by Suzanne Hart
I flexed my jaw. I knew what he was talking about. There was no denying that. I had always been pretty guarded since my parents. When I knew Neil in college, I was a chronic womanizer who had a problem with remembering the faces of the girls I’d banged. I blinked as I took another sip of my Heineken, trying to squeeze away all of those unpleasant thoughts, the memories of the self I used to be, the one I was embarrassed to admit.
Neil patted me on the back. “Hey, no worries man. You were always honest. You were just focused on your future. Nothin’ wrong with that.”
I huffed a breath. With everything that had happened, I wondered if there really was a difference between my past and present self. Did I really change in all of these years if my career was still my first and only priority?
When I didn’t say anything, Neil tried to make me feel better. “Look, Nancy just got this crazy new opportunity in New York.”
My eyes widened, an urge to spit out my beer instead of swallowing it overcoming me. “What?”
Neil nodded, and through my horror, I could still appreciate the pride evident in his eyes. “She’s gonna be a choreographer at the New York Dance Company. She starts her training next week officially.”
“So, she’s leaving now.”
Neil gave me a cautious look. “Tomorrow, actually.”
I ducked my head, my eyes wide, incredulous. “Way to bury the lead, Neil.”
Neil ducked his head. “Way to not tell me you were gonna propose to my sister.”
“So, it’s done, then? It’s set in stone?”
He gave a slow nod. “You gotta understand. This is her dream.”
I gulped. I couldn’t ignore that. Trying to stop her wouldn’t be fair. I had to let her go for her dreams. If I cared about her at all, I wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. “I know. I just… I can’t just let her go like that again.”
“Do you still wanna marry her?”
“Always.”
“Then go. But let me tell you this, if you head over there and you haven’t made a case, then you’re wasting your damn time. You should make sure you have some good reasons for breaking her heart because when Nancy makes up her mind, it takes a whole army to change it back.”
Neil’s words rung through my head the rest of the afternoon, that night, and all of the next day. I wanted to see her that night but Neil told me that she would be working her last shift at the club, and that she’d probably want to sleep. As much as I wanted to interrupt her anyway, as important as I thought this was, I didn’t want to inconvenience her any more than I already had. As I was in my car on the way there, I couldn’t think of anything but the sight of her, the sound of her, the smell of her. I missed her so much and the thought that I might never see her again, that she would really be gone, was too much to bear.
The morning of the next day, I went over to her house, the address Neil had given me. My heart pounded in my chest as I knocked on the door, my mind going blank with anticipation. I had no idea what I would even tell her when I saw her. But when she opened that door and I saw her standing there, her tired eyes wide with surprise, her messy hair thrown in a bun on top of her head, all I could think and say was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She grimaced--- surprised, hurt, stunned, as she stood aside for me to enter. The cozy place was cluttered with boxes. The walls decorated with nothing but odd hooks and scratches made by what used to be there. “Why did you come here?” She didn’t move again, but stood against her hallway with her arms crossed in front of her.
“I don’t want you to go.”
She sighed, her small shoulders moving ever so slightly. The image of me and her lying together on that boat, our naked bodies pressed together, flashed behind my eyes for a short moment. “I didn’t want to go either.”
She wasn’t talking about New York.
“I should have come to find you.”
She shifted her weight. “So why didn’t you?”
I pursed my lips, my hands curling into fists at my side. There were no good answers to this question, none that could actually explain my choices that day.
“I want you to go,” she said after she waited a minute for my response.
I shook my head. “Please, Nancy.” I shoved my hand in my pocket, my fingers curling around the black box.
But she got off the wall and started walking down her hallway. I followed her, my steps creaking on the aged wood, my feet stepping around the still-opened boxes and bags of trash.
“I have a lot to do. I just don’t have time for this.”
“Nancy, I’m sorry I didn’t come for you that day.” I said, unable to mask that pleading lilt in my voice.
She stopped, but kept her back to me. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t come here and try to make me feel sorry for you after all of this.” she finally turned, letting me see the way that her eyes were watering. “After everything.”
I crossed what little space existed between us and wrapped my arms around her. I needed to hold her, to keep her together, to have her, completely. The ring weighed heavy in my pocket. As I sucked in hefty breaths of her hair, squeezed her in my arms, felt the warmth of her skin on my fingertips, I was just about to let her know just how much I cared about her, just how much I loved her, just how a part of my future she was. But then she pulled back, her gorgeous eyes gazing up at me. “We’re just not meant to be together.”
My stomach flipped. My heart dropped, landing like a chunky, dead weight in the pit of me. This was going just about as badly as it possibly could. “Nance… No…”
But she shook her head, placing a hand on my cheek.
I could have melted at the touch.
“You have your life here. You have your company and your family. And…” she shook her head, her eyes getting redder and redder. I could practically see her struggling to talk around the lump in her throat. “And there’s no room for me in it. You made that abundantly clear.”
“But Nancy, I…”
“And maybe this whole New York thing is happening for a reason.”
“Nancy, I never meant- …”
“Maybe I was never supposed to be here.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Maybe we were never supposed to-...”
I took her face in both of my hands. “I love you.”
“-fall in love…” Her voice trailed off as she heard my last words. She just gazed up at me, her eyes wide, the tears finally spilling over. “You…” She managed to say in between her rugged breaths.
She tried to speak again, but I wouldn’t let her. I nudged her to the wall, and took her into my arms again, kissing her. Our lips collided, our bodies moving together as my heart launched into overdrive. It was like I was alive again, touching her, kissing her, being with her. I knew that I would never have anything like this again, anything like her.
18
Nancy
I couldn’t find the words in my head to answer James, so I just kissed him back over and over again. I let him hold me up. I let his hands speak to me. I let his body press against mine. I let him bring goosebumps to the surface of my skin and make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I needed to feel him kiss my neck the way that he was, I needed to clutch his face and his shoulders. I needed to wrap my arms around his neck and hitch my legs onto his hip. I needed to let him carry me to my bedroom and lower me onto my bed.
When I finally opened my eyes again, I saw him staring down at me on my bed like I was the only thing in the world. Even though I knew that there was no going back on my decision, no undoing what had already been done, I allowed myself to sit in this fantasy for just a little while longer. I allowed myself this little pleasure.
He gently lifted my shirt over my head, my bun loosening to the nape of my neck in the process. I sat up, exposed to him in that moment, my warm naked body calling for his; my nipples hard, my clitoris engorged. I wanted him more than anything I had before, more than that studio idea and even more than
this job in New York.
In a thrust of a mind filling, heart-stopping desire, I could think of nothing but having him. We shared hungry kiss after hungry kiss as I unbuckled his belt, and got his pants off of him. He pressed me down onto the bedspread, my old sheets caressing my back as he slipped my shorts off and then my panties. My legs flayed apart and I gazed up at him. At his hard rugged body and his cock hanging between his legs. I needed him inside me. I wanted him to fill me up. To rub every sensitive spot on my body that needed to be caressed.
He climbed in between my legs and I stretched them wider and wider apart. I put a hand on his cheek, giving him a softer more tender kiss, then I gasped as he sucked on my neck, as his hands massaged my breasts, gripped my ass, taking hold of every part of me, inside and out.
When he entered me, pangs of pleasure shot up my spine, I stretched my neck and arched my back. That sharp pain from the first time wasn’t there. It was like James belonged inside me, like his cock was meant to be here within me, reaching the deepest parts of me.
There was only the ecstasy of my body wrapping around his, of his breaths, his grunt mixing in with my moans and gasps. God it was so him. That skin on his body, the heat of his breath, the softness of his hair. In this short time, it had all become true, real, mine.
My eyes burned again, all of the thoughts coming back as I became aware of all the hurt I felt. The hot tears flowed down my cheeks, my body overwhelmed with the pleasure of him, the happiness that he made me feel and the undeniable fact that it was now all over. He thrust into me, deeper and deeper and just like that, I was filled with him. His cock stretched me, pleasured me and while he pounded me, he used his thumb to rub my clitoris.
I clutched his waist, my fingernails digging into his skin as I came. I was moaning, still crying and murmuring his name. He pressed his forehead against mine when he climaxed too, collapsing onto me, sighing. I could feel his cum inside me, I was filled with the essence of him and there was nothing we could do to change that.
“James,” I breathed. I had to tell him the truth, the whole truth, before I went away to New York.
“Yes?” He fell in the space next to me on my bed.
I turned on my side so that I could get a good look at him, there, naked, vulnerable and real with me. “I love you.”
He sighed, a smile playing at his lips.
But I wasn’t finished. “But I don’t see a way for us.”
“Why?” He placed his hand on my cheek, the familiar touch making me melt.
“You chose to fight for your career over me. You did it whole-heartedly, without even a second thought. I just… I don’t see how I could ever trust you, if you won’t fight for me. I just can’t bring myself to give this up, to give myself up, my dream… if I, we… if we will never be more important to you than the title behind your name.”
I could see his heart breaking behind those red-rimmed eyes. I turned onto my back, just so that I could get through this moment, so that I could go through with my decision, the right one. “I love you, but this was just the beginning. There would have been more struggles, a family… kids maybe.” It hurt to think about all the hopes I had kept locked safely in the back of my head, all those things I never wanted to admit to myself that I truly felt. “But if I can’t trust you with just me, we’ll never make it.”
We laid there for a little while longer, but the alarm I had set on my phone went off, the sharp sound cutting through the thick air I shared with him. It was the twenty-minute mark. I stood up, plucking my things off of the floor. I stripped the sheets and shoved them into the closest trash bag. Neil had graciously agreed to help oversee the move out of the house and the shipping of all the stuff I wanted to keep, but I didn’t want to make this any harder on him than it already was.
Moments later, I was standing in my front hallway. James hadn’t said anything, he hadn’t offered any explanation for his actions and neither was he trying to stop me from going anymore.
My bags filled my closest belongings gathered around me. James had stood silently, watching. He didn’t want to go and I wasn’t going to force him to. I guess, in a way, neither one of us wanted to let go of those precious last few moments. But then I heard a car honking. It was Neil, who had come to drive me to the airport.
My time had run out.
I opened my door so James could step out first and then closed it behind me, locking it. I shot Neil a wave, but he let the engine run idle. He was trying to give me as much time as possible.
“I could never ask you to stay.”
My heart was breaking. “I wouldn’t.”
He took my hand in his. “You deserve everything you’ve worked for.”
I placed it on his cheek. “You too.”
With that, I walked away, without looking back at him because I knew that would make me break down again. I needed to rip James off my body like an old band-aid. I got in the car with my brother and didn’t even wave at James, who was still standing outside my locked door.
Neil didn’t speak until we were already five minutes down the road. “Ugh… Nance…”
I peeled my eyes away from my window and stared at him. His brow was furrowed, his mouth folded into a frown. “Spit it out, Neil.”
“I just gotta know what happened with James. I can’t not ask you.”
I huffed, crossing my arms and resting my foot on the dash. “I mean, you were right. Is that what you want to hear? He’s focused on his future. So, I should be focused on mine too. That’s what’s really important… isn’t it?”
“I dunno… You were right too. He’s changed a lot. I saw you together just now. It’s no secret you are both about to do something unnatural.”
“And what’s that?”
“Separate.”
I couldn’t speak for the rest of my ride to LAX. I was fighting my heart, that visceral feeling of loss in my gut. It was normal to regret my decision now that I was at the point of no return, right? Neil and I said our goodbyes, trying our best not to make eye contact. I didn’t want to think about the fact that I was leaving him behind when I only just got him back from London. I decided to occupy my mind with the mundane routine of checking in, getting to my terminal, getting on my plane. I avoided my phone, a book clutched close as I settled into my seat.
The airport was, ironically enough, running extremely on time that day, and before I knew it, we were on the runway. The pilot made the usual remarks and then proceeded to drag us across the runway at high speed. My head was pressed against the back of the seat, my heart thudding, my hands clutching the hand rests, my eyes squeezed shut.
I could only see James behind them.
By the time we were in the air, I couldn’t shake the thought that I had just thrown away the love of a lifetime.
19
James
“Can I be excused?” I held my hand up from where I was sitting on the other side of the conference table, a glass of orange juice to my right, the hardback version of the presentation my uncle had tailor-made for me open on my desk. This was one of the last days of my training and we were going over the last big points before I officially moved into my uncle’s office. But I had started that morning with a crippling anxiety I couldn’t shake. I couldn’t deny the feeling that I was falling head first into the biggest mistake of my life. I asked my uncle if I could make a quick phone call.
My uncle stopped in his tracks, but after a pause, said, “Sure. But come back quick. We have a lot to go through before lunch.”
I nodded and hurried out of the room, practically tumbling into the elevator and up two floors to my new office. I just needed a few moments to catch my breath. But the next thing I knew, my fingers were calling Nancy, almost of their own accord.
“Hello?”
I sighed. Her voice filled my head, spilling through my ears, calming me, even from thousands of miles away. “Nancy.”
“James.”
“I-... I miss you.”
There was a pau
se and a sigh, and then. “I miss you too, James. You know I do. But I- … I don’t have a lot of time to talk- …”
I couldn’t let her go. I had lost all of my fighting strength. “I know, but I need you to listen to me. Just for a second.”
“You said you weren’t gonna do this.”
I sighed. “Nancy, I have the whole company now. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I have the power, the funds to give you that studio, any space you want anywhere in the city. I can help you.”
“James I don’t need your help. You don’t get it. I have this job, the opportunity of a lifetime. I don’t know how, but I just have a feeling that I’m supposed to be here, in New York, doing this. This is my life.”
It wasn’t working. I had to try harder to get her to understand that I loved her. A life without her was unacceptable. But it was getting noisy on the other end of the line and hard for me to think. “Nancy…”
“James, look I gotta go. You can’t ask me to drop everything. It’s just not fair.” With that, she hung up.
I was plunged into the silence of my office. I put my phone on my desk and sat back. How did we get here? How did I end up so trapped? I had always had the world at the palm of my hand. My parents gave me a life that meant I would never have to feel forced into a job. I had very real, very developed reasons for wanting this in the first place. But maybe it didn’t have to be this way. I knew, in all certainty that Nancy and I were supposed to be together. I would still find a way to fulfill my parents’ dreams, but I couldn’t do it like this.
20
Nancy
“Bye guys!”
I scurried down the worn steps of the converted studio building and pushed open the door, stepping out onto Fifth Avenue. I had been up since the crack of dawn to make it to my technique class, so the empty, quiet street I had left hours before had been transformed. New York was a big city of a different variety, so I was just now getting used to the way the streets filled with honking yellow cars, the shouts of hobos on the street with hands reaching out for a coin, the snippets of conversation pressing into my ears and bodies everywhere.
