“Look, I don’t want to fight with you.” He sighed miserably and sat back down on the bed, the springs whining underneath his weight. He shot me a guilty look, and I refused to meet his eyes because I knew that, if I did, I’d drown in those golden depths all over again.
“I didn’t sleep with Ivan. We just kissed, and that’s the truth.” I kept my eyes down, self-conscious about my confession. I couldn’t stuff down my feelings and pretend I didn’t still love him.
“I tried… I tried to go further with Ivan, but I couldn’t do it,” I went on, embarrassed.
I raised my head to check his reaction, and what I found was disconcerting: Neil was astonished.
His eyebrows were raised, his lips parted in surprise, and there was a strange gleam in his eyes. I couldn’t be sure, but I strongly suspected that he was relieved that no one else had touched me the way that he had. All at once, though, his expression shifted, and he turned inscrutable, retreating behind his wall of ice to keep me from seeing too deeply into him.
“It’s your life. Whatever you’ve done, you don’t have explain yourself to me.” He licked his lower lip, an unconscious gesture of anxiety, and lowered his eyes. For the first time, I didn’t believe a single word that was coming out of his mouth.
“You’d rather pretend you don’t care than admit your mistakes to yourself, wouldn’t you?” I said provokingly. “You always believed my feelings were fake, and now that you see they weren’t, you don’t have the guts to come to terms with the choices you made. You refuse to admit that you were the one who was in the wrong.” I struggled to my feet, the muscles in my legs threatening to go out at any moment, but my single-minded determination gave me the strength to face him down.
“You refused to tell me about Chicago. You hid the truth from me. You told my mother you were going to leave me, and you made that decision without ever asking me. You never asked what I wanted; you didn’t even consider making an attempt at long-distance. When you found out about your biological father, you cut everyone out of your life. Even me, the person who had only ever supported you and stood beside you even when you humiliated me with other women, even when you trampled on whatever pride I had left, even when you pushed me out in the cold. You made a new life for yourself while destroying mine. I thought about you day and night, and while I was doing that, where were you, Neil? In bed with Megan or other women? How many were there while I was grieving you? While I was crying all the time and not being able to eat? How many? And look at me, for God’s sake, Neil!” My voice grew louder and louder as I spoke, and I felt powerful in a way I’d never felt before. Finally, Neil lifted his eyes to look at me. I froze when his stare landed on my lips.
“Is that what you think? That this was easy for me?” He jumped up, towering over me with all that dangerous power. “You think I didn’t go to shit? The first few months, all I wanted to do was take the easy way out, and the only reason I am standing in front of you right now, safe and sound, is Megan. She is the reason I survived, and I have no idea where the fuck I’d be without her. I fucked other women to hurt myself the way I’ve always done. And yes, I slept with Megan too, and I regret that bitterly. So what are you going to do now? Judge me? Tell me that I disgust you? I didn’t disgustyou so much when you were underneath me having a great time!” he yelled, close to my face. By then, I was no longer capable of reason, and so I simply slapped him full in the face.
I poured all my frustration into that slap, all my disillusionment and suffering, but also my love.
Insanely enough, there was love in my pain.
Neil kept perfectly still, not uttering a single word even as his cheek began to turn red. He looked at me, unhappy but not particularly surprised by my actions. He looked like he was trying to figure out whether I was serious or not.
“Get out,” I muttered. All at once, I was inundated with thoughts of other women touching him, and it made me nauseous. I’d always suspected it, of course, but having it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt was infinitely worse. My head spun. My brief moment of triumph gave way to the feverish exhaustion. I staggered back, fuzzy-headed.
“No,” he answered. “You haven’t even heard the best part yet.” He moved closer, wrapping his arms around my waist for support. Instinctively, I pressed my hands to his chest and my body trembled as I stroked his flexed muscles. I looked up into those bright eyes that wouldn’t stop staring at my pallid face. “I thought about you every time.” He leaned down to get his lips close to my ear, and his stubbly jaw grazed my cheek. The proximity made me flash back to when I was his and he was mine and nothing else existed for us.
“I would think about you to get myself hard. I’d imagine your coconut scent, your soft skin, your ocean eyes, your button nose, and your perfect mouth to push myself over the edge, but I couldn’t orgasm with any of them, except for Megan. I always picked brunettes with blue eyes, and they always looked so much like you at night, but in the morning, they were completely different,” he whispered, tightening his arms around me until it was hard to breathe. He lifted one hand to stroke my hair, and I held my breath. I was trapped in his strong arms, lost in his words. “I became a director who only made the same movie over and over again. The same plot but different actresses…similar to you, but never actuallyyou. And maybe I do disgust you now. You’d have every reason to feel that way. But at least I’ve told you the truth; the whole truth,” he concluded.
He buried his face in the bend of my neck and breathed in my smell. I almost groaned from the pain of his crushing grip as I fought with myself, fought the part of me that wanted to give in. I didn’t want to do it, not now; it would be too humiliating after what he’d just told me, after everything he’d done.
I wanted to be better than I was before. Stronger. I needed to learn how to love myself as well. But then a tear rolled down my cheek, and the urge to kiss him, to taste his lips, began to build inside me.
No, dammit.
I didn’t have to do it. Icouldn’tdo it.
“Outside, Megan kissed you. I saw it,” I said brokenly, pulling away from him. Neil stared intensely at me, his hands still clinging to my body, digging in like claws that wanted to keep marking me.
“It’s not what you’re thinking. We have this connection that I can’t explain, but that’s it,” he answered uncertainly, as though searching for the right words. I stepped back; I would have rather heard that she was just another fling for him, but I’d known all along that wasn’t the case.
“Are you in love with her?” I asked him directly. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, like I’d said the most ridiculous thing in the world to him.
“Fuck no! Absolutely not!” he blurted out immediately, not even thinking about it. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in him, and that did reassure me a bit.
Then, his eyes drifted back down to my mouth, and I realized what he was about to do.
Did he seriously have the balls to kiss me after all of that?
Neil clearly wasn’t interested in wasting any more time, though, because he bent his head and grazed my lips with his own. When he felt my tacit agreement, he kissed me fully.
He did it so slowly, so delicately, that it actually hurt me. A pain I couldn’t name or describe suffused my chest as if to remind me how it had been without him and how I’d never be able to forget him.
My fingers splayed out on his chest, creeping down to his abdomen. He clasped the nape of my neck possessively to pull me closer to him, but he didn’t go overboard. He wasn’t demanding anything.
It was a gentle kiss but a powerful one as well.
Neil had become my whole world.
