by Ace Gray
My fingers itch to call Courtney. Call anyone for an answer. But I’m the only one that can answer it. And if I’m being honest, I’m tired of the voices spinning in my head.
James might be their impetus but he’s also the one that quiets them. Usually. When he brushes his finger down mine and storm churned waters calm. When he’s on the couch next to me I feel an easy contentment. When I’m lying in his arms, nothing seems insurmountable. He doesn’t make things go away—my family, my business, even my own insecurities just seem manageable. He’s a partner who I happen to be madly in love with and insanely attracted to.
That’s what gets me off my chair and shoves me out the door.
We’re better together. In the honest way, not in the perfect way.
At first our words were in the way. Then our pride. This last hurdle—our past—has always been the hardest to clear but I’m going to run the race. James’ words, not mine. I smile, realizing how many times I use that phrase, how his words find their way into my mind and mouth and heart.
I was wrong last night when I questioned his words as a gift. They are. They always have been.
And I will fight to hear more.
I round the corner to the coffee shop where he and Jenna should be having brunch. I was supposed to be there too but oh well. I don’t miss sitting across the table from her, pretending that this is all normal. That I’m okay.
I just want James. And I want him to know it.
My smile spreads all on its own when I see him standing beside a table. It falters the slightest bit when I see Jenna’s hand around his wrist, but I pull it back into place. They aren’t holding hands, this isn’t an intimate moment. I can keep my cool.
“James,” I call when I’m a few steps away. “Can I talk—”
Mid-sentence my words cut off as the world slows down. Jenna uses her grip to pull James. Down to her. Her other hand wraps around him and shoves into his hair as she pulls him to her lips.
And kisses him.
I feel the flame of anger lap at my insides. My hands ball into fists at my sides as I try to remember if my thumb is supposed to go in or out of my fist when I punch her. Because I’m going to.
Until I realize James isn’t pulling away.
In fact, he’s kissing her back.
I run. As fast as my sandaled feet and collapsing chest can take me. James is screaming my name behind me, but I won’t stop. I won’t listen. Not again.
The straps of my sandals are tearing at my feet, tears are stinging at the corners of my eyes. Everything hurts. So very bad. There’s a burning in my lungs and my legs. I my lips are chapped, and my mouth is dry. I’d give anything to stop but if I stop, reality will catch me.
The reality that James was kissing another woman.
Seeing the memory again levels me. Literally. I can’t keep running. I can’t keep breathing. I double over, bracing myself on my knees but my hands slip. I crash to the ground, gravel digging into my knees and the palms of my hands.
I give up. I feel it. The ability to keep myself up. The ability to keep going at all. A singular scream rips from my throat just before I’m about to crumble further.
But footfalls sliding on gravel barely precede strong arms wrapping around me. James falls to his knees and pulls me to his chest.
“No,” I scream at him and thump against his chest.
He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t even flinch.
“Don’t touch me.” The tears finally start streaming down my cheeks as I hit him again. “I hate you.”
“I know,” he murmurs into my hair.
I shove against him but it’s half-hearted. I fight against him, but my body is starting to shut down. He doesn’t let go until a car honks and he violently waves them around. I didn’t realize we were in the middle of the street, so I try to get up, but my body isn’t working right.
James understands though and unfolds his wretched body. He keeps his arms around me but gives me a moment to get my feet under me. When I stumble, he’s there to catch me.
“Leave me alone.” I shove at his hands.
“No,” he says softly.
“Jenna’s waiting.” I want to swing at him again, but her name takes it out of me, and I fall into him.
“I don’t give a shit where Jenna is.” He grabs my hand and puts it over his shoulder.
I’m about to pull it back when he grabs me and cradles me to his chest.
“Put me down,” I demand as the tears start all over again.
This is the James I always wanted. The one that would run after me, would weather my storm and hold me close, and I’m only getting him because he destroyed me. I’m only getting him when I don’t want him anymore.
“I hate you.” My words break, they barely make it out.
“I love you,” he replies, steady and strong just like his steps as he turns for my house.
“Don’t ever say that to me again.” I find the strength to shove my elbow into his chest and this time it makes him falter.
Luckily I find my footing when I need to and even though I’m shaky, I’m able to start walking away. He keeps hold of my wrist though.
“I’m not letting you walk away,” he says softly.
“You don’t get a say anymore.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You kissed her,” I scream.
“She kissed me.”
“You kissed her back and I don’t know what the fuck kind of brain damage you have that makes you think you can say you love me when your lips still fucking taste like her.” I stomp my aching, bloody foot as an exclamation point.
And I see it. The moment that his instinct to tell me I’m too much tenses his muscles. He balls his free fist and his perfectly imperfect lips thin in disappointment. The ice of his eyes goes even chillier and they get as close to rolling as I’ve ever seen from him. I brace for it. For him walking away, avoiding what he did and how it smashed my heart.
Instead, his hand digs in where it’s holding me, and his eyes fall away. “I was telling her she had to go, whether she had closure or not. That I moved for a reason and that reason can always be traced back to you. That I didn’t want to jeopardize the fragile thing I was building with you because she was here.
“She laughed. She told me that if you weren’t ready to fight then you weren’t ready to keep me. She was a bitch about it. Everything you said this morning was so right, I got up to leave. I didn’t give a shit what she had to say or why she wanted to say it, I just wanted to go back to you.” Each and every word of his story is its own beg and plead.
“Bullshit,” I spit.
“She saw you Mina, before you said something, and she was cruel and manipulative in all the ways you accused her of and all the ways you didn’t.” He’s still sincere, urgent and desperate, but sincere.
“But then you kissed her.”
“If I could take away the fact that my lips know hers, I would. I’d give anything for it. But I can’t. And as soon as she kissed me eight stupid shitty years of muscle memory told me to kiss her back. Because that’s what I always did.” His voice is picking up pace and pitch, breaking on every few words or so. “It’s not a good excuse, but it’s the only one I have. My head, my heart…neither one of them would kiss her. They’re both yours. Completely. You who loves the little bits of me that make me a man, even if it’s a shitty one. You that shreds yourself upon the rocks to believe me.”
God, his words are so good. So beautiful. They’re all I’ve ever wanted to hear. No, they’re better.
But his actions…
“You that writes me letters like this one.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. He looks me over once and decides I won’t run, because he finally relinquishes his grip on me to open his wallet and pull out a tattered and crinkled napkin.
“Where’d you get that?”
I don’t reach for it. I don’t want to see the words I wrote him when I decided that I loved him and tha
t I’d stick with it. I don’t want the reminder of everything he ruined.
“When I spilled marinara on my pants the night we watched movies. You had a full load of laundry sitting there, and I decided to do it. I always check pockets before I throw stuff in.”
I close my eyes. Things like that are the tiny and oh-so simple things that make James, James. That make him my soulmate, my home, my everything. They’re the same things that make him my demise.
“Those words don’t mean anything anymore,” I say as I cross my arms around my turning stomach.
“They mean everything to me.”
“Burn it, just like I did.” I shrug. “Like you did with my heart.”
I turn and walk away. On purpose. I hope he enjoys the view.
His footsteps mirror mine as I walk toward my house and each one is heavy, echoing in the empty cavern of my chest.
“Leave me alone, James,” I call as my knees wobble at the mere letters of his name.
“Never.”
“This isn’t charming. It’s harassment. By some other chick’s boyfriend.” I shoot him the bird.
“I am no one else’s but yours and I want to be your fiancé.”
I have to reach for the car parked on the street next to me when he says that. If I thought anything so far today hurt, I was infinitely wrong. That word, that six lettered f-word, is the nail in my hands and in my feet by which I’ll hang to death.
“How dare you,” I murmur.
“What?” He reaches for my hip and I swack at his hand.
“How dare you!” I scream in his face and shove his chest.
“Mina—”
“You think that’s something that you can say to fix this? That it’s some ace you can keep up your sleeve?” The tears come again, a knot in my throat. “How dare you use something that is sacred?” Each word cracks and breaks.
“If you think I’m using any words flippantly, let alone to manipulate you, then you never loved me, you never even knew me,” he says softly, and his hand falls away from me.
“I knew you’d hurt me.”
“Did you know how bad you’d hurt me.”
I hold up my hand up as my eyes close. “You don’t get to say that right now.”
“Because it’s true?”
“Because you KISSED SOMEONE ELSE!”
And as the exclamation point to my sentence, he grabs me and kisses me. His hands grip my upper arms and hold me. I swat at him where I can, but he doesn’t relent. His hold or kiss.
His lips, his horrifically wonderful crooked lips dance against mine. He tries to slip me his talented tongue, but the keyword is tries. I refuse to move my mouth against his. I refuse to let him in. Even if my body is bowing into his. Slightly.
My heart picks up pace and heat flushes across my chest. When he pulls back, his icy eyes have melted. They beg for my understanding.
I want to spit in his face. “That’s what it’s like not to kiss someone back,” I say as I turn.
My knees quake and I still can’t breathe. James reaches for me, to steady me again, and I try and shrug out of his grip but I’m still weak, and the world spins a little before righting itself. My heart hurts so bad that it radiates out, and even my fingers tingle. I go to rub my chest and I can’t because my fingers just won’t work right.
The world spins again.
I fall into James, dizzy and in no small amount of pain. I can’t breathe. My heart hurts, no, my chest. Good God, am I dying?
“You’re going to kill me. This is how I go.” I wooze against him again.
“No you’re not. I refuse to let you.”
“That’s not how this works,” I gasp.
His grip tightens, and he twists me toward him, he looks me over head to toe and back again. “I think you’re just having a panic attack.”
“What?” I try to rub my chest again, but my fingers are still tingling too bad use.
“I’m going to take you home, okay?”
Since it’s real pain and real fear, I don’t shove him away. I lean into him and let him help me down the sidewalk and up the stairs to my front door.
“It’s gonna be okay.” James rubs gently on my arm as he walks us through the kitchen. He keeps hold as we go upstairs and even as he pulls the sheets back. I collapse on the bed, sitting but broken like a little marionette doll. “Do you want water?”
I shake my head.
“Tea?”
I shoot him a look.
“So you’re feeling better?” He cocks his head.
“A little.” I wrap my hands around myself. “Was that really a panic attack?”
“Seemed like it.” He crouches down and looks up at me. “I mean, it seemed like mine.”
“You have panic attacks?”
“Since I was little.” He rests his hands on my knees and I flinch. He drops his hands and his eyes from mine. “When my mom came home from the lab, the pressure to be perfect around her got to me.”
“I’m sorry. I know your relationship is interesting.”
He shrugs. “I love her but living with her was hard. I never measured up, so any affection came by way of symptoms. I tried to shake them when I got older but things still get overwhelming.”
“Yeah.” I can’t look at him. Overwhelming is an understatement for where I’ve found myself.
“That’s why I don’t always communicate well. That’s why I bail,” he admits. “I feel my chest tighten and the unreasonable terror set in.”
I run my finger over the curve of his shoulder. I don’t mean to do it, I just feel the need to be there for him no matter how little he deserves it.
“I never knew.”
“I’m not exactly a fan of being vulnerable.” His brow crunches beneath his baseball hat. “The panic attacks are the reason I would disappear into the woods from time to time. The peace helps me clear my head, calm my nervous system down.”
“I remember that part.” I let my hand fall away.
“You always understood that part.”
I don’t know what to say. I’m grateful that he’s here with my body amped and exhausted and twisted up like it is. I’m glad to know more about him and having felt a panic attack, I’d avoid the words that brought them on too. But there’s still that kiss, that brutal kiss, seared behind my eyelids.
“I don’t know how to get past this, James.”
“I meant what I said about marrying you, Mina.” His fingers find a small patch of skin on my ankle to drum. I close my eyes at the very contact.
“I meant what I said about that not fixing anything.” I can feel the tears lodging back in my throat.
“I’ll go then,” he says softer and more defeated than I’ve ever heard. What little is left of my heart breaks.
“Stay.” The request just tumbles out, but I mean it. “Please? I know how awful I am for asking but I’m shaken and a little scared. I don’t want to be alone.” I lay down awkwardly onto my pillow, letting the exhaustion heavy in my bones pin them haphazardly to my mattress.
“Of course,” he says as he lifts up the covers and helps me adjust. After he tucks me in, he slides beside me. Not beneath the covers and not touching me but close enough for me to know he’s there. I close my eyes, grateful for his soothing warmth and his steady breaths. I even start to doze off when he adds, “I’ll stay as long as you’ll let me.”
“Ahhh,” I scream as pain shoots through my foot.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” James instantly soothes. His hand comes to my arm and he traces small, featherlight circles on my skin.
There’s still sunlight in my bedroom but it’s disorienting because it should be going soft and hazy not sharpening.
“What time is it?” I turn toward the clock and find James in the way, his eyes boring into mine. Into my soul.
“About seven. In the morning.”
“Oh my God.” I spring up and whip the covers back. “I was supposed to go to work. I have so much shit to do.”
�
�Shhh, Mina, I called them. Candice and I got someone to cover in the bar. She brought me the end of day stuff and the order invoices. I have it organized on your dining room table.”
“You…you did that?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you.” I meet his stripping stare again. “You didn’t have to.”
“It was my fault.” He looks away. “We need to clean your feet too.”
“What?”
“That’s why you yelped in the first place. There are sores all over them from…” He doesn’t finish his sentence. “I’d like to help.”
My body hurts. Each time he puts me through the wringer, it does a little more. The idea of reaching all the way down there…
“Sure.” I reach up and rub my temples.
He pushes up from bed and disappears into my bathroom. All the times I watched him disappear naked into that room sit heavy on my chest. Everything about him does. The way he hurt me, the way he’s helping.
“I hope it’s not too hot.” James returns with my pedicure tub, a warm washcloth, and some Band-Aids.
My heart swells, it makes each crack feel that much deeper.
I sit up and swing my feet off the bed. He carefully takes off my sandals and places each foot in the water. I wince when the heat hits the sores.
“Teach you to run from me.” James’ big smile spreads.
Mine can’t follow.
“Too soon?” he asks as he starts to wash my feet.
The answer is yes. God yes. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to joke about this. About us. Not when there’s been so much love and loss and hurt.
“Mina, I’m sorry,” he says softly.
“About everything?”
“Absolutely.”
I know what he means, he’s sorry for Jenna and for the tears on my feet. He’s sorry for hurting me. But it feels like so much more than that right now. It feels like sorry we ever met. I want to say the same thing, because I am sorry about it.
And grateful for it.
And torn up about it.
I feel everything about meeting him, about knowing him. Except okay. I’m too banged up inside and out. There are cuts and bruises, sure, but the deeper stuff too. The stuff that may never heal right. It didn’t the first time.
