Bad Love

Chapter 1

At his parents' funeral Andrew was the person to whom most of the attendees directed their attention. His indifference to the occasion, embodied in his posture (he was sitting slouched with his arms crossed and his legs stretched out before him) they found indescribably disrespectful.

"How can he be so rude?"

"I've never seen anything so disrespectful!"

"And at his own parents' funeral too!"

Paying close attention to Andrew along with the other attendees was Jasmine, his cousin Bradley's wife. Unlike the others who were observing Andrew, Jasmine had a very particular interest in Andrew. Shortly after receiving the news of the car accident that had killed Andrew's parents, Bradley had raised with Jasmine the idea of inviting Andrew to live with them until he'd finished his degree. Jasmine thought that what had happened to Andrew was awful and made no objection to Bradley's idea. Seeing him at the funeral, seemingly indifferent to his parent's deaths, Jasmine began to have doubts about inviting him to stay with them. His behaviour was strange, and it served as a reminder that, despite them being family, they knew next to nothing about him. Andrew had always been unsociable and the general opinion on him was that he was just shy. Looking at him now, Jasmine wondered if there was more to it than that, if maybe there was something about Andrew that she didn't want in her home. It was too late for her to change her mind, having his cousin come to live with them was important to Bradley and he'd already converted his study into a bedroom for Andrew believing that it was inevitable that he would accept their offer.

They approached him after the service. He was sitting on a bench away from all of the attendees who had gathered in the parking lot and were chattering amongst themselves before they headed to the house for food and refreshments. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses now, which made him even more inscrutable.

"Andrew," Bradley said, drawing his attention.

"Oh, hi," Andrew answered, with the same aloof tone with which he'd responded to everybody's condolences.

"Are you okay?" Bradley asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"The ceremony was nice," Jasmine interceded.

"I guess so," Andrew responded.

Jasmine regarded Andrew with increasing curiosity as he spoke nonchalantly about his parents' death. Bradley asked Andrew what his plans were and Andrew informed him that he and his brother Jonathan had agreed to sell the house and split the money.

"So you'll be needing a place to stay then," Bradley said to him. He made the offer to Andrew and overpowered Andrew's demurrals with his insistence. Andrew would move in with them in two weeks which would be the next time Jasmine saw him. He wasn't going back to the house with everybody else, he wasn't comfortable with the number of people.

Andrew waited for the crowd in the parking lot to disperse and then he took a walk to Melissa's house. Melissa lived in a large five bedroom house. Her parents were both therapists that practiced from home out of two offices that they'd converted the downstairs bedrooms into. Upstairs was their room, Melissa's room and a study/library. To avoid her parents, Andrew walked around the side of the house and climbed up a trellis that led up to Melissa's window. He had come to give her the bad news that he would not be taking her parents up on their offer to move in with them. Andrew had known Melissa's family for five years, having been Melissa's boyfriend and before that her mother's patient.

"So how was it?" Melissa asked him when he entered her room through the window.

"Your standard funeral," Andrew answered indifferently.

"I'd thought that on the day of their funeral you would finally show some emotion, but you're as impassive as ever."

"I don't know why you would think that, you should know me better than that by now."

"My mother keeps telling me to tell you that anytime you want to talk..."

"I know, but as you can see, I'm perfectly fine."

"Anyway, her offer remains on the table, as does their offer to move in with us."

"I won't be taking them up on either offer. My cousin Bradley just offered to let me stay with them, and I accepted."

For the first time since they'd broken up, Melissa began to grow fearful of the possibility of losing Andrew. The entire time that she had known him she had listened to him extolling the beauty and grace of his cousin Bradley's wife Jasmine, and knowing Andrew as well as she did, his efforts at getting what he wanted would be carefully thought through and perfectly executed.

"Where do they live?"

"They live in La Lucia, north of Durban."

"What about school?"

"I'm switching to correspondence, the only reason I go to campus is because of you."

"So when are we going to see each other then?"

"I'll drive here once a week, no more infrequently than once a fortnight."

"And that doesn't sadden you; that we're going to be seeing each other so irregularly?"

"Of course it does."

"Then why?"

"I can't say no to this opportunity Melissa, I have to do this."

Melissa's hope had always been that Jasmine would remain a fantasy of Andrew's, and given his aversion to nearly all things real she felt reasonably confident that her fears wouldn't be realized. Due to the strict policy of compartmentalization that Andrew applied to his life Melissa had never had the opportunity to meet Jasmine and gain some sort of understanding of Andrew's obsession, she could do nothing but accept that he was going to leave to be with the woman who, from the way he had described her, Melissa pictured as being a goddess of some kind.

"Every week," she insisted.

"Every week, I promise, and if I can't make it..."

"If you can't make it then I'm going to come to you."

"There's no need to be so distrustful Melissa."

"If you get what you want I may never see you again."

"You know there's no danger of that happening, but, since this appears to be a genuine fear of yours, every week, I promise."

They sat and talked for two hours and then Andrew left. Melissa understood well that for all of his talk about how important to him she was that Andrew could get by just fine without her, how she was going to get on without him was another matter. She was the only person he was close to and yet much of him remained a mystery to her. The workings of his mind exceeded her grasp, but she believed that with enough time that would change, time that, with him leaving, she was worried she wouldn't get.