TRITTANY: Finally Noticed

Broken Promise

TREVOR

4 MONTHS EARLIER...

She was gone before any of us could get used to her being around again. I stood outside of the club, leaning against the wall for what felt like an eternity after her cab had driven away and Victoria had clip-clopped back inside after yet another painful conversation of accusations regarding Britt. With my back against the brick wall, I guess I was just taking in everything she had said. It might have taken a while but by the time I was walking back into the club, I had come to the conclusion that maybe Victoria was right. Maybe it was time I stopped blaming her for why I was thinking about Brittany. Maybe it was time I stopped blaming anyone but myself. After all, what Vic said only got to me because I let it get to me. This whole time I had been sabotaging myself. I had been the problem.

For the rest of the night out with the cast after Brittany left, I managed to paint a smile on my face and dance and laugh and have a good time. We all knew that she was gone and we all knew that we were bummed about it but no one brought it up for the remainder of the outing. It wasn't until the following morning when I woke up and lay staring at the ceiling, that I let the realisation wash over me that this was it. That unbelievably fast week following the eternal month she was gone was all we got of her. It was all we were going to get until Christmas. She was really gone...again.

If I was being honest, I spent a lot of time thinking about Brittany in the days that followed. Shocker, right? Who would've thought it? That weekend, I was running around doing my own stuff; errands, choreography, meetings, teaching. It didn't seem to matter how busy I kept myself because the moment I stopped or slowed down, I was giving in to this weird desire my brain had to occupy itself with her. In fact, I was driving around and thinking about her so intently for so long that when my cellphone rang and Brittany's contact showed up, I wondered if it was me who had made it happen. Of course reality kicked in when I answered and she told me the only reason she was calling was because she had accidentally taken my necklace to Australia with her. After she hung up, I found myself feeling a little deflated that that was all she had wanted. That was why she called.

But what did I expect? Brittany was clueless to everything going on back here, which I was extremely grateful for. The last thing I wanted was for her to be weirded out halfway across the world over something Victoria had mistakenly started. I guess I was finally satisfied now that Brittany had flown back to Sydney without any questions asked that Victoria really hadn't spilled anything about what she and I had been talking about for the previous month and a half. That in itself made me sigh with relief. Of course I had been super happy when Brittany had been around again, however I was also unbelievably paranoid every time I wasn't with her when Victoria was, just thinking that she could've been spilling everything onto Brittany the way she had done to me. I didn't want Brittany to go through a month of confusion like I did.

At no point did I process how naive that was of me to say. In reality, if Victoria were to tell her everything she had told me, Brittany would probably have been able to laugh it off and have it completely forgotten by the time she was back in Australia. It was only me who would go through such a phase of confusion and conflict over something so insignificant and untrue. I was having a hard time figuring out why that was exactly.

I remembered from the last time Brittany flew to Australia that she was basically travelling for an entire day that I was out and about and running around doing stuff. For a whole day that I was waking up, getting ready, going to the gym or going grocery shopping or choreographing or teaching a class, she was sat in one seat on a plane in the air. It felt like forever since she had left Canada when I had gotten the call about the necklace and realised that she had only just made it back over there. After she hung up, I found myself contemplating that if time continued to go as slowly as this, Christmas was seeming further away than it already was.