Life at Best

Chapter Six

Chapter Six

When Brynne dragged herself out of bed the next morning, it was with a deep feeling of dread filling the pit of her stomach that she padded down the stairs knowing the day was going to be long and full of different bridal shops.  She loved Julie, but today was going to be a hard day for her.

She definitely needed some coffee before Julie wanted to set out on their way for the day.

Brynne walked into the kitchen noticing how eerily quiet it was in the house. The last few mornings since she'd gotten to North Carolina she would always be able to hear Julie puttering around the house or Junior getting ready to head to the shop, just little background noise the took up the dead silence.

But this morning there was nothing.

Maybe she'd gotten the days confused and Julie didn't want to go shopping today, or something had come up.

She walked over to the coffee pot and saw a little note next to it, the scrawling letters in Julie's handwriting.

Brynne -

Had a doctor's appointment I forgot about this morning and had to run some errands. I am going to catch lunch with Dale afterwards and then we can go shopping!

Sorry to leave you alone on your third day but I will be back by the afternoon and we can head out and check a couple shops out!

-Julie

Brynne sighed; she totally could have slept in later! The thought crossed her mind that she should just crawl back into bed and go back to sleep for a couple hours and she had sold herself on that exact idea when the doorbell rang, causing her to jump from the loud tone of the bell breaking up the quiet of the empty house.

She walked to the door, her mind preoccupied with the thought of the nap she intended on taking as soon as whoever was at the door, left.

Brynne opened the door and peered into the eyes she had been missing so much since arriving to North Carolina, the eyes of the man she still loved. Why hadn't she checked who was at the door before she'd opened it?

Martin stood outside the door looking like he'd seen a ghost.

"Brynne? What are you-"

"Martin?"

Tense silence filled the space between them, causing Brynne to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot, her eyes looking anywhere but at his. This was so not happening right now.

Her emotions were already a little out of control this morning due to the fact that she had to go look at wedding dresses with Julie later on that day, and this was not helping matters at all.

"Can I come in Brynne?"

Mumbling an apology for forgetting her manners, Brynne stepped to the side and opened the door a little wider, thus making room for Martin to move over the threshold of the door and into Junior's house, wishing she never would have gotten out of bed this morning.

It seemed like it had been forever since she'd seen him in person and she couldn't say she was immune to him. Having him in the same room as she, was intoxicating and heart-wrenching all at the same time.  She didn't know which way was up and which way was down and she felt like her head was currently spinning.

So many memories, emotions and thoughts flooded through her, she couldn't sort out what she should be feeling or should be saying at the moment, if anything.  So instead, she stayed quiet figuring she'd let him break the ice and start up a conversation. She didn't even know what she would say to him anyway.

"So you're back." It wasn't so much a question as it was a statement. "To be honest with you Brynne, Junior told me you were going to be back in town to help plan the wedding, and he told me when you'd be coming but he definitely didn't let it slip that you were staying with them. So, this is as much of a surprise for me as it is for you..."

"I don't know that that's possible Martin," she whispered. She had known this was inevitable. She wasn't dense; she knew it wouldn't be long before she'd have to see him again, especially since the NASCAR community was such a close-knit group of people. "To be honest with you, I thought I would have a little more time to get myself reacquainted with Charlotte, let the memories and thoughts and feelings sink in before I would have to come face-to-face with you."

He swallowed nervously, this conversation wasn't going the way he had hoped it would when he finally got the chance to get in front of her for the first time since everything happened. He hadn't exactly expected flowers and birds singing and that she would just fall into his arms like nothing had happened, but he hadn't expected her to be so tense. Since they'd walked in the front door there was still at least ten feet of space between the two of them; they were technically as close as they'd been in a very long time, but still so distant.  Too distant if it were up to him.

"I can go if you're uncomfortable. We don't have to talk or anything, I honestly wasn't expecting you to be here..."

She shook her head, "This was going to happen eventually Martin, and I just need a minute to compose myself..."

Martin sat down on the couch, hoping that when she was ready she would have a seat beside him and maybe – just maybe – they could talk this out. He would finally have a chance to make things better between them; to create the first steps towards her being able to trust him once again and maybe in the future he would be able to show her how much he loved her and how much he wanted to be with her.

He knew it was going to take some time, but that's all he wanted more than anything else in the world. For Brynne to be able to look at him once again with nothing but love and adoration in her eyes.

*

Brynne ran her hands over her face, taking deep breaths in and out to try and compose herself and keep the panic at bay.  What would her therapist say if she were here right now?  She'd tell her to calm down, compose herself; that this was inevitable and it was time to have this conversation on her terms.  In other words, put your big girl pants on and go and deal with the situation. 

This was not how she saw this day turning out.

She rested her hands on the sink and looked in the mirror, noticing the lines and wrinkles visible along her face. Not too many years ago, she'd never had a wrinkle. So much had happened to her in so little time, so much more than most people dealt with in a lifetime.  It had caused such physical and emotional trauma; she almost didn't recognize herself in the mirror some days.

"Better go get this over with," she sighed as she ran her hands over her face one more time. She left the bathroom and took a deep breath, rubbing her sweating hands on her pants as she re-entered the living room.

"Hey," she said softly, sitting down in the chair across from him. This was the closest she had been to him in a very long time, and she could feel the electricity run through her veins from him being so close to her.

"Hi," he said, smiling, "Glad you came back out."

Brynne ducked her head, trying to hide the fact that she was blushing over her reaction to the situation and him being in Julie's living room. She wasn't sure she was ready for this conversation, but she wasn't going to prolong it for longer.

"Sorry about that... my brain got the best of me."

"Brynne, there's no need to apologize to me... I surprised you; well... you surprised me being here too. But anyway, you have nothing to apologize to me for. If anything, I should be apologizing to you. I am going to apologize to you, if you'll let me..."

There were a lot of lies and omissions of truth that had led up to where they were today, and the last thing that Brynne really wanted to do was re-hash or unearth it all today. It was already going to be a long day as it was.

"I'm not quite sure I am ready for that conversation yet Martin, it's still a little raw for me and I don't know if I want to get that far into it today..."

"Not today then," Martin sighed, "But promise me sometime?"

"When I am ready, I promise I will let you know." Her promise held on the air as they both went silent, neither knowing what to say for a minute. Before too long Brynne broke the silence, knowing that if she didn't say what she felt like she needed to say it was going to eat her alive. "So, you have another daughter?"

The smile she saw grace his features melted her heart a little. If there had been one thing, she'd found sexy when they were together, it was the way his face lit up whenever Peyton was mentioned, or he talked about her. It was obvious that even given the situation surrounding Kinsey's paternity and all the issues he dealt with daily, he felt the same way about Kinsey.  He had always been the greatest father:  attentive, loving, playful.  Brynne had found it so attractive when they had been together.

"I do have another daughter," he grinned, "Kinsey Lynn." He pulled out his phone and opened a picture of Kinsey dressed all in pink with a pink bow in her hair. She had an unbelievable amount of hair for a baby so small, more so than Brynne had ever seen before.

"She's cute Martin, I think she has your eyes and maybe your mouth."

He gave a non-committal shrug; not really seeing it himself. Everyone had told him that Kinsey looked like him in one way or another; they would all pick a random body part and say it was the same. But he didn't see it. That didn't matter though; the paperwork said she was his, so in his eyes she was in fact his.

"What does Peyton think about her?" Brynne asked.

"Peyton's never met her before, actually."

"Why not?"

Martin sighed and closed his phone. "I just don't get to see her much," he said warily.

Before Brynne had time to ask any more questions, the door opened, and Julie walked into the house, poking her head around the threshold of the doorway to see what was going on in her living room. She had obviously recognized Martin's truck in the driveway and was unsure if she was going to walk into a warzone, or something she didn't want to see.  With these two - who knew, it depended on which version of Brynne and Martin she was going to see - pre Kaleen ruining everything Martin and Brynne would have been doing things she really didn't want to see.

"Hey guys," she said quietly, "Am I interrupting anything?"

Their heads shot up and even though they shook their heads to say she wasn't – in fact – interrupting anything, she could see she had.

"No," Brynne shook her head, "He was just telling me about Kinsey."

Julie's eyebrows shot up, knowing that Kinsey – and her mother – was probably a tough subject for Brynne. She didn't know that it bothered Brynne for a fact, but she could just read her friend's thoughts and body language.

"I actually didn't even know Brynne was staying here. Junior told me she was going to be in town, just didn't tell me she was going to be staying with you guys. This was a surprise to me – a good one – but a surprise nonetheless."

"I assume you had a reason for stopping by and not just to hang out with me in the middle of the day?  Especially since you know that Dale is at the shop, where I'm assuming you came from."

Martin laughed, and Brynne's heart hurt. She had missed that sound so much; missed the easy banter she used to be able to have with Martin before so much hurt had gotten in the way. So much had changed since the last time she had been with him, it hurt to think about it and it definitely made her head spin.

"I can't just come see you?"

"You could," Julie laughed, "But I'm sure you have much better things to be doing than hanging out here with me... like getting your car ready for this weekend!"

"You caught me," Martin shrugged, "I actually was here because I had some ideas for some of the various wedding events that will have to be planned in the near future and I wanted to run them by you. Being the best man, I figure I'm going to have to plan everything for Junior anyway, so I wanted your opinion. But it can wait until another time, I should be heading back to the shop now anyway, I've been gone longer than I was expecting to be."

"Call me and we can set something up," Julie told him.

He turned towards Brynne and shot her the lopsided smile she missed so much, "Can I call you or text you sometime?"

Brynne snapped out of her Martin-induced reverie and nodded her head slightly, "Sure. We can talk or something..."

"I'd like that." Martin walked up to her and couldn't help but to pull her into his arms slightly. She seemed stiff at first, but finally settled into his embrace, realizing how much she had missed it.

"I'll talk to you soon Brynne. And I'll get ahold of you Julie and we can figure out plans."

As he walked out of the house, Brynne crossed her arms over her chest and sighed, not only already slightly missing him, but knowing she had let him break down her walls, and she wasn't sure if she liked that feeling or not.

"So..." Julie said, "What was that about?"

She looked up and met Julie's eyes, "I think the real question is... when were you going to tell me he was Junior's best man?"

***

So I don't know about anyone else, but when I write I listen to music, I've been compiling a running "soundtrack" to this story and thought about posting it and putting it before the first chapter of the story sometime in the next day or so... I add songs to the soundtrack from time to time as I hear them and then when I'm writing turn the soundtrack on and listen and it usually let's the words flow on out!

Hope you all enjoyed the first bit of Brynne and Martin together for the story!  Let me know what you think!