The Stories We Whisper at Night

by Sky Corgan

  “Well, hello to you, too.”

  “Are you?”

  “Before I answer that question, who is it you’re pissed off at?”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected to get, and it threw me off, made me angrier than I already was. I opened my mouth, ready to tell Maggie that I could easily be pissed at more than one person at the same time, then shut it again. There was no sense in picking a fight with my bestie just because my evening hadn’t gone the way I’d wanted it to. It might have felt relieving for a little while, just to have a person to aim this fiery feeling at, but it wouldn’t do me any good. I needed somebody to help me understand where the hell I’d gone wrong!

  “Don’t worry, Maggie. It definitely isn’t you.”

  “Sheesh, that’s good to know. You sound like you’re in a rare form.”

  This was more than a little bit true. Estimating, I had been averaging around three to four hours of sleep a night. Coupled with more drinking than I was used to doing, my body was crying out for me to chill for a little while. On top of that was the humiliation, the utter discontent, with the way my evening with Matt Brinks had gone. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream, and over the past several hours, I had done a little bit of both.

  Maggie, with all her hopeful optimism and belief that life might actually turn out to be a fairytale, wasn’t the perfect person to whine to about this, but I didn’t know who else I could talk to. In all honesty, I didn’t have anyone else to talk to, especially not about something like this.

  Some girls would have called their mothers. I wasn’t that kind of girl. I wasn’t lucky enough to be that kind of girl. My mom hadn’t ever understood why I struggled so mightily with the opposite sex. She was beautiful and had been even more so when she was my age. She was the kind of woman who never struggled to get or keep a man in her life, and the fact that I did, drove her absolutely crazy. Even when she didn’t know them at all, my mother was prone to sympathize with the men who had jilted me, leaving me feeling bruised and inadequate on more than one occasion.

  “I’m not going to lie, Maggie, I’ve been better.”

  “It’s about the resolution, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Aw, Bella! I told you it would only make you miserable! You just aren’t the kind of girl who can fall into bed with a strange man like that. You’ve got a sensitive heart. I knew you were going to fall for him, and then you would feel terrible. This is exactly what I was worried about!”

  “What? No! That’s not what happened at all.”

  “Huh? Okay, then I’m confused. What’s wrong? Did he try to take advantage of you?”

  “How could he have done that when a one-night stand was what I was looking for?”

  “I told you, I’m confused! What’s got you so worked up?”

  “Ugh, I’m almost too humiliated to tell you.”

  “Come on, Bella, you know you don’t need to be. You know every embarrassing thing I’ve ever done. What’s the matter? You’ve got to tell me. Now I’m starting to get kind of worried.”

  “No, please don’t be. It’s not really something bad, or at least not something you’ll think is bad. It’s just...he wouldn’t do it.”

  “I don’t get it. Wouldn’t do what?”

  “Do I really need to spell it out? We messed around but no sex. Who the hell fails at something like this? What kind of a girl can’t even get a guy to put out? Something must be really, really wrong with me. What in the world am I going to do?” It all came tumbling out, words I’d been needing to say ever since climbing into the cab outside of Matt’s fancy house with my dignity hardly intact. I was crying again, but I barely recognized it. I was just so tired, so completely at my wits end. I was so terribly frustrated, and all the while, Matt’s face was lodged in my mind. His friendly eyes, that million-dollar smile. I could still feel his fingers moving across my body, and the echo of sensation it left imprinted on me made me ache everywhere.

  “But Bella, that’s great!”

  “Great? I’m sorry, tell me how this is great again? You know this is like, the opposite of what I was going for, right?”

  “Sure, I know that, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.”

  “That’s exactly what it means, Maggie! It means I failed! Like monumentally failed.”

  “Sure, but think about what this could mean!”

  “Aside from the fact that I’m a big fat failure?”

  “Stop it,” Maggie barked, sounding on the verge of being annoyed now. She hated it when I talked badly about myself, and I knew it. I just couldn’t help myself for the time being.

  “But Maggie, seriously. What else would you call this?”

  “Maybe you’re looking at the whole thing from the wrong angle. Have you ever considered that?”

  “Um, no. What are you talking about, anyway? I don’t see what other way I could look at a situation like this. He didn’t go for it. I put it out there, put it all out there, and he didn’t want it.”

  “Maybe it’s not that he didn’t want you.”

  “What else would it be?”

  “Have you ever considered that maybe he actually likes you?”

  “Sure. Right. That’s likely.”

  “You’re being too cynical! Maybe he really likes you, and he wants to get to know you better. Maybe he isn’t just interested in casual sex.”

  "Have you done any research about him? Because if that's what you think you should hop on the internet and see what you can find. All it takes is about five seconds to see that he has a reputation for being a total manwhore."

  “Ever think that he could have changed?”

  “People don’t change that way, Maggie. They just don’t.”

  “Are you sure about that? Look at you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This whole resolution thing. You’ve never been the kind of girl who wanted to sleep around with no feelings attached. And yet here you are, turning yourself into a person who does just that. If you can change, maybe he can, too.”

  I flipped my laptop open and starting rifling through it dismally. I didn’t know how to tell her that she couldn’t be further from the truth. My resolution was only days old, and I’d already managed to make a mess of it. I was supposed to take Matt to bed and leave him behind, never thinking about him again. Instead, I was on the phone with Maggie talking about why he had acted the way he did. It felt like I was right back where I had been in the beginning, back when it had seemed like I was always sitting around pining after some guy. Basically, it was the opposite of where I wanted to be.

  “Oh! Oh man, are you kidding me?”

  “What?” Maggie practically shrieked into my ear. “What’s the matter?”

  “You’ll never believe this.”

  “Believe what?!”

  “I just got an email from him.”

  “An email from who?”

  “Who do you think? From Matt.”

  “Ha! I told you! I freaking told you!”

  “Told me what, exactly?”

  “That he wasn’t just blowing you off! This proves it.”

  “Come on, Maggie. It so doesn’t. This doesn’t prove anything, really.”

  “Um, it definitely does. Why else do you think he would email you?”

  “I don’t know. People send emails for all kinds of reasons, Maggs. I’d be willing to bet that most of the time it’s not to profess a secret dying love.”

  “Nobody is saying dying love. What I’m saying is that he’s interested in you. He’s at least interested enough in you to want to talk to you. I think it’s time to consider the possibility that maybe not all men are crap. This one could actually like you. He could actually have potential.”

  My heart stuck in my chest in a way that was just embarrassing. I would never admit it to anyone, but there was a part of me that wanted her to be right. Resolution or not, there was still a part of me that wanted to believe that not all me
n were crap, that some of them had honest to God feelings and wouldn’t just leave a girl high and dry the first chance they got.

  The problem was, I had seen no evidence to the contrary. Even my own father had cheated on my mother with his secretary and left us on our own. Mom had made it clear from that time on that women had expiration dates. We were like goods on a shelf, and after a while, we got put into the discount bin. And that was only if we were lucky enough to be the kind of merchandise men were interested in purchasing in the first place. I had seen plenty of examples of how men could be shitty and almost none of what Maggie was always trying to convince me they could be.

  The small amount of excitement and hope I felt while I opened the email from Matt made me sick to my stomach, and I vowed to renew my commitment to my resolution right then and there.

  “So?” Maggie asked impatiently, her voice taking on an ever so slightly smug tone, “What does it say?”

  “Nothing, really,” I answered nonchalantly, no idea how to take what I was reading.

  “Don’t play coy with me. Tell me what it says, lady!”

  “Says work is boring, can’t stop thinking about me, blah blah blah. Says he wants to see me again. Wants to take me out tonight.”

  “No freaking way you get to act that blasé! He wants to see you again, and that means I was right! He is so, totally interested in you. I win, and you lose. Now we have to plan for your date!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  BELLA

  I briefly toyed with the idea of refusing the invitation. This was for a multitude of reasons, but there were two that stood out the most. First was that Matt had assumed I would have nothing better to do than see him that night. In all honesty, I didn't have any plans, nothing beyond my couch and a long bout of Netflix binging, but Matt didn't know that. He had no right to assume I would be able to drop everything and see him on a whim.

  The second thing was my resolution. That resolution had been made for a reason, and it wasn't one I was ready to forget just because a hot rich guy asked me out on a second date. It wasn't like I hadn't been asked on second dates before. I had been, plenty of times, as well as third and fourth dates. Guys could be so stealthy about the way they ghosted you. All of the times I'd gotten my hopes up only to be fantastically, cataclysmically let down were still fresh in my memory, and that meant that my resolution wasn't going anywhere.

  The reasons for my emailing Matt back with an acceptance instead of using the opportunity to execute my very own ghosting (something that would have been a first for me) were two-fold as well. The first was, of course, Maggie. Before I even mentioned the possibility of turning Matt down, Maggie was hounding me. She could be painfully convincing when she wanted to be, and I was too tired to put up much of a fight.

  The second reason was the resolution itself. I needed to prove to myself that I could have sex like a guy, meaning have sex and bail, and that hadn’t happened yet. I already knew from the night before that Matt was pretty fantastic in the fooling around department. If the way his fingers worked were any indication, he was going to be exactly the kind of guy I wanted to break in my new way of doing things.

  And so, I made up my mind to go, putting any thoughts that it might be because I wanted to get to know Matt far in the back of my head where they couldn’t bother me. I got ready, pouring myself into the pair of jeans that always made me feel like I could have been a porn star in another life, and put on a killer pair of heels. After a quick glance in the mirror, during which I determined that I looked good enough to tempt most men out there, I hopped in a cab.

  I had made a point of taking my own transportation this time despite Matt’s insistence that he would prefer coming to pick me up again. He’d tried pulling the southern gentleman card, but all I had to do was remember the way his fingers had slid inside of me to know there was nothing gentlemanly about him. Even thinking about the things he’d done to my body made my face flush hot.

  “This the place you were looking for, miss?”

  “Huh? I’m sorry?” I glanced at the cab driver with my far away eyes, struggling to get out of my own head and into the present.

  “I said, is this the place you wanted to go? You’ve just been sitting there, lady, and I’m trying to figure out if this is it or if you need me to take you someplace else. The meter’s running, so I guess you can sit here all night if you want. It’s your dime. I’m just wondering what I’m in for. Like should I grab a magazine or something.”

  “No,” I said in as icy a voice as I could muster under the slightly embarrassing circumstances, “no need for a magazine. Is this Plush?”

  “Sure is, lady.”

  Without saying anything else, I paid the guy, making sure to leave a decent tip despite his attitude for putting up with my crazy.

  My heart thudded in my temples as I did my best catwalk stomp through the large metal door of Plush, my stomach doing uncomfortable somersaults even though my internal voice insisted that I didn’t really give a damn how this thing went. This, not a date. When I caught a glimpse of Matt, those somersaults went into double-time, my personal metronome going so wonky I thought I might throw up. I knew he was hot, had seen him just last night, for God’s sake, but tonight he seemed to be on a whole other level. Tonight, he was so gorgeous it was borderline painful to look at him, and when he smiled his perfectly white grin at me, my heart hid in my throat.

  “Bella, you look fantastic!”

  “Just jeans and a shirt, you know? No big deal.”

  “I don’t care what kind of a deal it is. You look great. Here, take a seat. I took the liberty of ordering you an Old Fashioned. I swear to God, this place makes the best in the city.”

  I sat as gracefully as possible in the highly polished stool, more than a little worried that I would slide right back off of its extremely glossy finish. Matt slid a drink in my direction and then turned the stool to face him, sitting down with enviable ease and putting both of his palms squarely on my thighs. The skin underneath his fingers burned, and my head went straight back to the night before when his fingers had so easily whipped me into submission. I was doing my best to play it cool, but my body had other ideas. It was working with a memory, and all it wanted was more of what it had already gotten. I cleared my throat and did my best to focus on Matt, who was looking at me with a glint in his eyes as he spoke.

  “I’m really glad you met me here.”

  “Sure, no big deal,” I lied through my teeth as if I hadn’t spent a good portion of my day weighing the pros and cons of showing up, “my other plans fell through.”

  “Lucky me. I wasn’t sure you would come after last night. Things didn’t end the way I wanted them to.”

  “Like I said, no big deal. No point in dwelling on it. Let’s just have a good time, all right? Just see what happens.”

  “Sure, great. That sounds really great, Bella. I want to get to know you better.”

  I eyed Matt closely, only one step above suspiciously. Those were the kind of words every girl wanted to hear from a guy. It was the kind of thing I would have given anything to have a guy say to me and mean it before the New Year’s Eve debacle. But I wasn’t who I had been then, even such a short time ago, and I didn’t believe for one second that his words were spoken without an ulterior motive. I kept my mouth shut, though. The only point of me being here was to follow through on the original mission. I needed to prove to myself that I could do this, that I could sleep with him, feel nothing, and move right along.

  “What’s the matter?” He asked with a slight downturn to his voice, a sound indicating concern I didn’t believe for one minute he actually felt, “Did I say something wrong?”

  “Nope!”

  “You kind of got a look on your face. Maybe I’m just imagining things.”

  “Just enjoying this drink!” I took a long sip, swallowing two-thirds of the cup’s contents, and did my best to keep my eyes from watering as the booze hit my throat.

  Matt was watching me,
and I wanted to make it clear that I was a badass, which drove me to finish the drink in the next sip I took. He whistled and then winced a little. “Wow, really happy to see me, huh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Just, you seem a little on edge.”

  “No, not on edge. Just enjoying myself. That’s why we’re here, right?”

  “I hope so. That and to get to know each other. There’s something about you I can’t quite shake.”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you, but there’s really not a whole lot to get to know.”

  “Aw, I don’t believe that.”

  “You should. I’m just out to have some fun, you know. Just like you, I imagine.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I had been busy ordering and then accepting my second Old Fashioned from the bitchy looking bartender, but the way his voice sounded when he asked that question made me glance up. His entire body was facing me, his hands still on my legs, but there was something in his face that seemed almost angry. It caught me off guard in a big way, but I bit my tongue, determined not to show anything.

  I didn’t know what kind of game he was trying to play, but I was sure he was playing one. Guys like him always were. The seductive way his thumbs ran up and down the inside inseam of my jeans was a solid reminder of that.

  “Nothing. You’re reading too much into what I’m saying. I just think that’s the point of things like this, right? Just having a good time.”

  “Sure. Okay, that’s true. So, in the spirit of fun, why don’t we play a little game?”

  “Um, okay. What did you have in mind?”

  “How about we play Twenty Questions. My version.”

  “What does your version look like?”

  “I’m so glad you asked,” he answered with a devilish grin that made my insides tingle. “It goes a little like this. I ask you a question, you answer.”

  “That kind of sounds like an interview to me.”

  “Nah. It’ll be fun. Let’s start with an easy one. Where were you born?”

  “Right here,” I answered, dimly aware that in the thirty or so minutes since I’d been sitting with him, I had already lost way more control of the date than I was comfortable with. “I was born in Austin.”