The Challenge

She was laying there in some other guy's nook.

Brian watched her intently through the window. Her long dancer's legs were wrapped around his like a pretzel. The same way that she used to wrap them around Brian's legs, as well as his torso, when they made love.

Now Brian lay face up, eyes slitted. He tried to drift back to sleep for a few moments, almost forgetting that he had to be at his little sister's birthday party in 30 minutes. But that could wait for now, because she was still fresh on his mind.

As soon as he shut his lids that frozen image of her appeared once again. This time it was the image that he wanted to see. She smiled at him and moaned what he wanted to hear:

"I love you Brian."

Her fingers interwined with his as she leaned in slowly toward his face.

Just as Camilla was finally about to press her naturally plump, sun-kissed lips on his, Brian felt a buzz under his lower back. The alarm reminder on his cellphone, which he had slept on accidentally, started ringing and buzzing all at the same time. Everything went blank behind his lids for a moment, then his eyes shot back open. It was time to face his sad reality once again.

Camilla was gone....

He carefully pulled himself up from the bed. A sharp pain immediately shot up his neck and hit his right temple. He had just had another long night of binging. He never drank like that before. He only now went to those bars with his frat boy friends in hopes of meeting another girl like Camilla.

Instead of helping, each additional vodka-red bull mix he tossed back was a painful reminder of what he could not have anymore.

Camilla was a beauty, in and out. When he first saw her he reeled and could not stop smiling. She had a bright smile, smooth sable skin, and coke bottle curves that were so fierce that no man could resist turning to take just one more look. Yet she dressed conservatively enough to leave almost everything to the imagination. Surprisingly this fox wanted him.

Brian became intrigued with her more and more every day. She was cool, calm and collected. She had an indescribable strength that made him puff out his own chest more whenever he was in her presence. They came from two completely different backgrounds, but that did not phase him. None of that mattered.

But then the dark side of his male instinct kicked in. He started to wonder "what if?"

As a sick trick, or maybe just as an act of defiance against all that was good and right, Brian simply stopped calling Camilla. There was no good reason. She contacted him a few times to see what was going on. He assured her that there was nothing wrong. He could hear the hurt and confusion in her voice, yet he continued to neglect her.

She eventually gave up. More quickly than Brian would have liked.

A couple of weeks later, Brian became consumed with this nagging question of "what if?" once again. But this time it was in reverse.

What if he had just rejected the best thing that would ever happen to him in life?

So he had called her.

And he called again the next day.

And he called once more three days later.

But there was no answer. Just Camilla's sweet rhythmic voice on her voicemail message system, "...call me again soon..."

Just as he was throwing his phone onto his desk after the forth attempt, he heard it ringing. The sound was literally music to his ears-B.U.D.D.Y. by Musiq Soulchild-that was his special ringtone for her. That's what he thought of her then, a buddy with privileges. Until now.

"Hey," he breathed into the phone, his heart pounding relentlessly.

"Hey," they mimicked each other. There was a pause.

"So, what's up?" she asked, very indifferently.

"Nothing much, just wondering what's up with you?"

"Not much. I saw you called. But look, I can't chat. Someone's waiting."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

"Can I see you?" he finally blurted out, sounding desperate.

She hesitated. "I...uh... I don't think I can sweetheart."

The long and short of it: Camilla was seeing a new guy. And he had pretty much swept her off her feet.

Here Brian sat, on his bed, hung over, head pounding, as he did many nights since that revelation. She haunted him in his dreams. This was too much. This wasn't familiar to him. He had realized way too late, that he might be madly in love with this girl.

Now what.

Well, you know, Brian had never been the type to just throw in the towel...