by Mia Archer
No, that could wait. I thought I could just sidestep the whole thing by cooking, but apparently that was impossible. Was it too much to ask for some basic ingredients so I could make breakfast for the new love in my life?
That damn pounding in my head was coming back as I stared around in frustration. I really shouldn’t have drank so much last night. No matter how hard I concentrated on making it go away it persisted. I slammed a cabinet door shut in frustration, completely empty, and squeezed my eyes shut in a vain attempt to chase that pounding away.
It didn’t go away. If anything it seemed to get louder. And it was accompanied by another sound. Glass rattling?
Was that pounding even in my head in the first place?
I moved out of the kitchen and listened. Silence. I was starting to think I was hearing things and about to head back up to Allison’s room to find a place nearby that served breakfast, hopefully not one that would necessitate going into town though I thought that might be the case, when the pounding started again.
No, that definitely wasn’t in my head. What the hell? Did they have a cleaning service or something that came out here and they forgot their keys? I moved towards the front door where there were even more windows that gave a view out on either side of the door. Not very good for stopping somebody if they really wanted to get in, but then again this place was probably wired up like a Christmas tree with security systems.
Either way the windows gave me a good view of the dude on the other side pounding on the door. He looked to be about our age with blonde hair that was gelled and spiked. He had on a polo shirt with a logo on the right breast, as though you could get more stereotypical, and he had on a pair of sunglasses with lenses so large that they should only be worn by air force pilots.
Basically he looked like the quintessential frat douche that I’d avoided as a matter of course in college, only if he was our age then he should’ve grown out of all of that upon graduation. Who was this guy and what the hell was he doing here?
I thought about going back to get Allison, maybe she knew who he was, but he spotted me through the window. Smiled and waved. I didn’t smile back, but he pointed to the door.
I shrugged and made my way over. It didn’t occur to me until I’d unlocked the door that this guy could be dangerous. If he was a robber or a killer then he’d probably be known as the Frat Douche Killer when they eventually found him, but it was too late for me by the time I thought of that.
The door swung open and he pulled off his sunglasses. Looked me up and down in an obvious way that didn’t endear the guy to me any more than his outfit did. I wasn’t one of those militant types who got pissed off whenever a guy checked me out, they were wired for that after all, but there was something about it coming from this guy that pissed me off.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
He looked me up and down once more before his eyes finally returned to my chest. I sighed and rolled my eyes, not that he saw it since he was staring directly at my tits rather than my eyes. Leave it to a frat douche type to not even bother hiding the fact that he was checking out my chest rather than paying attention to the person.
I decided I’d been absolutely right with my initial impression.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Kyle.”
I stood in the door staring at this guy as he leaned forward as though I should somehow recognize that name. I racked my brain trying to remember if this was someone we went to school with. That would be embarrassing if I was supposed to know this guy or I’d had a class with him and now I couldn’t remember who he was, but I was drawing a blank. I didn’t think I’d ever seen his face before.
“That’s nice Kyle. Did your car break down or something? Do you need to use the phone?”
“Ha, good one,” he said.
His eyes traveled up and down my body again and I really had to resist the urge to reach out and slap him across that smarmy face. Once I could put up with in the interest of not having the cops called to Allison’s house after that wonderful night, but if he kept that up and made a habit out of it then we were going to have a very serious problem.
“Damn,” he said. “I wish Allison had told me all of her friends back home were as good looking as you! I would’ve left work early and joined her at the reunion last night for sure!”
I blinked. What the hell was he talking about? Joined her at the reunion? Why would some random guy be joining her at the reunion, particularly when it seemed like she’d come to the reunion specifically looking for me?
“Excuse me?”
The guy, Kyle, laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just kidding. Allison and I are happy. I wouldn’t risk what we have with any girl.”
He wouldn’t risk what they had with any girl. What they had. And then it clicked in my brain and I felt like an idiot even as I felt as though the earth was opening up beneath me and I was in free fall. What kind of guy would go to a reunion with Allison? What kind of guy would hit on a girl and then joke that he wasn’t seriously hitting on her because he didn’t want to risk what he had with Allison?
A boyfriend. A boyfriend would act that way. Allison’s boyfriend.
“You’re Allison’s boyfriend?” I asked.
His face lit up in a huge smile. “Yup! For a minute there you had me worried she hadn’t mentioned me at all!”
Ha. If only this guy knew how close he was to the truth. He took my question to mean Allison had mentioned him, but of course this was the first time I’d heard anything about a boyfriend. Of course Allison hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort last night.
She was taken. She was in a relationship. And yet she’d done what she did with me last night.
It was putting everything into an entirely new perspective. A decidedly sinister perspective that I didn’t care for. Go to the reunion, leave the boyfriend behind, take what she could get from the girl who was head over heels for her, and then have her man show up the next morning so she could get away without a care in the world.
I couldn’t believe it had happened again. I couldn’t believe I’d let Allison take advantage of me, and suddenly all that fun we’d had the night before, all the amazing things we’d done with each other, was cast in a very different light. That wasn’t the culmination of five years of pent up feelings and desire. That was just the culmination of five years of lust. That was Allison taking advantage of me one more time, telling me what I wanted to hear, before she went back to her happy heterosexual existence.
With her boyfriend. Who was standing right in front of me checking me out in his frat douche uniform with a goofy smile on his face like he had no idea that my world was coming crashing down around me. Again.
Allison had done it to me again, damn it.
Not that I was terribly surprised. Fool me once and all that. No, the only thing that really surprised me at this point was that she hadn’t tried to bring her boyfriend in on the fun and turn this into a threesome. I could see the conversation now. Take advantage of the lovesick lesbian and turn her into a living sex toy for the happy hetero couple, because wasn’t that all lesbians were good for? Providing a bit of titillation for the guys?
God I was so pissed off. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to smack that look off this guy’s face even though it seemed like he was innocent in this. More than anything I wanted to march up to Allison’s room and demand to know what the hell was going on here. Why she hadn’t bothered to tell me about her boyfriend and that he would be showing up for a visit this morning.
Damn it. Why had I been so naive? Why had I trusted her?
Because I wanted to. Because she told me what I wanted to hear. Because she presented me with a version of reality that I wanted to grab onto and hold tightly for the rest of my life, only it was shattering in my hands once more.
“Are you okay?” Kyle asked.
I wavered in the doorway for a moment before the anger took over once more. Anger that was familiar. Anger that was comforting in a way. That wa
s the emotion I’d used to focus my feelings for Allison for so long that it felt natural returning to that way of looking at the world.
It didn’t feel right, not in the way the world had felt right when I was in her arms, but it felt familiar and that was good enough for me. It was enough for me to hold onto sanity for the moment instead of turning into a screaming homicidal ball of rage which is how I was feeling deep down inside.
“I’m fine,” I said. My voice was flat and I sounded anything but fine, but this guy didn’t pick up on that. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to pick up on much in the way of nuance.
“So is Allison here?” he asked. “I’m guessing she is since you’re here.”
He stepped into the house and I nodded, feeling numb all over. Numb on my skin where I’d felt burning passion just a few hours ago in the night. Numb inside where I’d felt something deeper and warmer than the fires of lust that had been dancing on my skin, but that feeling was gone now. I’d been double crossed. Again. I’d been played for a fool. Again.
Better to not feel anything in that moment.
“I have to admit I was a little worried when I was driving up here to surprise her,” Kyle said as he moved into the living room and towards the stairs that led up to the second level balcony running around the massive first floor living area. He moved with the confidence of somebody who’d been here before. Of someone who knew the layout, and why not if he’d been dating her for awhile? I wondered how serious they were, as if that mattered. That was just a part of me still clinging to the hope that there might be something more between us, and I knew now that was a crazy false hope.
“Really?” I said, more because it seemed like he was waiting for a response from me than out of any interest to maintain a conversation with this guy.
He laughed and it grated on me. “Yeah, when she was acting like she didn’t want me up here I was afraid she might be having a little rendezvous with an old boyfriend or something. Crazy, right?”
Crazy. Right.
So Allison had been trying to keep him from coming up to join her at the reunion, had she? Well she was in for one hell of a surprise here in a minute when the guy walked into her bedroom. I briefly considered just telling him how close his suspicions were to the truth, but if I did that it would put me in very real danger of letting all of the negative emotions I was feeling spill over.
Besides, I wanted to see the look on Allison’s face when she saw me standing behind her boyfriend. When she realized her game was over. That the jig was up. That would be worth more than telling this guy that his girlfriend had been having exactly the sort of fun he was afraid she was having.
With another woman.
As we made it up to the second floor I reflected on how quickly things could change. The night before I thought everything was right with the world. I thought I was finally getting the happily ever after I’d wanted for so long while denying that I wanted it in the first place.
And now in another blink that happily ever after I’d constructed for myself was crashing down around me again. Inside I was crumbling because of Allison taking advantage of me and then dancing on my heart.
I took a deep breath as we got closer to Allison’s door. As we hurtled inevitably towards that moment where the shit was well and truly going to hit the fan.
Though I figured it was the least she deserved after everything she’d done to me. After everything I’d allowed her to do to me again.
Damn it.
20: Morning Disaster
I woke up feeling warm all over. I had a confused moment where I wondered where the hell I was. This definitely wasn’t the apartment. There was only the one window in the bedroom there and it looked out on a gorgeous view of the next apartment building over so I tried to keep the blinds shut whenever possible to keep the old creeper who lived there from staring in at me in the mornings while I was changing.
Not that it stopped Kyle from opening the blinds to “let the morning sun in” whenever he could. He didn’t seem to care that I didn’t want to put on a show for the old pervert who seemed to have a sixth sense for when I was getting dressed for work. Just one more annoyance that I wasn’t going to have to deal with anymore thanks to…
Claire.
Everything I’d done the night before with Claire was starting to filter back into my head. It was tough fighting through the alcohol-induced haze I’d put myself in, but then again there was no amount of alcohol in the world that could hold back some of those memories. What we’d done in the pool. The fun in the hot tub. Texting Kyle and telling him to stay the hell away from this place for the remainder of the weekend. Stumbling through the darkness and then doing what comes natural to young people who are hot for each other and more than a little tipsy when we finally got to my room.
My eyes flew open and I blinked at the sunlight streaming in. Dad had deliberately designed the place like this so the sun would be streaming in over a beautiful view of the lake in the morning and minding its own business on the other side of the house when it was setting in the evening.
Of course the sunlight streaming in through the wide open windows wasn’t the only reason I was feeling so warm and fuzzy in the moment. No, a lot of that had to do with what had gone down here the night before. With all the fun I’d had with Claire after we put the phones away and really started putting a dent in all the booze dad had stored in his little bar.
He was probably going to be a little annoyed about that when he got back from Florida and realized I’d raided his booze stash, but that was still a few months away so I wasn’t too worried. Besides, he’d probably be too preoccupied with me introducing him to my new girlfriend to give much of a fuck about some magically disappearing wine and whiskey.
At least I hoped he’d be distracted enough to forget about it. The man did take his alcohol seriously.
I wasn’t thinking about him being angry, though. No, more than anything I was thinking of the fact that I’d be introducing him to Claire. I thought of what she’d said, about how I could stay in the closet if I wanted but I wouldn’t have anything more than a friendship with her if I did. I thought about telling everyone that we were an item.
And for the first time I didn’t feel terror at that thought. I just felt peace. The peace of knowing who I was and not caring what other people thought about who I was. It was liberating. It felt damn good.
I rolled over to give Claire a thorough good morning kiss. I didn’t even care about morning breath. I knew my own breath probably smelled like a dragon, but I was in that honeymoon phase where I didn’t give a fuck.
The only problem was Claire wasn’t there. I blinked and felt a moment of panic. What if she’d left in the middle of the night? What if that whole thing had been some elaborate trolling move she’d pulled as part of a revenge plot or something? I could see it now. Get with the girl who broke her heart and leave her high and dry the same as I’d done to her years ago.
That night. Damn it that night. It seemed like it was going to haunt me forever no matter what I did, and I hated it. How long did one person have to pay for one stupid mistake? Sure it had been a whopping mistake, but still. I thought I’d be over worrying about it after what passed between us yesterday.
Something buzzed and I smiled thinking about one thing in particular we’d done the night before. I’d never been more happy to realize my mom hadn’t gone rummaging through my nightstand drawers in the intervening years since I left for college than that glorious moment when I found my old best pal still in its velvet case with a set of AA batteries that were still in good working order.
Yeah, that buzzing brought back some very good memories indeed. Only that buzzing couldn’t be coming from my plastic pal. No, I looked over to my nightstand and there was my phone, but it wasn’t the one buzzing.
Well, that answered one question at least. Claire was definitely still in the house. That or she’d run off in the middle of the night when she was still feeling a little tipsy and
had forgotten her phone. I was willing to bet she was somewhere in the house though.
That buzzing brought back memories from last night. Memories of Claire staring into her phone replaced the blush-inducing memories of some of the other things we’d done. She’d been looking at her phone an awful lot, and I wasn’t inclined to believe that it was all work related. It seemed odd that she’d be sending that many messages for work when she’d hardly looked at her phone at all while we were at the reunion proper.
I had a devil and angel on my shoulder as I looked at her buzzing phone. I looked over to the door which was wide open and listened. I didn’t hear anything, but Claire had to be out there somewhere. It was impossible that she just up and left and forgot her phone. I didn’t want to think that she’d just up and leave me in the middle of the night like… well like I’d left her five years ago. I didn’t want to think she’d have the capacity to do what I’d had the capacity to do in one of the crueler moments of my life.
Still, I was curious what the hell was so important that her phone was buzzing off the hook last night and even this morning. Was she messaging a girlfriend or something? Was she not telling me the entire truth just like I hadn’t told her the entire truth about me and Kyle?
“You’re acting crazy, Allison,” I said.
And still I stared at her phone as it buzzed again. A double buzz to let the world know there was another new message waiting and not just an old message that hadn’t been checked yet. I was burning with curiosity, almost as intensely as I’d been burning with desire the night before. What was in that message? What the hell was going on?
All it would take was grabbing her phone. Swiping on the screen and having a look at her messages. One swipe and my curiosity would be satisfied even if I would be committing one hell of a violation of trust with that swipe.
Did I want to do that? Did I really want to be that person right when I was starting to get over my lingering “that girl” feelings from that night five years ago? Adding new guilt on top of old hardly seemed like a promising beginning to a new relationship.
