Vanilla

“I’m trying to say that maybe is a selfish fucking thing to do to someone. Sometimes, just because you love someone, that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to end up together. You learn more from the things that end,” Alex said. “I don’t know what that guy thought or felt. But when you really love someone, you want them to be happy, even if it’s not with you. You deserve better than maybe.”

  “I know.” I swallowed hard against a fresh lump in my throat. “It was a good reason not to try with anyone else, though.”

  “It was a reason. Not a good one.” He looked fierce.

  I held up my hands. “I know. I know. Believe me, I feel like an idiot enough.”

  “You don’t have to give Niall another chance,” Alex continued. “I don’t know the guy. He could be a douchebag. But he apologized to you. Did you believe he meant it?”

  I hesitated but nodded. “Yeah. I do. He apologized and asked me what he could do to make it up to me, yes, but then he said he thought he could never make me happy, because he’s not into the submissive stuff.”

  “That’s what he thinks. What do you think?”

  “I think,” I said quietly, “that I was happy when I was with him. And that I don’t need cuffs and toys to be fulfilled. And I think it doesn’t matter, because you can’t make someone love you if they don’t. I kept thinking that we were going to work things out, that maybe...shit. I’ve spent years clinging to a maybe, Alex. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “So you’re just going to let him go?”

  I hesitated. “Yes. What should I do, chase him? Beg? I don’t do that. A fancy dinner and some flowers isn’t going to make anything up to me. A dozen orgasms won’t.”

  Alex grinned. “Yeah, but at least you’ll have a full stomach and a satisfied—”

  “Don’t!” I held up a hand to fend him off.

  “At least think about it. It’s clearly making you miserable not to talk to him.”

  I nodded, solemn. “I will.”

  “And that other asshole,” Alex added, cracking his knuckles. “Just tell me where to go to kick his ass.”

  “You’re not going to kick anyone’s ass!”

  He grinned. “Maybe not myself. But I got a guy. You want me to get my guy?”

  At that, I laughed. Then some more, until finally it sounded real. Alex left me alone in my office, where I logged in to my IM account and studied my contacts list, and the little rabbit there, for a very long time.

  42

  So you reach this moment where finally, finally, it all shifts, you find a way to open up your hands and let go. When what used to matter stops breaking you so fucking hard; when you accept that empty place in your heart will always be there because only one person can fill it, and you get up anyway because goddamn it, one person who does not love you enough should never make you incapable of moving forward.

  I knew what I should feel and think. I should stop being stupid, holding on to what didn’t serve me. No more maybes. No more clinging to the past. I had a small square of paper I’d printed out from the internet tacked up onto the bulletin board in my kitchen, one of those dumb forwards people pass around on Connex or emails.

  In the end, only three things matter. How much you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of that which is not meant for you.

  I’d printed it out because of George. Because of how nongraceful I’d been about letting go of someone who was so clearly not and had never been meant for me. It had been meant as a reminder, the way the ink imbedded in the most tender part of my arm had been meant to remind me.

  But maybe, at last, I thought, it was time to stop remembering. Maybe it was time to forget.

  * * *

  “You sure about this?” The shop where I’d had the first tattoo done was still there, but the artist placing the template over the piece on the inside of my wrist was new. He looked up at me through oddly delicate reading glasses totally incongruous with his shaved head and biker mustache. “This piece is still pretty sweet.”

  He meant the rabbit, of course. I nodded. I’d picked out something from the book and had him customize it—it was not unique, but that was okay. I wanted something I wouldn’t necessarily want to look at every day, something bland. Something I would have to work to remember.

  “Yeah. I’m sure.” I lay back in the chair with my arm on the padded rest and closed my eyes.

  The burn of the needle in my skin transported me. The pain, clean and somehow sweet, and all of it over too soon. I wanted it to go on and on forever, but nothing ever does.

  “Hey,” the guy said gently. “You okay? You’re not going to faint or anything, are you? I have smelling salts.”

  I opened my eyes. “No. I’m okay.”

  I’d been weeping, and swiped at my eyes to clear them. I should’ve been more embarrassed. I looked at the spot on the inside of my arm where once I’d carried all I had left of him. The rabbit was gone, covered over by a red rose.

  “What do you think?” the guy asked.

  “It’s great.” I flexed, waiting for more pain, but it had faded for the moment.

  My mother had thrown a fit about my getting the tattoo in the first place, warning me I would regret it, but I never had. That small rabbit had become as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or curve of my smile.

  And now, it was gone.

  43

  “This is nice,” my mother said and beamed at me from across the table. She’d put on her reading glasses to look at the menu, but she would order the same things she always did.

  Then again, so would I. Breakfast, anytime. I wasn’t even hungry. The toast would be like sawdust in my mouth. I’d eat it anyway so she didn’t scold.

  “So,” my mother said when the silence between us had stretched on too long for her to be comfortable with it, which was about three and a half minutes. “What’s happening with the guy?”

  I gestured to the waitress and held up my iced tea. I’d considered asking for it to be redone, lime instead of lemon, but instead I asked for water. I didn’t have the energy to bother. I looked at my mother. “Nothing is happening with the guy.”

  “He was so nice.”

  I frowned. “I guess that was the problem, huh? Too nice for me.”

  “Bite your tongue,” my mother said. “You deserve a nice man, Elise Genevieve. Don’t you dare try to tell me you don’t.”

  I stared at her, remembering the woman who’d taught me to dance and not the one who judged my art. That was the mother I wanted. It made me sad.

  “I just want to see you happy. Your sister, she won’t ever be happy. It’s my fault. For the longest time I thought she’d be my only one, you know, and until you two came along, she was. I should’ve made it easier for her. She felt replaced. She was high strung as a baby, colicky. The two of you came along and you were such...joys,” my mom said almost in wonder, as though she could hardly believe it. “Such a pleasure, both of you. Never a tantrum between you. I shouldn’t have played favorites.”

  If either my brother or I had ever been my mother’s favorite, that was news to me.

  My mother lifted her chin. “Jill felt displaced. Left out. She was so much older than the two of you. You and Evan had each other. You never seemed to need your sister. It affected her.”

  My memories of Jill had always involved screaming, the taking of toys. When we were older, Jill had bitched and moaned until she got her way, and my mother had almost always sided with her. Out of guilt?

  “Ma, you can’t blame yourself because you had two more kids. Jill’s an adult. She really needs to get her shit together.”

  My mother nodded but looked sad. “She took your father’s leaving a lot harder than you and your brother did.”

  “She was twenty-two years old. She didn’t even live at home!”

  “She was distraught and made bad choices,” my mother continued as though I hadn’t said a word. She leaned forward to lower her voice. “Not like a tattoo or anything like that, tha
nk God.”

  I sighed. The rose was still tender. My mother shrugged. We stared each other down.

  “Mom. Susan told me...”

  “I know what Susan told you,” my mother said. To my surprise, she didn’t sniff disdainfully. She only shrugged then gave me a long, steady look. “Sometimes you have to be selfish, if you want to be happy.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but I didn’t have to say anything, because my mother kept talking.

  “Susan has to do what makes her happy,” my mother said after a minute. “Better that than making everyone around her miserable.”

  “Is that what you did?” I blurted and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  My mother didn’t look surprised. She nodded. She wrapped her straw paper around and around her fingers until it broke.

  “I tried,” she said finally.

  I didn’t like it when my mom had grilled me about my private life; it seemed wrong and invasive to do so to her. What had happened between her and my dad was their business, and old news. Knowing the details of it wouldn’t change anything that had happened since.

  My mother reached to take my hand, just for a second, before letting it go. “You were happy with him, Elise.”

  “I was...at least, I tried to be.” I managed a smile. “Things don’t always work out.”

  My mother gave me a look. “So, keep trying.”

  “That’s your advice?”

  “Yes. That’s my advice. I didn’t, and look where it got me.” My mother linked her fingers together, her hands in front of her on the table, but her gaze was steady and unapologetic. “It doesn’t get your sister anywhere, either, does it?”

  “Being unhappy isn’t a good excuse for being a jerk to everyone, Ma.”

  My mother nodded. “Exactly. Or for being a jerk to a nice man who’s clearly over the moon for you.”

  “So it’s my fault? You don’t even know what happened!”

  “I’m just saying.” My mother spread her fingers apart and gave me a look of wide-eyed innocence. “When a chance to be happy slaps you in the face—”

  “I know, I know. You don’t turn it down.”

  “You can want what you want,” my mother said with one lifted, lecturing finger that somehow didn’t annoy me the way it usually did. “But you get nothing if you give up on it.”

  That wasn’t how the saying had gone when I was a kid, but it made a lot of sense. I grabbed my mother’s hand and squeezed. Maybe someday she’d tell me about the summer before my dad left. Maybe she wouldn’t. It didn’t matter—for the moment, she was the mother I’d always wanted, and what she’d said made a lot of sense.

  44

  You learn more from the things that end. You get what you work for. My mother and Alex had both been dead right when it came down to matters of the heart. I’d learned so much from everything that had ended. Esteban. Niall.

  George.

  I had one more message to send him, this time in the light of day instead of 3:00 a.m. No words. Just a picture of the inside of my wrist.

  He would know what it meant, I told myself as I tried to angle it just right so that he’d be able to see that the rose was now covering up the other piece, that it wasn’t some weird, random picture of some other tattoo I’d had done. It could’ve been anyone’s arm, actually. But I knew he would know it was mine.

  All the other times I’d sent messages off into the ether, knowing he would read and not answer them, that I was being the worst sort of fool, I’d always regretted it immediately. Never enough to keep from doing it again and again, but that’s the thing about being an idiot in love. It feels terrible, but not doing it feels worse.

  This time, the second I hit Send and the little message bubble popped up with my picture inside it, all I felt was relief. Light. I felt unburdened.

  I finally, after so long, felt free.

  The small D next to the message turned to an R. In the past I would’ve held my breath, imagining him all those miles away with his phone in his hand. Getting the message notification. Opening the app, reading the message. Then deleting it, unanswered.

  This time, I was moving to swipe the conversation into oblivion, then close out of my account entirely. Delete the app itself. I was done with him and this, all of it. Finally letting go.

  And of course, that’s when he answered me.

  Hey, how are you? Hope things are well.

  I stared at it. My hands shook. I drew in a breath and then another, feeling a little faint and sick to my stomach. I waited to feel something other than roiling nausea—hope? Excitement? Joy? Relief? But all I felt was...nothing.

  On his phone, the D next to his message to me would have become an R. He would know I read his reply. It went both ways. And maybe he was waiting, holding his breath, imagining me on the other side of our tenuous connection, wondering what I would say to him. Maybe he was doing a lot of things I would never know.

  I did not type an answer.

  I logged out of my account.

  And then I deleted that app from my phone and called Niall, instead.

  * * *

  He didn’t have to see me. Niall. He could’ve said no when I asked him. But he didn’t, so there I was on his living room couch, uncertain what was going to happen but desperately willing to find out.

  Niall came out of the kitchen with a glass of iced tea that he set on the coffee table in front of me without a word. I hadn’t thought I wanted anything to drink until he put the glass there. The question was, did I want it because he’d given it to me, or did he give it to me because he knew I’d want it?

  Did it matter?

  “So,” he said just as I opened my mouth to speak, not that I was at all sure of what I meant to say. He stopped, waiting for me to go on, but I shook my head. “So.”

  “Yeah.”

  I drank some iced tea, perfect the way I liked it, and put the glass back. I wiped my damp fingers on the hem of my dress.

  Niall sighed and settled onto the armchair across from me, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. His fingers linked. He looked over at me through the fringe of his too-long bangs.

  “So,” he said a third time. “Elise. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Niall. I’m sorry.”

  We stared at each other. In two seconds I could’ve been across the room and in his arms, but I didn’t move. And that was stupid, I thought. Cutting off my nose to spite my face. Stupid and proud and—

  Niall was suddenly at my feet. Kneeling there, reaching for my hands. I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to do, only that my heart was pounding, and I was a little short of breath.

  “I miss you too fucking much,” he said, pulling me closer. “Tell me you don’t hate me.”

  I’d never thought he’d go to my knees for me. I could barely speak. “I don’t hate you.”

  “Tell me,” he said, kissing me, “that you want me.”

  “I want you, Niall.” Could it really be so easy? Could someone who’d almost slipped through my fingers be within my grasp again—just like that?

  Maybe that’s the thing about real love...it comes easier than the kind you have to break yourself for.

  Maybe Niall and I wouldn’t have to break ourselves for each other. That was a maybe I could handle.

  I took his face in my hands as his arms went around my waist. Our mouths met, ravenous and devouring.

  He moved onto the couch. We were tangled, arms and legs. Rolling, him beneath and me on top. He ran his hands up to my hips and tugged at my panties; when they didn’t come off fast enough, he tore them. He worked open his belt and zipper and was inside me a half a minute after that.

  I cried his name as he thrust inside me. I tore at his shirt, one button pinging off the coffee table. I got my hands all over his chest, my nails leaving faint pink marks. I couldn’t stop myself from pinching his nipples, though only for a second before I put my hands flat on his chest, instead.


  His teeth raked my throat. His fingers wound in my hair, tangling and pulling and keeping me from moving. His lips moved on my skin. “Fuck me.”

  I rolled my hips, taking him in deep. I did as he asked, hard and harder. The slap of our flesh sent me higher and higher, and so did the way he said my name over and over, urging me on. When he slid his other hand between us so that his knuckles rubbed my clit with every thrust, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I came with a low shout.

  Niall bucked. I felt him throb inside me and let out a surprised cry—I’d heard of that happening, but had never actually felt a man come inside me. I rocked on him, grinding down, so close to another orgasm that all it took was the shift of his hand against me to send me over.

  We slowed. He was still hard inside me when I stopped moving. Breathing hard, I turned my head a little until he released my hair and I could sit up. I traced the marks I’d left on his skin with my nails. I leaned to kiss his mouth. Niall put his arms around me, and I rolled to his side where I found a way to fit between him and the back of the couch with one leg thrown over his and my skirt tucked tight between my legs to keep from making a mess. I was too worn out to worry about it more than that.

  I ran my hand over his chest to settle on his belly and kissed his shoulder. We were quiet. When I heard the pattern of his breathing shift into the steady drone of sleep, I hugged him, hard.

  He stroked my hair. “I love you.”

  I pushed upward to look at his face. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “No. Almost. I could be.” He blinked and yawned and shifted so we were a little less cramped.

  I sat up, still tangled up with him. “Niall.”

  “Elise,” he said with a small smile.

  “We really should talk.”

  He groaned, but good-naturedly. We untangled ourselves and managed to get off the couch without breaking anything. I went to the bathroom to sponge off my skirt and came out to find him in the kitchen, puttering around with plates and toast and butter and hot water on for tea.

  He turned when I came in. “Hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  He put his arms around me and held me tight. We stayed that way, slightly rocking, until the kettle started whistling. I took plates from the cupboard while Niall filled the mugs with hot water and tea bags. We both took seats at the table, though he got up after a second and went to the cupboard to bring something back that he slid toward me.