I had been married for six weeks the night I met Anthony. Tall, with olive skin and electric green eyes, he was so handsome that my cheeks flushed red when I walked through the front door of his shared house in Venice Beach.
I was in Los Angeles from Seattle visiting my sister over the weekend. Crossing paths with her boyfriend's best friend and housemate was not on the agenda. Due to flight delays, Anthony had just returned from a trip to the East Coast. His suitcase was still at the bottom of the stairs.
“Well, where are we going to dinner?” she asked.
The four of us drove his antique pale blue Land Cruiser to Café Brasil on Venice Boulevard. Outside in the small courtyard, Anthony slid next to me with the bottles of Two-Buck Chuck we had brought with us.
I pushed away the bothersome thoughts about my husband. College sweethearts, we had gotten married shortly before turning 23.
Over fried plantains as sweet and sticky as the August air, Anthony and I bonded over a shared passion for music, books, and foreign films.
“Have you seen 'In the Mood for Love'?” she asked. I shook my head, smiling, my mind reeling from the cheap red wine. “You're going to love it,” she said. Her hand brushed my thigh with a familiar intimacy that belied strangers.
The next day I flew back to my husband, writing off the night as harmless flirting. However, I couldn't stop thinking about the magnificent 29-year-old video editor. Every time I remembered Anthony's fingers against my leg, a surge of electricity ran through my body.
A week later he called me.
We talked for hours and continued talking for weeks afterward, and an intense emotional connection exploded between us. Neither of us had felt this way before. Do we dare to explore it?
Seven months earlier, my wedding planning was underway. He had told my fiancé that he wanted to extend our engagement. Everything was going too fast for me. She resisted the idea. Losing him scared me as much as marrying him. When I confided my doubts to my Mexican mother, she assured me that my cold feet would thaw. The tone of her melodious voice held a warning: don't ruin this.
I didn't care about ruining it. I had to see Anthony again. Making up an excuse, I returned to Los Angeles for Labor Day weekend.
Our illicit relationship developed during those last days of summer.
During the afternoon, we lay down on a grassy knoll next to the beach. Blankets and books spread around us as we listened to a playlist I had made on a shared iPod. “Declaration,” the imposing metal sculpture flanked by palm trees, rose into the hot air above our intertwined bodies.
At night, we strolled through the canals of Venice, holding hands like any other young couple, except my wedding ring jingled against the change in my purse. Anthony and I kissed over margaritas at La Cabaña, stumbling the few blocks from the restaurant to his house and his bed.
After the weekend was over, I physically returned to my husband. But the rest of me remained on the sparkling shores of California with Anthony.
“We rushed to get married,” I told my husband a month later. “I need time to think.” He took me to the airport, thinking I would stay with my sister. I didn't know that another man was waiting for me at the arrivals terminal.
For a while, Anthony and I existed in the fantasy of our little cocoon. We frequent Vidiots, where we rent Wong Kar-wai's stunning and tragic story of unrequited love. Anthony was right: the movie captivated me. We biked along the beach path, winding along the coast with the crisp autumn air against our faces. We watched the sunset from the Pacific Coast Highway, toes touching as our feet dangled off the back of his SUV.
Yet even in those moments of happiness, while pretending to be free, I felt more lost than ever.
In winter, I was spiraling. I confessed my infidelity to my husband. His anguish broke the cold barrier he had erected, leaving me heartbroken by my betrayal. “Your heart hurts?” she shouted. “Well, mine is broken.”
My relationship with Anthony imploded.
I returned with my husband. But there was nothing to save. She still wasn't over Anthony. My husband and I signed divorce papers nine months after saying, “I do.”
That summer, Anthony called to say he had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
The last time I spoke to him was two months later, in October. Surgery to remove his tumor was a couple of weeks away. Still reeling from the fallout of our relationship, I lashed out when he told me that he was dating someone and that things were getting serious.
In the ignorance of my youth, it had never occurred to me that I might not survive. In July, at age 31, she succumbed to cancer.
On the first anniversary of his death, I stood in the hallway of the Venice Beach bungalow that Anthony had moved into with his new wife. He married the woman he had told me about on the phone. He must have told her about me too. A kind and gentle woman, he had invited me to the celebration of his life. Her invitation was a gift. She couldn't know that she had spent the last year drowning me in grief, guilt, and regret.
Before me hung a framed photograph of Anthony and his wife on their wedding day. A salmon-colored button-down shirt hung from his skeletal frame. There was a hollow space beneath his shining eyes. He looked as beautiful as ever.
At midnight, his friends and loved ones gathered on bicycles and rode through the dark streets of Venice in his honor. Our group of bikers was so large that people stumbling out of the bars on Abbot Kinney Boulevard stopped to watch.
When we arrived at Anthony's favorite spot on the beach, we formed a circle, hands linked and our voices howling into the salty sky. There, in the moon shadow of that mighty steel sculpture, I declared my love and my loss and said goodbye.
The author is a freelance writer living in Highland Park. She is on Instagram: @kimberlybridson
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