Walk of Shame

by Gregory, O. L.

  "I can't."

  He drug his palms over me as he slowly withdrew them from my breasts.

  I cleared my throat before shifting to turn and face him.

  "What's wrong? You've been holding something back all afternoon, what is it?"

  I looked down, not wanting to say it, because once I did there was no going back.

  "You wanna wait until after the show? I can deal with it, if you do," he said.

  I sighed. "No, I don't want to wait."

  He put a hand on my hip and gave it a squeeze. "We can't talk about it unless you tell me what it is."

  I bit my lip again and forced myself to look him in the eye. "I love you," I whispered.

  He smiled and moved a hand to brush over my cheek. "I love you, too."

  "I'm in love with you."

  Something softened in his features. "Listen, you've got me. Why are you looking like you're about to cry? I swear, you can choose me, I'll drop down on a knee and propose. I am in this for you. You are what I've been looking for."

  That was it. Tears flowed, dripping from my face onto his shirt.

  "Em, tell me what's wrong."

  I shook my head, trying to find my voice. "I imagine marrying you. And I imagine myself being happy... for awhile."

  He stiffened and his voice went quiet and low, "And then what do you imagine happening?"

  Tears were free flowing now. "I can't marry the swamp. I'm sorry. I wanted to like the scenery. I wanted to not care about the humidity and bugs. I can make my peace with all the mud, but not with the things lurking underneath. I am so sorry," I said, tripping over words and trying not to become a complete slobbering mess.

  "Oh, my God. Why the hell am I even still here, then? I told you about the swamp from the beginning! You said you wanted to be with me at the end of this! What the hell is going on?"

  "I do want it to be you! I kept you with me because of that. I wanted to go home with you. I wanted to give the swamp a chance."

  "You gave it one afternoon."

  "Don't act like I haven't thought about this every day for the last eight weeks. I've done my research."

  "They're not all humid. Not all swamps fit the typical profile."

  "The one you spend the most time at does."

  He grunted and shifted me around so he could get up. "Why didn't you just dump both me and Phillip last week?"

  "Because I was still trying to convince myself that I could live in the swamp and be happy about it."

  "I told you we could take an extra day or two when moving the rigs. I told you we could spend the winters wherever you want."

  "Except if those extras days fall on a weekend, when the animal sanctuary is the busiest. And the winters, except for the mild ones where your job asks you to do a wintertime study somewhere because the weather is holding out. Yes, that leaves me with only harsh winters, when half the country is cut off from that kind of traveling and exploring, then I'll finally have the chance to dictate where we go."

  "It wouldn't be quite that bad."

  "No, but it wouldn't be quite as good as you were painting the picture to be."

  "You're really going to throw away love over this?"

  "Wouldn't you, if I demanded that we only live in the swamp during one season and maybe a day or two, here and there?"

  "I can't leave the swamp for that long and you know it."

  "Yes, I do know it. That's why I never asked you to do it. But just as much as you can't leave the swamp, I can't live in it."

  "You could write from anywhere, if you really wanted to badly enough."

  "Okay, you could switch specialties and be an ecologist for field and streams, if you really wanted to badly enough."

  He sighed so hard his whole body slumped on the exhale. "All this time we've been looking for love. We finally find it, and you want to throw it away."

  "Because it won't stay happy for us. We're going to end up resenting the other over this. You for keeping me in the swamp, and me for bitching about it."

  "You're in love with me, but you're going to pick one of them."

  "I believe they could both make me happier than being in the swamp can."

  "They're not me."

  Tears gathered in my eyes. "I know."

  "Em, please don't do this."

  "I don't know what else to do! We can't change who we are, and the other two are willing to accept me for who I am. I'm scared that I'd have to change too much about myself in order to be with you."

  "Do you love them?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you in love with either of them?"

  I sighed and wiped away more tears. "I need you out of the way so I can figure that out."

  "I can't believe this is happening," he muttered as he stomped inside and started throwing stuff in his bag.

  God, I hated to see this end badly, but I had expected it. "You can still stay the night," I whispered.

  He snorted. "For what?" He shoved his phone charger in the bag. "So we can watch pay-per-view movies all night? So we can have a one-night stand? What do you want from me?"

  "I can't have what I want from you."

  "You should never have told me that you wanted it to be me. You should never have kept me around," he said and flopped down on the bed.

  "You're right," I whispered. "I should have sent you out to the cars the minute I heard the word swamp. At the very least, I should have insisted we travel to a swamp and spend some time there early on. Because that's what kept me going, the thought that maybe if I just looked at it through your eyes, I could like it enough to deal with it."

  "...I can't offer you any more of a compromise," he said, seeming to begin to accept what I'd been saying as fact.

  "I know."

  "I love what I do."

  "I know, and I don't want to even think about pulling you away from that."

  He let out a heavy sigh, stood, and pulled me up into his arms. "I'm not staying tonight. Because if I stay, we'll have sex. And if we do that, Mike and Liam will track me down and beat the shit out of me for it when I knew I was going to have to leave anyway. So..." He leaned down and kissed me to the point of all but taking my breath away. "I'm going to go."

  He kissed me again before he let me go, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door.

  The production crewmember keeping watch outside immediately hit buttons on his phone and started directing Jared down to the awaiting car. I knew that by the time he hit the lobby, cameras would be on him.

  Two minutes, that's how long it took Troy to knock on the door. I, feeling stunned and alone in the wake of the conversation, let him inside.

  "Do you need a hug, or are you good?" Troy asked.

  A laugh bubbled up out of me. "I think I'm all right for now."

  "Good. Was this all about the swamp?"

  I nodded.

  "It's better that you addressed this now and not after you picked him, moved down there, and put yourself through that for the next few months. Then you two would have broken up and all the work you did here would have been for nothing."

  "I know," I said with a deep sigh. "That's what I kept telling myself."

  "And him leaving now, and you accepting his being gone, gives you more time to focus on the two left, so you can make an intelligent decision."

  I nodded with closed eyes.

  "Okay. You have two choices for tonight. You can stay in here and remain in the no camera or interview zone and I'll leave, or you can do an exit interview and return to your rig for the night."

  "I think I'm just going to hole up in here with my thoughts and the rest of whatever beer is left in the fridge."

  "I've got a bottle of vodka in my fridge. I can go and fetch it for you."

  "Even better."

  Thursday

  I crawled into the tub the next morning. I alternated my attention between drinking water to rehydrate, and actually cleansing my body.

  When I came out, I noticed some pieces of hotel stationary lyi
ng on the floor with writing scrawled all over it. I picked them up and read over them. Memories were starting to resurface about the night before. It seems the vodka bottle and I had spent considerable time making pro/con lists last night for Mike and Liam.

  What confused the hell out of hung-over me was that things like Liam's size and Mike's leg were listed on both sides of the paper. Liam's being from Scotland was a pro, but visiting his family required a transatlantic flight, a con. But visiting Scotland again was a pro. Mike's running with me was a con with 'friend zone' written after it. But then 'knowing him better than the rest' was on the pro side, even though all that running was how I'd gotten to know him the best. And 'likes to run' was a pro, as well.

  I pulled out my cell phone and pulled up the list of calls, dreading what I might see, and saw that I called Chloe last night. I hit the redial button.

  "Yeah?" she answered, sounding groggy.

  "I drunk-dialed you last night?"

  She laughed. "Yeah, you did."

  "How'd that go?"

  "I went and got Dad's bottle of tequila and we had a drunken phone party."

  "Oh, my God."

  "You were so far gone, the only way I could understand you was to get drunk with you. Then you started making more sense."

  "I have pretty decent handwriting when I'm drunk though."

  "That's good, because the papers I have over here, I can't read."

  "You wrote it all down, too?"

  "Yeah, I'm not sure if we did that on purpose or not."

  "Did we come to any conclusions on who I should choose?"

  "You mean after you got done crying about Jared? I think Mike and Liam ended up tied."

  "Wonderful."

  "But, hey, you can still try what I said to do."

  "What's that?"

  "You slept with Liam, go ahead and sleep with Mike, that way you can fully compare both."

  "Good grief."

  "For what it's worth, Dad and I both agree that Jared needed to go, for your own peace of mind. We know you liked him a lot, but he's Swamp Thing."

  I sighed, resigned. "I know."

  "I don't envy the decision you have to make. And I'm not about to give you my opinion anymore. You need to figure out which one will be best for you."

  "You've already talked to Dad about this, haven't you? Because you on your own would have an opinion."

  "He made me explain the empty tequila bottle. That's when he told me we'd reached the point where the remaining guys are both good quality men, and you're the only one who can choose for yourself who you want to be with."

  I sighed, irritated that she spoke the truth, even though that dumped the entirety of the decision on my shoulders. "Did I happen to say whether or not I fancied myself in love with either one of the ones left?"

  She laughed. "Yes. You love them both, you poor soul. You did this whole drunken crying thing about how you love them, and how they can make you happy, and you can picture a future with them both, and you'd rather shoot yourself than make this decision."

  "Well, damn."

  "Oh, yeah. You were pathetic."

  "Fan-freaking-tastic."

  Friday

  Troy walked Mike and me into my third suite in the resort, went over the rules for Mike, and then left with the crew trailing behind him.

  I stepped away and sighed as Mike locked the door. This was it. I'd finally made it to the last of the twenty-four hour lockdowns. I looked around and reminded myself to live in the moment, that this lockdown was just as important as the others had been.

  "It's been a long week for you, hasn't it?" Mike asked.

  I sighed again and gave him a small smile. "Yeah, it has."

  "Are you any closer to a decision, or are you a hung jury?"

  "Oh, it's been an enlightening week. One of the others is already gone."

  His face lit up. "Oh, really? That's just a damn shame."

  I laughed. "Yes, you look absolutely devastated on my behalf."

  "Oh, I am. Come, let me comfort you," he teased.

  I shook my head at him and rolled my eyes.

  "What? You can't blame me for being happy that my odds just shot up to fifty-fifty."

  "I don't blame you at all."

  He kept smiling as he looked around the suite. "This place is nice."

  "Yeah," I said, taking a moment to look around with him. "So, the first one to introduce me to your parents and the last one for the lockdowns. Have you been with your family for the past week and a half?"

  He paused in front of the lakeside view we had through the patio windows. "Yeah, I did. I came in for the last Walk of Shame, then went back home, and didn't make it back here until yesterday."

  "Needed some time?"

  He turned to me, his face all serious. "You started with fifteen guys to choose from. You've spent weeks narrowing it down to the best ones. We didn't have that option. We were all given one choice."

  I rocked back on my heels, suddenly unsure where this conversation was going to go. "You're right, that's why I've always left the exit door open for anybody who didn't like what they were seeing in me. One of the guys even exercised his right to use it. It's why I always ask you to stay, instead of telling you. If you're not interested, it's past time to say something, but I'll accept it now and wish you well. You wait until the final Walk of Shame, and I'll pitch a freaking temper tantrum over everything we've all gone through."

  He waited until I was done before he chuckled. He looked me in the eyes, grew serious, and shook his head. "I figured as much, so I used the time back home to think about you. I wanted to remove myself from all the cameras and interviews and questions to take a really good look at our situation. It wasn't until after you met my family, and didn't run away screaming, that I realized there was a legitimate chance that you'd really pick me. And now that we're down to the last two... It's time I come to a final decision myself. Because soon it won't be you asking me to hang around for another week. It'll be everyone expecting me to get down on a knee. And then we'll be leaving here, and trying to start piecing our lives together, and you'll be following me around, and we'll be in each other's real lives. I had to take some time and make sure it's what I want, before I commit to it."

  "I know exactly what you mean. That's what meeting everybody's family was for me. A chance to really picture a life with you, to see where you come from, to get a glimpse of you separated from the other guys, and hear other people's opinions of you. For some, it was a window into what life with them would be like. For others, it was just a tiny, holiday-like glimpse because they don't spend too much time at Mommy and Daddy's. But it still made it all feel more real, and made me think long and hard about which lives I could see working out and which I couldn't."

  "Exactly. We don't know if life out on the road with each other will be all sunshine and roses, we just thought we knew we wanted to try it."

  "I can see a happy future with you," I said. "But after all your time spent thinking, can you see one with me?"

  He smiled. "I can. Em, I'm more convinced now than ever that we can make this work between us. No matter who you pick, it's going to take some work to get used to incorporating someone else's needs and wants into your life. And I can't tell you which person will take the most or least amount of work. All I can tell you is that I'm ready for it."

  "Well, I can tell you that I hadn't planned on sending the other guy home until I got into the suite with him. There's something about visiting someone at home, and then being locked inside a space with someone, without anybody else around, that makes you face the truth. And, for me, two days ago the truth about one of my relationships got to where it was glaring me in the face and I couldn't deny it a moment longer. I had to address it, and it led to us parting. That's not something I'm feeling here and now. With you, I'm comfortable."

  He smiled. "Good, because I'm very comfortable with you, too." He held out his arms, "Come here."

  I walked into his arms and relaxed
in his reassuring embrace.

  Dinner was fun with him. I asked him to share some stories about the team of people he worked with, so that I could get a feel for how the group operated during working and off hours. I'd wanted to know what life lived his way would be like. Traveling alone sometimes, and staying within a group other times. It sounded like the best of both worlds. Some girl adventures, some group adventures, some Mike adventures, and a little down the road, some family adventures. And, hey, babysitters built in so I can get an afternoon to myself when Mike is working. It sounded like a pretty cool setup, like a kind of wondering tribe.

  We'd propped ourselves up with pillows on the bed, pretending to be watching a movie, eating pears dipped in honey. Mike acted like he was going to feed me a bite of pear. But instead, he used the pear to smear the honey on my lips. I laughed as he leaned in to clean up the honey with his tongue.

  The next honeyed spot was on my neck. Blissful sighs came from my lips as my hands kneaded against his shoulders. When I tried to reach for a piece of pear to return the favor, he grunted and gathered my wrists in one of his hands and pinned them above my head. I let out a sigh of frustration.

  He lifted his head, smiled into my eyes, and kissed my forehead.

  I chuckled.

  He lifted my shirt, and the edge of my bra, and pulled the cup to the side, out of his way. He dabbed my nipple with honey and proceeded to lick and suckle it off.

  That's when my moaning started in earnest.

  He gave me a gloating smile. "Do you want me?" he murmured.

  "Yes," I whispered.

  His smile broadened mischievously. "Stay here." He left the bed and went into the bathroom.

  I took off both my shirt and my bra.

  He came back into the bedroom with a washcloth. He proceeded to cleanse my feet.

  I had no idea where this was going until he spread a layer of honey on my toes.

  I burst out laughing even as the tension in my body coiled tighter. "What are you doing?"

  His mouth engulfed my big toe and his tongue swirled around, sending tingled zinging through my body.

  I squealed.