by Shayne Ford
She smiles as if she is aware of the battle that lies ahead of us.
I tear my gaze away from the screen, spin around and take the stairs up to the upper level.
Quietly, I enter the bedroom.
Her dress and shoes lie on my bed, looking like the clothes of a girl who just played dressed up.
Not tossed on the bed in the throngs of passion, not peeled away by me, or hurriedly by her.
Her response was mixed, to say the least. To this evening, the flowers, champagne, and music.
You think you hold a woman’s heart in your hand, but you can never tell.
You truly never know.
She shed her clothes in silence, perhaps regret, or nothing at all. She didn’t think of my touch, my kiss or the hunger of my body. She didn’t even say she hated me.
That would’ve given me something. Not much, but something. It would’ve given me an idea on how much love she has for me still.
But she said nothing at all–– not anything of consequence anyway. Not more than the food was good, the house is lovely, and I am as handsome as ever.
And then she left.
Disappointed, I look around.
This was a big slap on my face, worse than the one she made me feel earlier this evening. The first woman I brought home left my place without tasting my kiss or sharing my bed.
Well done, Thea Porter.
Well done.
The phone rings as I walk into the closet.
I sweep the screen with my thumb and put Lex on speaker.
“Where are you?” he asks as I untuck my shirt.
“Home.”
A pause ensues at the other end, the clamor of the club echoing in the background.
I hear James’ voice as well as Rain’s and Dahlia’s.
“I just saw Thea in the club with her friends. What happened?”
“Nothing, ”I say as I take off my pants.
Another pause ensues.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes.”
A few moments pass by before the background noise subsides and I hear his voice better.
I’m already in the bathroom, getting ready to take a shower.
“What happened, Preston?”
I turn the water off, and lean back against the sink, staying quiet for a moment.
“Things didn’t go that well.”
He doesn't comment.
“I brought her home.”
“I imagined.”
“I had my place ready for her. If she didn’t show up at the club I would’ve called her anyway, so I was prepared just in case, but, um... I made a mistake.”
“What did you say?”
Concern threads through his voice.
“I was truthful with her... Perhaps too much.”
He stays silent.
“That pissed her off in the beginning, and then it tipped her off.”
“On what?”
“I might’ve come across as non-committal.”
“You are non-committal, Preston.”
“Well, that was not my intention anyway. I wanted to give her a fair warning that I wasn’t, perhaps, what she wanted me to be.”
“And?”
“She flipped the whole damn thing and pulled back big time. She said that she didn’t want anything from me and that I shouldn’t be worried since she doesn’t expect much from me anyway.”
“Ouch.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I’m not surprised though.”
“Well, I was... And that’s not all. She plans to move overseas this next semester with an international exchange student program. She moves to Turkey.”
“Oh...”
“Yeah. So I don’t know if she’s had that in the works for some time. I imagine that she did. She said she did. It takes time to go through the application process, so she must’ve told the truth. At any rate, things didn’t get any better as the night progressed. We had dinner, and then I gave her a ride to the club before I came back home. I wasn’t in the mood to hit the club again.”
“I get it, man. So where did you leave it with her tonight?”
“Nowhere. We’re fucking friends again.”
His laugh echoes in my phone.
I crack a smile.
“It’s not funny, Harrington.”
“I’m not saying that it is, but you have to give it to her. She’s beating you at your own game.”
I stay quiet for a moment before I speak.
“It’s no longer a game, Harrington, and she’s not beating me because she doesn’t even play it. She completely pulled me out of it. When I said what I said to her, I wanted her to be aware of what was lying ahead of us. I wanted her to know where I’m coming from. I didn’t want her to have high hopes that I knew I’d crush. She was all riled up because of Valerie and all that crap. And I explained to her that she shouldn’t fear the dancer, but when I hinted to her that the real problem lies deep in me, it was as if I crushed her feelings with a hammer. All that passion that I’d seen in her earlier on completely vanished. All her jealousy disappeared if it was never there. She got back at me with the news that she’s leaving too.”
“Why is that a problem? You can visit her.”
I breathe out a chuckle.
“Sure, I can. She already told me that. We are friends now,” I sneer, laughing. “The thing is I don’t feel good about the fact that she’s going to be away from home, alone.”
“Worried about other men?”
“Other men too.”
“Why are you so bothered, Preston? You two are pen pals now. She’ll keep you updated on her love life.”
“Haha. Very funny, Harrington.”
“So what are you going to do?” he asks seriously this time.
I run my fingers through my hair, sucking in a long breath.
“I’m going to use what she’s given me... I’ll be her fucking friend.”
7
EDWARD
My smile dies out the moment I hang up the phone. My chest feels heavy, my muscles tense.
I spend a few minutes in the shower letting the warm water roll over me and my mind go adrift, trying to relax.
Things have changed in the past few months. And I feel as if I’ve changed as well.
I turn off the shower, grab a couple of towels, pat myself dry with one of them before I wrap the other one around my waist.
Barefoot, I walk into the bedroom where I’m greeted by the scent of burning wood. I fix myself a drink and slide onto the bed, my phone nearby.
The first gulp of liquor removes some of my tension. My skin warms up, my blood pumping faster. I slide my thumb across the screen while taking another swig and swallowing.
Fire travels down my throat.
“Hmm...” I mutter as I shift through Thea’s pictures looking for her nudes.
I study her as if I try to solve a riddle. I look at her as if I want to get a sense of her.
Slowly, my hand slides to my groin. I’m getting hard beneath my touch, my eyes still glued to her snapshots.
The moment I start twitching and throbbing, I remove my hand, close the app and call her.
The phone rings a couple of times.
“Hey,” she says, panting.
My jaw throbs, tense.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting home. You?”
“Alone?”
“Mmm-hmm. Why are you asking?”
She sounds cute, a smile threading through her voice.
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?” she asks with the voice of someone who is mad.
“I don’t know. Just asking. So how was it?”
“Not so interesting actually. My friends were talking about going to someone else’s place while I just wanted to come home. Wait a second,” she says, the sound of a door opening and closing echoing in the background. “You’re on speaker,” she announces, her voice modulating as she’s moving bac
k and forth. “What’s up?” she tosses at me as if she talks with her cousin.
“I, um... I wanted to talk to you, but maybe I should call you some other time,” I say, using a classic strategical retreat.
“No, no... It’s okay. I just want to take a bath. I’m really cold.”
“No problem. Take your time.”
For a few moments, I hear all sorts of noises in the speaker. A door, the water running, and then the soft sound of a slow tune.
“Can you wait a little more? I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Sure.”
I bite my lip.
Being friend-zoned really sucks. I guess life teaches me a little lesson now.
I clear my throat and listen.
More sounds travel to my year. A glass hitting a hard surface, perhaps a kitchen counter. Her muffled curse.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I took my clothes off, poured myself a glass of wine and now, I’m going to soak myself into the bathtub while I’m going to listen to you.”
My fingers curl, tense around my glass.
“You could’ve done the same thing here.”
“Very clever, Mr. Preston, but as I said tonight, I wanted to give you your much-needed space.”
A sly grin flashes in her voice.
Not all is lost.
“Are you fucking with me, Ms. Porter?”
“I can ask you the same thing.”
“I didn’t say I needed space.”
“You didn’t need to,” she says with a lighter voice as if she’s not affected at all. “I know what your problem is...” she adds a bit distracted and then goes quiet.
I hear the sound of her glass hitting a smooth surface again, like a tile perhaps and then her footsteps, running away and coming back, accompanied by her giggle.
A splash tells me that she sunk into the tub.
“Oh, it’s chilly,” she says, singsonging a melodious laugh again.
I rewind and review the succession of the images as I envision her running butt naked through the apartment.
I can hear the music a little better now. She must’ve turned up the volume. I hope she didn’t forget what she wanted to say because I’m waiting on pins and needles here.
“Mmmm... This is so much better,” she says, literally moaning in my ear while drinking her wine.
I clear my throat again.
“About my problem...” I slip with a voice lined with a dash of humor.
“Yes. About your problem... You can’t get close to anyone, Ed.”
My smile just died.
“What are you talking about?”
She takes another sip.
“There’s something about you... I sensed it so many times. And I don’t know where it’s coming from. All I know is that you don’t feel good when you get too close to someone you care about, and then you fuck things up.”
I try to smile.
“It’s not exactly what I expected to hear, but I appreciate your honesty. But how would you know all that?” I ask in one short breath.
“It’s easy.”
“Really?” I mutter skeptically. “Humor me.”
“First you needed a game. You said that it was for me, but it was also for you. To protect yourself. To help you stay away from me. As long as you had that cover you could pull back anytime you wanted, and you did it quite a few times.”
“Go on.”
“Then you punished me a few times, perhaps inadvertently, but you wanted to get back at me, teach me stuff and whatnot. That also put a safe distance between us, and oddly enough that made you feel comfortable.”
“Give me an example.”
“When you made me jealous in LA. And then when you let me squirm after you stormed out that Saturday morning when Elan walked into my apartment.”
“Okay...”
“And then every time we got back together you wanted me a little more than the last time, and it was mainly because you didn’t have me those times when for one reason or another, I pulled away from you. That tells me that you feel better–– more comfortable I should say, when you have your space.”
I ponder for a moment.
“What about you?” I ask.
“I’m quite the opposite. I feel threatened when you pull away. When the space between us grows, and there are other people in it. When I don’t get enough reassurance from you, and I don’t know how to read your clues. When you suddenly get unreadable or distant, or you pull away without an explanation like that morning. I feel the best when I am close to you, and I can read the signs. When the signs tell me exactly what it is, and there are no mixed messages. When I know for sure that if we spent the night together, you would be there for me the next day and the next. When I get too much space around me, I get lost. I also lose my faith and hope. I start rising walls around me, and talk myself out of you.”
She pauses and then she starts to chuckle––a sad, bitter laugh.
“That’s why I started to delete your pictures and decided to move overseas.”
“My dick pictures are gone?”
“Pretty much,” she says with a lighter voice.
“Why?”
“Why keep them? They reminded me of you.”
“Naturally,” I say, slipping humor in my voice.
“No. No... Not in that way. The thing is, I can’t torture myself with your body if emotionally, you’re not available to me.”
That last part hits close to home.
“How, um...” I start.
But she is quicker than me.
“Listen. I’m sure that’s not the reason why you called me tonight. I don’t think that me telling you all this stuff is a good thing.”
“No. I mean yes. I want to hear your thoughts on us, but... What makes you say I’m emotionally unavailable to you? Who can you compare me with?”
“I have no one to compare you with, Ed. I’ve never experienced true closeness to anyone. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know how a man should feel when he is close to a woman.”
“You may be wrong.”
“I may. Or I may be not. So anyway... We were talking about me giving you space. So that’s why.”
A piano cries a soft melody in the background. I listen to it for a moment.
“So why did you call?” she asks.
I take a sip of scotch before I speak.
“Since we’re friends and stuff...” I say.
She starts to laugh.
“You are so funny.”
I smirk.
“Mmm-hmm... I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
Curiosity lines her voice.
“I’m flying to Vegas next Friday, and I was wondering if you could come with me.”
She stays silent.
“It’s not leisure or anything. It’s something that I need to take care of before I leave... I thought about what you said to me a while ago when we were talking about family and stuff, and I decided to pay a visit to my father.”
She gives me silence for a few seconds.
“Why would you want me to come with you?”
A small smile tilts my lips.
“Because you are my friend.”
THEA
His words sink into me deep.
“We’re flying my jet, spending the night there and coming back on Saturday, unless you want to stay more.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you’re coming? Or okay, you’re spending more time with me there?”
“Both... I think.”
“You can’t trust me?” he asks with a seductive voice.
My eyes slip to my nipples. Hard like pebbles, the little buds emerge from the water looking like small floating devices.
I clench my thighs.
“I don’t trust myself,” I mutter.
“I can’t hear you,” he says
I think I register a smile in his voice.
“I. Don’t. Trust. Myself,” I say lo
uder.
“No need to worry.”
“Now, I’m really worried.”
A wolfish laugh rolls in my ears.
“You said no sex without emotions.”
“I said... Wait a minute. I said that you are not emotionally available to me.”
“Try me.”
I see the set up there.
I muse for a moment, a smile creasing my lips.
“We’re not even in the same room.”
“Since when is that a problem?”
“For emotions it is.”
“I wasn’t talking about emotions.”
“Are you setting me up now?”
“More like seducing you. I mean... I tried it early on, but the wrong emotions got in the way.”
“Hmm... I see. Are you begging for sex, Mr. Preston?”
He laughs softly.
“It’s called bargaining, Ms. Porter.”
“What’s the trade-off?”
“You let me seduce you, and I’ll give you the best orgasm without me in the room.”
I start to chuckle.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Oh, yeah... I remember. So you think that just because I have the hots for you I’ll toss my principles to the side for an... orgasm?”
“Sounds like a very good deal if you ask me, considering that you’re only pushing your principles to the side temporarily.”
“Are you suggesting something like a ‘friends with benefits’ situation?”
“I’d say that the situation is fluid, but for now, yes. We can always upgrade it later on.”
“You’re a hustler, Mr. Preston.”
“And you are a very insightful woman.”
I laugh.
“I can’t believe that you’ve already started. Flattering me and all... You seem stirred up.”
“I’ve been stirred up since I saw that dress lying on my bed, and you weren’t naked in my arms.”
My breath hitches.
I push upright, sucking in a short breath.
Water slides of my arms like an unraveling piece of fabric, goosebumps forming at the touch of air.
“Why didn’t you want me in my black outfit?” I ask, my voice two notches quieter.
It takes him a moment before I hear him drawing a long breath.
“Because I had this image of you in my head. Wearing one of those dresses, slowly dancing with me, my arms wrapped around you....”
