shower," she pauses just to send the redhead a few satellite-enhanced pins and needles for a second, "But I guess you've called five minutes too late."
"I'm not sure if that's a good thing, but whatever. You just woke up? It's, like, five-ish here in Paris." Her body is sprawled on the bed, lethargic enough to not want to move anymore. She reaches for the nightstand and grabs honey-scented lotion. Moisturizing is the shit, really.
"Well, it's eleven-ish in The Hellhole, and I just had the worst day, and I shudder to imagine what this call would cost me, or you, but I need my girltalk, and I need it now," and Brooke recons it's her well-deserved right, since she did force Victoria to hire Rachel again, a five year contract her lawyers struggled over and Victoria was close to stroke about, so now the girl owes her big.
"You still have those nightmares?" Brooke does, of course she does, she probably always will and she's accepted it, but it's really beside the point, and there just isn't enough money on her cell to prevaricate.
"More like, an old one just came alive…" She sounds sharper than she intends. She keeps rubbing the lotion in her legs, and finds out her fingers can wrap around her ankle now, and she supposes it puts her a little on the frail side.
"Oh, hun', did Victoria call you? That bitch just never stops, and I swear…" Victoria Davis is the subject either of them can rant about for days not even having to take a breather, but again, so not what's bothering Brooke at the moment.
"Lucas Scott has showed up in my doorway exactly four hours ago. Hence the old nightmare reference." She swears she can see Rachel gape, sigh, snicker, swallow and sigh again.
"Are you telling me you've been having mad passionate sex with your ex for the past four hours and took shower with him and for some inane reason you're now putting on your clothes? Trust me, girl, you want to get back in that bed. Years of abstinence call for more long-term compensation."
"I still wonder how you manage to shop with your head obviously constantly in the gutter." She finds the whole idea of having sex with Lucas – again – absurd and depressing, and tries to settle more comfortably underneath the covers, working the lotion into her elbows. "I did not screw Lucas. Actually, I basically threw him out. But… imagine this – he actually thought I was dead! Go figure."
She hears honest giggling after that, and Rachel brags how she's obviously done her job so well in hiding 'the hottest fashion celebrity of Manhattan' from paparazzi. She confirms, though, that neither Haley nor Peyton called to check on Brooke's or her well-being since the storm.
"You have to kick Mouth's ass though," Brooke adds as an afterthought. "Sure, he has an OK to tell whomever about me, but couldn't he just give Lucas my number and have him give me a call?"
"Well, it's Lucas Scott, your biggest, dare I say only, crush, and only the most mulish man in history. I figure Mouth didn't have much choice in the matter," Rachel offers carefully.
"Lucas wasn't a crush," Brooke sighs, as if admitting it to herself is more then her heart can possibly take. "He was a full-on crash." Some people don't explore the repercussions to their actions, and Lucas friggin' Eugene Scott is one of them. Whatever mistake he makes, he snaps back in a matter of days, and on the rare occasion something forces him to remember, he's already moved on and expects everyone else to. And she still cares too much anyway.
"Whatever, hon'. Maybe the universe does that on purpose." Of course it does, Brooke thinks, then decides to specify.
"Does what on purpose?" It was so obtuse of her, to fall in love with him back in the day only to bite her nails in desperate hysterical fits now, trying herself to move on. But she sort of has a lot bigger issues then Lucas-drama now, and it's a start.
"Brings you back your soulmate right when you need him the most." And it's not the comment she ever expected from Rachel, however sarcastic her voice is. The sheer ludicrousness of it makes her take a moment to collect her wits.
"Well, ho, never thought I'd be the one to tell you, but soulmates only exist in the Hallmark aisle of Duane Reade Drugs. And I don't need Lucas, or anyone, for that matter, to save me, thank you very much." But she does, a little. So miniscule, in fact, that it doesn't even matter most of the time, but she's still trying and marvelously failing to save herself.
"No fooling the universe, Brookie." Well, it does have one hell of a sense of humor.
"Bite my fat ass, Rae." She hangs up and her mood dissolves again, leaving her blank and tired.
She rolls and hugs her pill, momentarily considering another therapeutic crying fit. Maybe, the treatment she chose is right. Maybe, she just needs another dosage. She stops when the power is cut, and lets the rain continue crying for her.