Vanilla

  I wanted to face him again with my full face on, painted like a warrior, but instead I came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed, my hair towel-dried and still damp. My pajamas were cute, a tank top and silky boxers, but I went without a word to my suitcase to pull out an oversize T-shirt to put on top. Niall hadn’t changed, but he’d pushed himself back onto the pillows, on top of the covers, to watch TV.

  Face impassive, he didn’t say anything when I took up my book, which, like my pajamas I hadn’t intended to need. I got into bed on the wrong side, but didn’t ask him if we could switch. I tried to concentrate on the book, but the words swam, blurring. After a few minutes, Niall got up and went into the bathroom. He was in there longer than I had been.

  The room had gone chilly from the air-conditioning, and I shivered from it. Anxious that my stomach was going to get upset enough to make me truly ill, I swallowed hard. Then again. I turned off the light, put my book on the bedside stand and curled into myself so I could count backward from a hundred. But my tried-and-true method of putting myself to sleep didn’t work. I was still awake when he came out.

  He turned off the light first. I heard shuffling near his suitcase. The bed dipped when he got into it. I waited for him to touch me...but he did not.

  “Are you upset?” Niall asked finally, his voice quiet as the shadows.

  I didn’t turn to face him. “Yes. I am.”

  “Why?”

  Blinking rapidly, I tried to find an answer that would come out calm and in control. What I managed, instead, was a low rasp. “Why? What do you mean, why?”

  “Just what I said. Why?”

  I was glad now that he hadn’t curled up behind me. I couldn’t have borne his touch now. I punched my pillow and eased to the edge of the bed, as far from him as possible. “That was pretty much the ultimate rejection, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed.

  The motherfucker laughed.

  It wasn’t an easy laugh, and it lacked humor, and I could tell he’d forced it, but even so it was not the response I wanted. Niall sat up. I could see his shadow and from the corner of my eye, the outline of him, but fortunately for him, he kept his hands to himself.

  “Don’t be like that,” he told me.

  The only thing that kept me from leaping from the bed in a white-hot rage at that point was that I was genuinely too stunned to move. I couldn’t even speak. Behind me, Niall lay back down, close enough that his shoulder would’ve brushed mine if I turned onto my back. I didn’t. I didn’t move, didn’t say a word, because to do anything in that moment would’ve made me lose it. All of it, everything, I’d have screamed and raged and possibly thrown things; I would’ve wept for sure, great gushing buckets of the tears trying to stab me in the throat and eyes even now. I would’ve lost control, and I refused to give him that.

  “Good night,” Niall said.

  I did not answer him.

  34

  I did not sleep.

  Beside me, the soft in-out huff of Niall’s breathing told me he did, or at least did a good job of pretending. Morning light started peeking around the blackout curtain in only a few hours, but I’d never been so glad for a reason to get out of bed. Though I’d showered so recently that my hair was still wet, I took another, this time forcing myself to endure a lukewarm spray to keep myself from dissolving into dismay.

  I blew my hair dry, not caring if it woke him. I did my makeup. And finally, I dressed in the clothes I’d brought along to travel in.

  He was up when I came back into the bedroom, the TV on but the volume so low there was no way he could really hear it. He’d propped himself on the pillows, an arm beneath his head. He looked rumpled and gorgeous, and I kind of hated him for making me want to slip back beneath the covers with him and be naked all day long.

  “You’re up early,” he said.

  I tucked my toiletries into my suitcase and made sure my dirty laundry was separated from the clothes I hadn’t yet worn. I slipped on a pair of flats and settled my fuck-me pumps alongside my cosmetics bag. When I turned to get my book from the bedside stand, Niall was watching me.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to head home early.” My chin went up. I heard the steel in my voice. I knew the look on my face.

  Other men would’ve known better than to try and charm me in that moment, but I’d already figured out that Niall wasn’t other men. “Don’t be like that. C’mere.”

  He sat up and crooked a finger at me. Actually gestured to me like I was some woebegone, delicate little flower who needed to somehow be comforted. Or wooed. Fuck that. Fuck being soft. What had that gotten me but rejection, humiliation and pain?

  I didn’t move. I put my book away and closed my suitcase. I visually checked the room for anything I might have left behind then found my purse on the chair and put it over my shoulder.

  “Elise,” Niall said like a warning. “Don’t do this.”

  “I think it’s best if I leave.”

  Niall got out of bed to stand in front of me. I could’ve pushed past him, but that would’ve meant touching him. And frankly, I didn’t need to be that aggressive to get what I wanted. I knew that well enough. I didn’t move.

  “C’mon,” he said with another of those half laughs that sounded nothing like his usual good humor. “What’s going on? I thought we were going to have a great weekend together.”

  “So did I.”

  A shadow crossed his expression, but he was still pretending last night hadn’t happened. “We still could. I have dinner reservations for tonight. I thought we were going to the art museum...don’t let last night upset you so much.”

  “Don’t tell me how to feel, please.” My words were clipped, precise, but polite. Cold, though. Really fucking cold.

  He frowned. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me how you feel, then. Since I can’t figure it out.”

  “I’m upset about what happened last night,” I said carefully. “About you choosing not to finish.”

  Niall’s gaze darkened. His mouth thinned. He was pissed off, now, but I didn’t care.

  “You told me to come for you,” Niall said flatly. “My orgasm is my decision.”

  I gaped, jaw dropping. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Look, I know you’ve had bunches of guys who get off being bossed around by you, but in case you haven’t figured it out, that’s not me. It’s never going to be me.”

  My fingers curled on the strap of my bag, but I wanted to make them a fist. “I wasn’t bossing you around. I was...we were both talking. I thought it was something we were both doing with each other, Niall.”

  “It felt like you were trying to get me to do what you wanted me to do,” he said. “Not what I wanted to do.”

  I reeled at this, not sure what to say or how to say it. All I could do was shake my head, helpless to find words even to defend myself. “I thought you’d want to!”

  “I don’t get off on being ordered around!”

  “I wasn’t ordering you,” I cried, resenting his accusation even as I tried replaying the night before in my head to see if I’d come on too strong. Too dominant.

  “It sounded like you were,” Niall snapped.

  I recoiled, physically and emotionally. I shook my head again, grasping for control and finding it only by biting my tongue hard enough to make a star or two dance across my vision. I rubbed the soreness against the back of my teeth.

  “I thought we were doing something together,” I told him in the same flat tone he’d used with me earlier. “You were telling me to do things, and I was telling you to do things...and you made me feel like I was less than...porn.”

  It was his turn to take a step back. “The fuck does that mean?”

  “It means that you made me feel like it was something you were orchestrating all for yourself, like you were watching porn or something. Except that I’m pretty sure when you do watch porn,” I added with a sneer, “you actually get off.”

  Niall
’s lip curled. “You’re the one who was making it like porn, asking me to come all over your tits. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you did with all your lovers, but I’m not that guy. I don’t get off on being bossed around.”

  I went hot. I went cold. Like a fever, an illness, I started to shake. “You were the one bossing,” I whispered. “And I was letting you.”

  “I guess you don’t like it when you’re on the other side of things.”

  I’d bitten my tongue plenty of times to keep myself from saying cruel words aloud, but at this I found myself utterly speechless. I bent to lift my suitcase, focusing on that one thing, that action, to keep myself from screaming or bursting into tears or needing to sit because my legs had started to shake. I wanted to puke. Mostly, I just wanted to get out of there.

  I suddenly resented all the times I hadn’t pushed, hadn’t demanded or commanded or insisted on getting my way. All for what? For the sake of love.

  He tried again to smile. “C’mon, Elise. Don’t go.”

  I didn’t look at him. When he took a step toward me, I didn’t step back. I turned my face away, though. I could not look at him. I didn’t want to.

  When he stepped aside, I pushed past him without touching him. My suitcase bumped his leg, but I didn’t apologize. If I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what would spill out, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. And still, now, as angry and hurt and dismayed as I was, I didn’t want to break open in front of him. I didn’t want to be hurtful.

  So instead, I swallowed everything, and I left without looking behind me.

  * * *

  No games. That’s what I had said, and if I expected Niall not to play them, I couldn’t, either. So, although I didn’t want to, I texted him as soon as I got home.

  We should talk.

  He did not answer.

  I waited an hour and texted again. Please call me. And again, Niall didn’t reply. I waited for the rest of the day, trying to lose myself in laundry and bill paying, all the things I would not have been doing if I were still in Baltimore, holding his hand while we looked at weird art. When night fell, he still had not replied.

  I didn’t text him again.

  35

  One week. Not a word. Then another week as deathly cold and silent as the first. Niall’s silence seemed as clear an answer to me as if he’d told me to my face he never wanted to see me again.

  I don’t make good decisions when I’m upset. Hell, I don’t make good decisions when I’m happy. As far as shitty choices went, I was in no frame of mind to figure out if trusting Niall had been one more in a long string of them, worse than a tattoo could ever be. All I knew was that I was hurting, and the last person who’d done anything to make me feel better in any way had been Esteban. So I made another stupid decision, and I called him. I’d never called him before. He’d only ever called me. He answered, sounding distant and wary, but he answered.

  “I need you,” I said.

  He sighed. “Querida...”

  I wasn’t crying, but close to it. I closed my eyes. My fingers gripped the phone, and I pressed it hard enough to my ear to hurt. And because I knew him well enough to know what buttons to press and how hard to press them, I pushed them. Hard.

  “Esteban,” I whispered. “Por favor.”

  * * *

  Esteban met me, as I knew he would. I was the one who got there first, waiting for him, and when he came inside, I didn’t make him get on his knees. I didn’t toss down a bag of toys. I simply took his hand and led him to the bed, where I pushed him gently until he sat. Then I straddled his lap and took his face in my hands, and I kissed him on the mouth.

  “What do you want,” he asked against my mouth. “What do you need?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” I whispered.

  Esteban pulled away to look at me, his dark eyes clouded with concern. He stroked a thumb under each of my eyes then tucked it into his mouth. I licked my lips and tasted salt. Then he nodded.

  He rolled me over and moved me up the bed like I weighed nothing. He kissed my eyes. My cheeks. My jaw, my throat, my chin. He unbuttoned my blouse and caressed my breasts, bare beneath, cupping them in his hands. He sucked gently at each nipple until they stood up, tight and red, then flicked them with his tongue until I writhed.

  He undressed me and covered every inch of me with kisses. He moved between my legs and parted me, opening me to his mouth and tongue, the press of his teeth shielded by his lips. Esteban knew my body. He didn’t need my commands. His worship went on and on until I came, gasping, and then he left me only long enough to put on a condom before he was on top of me again.

  He pushed inside me with a low grunt. He bent his face to the side of my neck. At first he fucked me slowly, and then he moved faster, harder. He came with a shudder and a low shout and fell on top of me.

  He rolled off me a moment or so later and lay staring up at the ceiling with his hands folded on his chest. I lay in a similar position next to him. I listened to his breathing slow. I still tasted salt. Tears, sweat, it didn’t matter.

  “We’ve never done it like that before,” Esteban said. “Me on top.”

  I didn’t move. “You didn’t like it.”

  He turned his head to look at me. “I always like it with you.”

  “Then why—” I stopped myself with a shake of my head and turned away from him on my side. I didn’t want to ask. As always with him, I didn’t want to know.

  He spooned me from behind, his lips pressed to my shoulder. “I missed you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have gone away.” It came out harder than I meant it to.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry. I had to. I thought it would be easier if I did it that way. Because I knew if I told you, I would not be able to do it.”

  I covered my face with my hands, weeping in silence. Quaking with it, while he held me. The thing was, I couldn’t tell if I was crying because of Esteban, or Niall, or that other one whose real name I never said. For all three, I guessed. And for myself, who kept making the wrong choices over and over again. Like hurt was all I was ever destined to have.

  We lay there until his phone blared, startling us both. He didn’t answer it or even look to see who was calling, but I felt the tension in his muscles. I sat up and excused myself to the restroom, where though I ran the water, I still heard him murmuring into the phone. When I came out, he’d dressed and was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “I know,” I said. “You have to go.”

  “Come. Sit.” He patted the edge of the bed.

  I did. He took my hand. Our fingers linked. We sat like that for the time it took the numbers to change on the clock.

  “I can’t see you anymore,” Esteban said. “I thought it would be easier not to say it to your face, but it was not. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of it. And I’m sorry about whatever happened to you that made you so sad.”

  “Thank you for telling me and not making me have to guess it. Again,” I added, just to watch him wince. But then I kissed him. “It was the agreement. Thank you for telling me.”

  “I was bad at it before. I’m sorry.”

  I leaned my shoulder into his then put my head on it. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Esteban made a small noise, and when I looked at him, he’d covered his eyes. All I could see was the downward curve of his mouth. When he reached for me, I held him. Tight.

  “You’ve been so dear to me,” I told him. “I cherish you, Esteban. I’m sorry I never said it before. I know you wanted to hear it. I’m sorry I never gave you that.”

  “You gave me much,” he said.

  I smiled, still tasting tears. “You gave me much, too.”

  He leaned to kiss me, but at the last moment, I turned my face. Not out of spite, but because I could not bear it. That our last kiss should taste of tears. He kissed my cheek instead, and the corners of my eyes. I wanted to hold on to him harder before he left, but I didn’t.

  I let him go.

  36


  Niall was waiting in my driveway when I got home.

  I hadn’t showered. I wore the stink of sex on me like a cloak; my hair was mussed. I was sure my lips were swollen. But so were my eyes, because I’d cried the entire way home. I pulled in beside him and thought, oh, fuck.

  I got out of the car. So did he. I waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, I headed for my front door.

  “So,” he said from behind me on the porch.

  I turned. “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  I stared at him without speaking. I wasn’t sure what I had to say. Oh, I had plenty of words, but none seemed willing to force themselves out of my mouth. I wanted to fall into his arms and kiss him, but I didn’t move.

  “We can talk out here,” I said.

  “What, like strangers? Like I’m trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner?”

  I crossed my arms. “You have something to say to me? You’d better start talking, because in about a minute I’m going to go inside and ignore you the way you were ignoring me for two weeks.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  “No,” I told him. “This is also about what happened in Baltimore, and how you acted there, not just the fact you haven’t answered a single fucking text in two weeks. You just disappeared, Niall.”

  I started crying then. He moved toward me, but I blocked his embrace with my shoulder. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Can we not do this on your front porch, please?”

  I swiped at my face. “You don’t want the neighbors to see?”

  “I don’t think you want the neighbors to see,” he said under his breath, looking over his shoulder then back at me. Everything in his expression screamed misery.

  I wanted him to be miserable. I also wanted him to be wrong about me, though he wasn’t. I unlocked my door and went inside without inviting him in. He was already in anyway, in every way that counted.