by A. J. Wynter
I opened my liquor cabinet and poured myself a tall glass of whiskey and then flung myself down onto the sofa. I had given this life a fair chance, this life of falling in love and dog cupcakes and walks in the park. Well it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park, that’s for damn sure. No wonder people were always so miserable all the time, with their silly love songs and breakups and nonsense. It was such a waste of time and energy.
I picked up my phone from off the table and found Megan’s number, and sent her a quick text. I was still pretty riled up from making out with Eliza and from all the fighting, and once I recovered, a nice evening of no strings attached sex with a beautiful woman would be exactly the cure I needed.
I was finished.
Chapter Fourteen-Eliza
Ben is not a yeller, or a screamer, or a fighter, (unless of course, someone’s kissing his fiancée). He’s never had that sort of passion in him, which I used to think was a good thing. But now that he’s on the other side of Sabryna’s apartment, staring at me coldly, I’d do anything for a clean, simple fight.
He’s looking at me like I am evil itself, and I’m beginning to feel nauseous. Sabryna had left to pick up food, and Ben and I were left alone in the apartment to decide the fate of our relationship.
“So how long have you had a secret boyfriend in Seattle?” Ben grimaced.
“It wasn’t like that,” I tried to explain. “I left because I was getting cold feet, and I needed to see Sabryna and figure things out.”
“Bull. Shit. Eliza. How stupid do you think I am?”
“No really, Ben, listen to me,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “The night I left, I was freaking out. I started feeling trapped, and I started getting scared. I needed to run away, to stretch my legs a bit before the wedding, and I don’t know what got into me but I just went, and there was no turning back.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “That sounds…”
“I know, I know,” I said. “But you can’t tell me you’ve never wondered about other women, and life outside our town, and how our lives could be different? Doesn’t it ever feel like that to you?”
“No!” Ben yelled, suddenly furious. “No it doesn’t, Eliza, and you know why? Because I love you, that’s why!”
“How would we even know?” I yelled back. “We’re the only people we’ve ever dated! We’re getting married because it’s the default and we’ve been together for ages and that’s what we’re supposed to do at our age, but did you ever suppose that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t right? You never had a single doubt?”
Ben shook his head. “That’s beside the point.”
“No, but it isn’t!” I said. “I came here because I needed to run, just one last time, to see if I was missing anything before I settled down with you in that small town for good. And you know what? I’m glad I came, because I am missing something. That’s what I found out.”
Ben looked at me, disgusted. “And you found that with him, I suppose?”
I shrugged. “I did. I know it sounds wrong, but I did.”
“I don’t understand how you could do this to me,” Ben said, shaking his head sadly.
“It’s not just me though, Ben,” I said. “I think it’s you too. I can tell when we’re together, and I know you can too. We just don’t have that natural spark, that easy chemistry that other people do when they’re around each other. We’re just friends who get along, but we’re not in love. And we both deserve love…it’s just not with each other.”
Ben shook his head. “I didn’t expect this when I came here to find you, you know,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure that you were safe and bring you home.”
“I’m staying,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I have to.”
Ben turned to make his way towards the door. “So this guy…” he stuttered. “You have this…with him?”
I thought of Cassidy and I joking around the office and our long conversations in the park, the ways our words flowed and worked in patterns together. I thought of our kiss, the electricity of it palpable on my fingertips. Even in the very beginning, when we were young, it had never quite been that way with Ben…and with Cassidy, it had fallen into place like instant magic.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do. And I’m sorry.”
I held my breath as I watched him leave.
And then, and only then, was I truly alone.
***
I felt shooting pains in my feet as I ran down the pavement, my heartbeat pounding like a drum in my ears. I had made my choice, and something about that terrified me. I realized with a sudden jolt of guilt that I already barely missed Ben, and that the termination of our engagement had been flatter and more business-like than it should have been. Perhaps my love for him had been a charade all along. I wanted Cassidy, and I would do anything to get him back.
I was out of breath by the time that I reached the lobby of his building. Sabryna had scrawled out his address on a piece of scrap paper, and it had almost disintegrated from the sweat from my palms. I watched as two doormen gave me strange looks…clearly, I looked out of place and suspicious in the posh atmosphere of the building, but I strode toward the elevator like I owned the place and slipped into the elevator behind another resident. I was determined to win him back. But what would I say? I had been keeping this secret for so long, had gotten so intimate with it, that I had forgotten how strange and horrifying it must have sounded hitting Cassidy’s ears for the first time.
I felt tears coming, and I began to panic. I took three long, deep breaths as I made my way to Cassidy’s door. Oh god. What could I even say? What words would ever excuse what I had just done to him?
I stood in front of the door, feeling nauseous at the thought of what Cassidy’s face would look like when he’d open the door. Beaten up, heartbroken, disappointed.
The door opened slowly…oddly…feminine?
“Yes?” said a high pitched, sultry voice behind the door, and I found myself face to face with a woman…one who was probably five years younger and five inches taller than I was. She had blazing red hair and wore a black silk sleep shirt draped off her shoulder in a way that practically declared that she had just gotten laid.
“Oh, um…” I stuttered. “This is a bad time, I, um…”
Just as I was about to frantically turn to go, I saw Cassidy approach from the kitchen. He was wearing only his navy boxer shorts and had an ice pack on his shoulder soothing what must have been a wound from his fight with Ben.
“Eliza?” he asked. “Really? Do you really think there’s anything you could do to make up for lying to me like that? Do you?”
I stood there frozen, staring at him in terror. The redhead just stood back, amused at the drama playing out in front of her. Cassidy, who was usually so happy-go-lucky about life, was staring at me with a look of deep shame and disappointment that felt like a stab in the gut.
The redhead smirked at me, and then looked down at me with a pitiful gaze as if I were a lost puppy that no one was coming to rescue.
“I’ll go now,” I said, running down the stairs before the tears started. I couldn’t believe my stupidity. But I couldn’t blame him. I had deserved it.
I had thought that playboys couldn’t have their hearts broken. But I was clearly mistaken.
Chapter Fifteen-Cassidy
Two weeks had passed, and finally, on this sunny Sunday morning, I was finally feeling back to my old self again. I poured myself my morning cuppa and sighed, letting myself lounge on the sofa for a few minutes before going on my weekend run. It had been a rough month for me.
I had let myself fall for a nice girl, which was a stupid move in the first place, only to find out she wasn’t so nice after all and have the absolute shit beat out of me. I wasn’t sure if heartbroken was the right word…we had only been on one date, anyway. But Eliza, to me, had represented something I had never thought I would find: a woman who I could really fall for inside and out. I hadn’t just lost Eliza, but I had lost the dream
that she had represented for me. It seemed I’d be stuck hooking up with random girls and feeling the emptiness that came along with that for life. Eliza had been my last shot at something different, and she had failed me.
Work had been painfully awkward, but it was doable. I managed to pass off the black eye and bloody nose as a football injury, and I showed up to work ten minutes early to avoid Eliza, who I now only saw at company meetings, where we sat at opposite sides of the table, avoiding each other’s gazes. I wondered why she was still here: I figured her fiancée would have carried her back to South Dakota by now, the smug asshole.
I sipped at my cup of tea and tried my best to relax. This weekend I had stayed in, an unusual practice for me, but it had helped me to recover and revitalize myself from everything that had happened.
I sighed as I felt a small hand run up the length of my leg. Oh yeah. And then there was Megan.
“Good morning,” she whispered, suddenly palming the hardness of my cock underneath my gray sweatpants. Megan was the perfect antidote to counteract my heartache. She was young, beautiful, emotionally uninvolved, and exactly the distraction I craved.
“Good morning yourself,” I said, watching as Megan slowly cuddled up to me, keeping steady eye contact the whole time. “Come back to bed, will you?”
“If you insist,” I said, suddenly pinning her down on the couch. “But I’d rather have you right here.”
“Feeling impatient, are you?”
“Very,” I confessed, pulling off Megan’s tiny nightgown and kissing her neck, listening to her sigh as I left soft caresses down the length of her body. A thought interrupted, a nasty one—the kiss with Eliza felt different, it was extraordinary it was—but I cut it off, lifting up Megan’s wrists to pin them above her head.
Megan sighed as I leaned down to kiss her, and I groaned as I felt her legs wrap around my waist. The woman was still as insatiable as ever, I thought as I felt her grind against me. She was exactly what I needed right now.
“Get up,” I ordered with a smirk, and Megan smiled as she slid off of me. I took her hand and led her to the kitchen wall, the only one in the house that didn’t have one of my cousin’s atrocious paintings.
I grabbed Megan by the bum and lifted her up again the wall, where she promptly wrapped her legs around my waist. “Didn’t think you would have the energy to take me up against the wall this early in the morning,” Megan said, yawning. “You’ve never struck me as a morning person.”
“We’ll see about that,” I whispered in her ear, and in a quick motion I stripped her black panties down the silken lengths of her legs and threw them onto the floor. I stroked her, teasing her, as I slid my sweatpants and boxers off, releasing my rock-hard erection.
Megan groaned as I pushed into her slowly, her back still pressed up against the wall as I began to move. She let out tiny moans as I ravished her neck, and she threw her head back against the wall in utter pleasure as I began fucking her harder against it. I was consumed with the incredible feeling of being inside her as she gasped my name, and I struggled to hold her up as she convulsed more and more in response to my movements. I brought my fingers down to her and stroked her until she came with a long and satisfied sigh. I felt my own orgasm approach and pushed her harder into the wall for my final few thrusts until I felt myself come apart inside her, and I weakened and lowered her down to the carpet.
“Let’s sleep for a bit,” Megan said, sliding down from the wall. “And then round two?” She winked. I followed her back into the bedroom and laid down next to her a bit reluctantly. Holding her up and fucking her like that had stripped me of all of my energy. All I wanted to do was to fall fast asleep.
I turned over in bed and sighed, staring absentmindedly at the wall. My eyes travelled across the exposed brick to a guitar, one I bought when I first came to this city years ago, and I hadn’t touched it in years.
I had felt like a different person with that guitar in my hands, a cocky boy just off the plane from London and reveling in the feeling of having American girls melt at my feet like butter. When you’re young and you escape for the first time, it’s like you’re not yourself, at least for a while. You put on a skin, a city skin, one of confidence and steel and daring, because it’s the only way to survive. Your moral compass only sets in later. To survive, you have to become someone else, at least for a while, and I had forgotten how that felt.
Eliza, getting on the highway to a city she had never seen, running from something and to something she couldn’t quite explain…I had been like that once too. She had put on the mask of her new life, created an identity that hadn’t included Ben—it couldn’t have, for the sake of her own sanity. I remembered the way I hadn’t called my mum and dad for months on end and abandoned all my old friends in England, and my old ways. To run desperately to a new life also meant leaving an old one behind, and you needed a strong, merciless heart to do so. I of all people should know.
I turned and looked at Megan next to me, sleeping peacefully as her mascara smudged my pillow. She was brilliant yes, but brilliant like all of the others were. She was no Eliza Cameron.
Eliza Cameron was a supernova. And she was what exactly what I needed. I would be kidding myself to think otherwise.
Chapter Sixteen – Eliza
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need,” Sabryna said, giving Maggie a scratch behind the ears. “But don’t you think it’s time to head back?”
I stared blankly at the wall. “Why?”
“I mean…” Sabryna said. “You came here to think through the engagement, and now the matter of the engagement is kind of…settled. Right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m a bit afraid to go home and face everyone though. There’s not a single person I know back home who wasn’t waiting for this wedding.”
“In the end they care about you, Eliza, not the wedding,” Sabryna said. “I think you’ll be fine.”
“I guess,” I said, curling up deeper into the couch. “I just get this sense like I’m not quite finished here. I like Seattle. Well, the people more than the city, but, I’m different here, you know? I want to get to know that version of myself. I’m not ready to say goodbye to her yet.”
“I don’t think you’re ready to say goodbye to Cassidy yet, either,” Sabryna said. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever seen break his heart. Or even, I don’t know, papercut it.”
“Really?” I asked, thinking back to the look on his face when I had visited his apartment. “I just wish I hadn’t screwed it all up. I should have been honest with him. Maybe he would have understood.”
Sabryna sighed. “You think he’ll ever forgive you?”
“No,” I said. “There’s no way. I mean, I wouldn’t forgive me.”
“I don’t know,” Sabryna said. “This wasn’t just another fling for him. I don’t know if he’s ever been in a proper relationship before. I mean, I don’t think he ever found anyone he liked enough. If you were as special to him as it sounds like you are, I wouldn’t put it past him to give you another chance.”
I sighed and pulled a blanket over my knees. “Well, it’s a nice thought, anyways.”
Sabryna came over and sat beside me. “If you’re interested in staying, even just staying for yourself, there’s apartments for rent nearby, and we can go look after work this week.” Sabryna put her arm around me. “And if it makes you feel better, Johnathan is really impressed with your work, and he’d more than love to have you stay.”
I smiled and nodded. “I think I’d like that,” I said, and fell asleep there on the couch with Sabryna beside me and Maggie curled up at my feet.
Chapter Seventeen – Cassidy
I sat inside the limo, waiting.
This was a long shot, yes, especially after Eliza showed up and Megan of all people had decided to answer the door, but it might be my only hope.
Meet me outside… I had texted her five minutes ago, but there was still no response or sign of
Eliza coming down the stairs of her building. Was she just getting dressed and putting on her makeup? Or was she peeking through the window curtains, scowling at the very sight of me?
I was beginning to give up hope when I heard the familiar clacking of heels on the pavement outside and turned to see a bright blue pair of stilettos outside my door. I watched as my driver exited the limo to hold the door for her and let her inside.
“You wore the wrong shoes,” I told Eliza as she slid into the backseat. “Rookie mistake.”
I couldn’t help the grin that lit up my face the second I saw her, and she grinned back.
“What are you doing, Cassidy?” Eliza asked, her tone suddenly turning serious. “You should want nothing to do with me. You should hate me. You should—”
“But I don’t,” I said, with a smile. “I’ve tried and tried but…I don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Eliza said. “I’m sorry I lied to you about Ben. That was so wrong, and so not me, and I just don’t know what I’ve been doing.”
“Running away changes you,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “And I had forgotten that. It’s so easy to hide your old world away like it’s nothing…and it’s something that I did when I first moved to Seattle too. I lost myself, and people got hurt.”
“It’s no excuse…” Eliza said. “I’ve been horrible…and to you especially.”
“At least you didn’t have a hot, half-undressed redhead answer the door to me,” I said, sighing. “That made me feel like utter shit to watch you witness that, let me tell you.”
