Discordant Juncture

Discordant Juncture

By Amy Lancaster

It took some concentration to slow his breathing. He could still feel the adrenaline that had flooded through him when he heard her voice on the phone, and that was making it hard to wait. It had been a few years since he’d last seen her. He still didn’t understand exactly what had gone wrong, but life without her hadn’t been easy. He’d been distracted. He’d blown off a lot of opportunities to meet other people, but he told himself he didn’t care. He knew that was just one more mistake in a sea of errors, but he’d felt unsure of himself ever since she’d left. It wasn’t that he hadn’t done anything in all that time. He’d left the state to go to school for a while, and now that he was back, he would be graduating soon, but for some reason, even that accomplishment didn’t make him feel any better.

Sitting on the edge of the old treehouse on his parents’ property, he stared at his shoes as he swung his feet. The sound of a car coming up the graveled road made him lift his head suddenly. His breathing got more rapid and shallow as the car came to a stop, and he saw her get out and look around uncertainly. He jumped from the platform of the treehouse and landed on the ground a few feet below. The movement caught her attention and she waved nervously. She started walking towards him across the sparse lawn in the shade beneath the trees. He motioned for her to continue and watched her approach with bated breath. Hope was still incredibly beautiful. Not knowing what else to do, he shoved his hands into his front pockets and tried to look disinterestedly up at the canopy overhead. He was forced to look back down as the sound of the grass rustling ceased a few feet from him.

“Hi, Ben.” She said awkwardly. She looked from him to the treehouse. It rose darkly against the bright mountains in the distance. The wood was greyed from years of exposure to the weather and a few boards were broken and missing. It was sturdy despite its age, and more importantly, filled with enticing memories of the many pleasant afternoons they had shared there in the past.

“Hello.” he replied stiffly. After an uncomfortable silence, he continued, “I was surprised to hear from you.”

“Yeah. I just really wanted to see how you were. It’s been a while.” Her face flushed, and now she looked at her shoes, rocking back onto her heels restlessly.

He studied her intently before motioning towards the treehouse.

“We could go sit up there if you want to.” Ben suggested quickly. She responded with a faint smile which deepened into an actual grin, when she finished climbing the ladder and stepped onto the platform.

“Oh! I’d forgotten how nice it was up here!” she exclaimed.  Hope turned from the view of the tree covered hills that waved in the summer breeze, towards Ben as he climbed onto the platform too. He nodded in agreement, waiting apprehensively for her to tell him what she wanted.

It was hard to see her. It made him conscious of all the mistakes he had made when they were still together. He shouldn’t have made her wait for him, but by the time he had figured that out, it was too late. Most men called that being an idiot. He’d have to agree. He was an idiot, but that didn’t mean that he knew what to do about it now. He knew that she had moved on and he also knew that he had told her to go. Remembering that brought a fresh wave of dread to wash over him.

After surveying the scene, he looked over to where she was standing. Her eyes were locked on him and the intensity on her face made him very uncomfortable. He quickly looked away again.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” he blurted out more defensively than he meant to.

She fumbled through a bunch of small talk that didn’t interest him much. He knew her well enough to know that this wasn’t what she’d come for. Women always wanted to talk about relationships. This had to be about why things had ended so abruptly between them. He knew she didn’t understand either. Why didn’t she just get to the point? He hated that she looked so pained. He wanted to tell her that he had missed her and that he just wanted her to stay, but the words didn’t come.

As she spoke, she had unconsciously moved closer to him, trying to get him to engage in the conversation over the sound of the rustling leaves. He didn’t want to talk. He gave the cursory responses required to show that he was still paying attention, but continued looking into the distance. She kept on talking and he eventually realized that she wasn’t going to say it. 

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. Being so close to her was flooding him with emotion that he didn’t know how to deal with, and had been barely able to repress. He still thought of her as his girlfriend. Impulsively, he put his arms around her and pulled her close to him. To his surprise, she didn’t resist and held him tightly in return. They stood in an intense embrace for several moments in complete silence. The elevation and isolation of the tree house seemed to shelter them from the rest of the world for one prolonged moment.

“I don’t know what to do.” he said, and the wooden planks under his feet groaned as if acknowledging the elephant in the room. “Unless, you’re going to leave him, there’s no way we can fix this.”

“I know.” she said softly. “Why has everything between us always been so hard?” There was no good answer to that and he knew it, so he said nothing. The tension between them felt harrowing. The torturous silence was finally broken by her tearful admission. “I can’t do it. It’s killing me, but I just can’t do that to him!”

It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but the caustic truth of her confession stirred up bitter resentment. He released her and walked a few steps away in agitation. The treehouse platform swayed a little as his movement shifted the weight it was carrying. A gust of wind rustled the branches as the warm air whisked by. Shame and burning disappointment filled him. The raw, unresolved emotions were becoming unbearable.

“Why did you come here then?” he demanded indignantly.

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed in frustration. “You never loved me anyway! You never understood me and you never cared enough to try!”

The accusation did more than sting. It was a powerful right hook that hit home. It wasn’t true. He loved her in ways he was powerless to describe, but he had always been unable to convince her of that fact. His inability to make her understand made him want to leave. He concentrated on trying to keep his feet firmly planted, but he was acutely aware of the sudden rush of blood pumping through his veins.

Despairingly, she fixed her eyes on him again, and what he saw in her face fanned the flames of discord in his heart. The one thing he had never been able to bear was her disappointment in him. In fact, it was suffocating. Knowing that he might never see her again was the only thing that kept him from walking away immediately.

“Nothing I did was ever good enough for you, was it?” he countered. She let out an exasperated groan and started descending the ladder angrily. Another gust of wind through the tree shook him from his angry stupor and he followed her, trembling with adrenaline. At the bottom of the ladder she turned and rounded on him, shielding her face from leaves and dust being stirred by the increasing wind.

“What did you ever do for me? Any time there was a problem you left! You shut me out and left! All I wanted was for you to be there for me!” Her voice broke and she started sobbing as she was overcome by her own pain. He failed to see the warning sign.

“Are you crazy? What are you talking about? I spent almost all my time with you. I wasn’t getting a lot of other stuff done because I was always with you.” he protested heatedly.

“Ben!” she screamed hysterically. “You’re right! Okay? You always have to be right! I shouldn’t have come. This was a huge mistake!”

She turned with clenched fists and stormed angrily across the shaded lawn, towards her car parked on the hot, sunny road. Ben was left watching the clouds of dust kicked up by her sudden departure. In seconds, the dust was swept higher into the atmosphere by the sharp gusts of hot summer wind, obscuring his view of her. Furiously, he turned away from the road, but stopped suddenly as some small branches were torn loose and fell to the ground in front of him. Instead, he found himself looking up at the weathered old tree house with its missing boards. Instinctively, he felt that they shared common ground now. In that moment he realized that the best days were now solidly in the past for both of them.