“Stop, I’m married,” I kept saying, playfully pushing him away.
“So am I!” he kept insisting.
“You just like the chase. It’s not going to happen.” I looked around for Lisa but couldn’t find her through the crowd of dancing people. I finally excused myself to go to the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, I realized I was drunk, really drunk. I splashed water on my face and attempted to sober myself up. I called Lisa twice, with no answer.
Finally, I texted her:
Where are you? I’m in the bathroom.
I refreshed my makeup and tried to look as sober as possible as I opened the door to walk out. Mike stood waiting, right outside the bathroom. Before I knew what was happening, he pushed me inside and shut the door and started kissing me. I instantly froze, like I couldn’t move. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you’re trying to run, but you’re legs just won’t budge.
“Mike, stop,” I pleaded. “I’m married. I can’t do this.”
He lifted my dress and tugged the straps down over my shoulders. “I don’t see him here—damn, you are gorgeous!” he kept saying.
Then, he pinned me to the sink. He opened his pants and tried to force himself inside of me. I didn’t know what to do. He was too big to push off, too overpowering. I started to cry. I didn’t know if it was the tears streaming down my face or if there was an angel sitting on my shoulder, but he suddenly lost his erection. He held me captive with one hand and stroked himself with the other, trying to get erect again. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. He jumped back and zipped his pants up.
I ran to the door half-naked and threw it open. Lisa was there.
“What the fuck is going on in here? I got your text,” she said holding up her phone, her eyes narrowed on Mike.
“Nothing,” I said, wiping my eyes. I fixed my dress and said, “Let’s go.”
I was so drunk that I passed out almost as soon as we got back to the room. When we woke up the next morning, I was unbelievably hungover. Still stumbling, I threw things into my suitcase, not even sure what I was packing. I didn’t even care; I just wanted to go home. I was very silent.
Lisa finally said something when we were back on the jet, to break the silence.
“Samantha, I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But I am telling you, this is not your fault.”
I looked up at her disbelievingly. “How could it not be my fault? I was flirting with him,” I replied.
“I don’t give a fuck if you were giving him a lap dance. You said no, over and over. You told him you’re married. The second you said no, it should have been no. Samantha, he said he was watching you! For three days! That’s so scary. We were so drunk that we didn’t even realize what that really meant. This guy didn’t show up accidentally, he was following you. We need to do something!”
I couldn’t get it out of my head. I felt guiltier about him than I even did about John.
“What if I didn’t start crying?” I asked. “What if he didn’t lose his hard-on, what if you didn’t come in when you did? What if I’d been raped? What would we have done?”
“Samantha, this is you and me. If he raped you, we would have killed him,” she said. She poured champagne and orange juice into a glass and handed it to me.
“You do realize that is exactly how Thelma and Louise started, right?” I asked.
“We should report him,” she said.
“Report him? How? We don’t even know his last name, and he technically didn’t rape me,” I reasoned. I took a sip of the drink and immediately put it down. “I can’t drink this. It’s going to make me vomit.”
“I’m sure they have security footage,” she said.
“Security footage? Are you nuts? You want Jimmy and Vince to see how we acted out in a club? Vince cannot find out about this. He would not be cool with any of it. Both of us, all over guys—not to mention that we both cheated! No way. We have daughters! Do we want Casey or Hailey to think it’s okay to act like this?” I asked.
“Would you rather the reverse? That they think it’s okay for a man not to take no for an answer, even if they were acting like that?” she argued.
“Let’s just be thankful you came in when you did, and nothing happened. This could have been a lot worse. No one can know about this Lisa—promise, no one. This goes to the grave with us!”
We made a pact right there. No one would ever know what happened in the bathroom that night in Ibiza. I reclined my seat into bed position.
“My entire body hurts, I’m too old for this shit,” I complained.
Lisa followed my lead, putting her seat into bed position before looking over at me.
“You know what else?” I asked. “I’m over being thirty-three. I think I’m ready to be forty.”
Just like that, I left my thirties in Ibiza.
SARAH
My mother was super excited to meet Brendon for Thanksgiving. Me, not so much. She hadn’t met a guy that I’d dated since Brett, and by the time she’d grown to accept him, we’d already broken up. I had no idea how she was going to react to Brendon. I didn’t even notice what he was wearing until we got out of the car and he took the ticket from the valet guy. He had a new car, but it wasn’t flashy, or even noticeable.
“You’re wearing sneakers?” I asked, surprised.
He lifted up his pant leg to give me a better view of them. “Yeah—they were like three-hundred dollars, why? What’s wrong with them?”
“We’re going to a nice restaurant; you really think sneakers are appropriate?” I asked.
“A nice restaurant in Brooklyn, sneakers are fine,” he argued. “I wore a button-down. I don’t think it’s a problem.”
As we walked into the restaurant, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. Everyone was dressed up: men in sports coats, women in dresses, even children in cute little suits. No one was wearing sneakers. Even the maître de who escorted us to our table looked like he’d just shined his shoes. The tables were filled with plates of steaks and seafood towers. There were beautiful chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Brendon’s shoes were completely out of place. My mother had already been seated, and was also all dressed up. She didn’t have many fancy clothes but the few she had, she enjoyed wearing to events like this. Today she wore a very nice purple dress with matching shoes, I could tell that she’d put time into her outfit. She was even wearing the pearls my father had given her as their wedding gift; the ones she only wore on special occasions. She stood up as soon as she saw us.
“Brendon!” she exclaimed. Her tone grew less excited when she spotted his sneakers. “It’s so nice to meet you finally…I’ve heard so much about you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Evans,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
As we sat down, she looked at me and said, “My name isn’t Mrs. Evans. It’s Mrs. O’Malley—Sarah, didn’t tell you that?”
Brendon glanced sideways at me, taken aback. “Who is Sarah?” he asked.
There was an awkward silence, so I motioned to the waitress to order drinks. After only a few minutes, we were already on strike two.
“Sarah?” my mother said, raising her eyebrows at me and waiting for a response.
I looked at Brendon, who also stared at me, equally confused. I placed my elbow on the table and rested my face in my palm.
“I’m Sarah,” I said. “I mean, I was, when I was born. I legally changed my name when I turned eighteen. No one calls me Sarah.”
“I do,” my mother said. “I’m the one who gave birth to you, don’t you think I should have had the right in naming you? And take your elbows off the table.”
I dropped my arm to my lap and looked down at the table, secretly wondering if I could crawl under it. Brendon took my hand. He could tell I was getting upset.
“Sarah is a beautiful name,” he said to my mother. “Maybe if we have a daughter, we can name her that.”
When t
he waitress approached with drinks on her tray, I practically jumped out of my chair to grab mine. I took an enormous slug. Did he just say our daughter? I was now literally feeling under the table with my foot, measuring if there was enough room for me to fit. I wasn’t sure if Brendon was trying to appease my mother, or if he seriously thought we were going to have kids together. I’d always wanted children. But in the past few years, that dream had been retired to the back of my head—considering I was in love with someone who already had his own kids, and they were both grown. Would Vincent even want to go through all of that again?
My mother smiled cynically.
“I have a daughter, and she was named Sarah,” she said, shifting her gaze from me to him. “But a granddaughter would be just as nice. Are you Catholic?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. “I’m Irish, too, went to Catholic school as a kid and all.” He instantly redeemed himself with that statement.
I couldn’t help but wonder what the conversation would have been like if Vincent were with me instead of Brendon. Even if he were single and didn’t have kids already, my mother would hate that he was so much older. She would hate that he was Italian, too, but she would like that he called me Sarah. She would also like that he’d have enough class to wear real shoes and not sneakers.
During the meal, Brendon and my mother spoke a lot about his parents, his upbringing, my father. By the end of dinner, she was impressed by him. She told me how handsome he was, and how he made a nice catch. That Irish Catholic comment really saved him. I couldn’t help but wish I was as impressed by Brendon as she was. He dropped her off after dinner, and we headed back to his place. Once we were in the car alone, he started yelling at me almost immediately.
“Really? When were you planning on telling me that your name wasn’t really Bianca? Or were you never going to tell me that? You know what a dick I felt like?”
“Brendon, relax, no one calls me Sarah but her. It’s not that big of a deal,” I insisted.
“Not that big of a deal?” he continued, raising his voice even louder. “We’ve been dating for almost a year! I don’t know your real name, you won’t let me come see your show—is there anything else you’re not telling me?!”
He was getting angrier by the minute. The madder he got, the faster his foot pressed the gas pedal.
“I explained to you already—I get nervous when people I know are in the crowd. And the name thing is ridiculous, okay? She named me Sarah, but my name is Bianca now. You're being outrageous, just calm the fuck down!” I said, getting just as loud as him.
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” he yelled, and punched the radio. He winced afterward and shook his hand. I took pleasure in the fact that he’d hurt himself.
“Maybe I should just go home,” I said. “Why don’t you drop me off?”
“Oh, now you want to go home? Because you’re a liar?!” he screamed.
“Can you pay attention to the fucking road before you get us both killed? I’m not a liar. I didn’t tell you one thing, that doesn’t make me a liar.”
He pulled up in front of his house.
“I told you to take me home,” I said.
He stared at me before opening his door and climbing out. After slamming the door, he said, “If you want to go home so bad, you can walk, Bianca.”
“Fine.” I started walking up the street. I was already to the corner, lifting my hand to hail a cab when I heard him yell.
“Wait!” He ran over to me while the taxi pulled up. “I’m sorry, just come in,” he said. His whole tone changed dramatically.
“I just really want to go home.” Tears welled in my eyes, and he put his arms around my waist.
“You getting in?” the taxi driver asked impatiently.
Brendon waived his hand to motion him to leave.
“I’m sorry,” Brendon said again, once the taxi pulled away. “I’m just so in love with you. You make me crazy. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me what your real name was. Just come inside, please.”
I wiped the tears off my face. At that moment, I couldn’t help but think about how Vincent was currently in Aruba with his wife, doing God knew what. So, I followed Brendon inside his house, where he made us drinks. I stood in the studio room, staring at the mess before me. His place was a real dump. Not only messy, but dirty, too. Dishes all over the coffee table and end tables, clothes all over the floor. He didn’t even have a couch, just a twin-size bed that doubled as one. There were holes in the walls, mostly due to him getting mad over some sort of video game drama. I was always afraid to put down the expensive pocketbook that I’d gotten for my birthday. I rarely brought him to my place, mostly because I liked when my sheets smelled like Vincent’s cologne. Plus, I didn’t feel right bringing him there.
Brendon handed me the drink. Before I could even lift the glass to my mouth, he came over to me and started kissing me. It was so hard to get into kissing him. All I could think about was Vincent. How he would never yell at me like that, and how every time we were together, I couldn’t take my hands off of him. Brendon was okay in bed, but there was no passion, no lust—sex with him made me think of how Vincent had described sex with his wife. Brendon was also very rough, which made me wonder about Vincent. Was he rough with his wife? Did he talk dirty? Did she do things with him that I wouldn’t do?
Suddenly, I couldn’t get the visual of Vincent on top of his wife out of my head. I knew I had no right to be jealous—he was technically her man, not mine—but I was. Insanely jealous. The vision of them having sex haunted me all night.
The next day, I climbed up to the rooftop of the club and sat in the nook. I texted Isabel to meet me there.
“You’re not going to jump, are you?” she asked once she arrived, approaching me slowly.
I shook my head. “No—it just feels like forever since I’ve been up here to think. I used to love coming up here.”
“Well, who told you to make it your personal sex roof?” she asked, pointing at the wall where we first had sex. “What’s wrong?”
“Brendon told me he loved me last night.” I gazed over the rooftop at the view of New York City. The buildings looked so different in the day versus the night. Sure, they were tall, but without the billboard lights illuminating them, there was nothing really special to them at all. The structures just looked like ordinary skyscrapers.
“I’m confused, is that a bad thing? I mean, he’s everything you wanted: great on paper, has his own apartment, his own car, makes good money. He’s really cute too, so what’s the problem?”
I stared up at her without saying a word.
“Is this about Vincent?” she asked, throwing her hands up and rolling her eyes.
“He’s just so different,” I said.
“Yeah, most men are going to be. It’s not a fair comparison. Vincent is older, grew up in a different time. You want to get married, right? Have kids? Vincent ain’t the guy you’re going to do that with. What are you going to do—have a kid who has a dad every Monday for two hours? I mean, even if he did leave his wife, he’s so much older than you! You want a guy that old to be the father of your kids?” she asked.
“Brendon is just so…so, ugh, I don’t even know the right word. I like him, I really do, it’s just he flips out all the time, over stupid shit. The other day, he almost beat the shit out of someone for checking me out,” I said.
“Didn’t Vincent almost get into a fight with someone over wanting to buy you a drink in Atlantic City?” she pointed out.
“Yes, but that guy was a prick and started it. And I was able to calm him down. Immediately. Brendon doesn’t calm the fuck down. I’m afraid I’m going to get a call one day that he’s in jail.”
“Look, you may never be as attracted to another man as you are to Vincent. The two of you have some crazy chemistry, I’ll admit that. You were attracted to him since the second you saw him but, you have no idea how Vincent would be if he were your man
, because you’re not with him all the time. You think you’d still be as attracted to him if you woke up next to him every day?” she asked.
I shifted my attention back to the plain skyscrapers. Was Vincent just being illuminated in my head, same as New York City at night? No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
“Yes,” I said. “I would be. I get more attracted to him every time I see him. It’s crazy, really—you’d think by now that would have slowed down. I think about him while Brendon and I are having sex. Is that normal?”
“Yes, it is. A lot of people fantasize about other people in bed. That’s normal. I do it all the time,” she said, trying to cheer me up.
I started pacing the roof, raking my hand through my hair. “I just don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t understand how so many people can live double lives this easily. Brendon keeps wanting to come to my show. Isabel, he can’t come to that show, everyone knows Vincent as my boyfriend. How do people do this?” I cried.
She wrapped her arm around me. “Relax, everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. Let’s just pray that Vincent and Brendon don’t show up at your apartment at the same time. My bet is on Vincent, though—I think he’d kick Brendon’s ass.” She laughed. “Come on. I’ll make you feel better.”
She picked up her phone and put on the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” She started singing the words and pulling me toward her to dance. I laughed and pushed her back.
Wounds of Time Page 17
