Page 570 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

“You didn’t want to be my fantasy.

“You wanted me to be yours.”

His face goes pale, then he shakes his head fast. “Allison, no—seriously? C'mon. That’s not what this is.”

I keep going, “First girl who made you feel like a man and not a mouth. First girl to make you feel anything, really. First girl to make your dick hard. Your dream girl, right? And I think once in your miserable fucking life, you looked at me and said to yourself,’ You know what? My fuckin’ turn.’”

“Allison.” His brows raise. “Stop.”

I don’t. “Bet you’d keep me for as long as you could. At least until the river runs dry.”

His palm slaps the counter.

“Jesus. Seriously, fuckin’ stop!”

I lift my arms up at my sides, voice shaky. “Tell me the point then.”

My vision smears,

so I stare harder.

“For months,

“you’re beggin’ me to let you in,

“you’re tearin’ down my walls.

“And once you do,

“this is what you do with it?

“What was the goddamn point, huh?”

“Why beg me to let you in?

“Why would you sleep with me every night—inside me, Drew.” I clap hard. “INSIDE ME!

“Why make love to me.

“Why kiss me like you do.

“Why stand there and tell me we’re everything. And why hang me out to dry when I tell you I love you?

“You freeze up, acting shocked?

“WHAT THE FUCK did you expect?”

The hurt takes my throat with both hands, squeezing each time I try to swallow back the sob. Then a tearless cry breaks through when I finally say,

“Why would you do this to me?

“You knew what this would fuckin’ do to me.”

His bloodshot eyes hold mine, wet and wrecked, and then he cuts them sideways, furious, knuckle catching the tear on his jaw.

“You can do all that, say all that,” I continue, “but not the one thing that’d help me breathe. And you wanna know what that tells me?” I ask, not giving him a chance to answer. “It tells me you can’t, ‘cause then that means this would be real. And this was never supposed to be real to you. And that tells me this was never gonna last.”

His phone buzzes on the counter.