by Jordan Bell
The front door banged shut but I didn’t move from my bed. Hardly breathed. It felt like my veins were shutting down - sorry captain, that’s all we’ve got. The ship’s going down and we can’t stop it.
“Kat! Bitch, I’ve been texting and calling you for like, two days, so I’m staging a coup. Where are you?” Julie’s heels clomped across my living room and stopped to drop what sounded like a pile of mail onto my coffee table. “Last chance if you’re not alone. I’m coming in and nothing is going to stop me.”
Julie shouldered my bedroom door open, a venti mocha something in each hand, and blond hair floating around her head. The coffee smelled delicious, but I couldn’t be bothered to get up for it.
“Holy fucking shit I’m going to kill him.” Julie dropped both drinks onto the bedside table and climbed into my bed, shoes and all, over my curled up form and wrapped herself around me from behind. “What did he do? Why didn’t you call me? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“Is she alive?” Kelli appeared a second later in the doorway. She swept her eyes over my room and wrinkled her nose at the mess I’d allowed to take over, then alighted on the edge of my bed. “She doesn’t smell like she’s alive.”
“Barely.” Julie ran a hand across my forehead, smoothed the little flyaway hairs from my face. “I think we arrived just in time. Nothing some coffee and donuts can’t fix, am I right?”
“And a shower,” Kelli added.
I pushed Julie’s hand away with a sigh and crawled between them and out of bed.
“Of all the people in the world I want to see right now, you two are pretty much at the very bottom of it.” I grabbed the coffee. “I’ll keep this, but you can both get out.”
Kelli and Julie exchanged worried glances, then followed me out of my bedroom. They’d opened my curtains, flooding the little apartment with an obnoxious amount of sunlight. It made me growly and ferocious and unforgiving. I hated that it was sunny outside and that I could hear shoppers passing by on the street below. It didn’t seem fair that when everything sucked the most the world kept going right along. It felt like a slap in the face, a real fuck you from the universe.
While everyone else lived their happy little lives, I’d turned into Grendel or Maleficent or the Wicked Witch, one of the villains who crawled around in their dark castle not showering and gnawing on the bones of heroes who’d come looking for a princess to save.
Hadn’t showered. Hadn’t eaten either. Had it already been two days since my near arrest? I’d called in sick Friday because I couldn’t bring myself to face anyone who might be able to figure out what had happened to me.
Oh, that’s the girl who got arrested for prostitution.
Almost arrested.
Who would look at her and think anyone with a sports car would pay for that?
My insides cringed, threatening to lose what little I had in my stomach.
“Honey…” Kelli started before Julie broke in.
“Let us explain.”
“No.” I yanked the curtains closed and spun to face Kelli first. “You. You. You started this. Thanks to you we can’t even be in the same room together anymore. Don’t say you’re sorry. I lost the little bit of him I got to have because of you. You can’t be sorry for this. It’s not fair to ask me to forgive you.”
Kelli wilted and looked away. Her sad eyes made me feel violent.
“And you.” I shook my head at my best friend. “You knew the situation better than anyone else and you forced him on me in the worst situation possible. You can’t even imagine how bad his reaction was. He looked at me the way Brian does, like I couldn’t do anything right. Like I deserved everything I got. And when Michelle showed up…”
Julie gasped and covered her mouth. I held up a hand to stop whatever nonsense apology she might have for me.
“You are both fired as friends. Fired. Do me a favor and go help someone else before you do any more damage though I don’t know what else I have for you to take.” I stalked out of the room, unable to take their sorry eyes any more. Everyone was just so fucking sorry.
“You have to believe me. I didn’t do it to hurt either of you.” Kelli followed me into the kitchen despite my giving them every indication they were unwanted. Julie trailed after. “Honestly, I thought you had feelings for each other. And I’m not the only one who thought that. Everyone at the bar has been convinced you’ve been sleeping together for years.”
“What?” I shrank away from them, mortified. “They have not! Why would anyone think that? And let’s be clear right now, we still haven’t slept together. And we won’t. Not ever.”
Julie snorted and crossed her arms. Her expression went from worry to defiance in a millisecond.
“You love him.”
“Not like--”
“Yes.” She wedged herself between me and the fridge. “You do. Just like that. I’m your best friend. I’ve known how you felt about him forever. And while what Kelli did was stupid --sorry Kel-- but we all know you’re his favorite person in the whole world, too. It’s gross and sweet and inevitable. I called him because I would always call him if something had happened to you. And he’d want me to. That hasn’t changed. Just because he doesn’t know what to do with himself right now doesn’t mean he wouldn’t come for you in a heartbeat.”
“And I was stupid,” Kelli said. “I swear I thought it would be romantic. If you both knew each other’s secrets, and those secrets were identical…” She sighed and shrugged her thin shoulders in defeat. “I’ve maybe been reading too many romance novels. I just thought it would all work out. You’d kiss and there would be fireworks and cartoon birds and royal weddings and shit.”
I looked away from both of them, their confessions making everything inside me hurt like hell. They weren’t wrong. God, that would have been easy. My favorite person in the world couldn’t be in the same room with me and I loved him, had always loved him, and no one told me I could lose him if I wasn’t careful. No one warned me that it would ever become unrequited.
That I would become one of those girls who didn’t shower or go to work because her heart hurt too much.
My refrigerator was covered in pictures, take-out menus, ticket stubs, a bulletin board of memories and weekend memorabilia. Dozens of the pictures featured Josh from a few weeks before Kelli’s party to as far back as my high school graduation. While Kelli and Julie kept rambling their beautiful, romantic reasons for ruining my life, I stared at one picture in particular.
We were at my mom’s house before my dad died. I sat on the railing of her back porch and Josh leaned next to me wearing black sunglasses and no shirt. I looked frumpy and sweaty in t-shirt and jeans. He looked like a sweaty underwear model with his arm around me so I wouldn’t fall thirty feet to my death on the rocks below. He’d been eating a sandwich and in the picture he held one of the triangles up for me to take a bite. He nosed beneath the fall of my hair, all pink back then, to whisper something to me. I did not remember what he said or what kind of sandwich it was, but I could remember we’d shared the whole thing one bite at a time. We looked easy and happy and forever.
I hadn’t even known Brian had taken the picture until I downloaded them to print. The picture had made my heart beat double time, made me sweat and blush every time I saw him for days after. But I’d been dating Kyle at the time and this was Josh we were talking about and I…I’d put it out of my mind. I forced myself to forget that his mouth that close to my neck could make me sweat.
And last night I thought we were finally going to take the risk. I thought he was going to ask me to stay with him, that night, the next morning. Forever. I’d been so sure.
And so wrong.
I tore the picture off the fridge, sending its magnet clattering across the floor. Both girls shut up and stared, open mouthed, as I tore the picture in half. Then again. And again. And again. Until I couldn’t tear any further. Until my hands were shaking and tears clung to my eyelashes.
“What’s done is done,” I snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Julie put a hand on my wrist, probably to stop me from pulling all my pictures down. She nodded. “Ok, sweetheart.”
“Whatever you want,” Kelli said.
“I got picked up for prostitution. My date left me there without so much as an apology. Josh got to see me like that and judge my mistakes and go home to a better girl who doesn’t get mistaken for a prostitute. I don’t want to ever talk about him again, do you understand? I just want to forget he exists. No more calling him. No more mentioning him.” I tossed the ripped picture shreds onto the table top. They scattered like puzzle pieces, each a tiny broken piece of memory I didn’t want. “He wants to go so just let him go.”
I slid into a chair at the table in case my knees decided to give out. A pink box waited there smelling like spun sugar and icing and a thousand oven-warmed calories. They really had brought me coffee and donuts. I pulled the box towards me and flipped the top.
A puff of warm steam hit my face, the delicious scent lifting my spirits. The icing very nearly melted right off.
Julie and Kelli took seats on either side of me, watching as I shopped for the perfect pastry. I picked a round one with melty chocolate fudge icing. I took a bite and chewed very slowly while I considered how much to tell them.
“I just wanted to go on a date with someone like…who likes…” I shook my head and licked chocolate from my bottom lip. “God, I can’t even say it out loud. That probably means I shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Julie filled me in on the details,” Kelli said. “That’s actually why we came over.”
“If you came to hear how I survived the joint amongst criminals and lowlifes, you’ll be pretty disappointed.”
Julie took my free hand and threaded her fingers through mine in a grip that almost hurt. “Not exactly. It was Kelli’s idea, but maybe not the worst idea she’s ever had.”
Kelli snorted. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Julie shrugged apologetically.
Kelli was older than Julie and me, but even in her wrinkled t-shirt and jeans she was lovely and brash. It was hard to see her as someone’s submissive. I could barely see myself that way and Julie not in a million years. It was all so confusing and I was so tired of trying to make sense of it.
But my two friends exchanged such hopeful, excited looks that it was hard to deny them the chance to be helpful.
“Ok, what’s your idea?” I sighed and shoved the rest of the donut into my mouth.
“Well, I have this friend.”
“Oh, God.” I groaned.
“Hear her out.” Julie nudged my shoulder with hers and I nudged back.
Kelli spread her hands across the table top, grinning like a CEO about to take over a company. “His name is Oliver and he’s throwing a party tonight. I know he’s taken on new subbies before to help show them the ropes.” Julie snerked. Kelli gave her a We are not amused glare. “And he’s one of the nicest guys I know. I told him all about you and he told me to invite you to his party tonight.”
“After everything that’s happened you want to set me up on a date? You really are the worst friends.”
“Oliver isn’t a date. He’s a friend and a really great mentor.”
Julie lit up. “Like, the kink whisperer.”
“Like a no strings attached friendship,” Kelli corrected. “And it helps that he’s hot as hell.”
“I do not want someone else, not days after my last epically failed attempt. You’ll be lucky if I ever talk to another guy, let alone a kinky one. It’s not happening. I’ll stay here with the donuts. You go to the party without me.”
Kelli shared a look with Julie before hunching down and meeting my lowered gaze. “Josh would approve of him. They’re friends and he respects Oliver as a Dom. He’d trust him with you.”
At the mention of Josh’s name my heart squeezed so hard I had to close my eyes against the pain. I hated him and I wanted him and I hated that I wanted him. I had no idea if I could be with someone else without my whole body longing for Josh instead. A small part of me even worried that it would be almost like cheating. If I loved Josh, how could I bear submitting to anyone else?
The way he’d looked down at me while he pulled my head back, possessive and obsessed and hungry…I only wanted to be wanted like that by him.
Except there was another woman between us and I couldn’t forget that.
And that Josh would approve of me being with this Oliver was somehow worse than not being wanted by him at all.
On impulse, I glanced towards the South River Bar. Josh was probably in his office doing something ordinary like payroll while I sat in my kitchen listening to a sales pitch for a sex tutor.
My friends didn’t say anything as I buried my face in my crossed arms and swallowed down the rock in my throat threatening to choke me. Tears welled before I could extinguish them. I rubbed the few stray drops from my eyes with the cuff of my shirt and shook my head.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can do that.”
“Just meet him.” Kelli reached across the table and covered mine and Julie’s hands with her own. “It can’t hurt just to meet him right?”
I snorted and shook their hands off. “You’re joking, right?”
“Just come to the party then,” Julie offered. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. But you need to get the hell out of this apartment.”
“Is this what you want?” Kelli swiped her hand at the mess in my sink, my hair, my pajamas. “Are you happy hiding and crying and waiting for Josh Fucking Murcek to come to his senses? You know better, Kat. When have you ever fallen for that nonsense? You know full well if it were Julie, you’d probably threaten to set her apartment on fire if she spent more than a day pining after some loathsome boy.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s actually done that before.” Julie tapped a finger against her chin. “Brad Thompson. Eleventh grade.”
“That was justified.” I scowled and reached for another donut. “You forced the Virgin Suicides soundtrack on me for two weeks straight. And there was so much sighing. And bad poetry.”
Kelli snatched the pink pastry box out of reach. “Well this is our bad poetry intervention. Come out with us. Meet him. Have a little fun. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Obviously you’ll have to take a shower first.” Julie made a face. “And change your clothes.”
“Don’t give up on what you want. Our little community is powerful strong and protective and it’ll do you good to meet other people just like you. Find out if this is really for you or if it turned you on because it was with--” Julie stopped Kelli with a look. She blanched. “Right. Did I mention Oliver lives in a very fancy pants condo in the Philomel district? He’s out of this world, I’m telling you.”
“Yeah, ok,” I murmured grumpily. “I’ll shower. Now give me a stupid donut.”
Julie wrapped her arms around me and squeezed and they might have been the worst friends ever but they were also the best and I was so damn lucky.
Julie said against my arm. “It’s ok to miss him.”
“As long as you don’t grind to a halt when he gets to keep living,” Kelli said as she tore a sugared donut into threes and handed the pieces out.
As if it were that easy.
We stuffed ourselves with greasy sugar goodness, licking sticky powder from our fingertips. They talked, swooning over this mysterious Oliver, not mentioning Josh by name but he was still there in between the words, between the ideas. None of us were stupid enough to think I wouldn’t have Josh in my head all night, lurking like a ghost who would never let me settle down. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t.
But I nodded like a paper doll and pretended what they said was easy. Move on. Keep going. Let go.
Pretend. And the more they talked, the easier it felt, the pretending.
Sometimes it was easy to forget your whole world wasn’t just this one thing, this
one piece that when it breaks so do you. It was easy, so fucking easy, to let hours tick by beneath the covers, unmoving, barely breathing because the before was gone and the after was too big to consider. The world expected you to continue breathing even though you’d been hollowed out and left for dead.
Then your friends, the rest of your pieces, showed up with 2,000 calorie cups of caffeine and they held your hand and told you the truth. You smell. You have to get out of bed. We’ll help you through the impossibility of stepping outside your front door.
You’re still alive, they said.
They brought you donuts. They gave you permission to keep breathing.
SIXTEEN
I must have been out of my mind to agree to this.
Julie and Tyler walked ahead of me, fingers entwined, leaning into each other like they didn’t have every day of their lives together. He whispered against her ear and she laughed, long and loud and unapologetically. They looked sophisticated and grown up and older than I’d ever felt in my life. Next to their tailored bodies, I felt like a little sister, all awkward knees and elbows.
They talked me into a light blue sleeveless dress. It had a white chevron pattern that accentuated my hips and chest, which I hated but they swore by. At some point I didn’t even care anymore since I had about as much interest in meeting Oliver as I did in any random stranger on the street. I wanted to go home. I wanted Josh.
I wanted everything to be just as it had been locked in his bedroom, in the quiet and shadows, him wiping the rain from my cheeks.
Kelli wasn’t kidding about the fancy pants condo, though. Philomel was a little area of town on the nice side of South River that butted up against downtown where all the financial companies showed off how much money they made. Philomel was tiny in the shadows of the big glass rocket-shaped buildings, with my favorite library and a lot of Italian restaurants owned by very Italian families who believed dinner wasn’t dinner unless it lasted four hours. My father loved Philomel and brought Brian and me here sometimes to hobnob with some of his old Catholic school buddies. They played cards in the back while wives considered whose daughter Brian would marry.
