“Please, don’t make me beg. I came here willingly, the way I’m supposed to. I promised I wouldn’t beg and make you whip me.”
Everything within Debra recoiled. She had never, in her entire existence, heard a sentence like that. “I…what?”
“You were happy tonight. You were laughing, and you looked happy without me. That’s my fault because I always break everything. But your happiness is the most important thing to me, Janet.”
Who the hell was Janet?
“Billie, I’m not Janet. I’m Debra. Your client from the shop.”
Billie looked away. “Right, yeah. I knew that.”
Debra took Billie’s hand slowly and dipped her head. She didn’t want to do this standing behind her front door. She wanted to sit down with Billie and give her a moment to come around from whatever was going on inside of her. “Will you sit down with me?”
“If you want me to.”
“I’d really like it if you did.” Debra smiled as she cocked her head towards the couch. “Maybe I could put the kettle on while you’re here.”
“I didn’t know it would hurt.” Billie followed Debra into the living room and stood in the middle of it, looking down at the floor. “I didn’t know I could feel like that.”
While Debra appreciated what Billie was saying, it was important that she reminded her of the reason why Debra had been at the restaurant with someone else tonight. “You…don’t want me, Billie. You’ve been gone for over two weeks now. You do remember that, don’t you?”
“How could I forget?” Billie lowered herself to the couch on shaky legs. “You were the best thing I’ve ever had in my life, however brief it may have been.”
Debra didn’t want to make it obvious, but it seemed Billie was beginning to come back into the room again. Still, the confession broke something inside Debra that she hadn’t realised had been waiting to break.
Debra crouched in front of her again. “Billie, why did you come here like that? On your knees?”
Billie looked down at her shaking hands and swallowed. “I panicked after I saw you. After what you’d watched me doing at the shop. I-I…um, I-I reverted. Back to what I know…to what used to work. To…how I survived.”
Survived.
That word slid down Debra’s spine like ice.
“Billie,” she whispered, horrified that she was having this conversation at all. “You don’t have to kneel for me. Youneverhave to kneel for anyone.”
Billie’s eyes filled with tears again, spilling over her lashes. “When I do something wrong, I kneel. That’s the way it is.”
“You’re not in trouble. I was angry, yes. I’mhurt. But you don’t get on your knees for that.”
Billie’s bottom lip trembled. “I do.”
“No,” Debra said firmly. “You don’t.”
“I saw your face,” Billie whispered, as another tear fell. “The way you looked at me when you were standing in the doorway. It was like you finally understood what everyone else eventually does. That I’m nothing. Nothing worth caring about anyway. I didn’t want to be that person again. Ineverwanted to be that person again. I…was surviving in the best way I know how.”
Debra reached out and took Billie’s hands in her own. They were ice-cold. There was nothing performative or manipulative going on here. Just devastation…and a woman who had folded herself into a shape she thought would keep her from being abandoned.
“I’m not going to punish you or humiliate you.” Debra squeezed her hands. “I came to the shop tonight because I wanted to say goodbye to you. It was clear you didn’t want to see me again, and after my date, I realised that maybe we were only supposed to have so much time with one another. That perhaps you’d been right, and Ishouldwalk away. I was hurt and confused, I still am to some extent, but I still care about you. Your decision to not want to see me anymore doesn’t change that.”
Billie’s shoulders sagged at that, the tension draining out of her as though the words themselves had been permission tobreathe. “I don’t know how to be wanted, but I don’t want to lose you.”
Oh God.
Debra reached out and cupped Billie’s face. She wiped her tears away, grounding her with a touch she hoped wasn’t too much. “Things may have ended the way they did, but Iamhere for you.” Debra would offer Billie nothing more than friendship right now. She wasn’t in the right headspace to receive anything other than that.“Look, we know where we stand with one another, and I’m okay with it. But please, don’t punish yourself like this. I’m okay, I’llbeokay. Right now,youare my priority.”
“Y-you don’t hate me?”
Debra regarded Billie with a gentle smile. “Hate isn’t an emotion I carry.”
