“I’m perfectly capable of managing my life and my relationships with my siblings. I don’t need advice from you,” I said scornfully.
“That goes for Selene too…” He hesitated slightly. “She doesn’t have anything to do with it either, Neil. I’ve heard from her a few times in the past six months, and she told me that you were the one who made the choice to end it between the two of you. She knows about her mother and what you two talked about, and still she doesn’t accept your decision,” he said, soft and disappointed. And then the anger, that anger that turned me into nothing but a beast, got the upper hand. I let my arms fall to my sides and stood up straight, instantly demonstrating the power Babygirl still held over me. Even from so far away. Even though there was no longer an “us.”
“She needs to live her life, John, and she needs to get away from me to do it. Her mother was fucking right. Why can’t anyone understand where I’m coming from? Do you know how much easier it would have been to bring her to Chicago with me? To take her and use her up at my leisure? She’s the only person I’ve ever shown my soul to. I made the right choice for both of us.” My voice got louder and louder before faltering.
It was a bitter taste that I’d experienced twice before: the first time when I was a child and the second at in my early twenties.
And that was why I went to war internally. I wasn’t going to drive Babygirl crazy.
She wasn’t going to live this cursed life and have this dreamless future because of me.
“I’m afraid it’s not only up to you to make that decision. You should have told her about Chicago and let her decide what she was going to do. She accepted you, Neil. She never would have abandoned you…” John stood up to face me.
I gave him a sardonic smile. All I wanted for Selene was a better life. Why was that so hard to understand?
“I’ve forgotten her already anyway. I’ve moved on…” I finished tersely. I needed to shut him up and shut down this line of inquiry and get back to work.
“You’ve forgotten about her?” John lifted his eyebrows like I’d just said the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “Typically, one’s pearl isn’tso easily forgotten,” he continued. “I did hear she was seeing someone, though.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and scrutinized my face, probing for reactions, for emotional shifts. I wasn’t surprised to hear that about Selene. I’d figured she’d eventually go out with someone.
Apparently that love she was always talking about really was just a lie after all.
I’d always known that. It just took her a little longer to realize.
“So she’s got a boyfriend now?” I blurted out, feeling a strange, acidic feeling rising from my stomach into my throat. John smiled a smug little half-smile, and I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Just the thought of it made me feel on edge.
“So what if she does?” he answered pointedly with an amused undertone to his voice. My eyes bugged slightly—so what? So, I didn’t want to think about some guy’s lips on her; I didn’t want to think about him rubbing his slimy mitts all over her.
She had only ever been mine.
I was the one who took her virginity. I was the one who had given her her first orgasm. I had tasted every part of her, touched her everywhere, and possessed her in every possible way. I was the first man to ever see her naked, the only person she’d explored sexuality with in her entire life.
I couldn’t deal with the idea that she’d now shared those same things with someone else.
“It’s her life. If she’s happy, I’m happy.” I shrugged and tried to look indifferent, but I almost puked as I said it. I knew I couldn’t blame her for anything. After all, I’d also let other hands and mouths kiss and touch me. Though none of them gotinme, to the place where only she had been. The place where I still kept her.
I tried to quell some of my possessiveness and think clearly: She had moved on just like I had told her to, and I couldn’t judge her for that. I had no right to get all pissy about it. It was tough to admit it, but it was true: finding out she had a boyfriend put me off my game.
I shook my head and smiled ruefully.
I had been right all along: pleasure was real, and so were orgasms and the loneliness that made people cling to one another just to believe in something.
But love was just a big lie, and Selene’s was no different.
This was only confirmation of that.
“You know, Neil, we often feel haunted by our best memories because our souls long to return to the people and places that allowed us to feel our best,” John answered. He seemed concerned by my exhausted silence.
That was true enough: Selene was the only good memory I had. Which, I supposed, meant she’d never stop haunting me. Babygirl had cast a fucking spell on me; nothing else explained this turmoil.
“I’m good right now. I have everything I need,” I said, trying to make him—and even more so myself—buy my bullshit.
In reality, I was like a desperate man walking through the endless desert.
I was looking for my path.
But it wasn’t there; I couldn’t find it.
