“We were together for just over a year. The sex was fantastic. We got along great. I’d had a bunch of short relationships that hadn’t been very deep or meaningful, but with George I fell hard. He was smart and funny, he had a good job, he had his shit together. I imagined myself baking him pies and making babies, doing it all up June Cleaver style, except instead of a white picket fence and an apron, I’d have a leather flogger and a headboard with permanent eyebolts in it.”
Alex snorted soft laughter, but that was all right. I’d been making light, though I felt anything but.
I shrugged. “He had this way of looking at me...he didn’t need to say a word. He’d just stare. Like he thought I was amazing and wonderful. I thought...” I paused, hating the way my voice rasped. “I thought I made him happy, you know?”
“I understand. Totally.”
Looking at him, I thought he did. “I let myself get lost in him, though. Addicted, I guess. Part of it was the sex. That power, the control. It was heady stuff I’d dreamed about for a long time but hadn’t really had, not in that way. He made me cockdrunk, but it was more than that. I was crazy in love with him, like you said, the key word being crazy. Loved, loved, loved, crazy mad insane with it, to the point where as much as I might have exerted control in the bedroom, I was totally out of control in the relationship. He was the one who was in control because he just...didn’t feel the same way.”
“Uh-oh.”
“We had this intense sexual connection, but for me it wasn’t always about trussing him up like a turkey or any of that other stuff. I mean, sure, I liked it, but it’s never been all about constantly topping someone for me. I know there are people who can’t get off without a script and a scene and all that, but it doesn’t have to be like that every time for me. There’s more to life than handcuffs and paddles.” I paused. “My switch gets flipped for all kinds of things, like the way he always opened the car door for me or got the things down from the high shelf. How he stocked his fridge with the kind of cheese I liked, even though I’d never mentioned it. He just knew. Myriad tiny things all making up the whole. It’s always been about that, for me.”
“Who doesn’t like to feel they’re understood?” Alex asked quietly. “I get it.”
“So we had this time, you know, this bright and shining time when he made me feel like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I didn’t doubt ever, not for a second, that George thought I was beautiful and amazing and wonderful.” I paused again, hating the sting. “And then one day, I wasn’t so wonderful anymore. He stopped doing all the little things. Then he stopped answering my messages. He stopped reaching out first. He started to cancel plans.”
“All bad signs.”
I laughed bitterly. “He stopped making me important. And I can forgive a lot of things, but not that. When I asked him where things were going with us—”
Alex winced. “The conversation every man dreads.”
I laughed. “You think women like it any better?”
“I guess not.”
“I had to ask. I didn’t want to. But I had to know what he felt about me. What he wanted. I told him I loved him and wanted to be with him, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make it work for us. He gave me the romantic equivalent of a pat on the head and a chuck under the chin. He said he loved me in his own way, but that being with me was like eating ice cream every day. You decide you like a new flavor, right? And you glut yourself on it. You eat it every day. You think you’ll never get tired of eating it. It’s your favorite flavor. You can’t get enough, until one day, you wake up and you decide you’re sick of that flavor.”
“Ugh,” Alex said, but nodded. “He wanted a new flavor?”
“Yes. I guess he decided he really wanted to try vanilla.”
“Wow.”
I nodded. “Right? He said he’d never been able to make anything work out, that he was always looking ahead for the next best thing.”
“After a year, he said this to you?” Alex looked disgusted.
I laughed, not because it was funny but because it was all I could do. “Yes. After a year, he said that to me.”
“He was stupid, you know. You were the best thing that ever happened to him.”
“Thanks.” I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like that, though. It felt like shit. It felt like he was telling me that everything we’d done wasn’t what he really wanted. It made me feel like he’d never truly understood me at all—that I’d been alone in this thing the whole time.”
“What do men do when they fear women?” Alex asked after a second. “They make them doubt.”
“He said he needed some time, but that we could just stay in each other’s lives while we dated other people. As if I could’ve handled that. And that maybe, after some time, if neither of us had found someone we liked better, we might get back together.”
“Oh. Wow. The fucker. Jesus, Elise.”
I drew in a breath, hating the sick feeling in my stomach. “He said we’d keep in touch. I told him he could go fuck himself with broken glass. He said good-night. I said goodbye.”
“Good for you!”
I laughed again, embarrassed this time, but hell, I’d owned up to everything else, I might as well finish the story with the truth. “I regretted saying it immediately. That’s the thing about crazy. It tends to stick.”
“So does shit when you throw it at the wall,” Alex said.
This time, my laugh was not bitter or embarrassed. A full-fledged guffaw burst out of me, hard enough to hurt. “You have such a way with words.”
He grinned and buffed his nails on his shirt. “Thanks.”
“He told me there was a chance, Alex. There was a maybe. And I...God. I’m such an idiot. I took that maybe, and I held it close to my heart, and I kept it there for the past three, no, almost four now, years. Because as long as there was a maybe, it wasn’t a no.”
“Have you talked to him since?”
“I used to talk to him all the time.” I frowned, not proud. “I’ve apologized. I’ve asked him to reconsider. I’ve asked him to tell me he hates me. I’ve asked him to tell me he doesn’t. He never answered me. He never told me to stop. He didn’t block or delete me. I know because the messages went through and because I still see him in my contacts list. He read the messages, but never answered. He just kept letting me hold on to that maybe.”
“That’s fucked up.”
I almost gagged on the thought of it. “Yeah. Stupid. Pathetic. Embarrassing, God, so fucking embarrassing. It was like a sickness with me. And I knew it, but I didn’t care. Because there was that tiny, teensy-weensy spark of hope. At least I told myself there was.”
Alex frowned. He looked embarrassed then, himself. Then determined. “Look. I’m going to be blunt. Can I be blunt?”
“If I say no, will you say it anyway?”
“He put you on his C list,” Alex said.
I blinked. I swallowed a sour taste. “Ugh.”
“Look, I’m not proud to say this, but...I’ve been that guy. That asshole guy who keeps people around just in case.” He looked ashamed. “Sometimes you had to work a little harder than others to keep someone on the string, but sometimes all it took was letting them know you were reading their messages and just not answering to keep them around in case you wanted them, when you didn’t have something better.”
I put my face in my hands. “Oh, I think I’m going to puke.”
“Don’t,” he said. “If you puke, I’ll puke. It’ll be like the pie-eating scene in Stand By Me.”
I peeked at him through my fingers. “So that’s my story. I’ve held on to a man who dumped me, hoping one day he’d come back around and we could have what we had when it was good. I fucked my way through half a dozen men since then and wouldn’t let any of them in, just in case one day George answered me. I met my lover, who was totally into letting me tie him up and do all manner of kinky things to him, and it was really great, until I found out he’s married with t
wo kids, one an infant that can’t be more than a couple months old, and the last time I saw him was only weeks ago.”
Alex choked on his last sip of coffee.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fuckery. I didn’t know. I thought we had rules because I didn’t want it to be more than sex with him. I didn’t want to get caught up in a relationship or fall in love or anything like that. I should have guessed it, though, that he had his own reasons for the rules. I should’ve known. I guess I didn’t want to know. That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Knowing definitely is worse than not knowing,” Alex said. “Don’t beat yourself up about something he kept from you.”
“He broke it off. And now that I do know, I could never go back to the way things were. But I miss him. God.” I shuddered with unhumorous laughter. “I miss what we did anyway.”
“And Niall,” Alex added. “What about him?”
I squared my shoulders. “He embarrassed me, Alex. He made me ashamed of myself. Of what I like to do. Of what we’d done together, which was honestly nothing compared to what I’ve done with other men. That’s worse than making me feel unimportant or making me doubt myself. I can’t forgive him for it.”
“Has he asked you to?”
I hesitated, thinking of Niall’s pleading gaze. “He said he was sorry for getting bent out of shape during an argument we had. And for hurting me.”
“It takes a lot to apologize, Elise.”
I was silent for a few seconds. “I know. But it didn’t matter. The damage had been done. I went through this already. I’m not doing it again.”
Alex groaned and scrubbed at his face. Then he set all four legs of the chair on the ground with a solid thump. “Let me tell you a story.”
40
Alex
Her name is Anne. She’s my best friend Jamie’s wife. And one summer, because Jamie asked me to seduce her, I did. He said she wanted it, that it had been her fantasy. I thought he was being an open-minded and caring husband, giving her what she wanted. Later I found out she had no idea he’d set it up, but by then it was too late. She’d fallen into it as hard as I had, and we’d all gotten lost in it. They made me a guest in their home, and I came in like a fucking tornado and almost ripped it all apart.
There’s a problem with taking something you know you’re not meant to have, especially when it’s given to you all wrapped up with pretty ribbons and paper. When it’s a gift, you should be grateful for it in a way you don’t have to be if you stole it. Jamie gave me his wife, and I took her, but I wasn’t grateful for her until it was too late.
I loved Anne, and I could tell you I loved her like I never loved any other woman, but all that means is that everyone you love, you love differently. More, less, sane or not, every time you fall in love it’s never the same. What I can say is that I fell for her, hard, but I hurt her because I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that. Because I was scared, or arrogant, or because I thought she would never leave her husband to be with me. Or maybe I thought she would, and I knew I could never be the man she deserved. I don’t know. I ran away at the end of that summer so she couldn’t tell me, and I didn’t have to know.
Then when Jamie invited me to come to Cleveland to see one of our favorite bands in concert at some little club I’d never heard of, I said yes. It had been about six months since I’d left Sandusky. Since the last time I’d seen Anne, though, Jamie and I had stayed in touch. He told me Anne was going to be at the concert. I didn’t think to ask him if he told her I would be there, too.
The moment she saw me it was obvious she hadn’t expected me. When I came around the corner, Jamie and I hugged it out, but when I moved to hug Anne, the look on her face fucking killed me. Her eyes lit up then skated away from mine like she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She wouldn’t look at me, even though all I could do was drink in the sight of her.
When we crossed the street toward the concert hall, I automatically reached for her arm to make sure she didn’t stumble. She didn’t yank it away; she didn’t make a scene. But she pulled away and gave me a disgusted look.
“Hey,” I said, stupid and trying to make nice. “It’s all good. We’re good.”
She didn’t answer me.
We got to the concert, and Jamie was buying shots, and at some point, there in the crowd, I found myself next to her. Shit. I say found myself like it was an accident, but I put myself there. I’d told myself it would all be okay, that I wouldn’t need to touch her, but that close, there was no way I couldn’t reach for her.
I moved up behind her and slid a hand into the thickness of her hair. I meant to cup the back of her neck, but instead I wrapped my fingers in her hair and tugged her back against me. She molded herself to me. I can’t say what we did was dancing, not with so many people pressed up against us or her husband two feet away, bouncing and throwing up the devil horns to whatever song the band was playing. But we moved together for a minute or so, and all I could do was soak her in.
Until she turned, that look of disgust back on her face. She put her fingertips on my chest, over my heart, and shoved. It hurt. Not just the physical touch, her fingers digging into the meat of me, but the way she did it so vehemently. She was pissed, but worse, I saw the flash of tears in her eyes. All I wanted was to touch her again, even if it could only be for a minute or two, and instead I’d hurt her. Again.
Jamie had booked us rooms at the same hotel, since the drive from Cleveland to Sandusky at two in the morning after a night of drinking and carousing wouldn’t have been smart. Twenty minutes after we parted ways at the elevator, she knocked on my door. I let her in. Of course I did. Some stupid part of me hoped that she was there to fuck or forgive me. I’d have taken either.
She wasn’t.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
Words came out, but like a dumbass, they weren’t what I really meant to say. “I thought it would be fun.”
I might as well have slapped her in the face, the way she flinched. Anne looked away from me. I’d never felt so small.
“You are so selfish,” she said. I wanted to protest, but I knew she was right. “You knew how I feel about you, and you show up to a fucking concert? Like nothing happened? Like you didn’t fucking break my heart into a million pieces, and what, you just think you can come along and put your hands all over me and make me want you again?”
“Anne...”
But she wasn’t having any of it. When she looked at me, I realized it was better when she wouldn’t, because seeing what I’d done to her was like watching her set herself on fire. I couldn’t stop it; all I could do was watch her burn.
“I’ve tried to hate you, and there are times when I almost make it, Alex. And then I am reminded that I love you, and everything hurts all over again, and all I can do is hate myself for ever thinking that maybe you had one shred of feeling for me.” She held up a hand to stop me from speaking, though all I’d managed was a noise. “But obviously, you think nothing of me. You care nothing for me. If you did, if you had the tiniest crumb of love for me, you would never have been so simply, casually selfish. But that’s what I guess I should expect from you, isn’t it? It’s all you’ve ever been. It’s all you will ever be.”
I don’t know if I reached for her then, or she meant to hit me, maybe, but then she was in my arms, and I was kissing her. If you’ve ever kissed someone like you wanted to punch them in the face with your lips, that’s pretty much how that went. I pulled away bruised and stinging. I’m pretty sure she bit me. I tasted blood and her tears, and it didn’t matter if Anne couldn’t bring herself to hate me. I hated myself plenty.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It wasn’t enough. It couldn’t ever be enough, but I said it. “I’m sorry, Anne, I’m really sorry.”
She let me hold her. She didn’t relax against me at first. It was like hugging a board or a rod of iron. But she pressed her face to the side of my neck after a minute, and her arms went around me.
She whispered in my e
ar, “I hate you.”
We looked at each other. I wanted to kiss her again, but maybe for the first time, I was man enough not to give in to taking what I wanted and fuck the consequences. She studied me, and I had no idea what she was thinking. I probably never had.
“Are you here to ask me to run away with you, Alex?”
I could have said yes, and meant it, at least in that moment. I could’ve told her maybe, to keep her hoping and waiting for me until I figured out how to be what she needed me to be, and that’s what I wanted to come out of my mouth right then, believe me. Because I couldn’t say yes, but I didn’t want to give her up in case I never had a chance at anything so great again.
Instead, I gave her the truth that would last a lot longer than a minute. “No.”
“I love you, Alex. But I love my husband, too. And you’re his best friend, and I know you love him, and he loves you, and all of this is a huge fucking disastrous mess, but when you love someone, you want them to be happy. I want James to be happy. I want to be happy. I want you to be happy, too. But I don’t want you to ever again touch me the way you did tonight.” She drew in a long, shaky breath. “How does that make you feel?”
“Like shit,” I said honestly.
“Good. I hope it breaks you. I hope the thought of never touching me again makes you want to die,” Anne said.
Then she stepped away from me, though she let our fingers link and linger until I could no longer hold on to her, and I had to let her go.
41
“And I did,” Alex said. “I let her go. Because I did love her, and I did want her to be happy.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I didn’t say much of anything. He’d gotten up to pace while he talked, and now his hair was a rumpled mess from running his hands through it. His voice had cracked and broken several times during the story, and when he looked at me now, it was with red-rimmed eyes.
I tried hard to parse what he’d been trying to tell me. “Are you trying to tell me that George loved me enough to let me go?”