Page 72 of I Want to Know What Love Is

“You can have the bathroom now.” she darts a glance at my dick and I smile. Then she shifts her gaze to my swollen battered hand. “How does it feel—your hand I mean?” she gives me a serious don’t fuck with me look. Shit.

“About as good as it looks,” I say honestly.

“Ouch. You’re going to get it looked at today, right? You’re not going to get all macho, are you?”

“I’ll get it looked at.” She heaves a sigh of relief and pushes past me.

“I need to get dressed and get going,” she says without looking at me. I catch her shoulder and turn her to face me.

“Mandy, I—"

“This was a moment in time, Dylan. Our night together something to be cherished, but never repeated.” She chokes on her words, an involuntary sob wrenches from her throat as she turns away and wrenches free from my grip.

“Are you sure about that, sha?” I stroke her cheek, but she jerks away from my touch.

“It has to be that way. If anyone finds out—other than your friends. God.” She looks at me for reassurance.

“My friends would never betray me.” She lets out a breath.

“Please understand, my career is on the line and I’ve worked so hard.” She pleads, “It’s all I have.”

“You have me.” I scrape the words past my throat, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing I’m torturing both of us. She looks so sorrowful that I feel like a fool, because who am I? An unwritten story.

“I don’t have you.” There’s heat in her voice now, like she’s gathering her defenses, transforming her profound sorrow and regret to defiance, circling her wagons, erecting her walls for fortification, justifying the fear I can see welling up in her. “You don’t even know who you are.”

I want to tell her she’s wrong, want to scream that I know who I am and that I love her, that I know what love is even if she doesn’t, but I also know my words will fall flat like empty parade balloons. Know that I have to somehow prove it with actions. For both of our sakes.

“We’ve had a…”

“Beautiful time?” I say, struggling to stay in control. She laughs—the sad kind.

“But it can’t go on.”

“Why not?” Stupid question on my part, but I’m losing my cool. Losing everything.

“Transfer,” she commands, her chin up, doubling down on the hot defiance.

“You transfer,” I say automatically, though I know it’s like trying to throw a cat through a brick wall as my grandpa would say, messy and mean and impossible.

“Touché. Looks like we’re both into our careers more than each other.”

Her words break my heart because they couldn’t be further from the truth, because I know it’s fear talking and she’s begging me to prove myself. I feel the cracking in my control, in my being, like I’m being pulled in two between my future and my longing for this woman I want right now.

“They tell me I should move on and find someone else,” I say. The opposite of what I want to say, the words spinning us further apart, pushing everything I want back towards the realm of impossible.

“I’ve been told the same,” she says.

“How’s that working for you?”

“Same as it’s working for you.”

I laugh, a bittersweet sound, a bitter taste that makes me want to spit.

“Look, I know you think you’re in love with me, but hell, I once thought I was in love with Gary—”

“Do not compare me to Gary.” I vibrate with emotion, with outrage because it’s a relief from despair. “Low blow even for you.”

“I’m sorry.” She looks away. “Love is unreliable. It can’t be counted on. Gary’s only merit is that he taught me I need to count on myself and only myself.”