What If

“What air is there to clear between us?” I wondered. If anything, he needed to speak with Briar, to apologize to her.

“Plenty,” he muttered. “Man I wasn’t blind then…”

“What are you babbling on about?” I said frustrated. My body was taut, prepared to spring.

“I wasn’t blind at that party. That farewell thing where I met you,” he explained. “You were in love with her, and you know what? Briar was in love with you too. But shit, I wanted her enough to put up a fight. I thought I won.” He rubbed his jaw in thought. “But now look at where we are. I didn’t win; I just postponed the inevitable.”

“I’m not following you…” My head was spinning with all this information. Someone was able to read me and see the truth behind my friendship with Briar, and that guy was Briar’s ex-husband who is telling me Briar loved me, too?

Killian’s features became angry. “Don’t play me for a fool, Arrow. You want me to believe you’re back in town and not seeing Briar?”

“To be honest, I don’t really give two shits what you know and don’t know about Briar and me,” I quipped.

“Why are you acting like I’ve ruined your life? She’s single. She’s not my wife anymore. If you want her, there she is. I lost, Arrow. She’s not mine.”

“You lost because you wanted to divorce her because she wasn’t ready for kids! You look like an idiot, you know that?” I remarked. Truthfully, I was thankful she wasn’t with Killian anymore. The mere thought of her being with anyone was tough to think about, but someone breaking her heart was unfathomable.

Killian smiled sadly. “That was the reason I gave Briar when I told her I wanted a divorce. But it’s not true. I could wait to have kids with her.”

“Then what’s the real reason?” My eyebrows drew together, and I scooted forward in my seat.

“She’s not in love with me.” He threw back the rest of his beer. “It was kind of a test. If I said I wanted a divorce, would she fight to keep me? She didn’t. She accepted it with very few questions. She loved me. I know that. But looking back now, she was never in love with me. And believe me, there’s a difference between being loved and having someone in love with you.” He stood from his seat and picked up the large, empty cup he finished off a few seconds ago. “She never looked at me the way she looked at you.”

I sat looking forward at nothing and nobody, mulling over everything Killian said.

The heavy tapping on my shoulder from Killian forced me to look up at him. “You get a second chance. Don’t mess this up. Be good to our girl.”



Five beers later, I still sat dumfounded. I had all of our memories filed into a large compartment in my brain. I pulled out one every so often and replayed those times like an old home video. Never, ever, did I look at those memories and consider the idea that Briar felt the same way I did for her. The other day, outside of this very bar, she admitted to me that she’d been crazy about me. Not in love, but crazy. There was a difference. A big one. You could be crazy about your friends, your family. Hell, you could be crazy about your favorite television shows. If Killian was correct and Briar was in love with me when we were teenagers, was she telling me the other night that she was still in love with me? If Briar loved me back then, why did she give up on me? Why did the letters stop coming? Why didn’t she fly out for my graduation? Why didn’t she call me?

Those past memories continued to invade my thoughts… Back then I eventually held a grudge against her. Days went by that I didn’t hear from her, and each day that passed was another wedge between us. In a moment of weakness, I deleted and blocked her from my network pages. Well, Lacey did. She said she wasn’t comfortable with my friendship with Briar. She asked if she could get on my pages and block Briar and, because of our lack of friendship, I didn’t see the hurt in it. No longer getting updates on Briar’s romantic life with Killian was a relief. Seeing her smiling in pictures where he was hugging her from behind felt like small stabs in my chest. I had to make a choice: move on with Lacey and stop my constant state of fury whenever there was a post on Briar’s page, or continue putting myself through constant torture. I chose the former, allowing Lacey to do whatever she wanted with my page.

I kept the same number for a long while, but eventually I knew I needed to change it, too. At the time it felt like the only way to move on. But even after I made all those changes, I still wondered about Briar. I often wanted to know if she was happy, if life gave her everything she deserved.

Now all of it seemed petty, seemed stupid, seemed like a complete waste of the time Briar and I could’ve had together. It was all because of miscommunication, all because we were afraid to tell each other the truth. I needed to know if Killian was right. Had Briar always loved me? Where was she the day of graduation? And why did she never try to contact me?



I fell asleep that night with the intent of asking her all of those things when I picked her up for the concert. I awoke in the middle of the night in a sweaty mess, heart beating rapidly, and the images of my time in Afghanistan still fresh from my dreams. I looked around the room for the men who tried to kill me. Realizing I was in my own apartment, in the US, gun in the nightstand next to me, that I was safe, I laid back down, letting out a relieving breath. I wondered if the nightmares would last for the rest of my life, or if eventually it would seem like a distant memory, one which lost its vividness.

It was only three in the morning. After getting up and taking the sleeping pill the doctor prescribed me, I fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.





With the heat cranked up in the truck, the tickets to the concert resting in my back pocket with my wallet, I headed to Briar’s apartment. I glanced over at the dashboard where the time lit up in a bright florescent blue. I was going to be early to Briar’s, but I couldn’t sit around the house any longer and wait to finally see her.

I rang her doorbell and chuckled when I heard her cursing while getting closer to the door. Clearly, she wasn’t ready yet. When she opened the door, her hair was a mess of curls, most of it blocking her face. She had a black heel in her hand that she was simultaneously trying to put on her foot while holding her skirt down.

I watched, enjoying the chaos and utter disarray which was Briar. I tried to keep the chuckling quiet, but she looked up at me with her hair still stuck to the lip gloss making her mouth shiny. I couldn’t hold it back. I reached out and freed the hair from its sticky prison. She blew out a mouthful of air, pushing the hair coming closer to her lips away from her.

“You’re early,” she stated, hopped over to her couch, sat down, and clasped the heel around her ankle.

“I am.” She stood back up, straightened the tiny black skirt that only barely covered her ass. My eyes must’ve widened, because she smiled confidently and did a little twirl showing me her backside which looked sinful in the get up. She wore a pink shirt with sheer sleeves but opaque everywhere else, looking sexy and classy much like the New Year’s party at Miller’s. Her lips were naturally a dark pink, but her lip-gloss must’ve had a tint to it. Her lips were cherry in color. The woman knew how to stay right on the line of tasteful yet boner-inducing.