“You left in a hurry.” I leave out the part where he started to cry against me. Sometimes that happens, but he looked as surprised by it as I was.
“I was worried about Athena.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes!” He practically shouts it. We stare at each other for a while. He exhales again and says, “No.”
Finally. “Then what was wrong?”
He bites his lip. Athena whines and comes to sit by him, resting her chin on his knee and he pets her head. It’s the most peaceful they’ve looked together since I met them.
Finally, he sighs, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure I let my boyfriend treat me like shit for years, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
13
Charlie
Whoops.That was a bunch of words I didn’t mean to say out loud. Even Athena’s looking up at me with her “seriously, dude?” eyes on.
Mason rocks gently back in his chair and takes a slow sip of his coffee. I’m pretty much ready for the concrete to crack and swallow me whole.
Finally, Mason says, “And that’s why you took off?”
“What?” I nearly knock over my drink. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I’m such a mess. Sorry.”
Gently, Mason leans down and lifts the little dog into his lap. She grumbles, but he strokes between her ears, and she stretches up a long way to lick his chin. I want to lick his chin. Anything, really, to avoid having this conversation.
“Do you need to talk about it?” Mason asks.
If he’d said,Do you want to talk about it?I’d have been able to shake my head and make a comment about how Vann would be appalled at the amount of milk in this cappuccino. But the truth is, yes, I really do need to talk about it, and Mason’s the guy to talk about it with, in part because if we can get past this, maybe he’ll take me to bed again, and in part because I can’t talk to anyone else. Vann will be sympathetic, but even if he never saysI told you so, I can still hear it. I should have heard it a long time ago.
“I came home and there was a man I didn’t know handcuffed to my bed.”
The world goes quiet. Even the birds stop tweeting. A woman gives us a wide berth as she heads into the coffee shop.
Just fabulous. Catastrophic sinkhole, I’m ready when you are.
Mason says, “But your boyfriend knew who he was.”
I nod, the taste of dairy in my mouth going sour. “Apparently they’d been seeing each other for a while. Gavin even had the audacity to suggest maybe we could try an open relationship or some sort of poly arrangement.”
“Usually that’s the sort of thing that gets discussed before the handcuffing.”
“That’s what I said!” I don’t know if Gavin really meant what he’d said about hoping I’d be into his new guy too or if he was trying to cover his ass, but in the hours after handcuff man had left, I’d found a confidence in myself I hadn’t tapped into in years. On any other day, I would have tried to see it Gavin’s way or would have given him another chance, but that day, I told him to leave.
Mason sips his coffee as he watches me thoughtfully. “But that’s not what made you run off from my place.”
Ugh. Why can’t this just be a story of how my man did me wrong? Still, in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose. I sniffle, because my dignity is completely on hiatus, and say, “And what you and I did...It was hot. Like so hot. And something else. Like you knew me, even though we’ve barely met before. And it was never like that with Gavin. What we did was always about him, and if I said I didn’t like it, he said I had to try harder. We were supposed to be in this long-term, committed relationship and it was never as good with him as it was with you, and all you did was excavate my prostate with a fancy stick that my best friend made.”
The same woman who side-eyed me on her way in is coming out of the coffee shop, and this time she flat-out yelps, nearly dropping the tray of drinks she’s carrying. I can’t even meet her gaze. If Mason apologizes for me, I’ll probably die of embarrassment right here.
Instead, after the woman has passed, he sets Pamela down and says, “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“My truck. My place. We can drive around in circles if you want. But I think we should be anywhere that isn’t an outdoor public space where anyone can hear the gory details of our sex life.”
Do we even have a sex life?
