Irresistibly Undeniable

by Zoey Derrick

  The server leaves and I reach across the table to stroke the back of her hand gently. I need the contact for some strange reason. I need to know this isn’t a dream and touching her grounds me. She’s really sitting in front of me. Her eyes meet mine and I can’t look away from her.

  Lost in the depth of her vibrant green eyes, everything I felt that night plays through my mind. Bringing that night back to me with a vengeance.

  “It started as a challenge,” I breathe and her eyes widen. “No one put me up to it or anything like that. But when I came over that afternoon, I was determined…” I pause, taking a sip of my beer and steadying my nerves. Suddenly the current flowing between us shifts and I feel the now all-too-familiar spark flying between us like the filament of a light bulb. I take a deep breath. “I started out with the intention of ‘getting it out of my system’.” I scrub my hand through my hair realizing that this truth is it. She will either stay or she will run like hell. I have to find it in me to be okay with option two and her running like hell. She should run, hard and fast, because this line is about to be crossed and once I do, there is no going back for me. I can only protect myself from this one more time. I’ve said the words so many times in my head, in the mirror, while talking to myself, but the result was never there, never one I could gauge for myself because I don’t know what she’s going to do.

  I look at her, pleading with her, begging her not to run. “Please, Dyson.” God, I love it when she says my name. “I need to know. No matter what the truth is, I need to hear it.” Her green eyes plead with me, begging me to tell her my truths.

  “You’re undeniable.” My resolve settles over me. Willing to accept either outcome, no matter what it is, I swallow the rest of my beer and the server returns with her new margarita. We haven’t even touched our food. “Eat,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. “I can’t, not until you tell me the truth.”

  I lean forward, getting as close to her as I can manage with the table between us. “What if the truth sends you running for the hills?”

  She pulls her eyes away from me, looking down and bringing both her hands into her lap as she contemplates what to say next. Losing the eye contact makes me uneasy and I start to fidget with my shirt collar, a nervous habit I’ve had since playing football. I would always grab the collar of my jersey and my shoulder pads as I watch the game from the sidelines.

  “In ten years, I’ve concocted every possible scenario as to why you left me that night. I’m pretty sure the truth can’t possibly be any worse than what my mind has managed to make up.” Her voice is soft, pained.

  “Look at me, VeeVee.” My nickname forces her eyes to me, but I don’t see hatred or panic in them, I see the same look of devotion I saw in her eyes when I looked down at her the moment I broke through her virginity, so trusting, honest and loving. She handed me her heart and soul through her eyes that night and I trampled all of it like it was a useless object. I was seventeen years old, blissfully unaware of the priceless gift she was bestowing on me that night. “Because the minute I slipped inside of you,” I whisper. “I knew I loved you more than life itself.”

  She gasps and sits up, her eyes wide in shock, confused. Desperate to wipe the look of hurt off her face, I continue, “When I showed up at your house, I had every intention of telling you I was leaving, that I was moving the next day. I’d made Dusty promise he wouldn’t tell you on the pretense that I wanted to do it myself.” I take a deep breath. “When I got to your house, you looked…” I struggle to find the right word to describe her that day. “Like an angel. Your hair was down and particularly unruly that day.” I smile at the memory of her when she opened the door. “You had on that silly t-shirt you’d bought at the State Fair the summer before and the cutest pair of pajama pants ever. I remember they were pink with little red and white hearts on them.” The memory consumes me. “You were watching that ridiculous movie.”

  “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” she mumbles.

  “In hindsight, that movie isn’t so bad,” I tease her a little, fighting to break the tension.

  She smiles back, but it’s not entirely the smile I love and I realize it’s because I’m dodging the answers she desperately needs. “We sat on the couch and you snuggled right into me like old times.” I see our waitress pass and I raise my beer bottle, indicating I need another one and she nods. “When you settled in to watch the movie, I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. I realized then you weren’t like all the other girls I’d dated,” no need to rehash the obvious, “you always did what you wanted, what came naturally to you and that day was no different.”

  The waitress appears with my beer and asks, “How’s everything?” She takes in our untouched plates, confused.

  “We’re fine,” Ireland cuts in. The sound of her voice brings me back to the present.

  The waitress nods and walks off, I pull on my beer, sucking down half the bottle, needing the liquid courage to continue my story.

  “I realized I’d been delaying as long as I could. Having you in my arms, knowing I was leaving the next day. Realizing there was a good chance I might never see you again, it broke my heart.” I lean forward, bringing my elbows up on the table, looking at her, but looking through her, past her, as I watch the memories play in my head for the millionth time. “I needed to be close to you the only way I knew how. But what I didn’t realize when I’d gotten you into the barn, was just how beautiful you really are.” I watch her blush at the compliment, but I don’t stop, “I realized in that moment I couldn’t leave you. That leaving you was going to kill me and I couldn’t stop myself from proving to you that everything we’d been flirting with since we were kids was truly real. That I fell in love with the girl when I was just eleven years old.” I reach my hand into my pocket and I pull something from it. I rub my thumb along the now smooth and almost shiny surface and it brings me a calming comfort like it did my first day at a new school.

  “Give me you hand,” I tell her and she doesn’t hesitate, I take it with my free hand.

  “The day she gave me this.” I gently place the well-worn rock in her hand and her eyes fly to mine, then to the rock and back to mine. Oddly enough, the rock was everything Ireland was then, and is now. “I remember looking at the rock and thinking of a tiger’s eye when I did. I was eleven, I was a boy and it was a rock, but I never let it go,” I tell her, my voice full of all the emotion I’ve suppressed for more than fifteen years, since the day I met a girl with fiery red hair and a personality to match.

  Her eyes well with tears as she takes the rock from my hands. I can’t for the life of me imagine what’s going through that pretty little head of hers as she stares at the rock in her hand. I desperately need to finish the story, finish telling her everything before I lose my nerve. I take comfort in watching her thumb rub over the same surface I’ve used to find my balance for sixteen plus years.

  “When we finished, the horny teenager went away and I panicked because I realized the girl I was head over heels in love with was going to be left behind. That I had no choice and that I could no longer leave her. When we were together you poured everything out through your eyes, your love, your heart, your soul. I felt like my soul had found the one thing it was missing to complete me. Everything you gave me that day was precious and a gift that should have been cherished and no matter how my head processed everything in those moments, it all lead to the inevitable truth that I had to leave.” I pause and take a deep, steadying breath. “It was too much for my seventeen year old brain to handle in the moment. So I told you what I thought you would need to hear. I thought you would be angry with me for taking advantage of you, but I figured you’d chalk it up to experience and move on with your life and I would find a way to move on with mine.” I shake my head back and forth, closing my eyes. “But I was wrong. No matter how hard I tried, you were never far from my mind. I quit talking to your brother because I couldn’t take having you so close and yet so far away at the same time. He to
ld me, one day, that you absolutely hated me and he couldn’t understand what I had done to make you feel that way. I couldn’t tell him. He knew my taste in girls and I was selfish enough to believe he wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore if he knew. Then it got to a point where I could no longer keep it from him, and so I stopped talking to him.” I sigh, “I needed you to move on with your life, forget about me, because I didn’t deserve to be forgiven, only forgotten.”

  Her tear filled eyes meet mine. Her voice is barely above a whisper. “That’s just it, Dyson; I was so sure of what I felt for you that I couldn’t believe you truly felt that way. That you honestly thought of me as another notch in your bedpost.” She wipes a tear from her cheek. “It wasn’t until I ran to your house the next day that I realized you were gone, your mom was gone, and your house was empty. I never got the chance to prove you wrong, prove to you that what I saw in your eyes that night was real, and it was raw and it was everything to me. Never being able to do that broke me, Dyson.”

  Her words are like a knife to my heart. A knife I didn’t see coming and all the pain of ten years missing my girl slices through me like hot shards of jagged glass in my veins.

  Chapter 22

  IRELAND

  “Feel Again” - One Republic

  I watch as unbearable pain washes over Dyson’s face as I tell him that finding his house empty completely broke me. It’s probably the truest statement I’ve ever made. Seeing that pain is worse than anything he could have ever done to me. It’s the worst feeling in the world watching my words completely shatter him. I want nothing more than to comfort it away for him, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  Ten years’ worth of unbearable pain, a shattered heart, wall building, hatred and resentment, all consume me and all I want to do is run out of this restaurant and never see him again. I have my answers, but getting those answers means my heart is shattered all over again. It never fully mended in the first place, but it was breathing, it was trying to live because I needed it to, but now, now it’s broken and barely beating.

  Our waitress returns, snapping him out of his trance. “No, but can we get some boxes, please?” he asks her, his eyes never leaving mine. The kaleidoscope of unshed tears fills my vision and he knows. I can see it in his eyes. He’s scared. He knows I’m going to run away. He knows that I can’t handle this and that hurts almost as bad as when he told me it was about time I put out. No, this is worse. This is way worse than seeing his old house empty the next day.

  The waitress returns quickly with several boxes and some foil. I mindlessly watch Dyson scoop the meat and veggies, then box up the condiments and finally wrap up our tortillas. The sight of the food makes my stomach roll. I swallow back the bile and the words that will shatter him completely. The truth is I can’t do this. I don’t know if I ever could. Knowing now, that there was so much more between us than I could have fathomed at fifteen years old is just…it’s too much.

  When he’s done, he throws a hundred dollar bill on the table then he stands up, surprising me by holding out his hand for me to take. “Come on, angel, let’s get you home.” His voice is as pained as I feel. Automatic response and motion brings me to my feet. I feel listless, torn and empty. I can’t stop myself from taking his hand in mine. The all-too-familiar spark igniting between us once again as we leave the restaurant.

  He leads me to his car with tears still dripping down my cheeks. I wipe them away with my free hand as best I can, hoping he’s not paying much attention as he opens the door for me. Keep it together, Ireland. Just a few more minutes until you get home then you can fall to pieces. I’m losing him all over again. He’s slipping through my fingers and I have the power to stop it, but I don’t know how, I don’t know if he wants me to stop it. Why isn’t he stopping it? Why is he just taking me home? Why isn’t he fighting for this?

  I slide into the seat and he places the bagged tower of food boxes between my legs before closing my door and walking around to his side of the car and folding himself inside, he starts the car. Our close proximity, his cologne, a scent that screams Dyson, fills the air around us and my head begins to fog. Stop this, Ireland, stop this from being the end. You have that power.

  If I had been able to hate him all those years ago, would this be easier? Would we even be here now? The truth is I don’t know because I was angry with him all those years ago, sure. That was easy, eventually. But I never hated him. A part of me knew he’d done it to protect himself, maybe even to protect me. He wanted to give me the chance to move on with my life because he couldn’t be there for me anymore, but in truth, I never wanted him to let me go.

  Dyson says nothing as he drives toward my apartment and neither do I. I can’t find my voice or find a way through the fog of everything roaming in my brain to form a coherent question or statement. I can’t find anything to do or say to right the ship, to bring him back to me, to bring us back together and stop this from sinking beyond repairable.

  I need Dyson like I need air.

  His pained expression when I told him he broke me is a look I will never forget. It will be forever engrained in my mind just as he realized his own self-preservation that night was more important than what I was going to go through. I know he cared about how it would impact me because that pain was real, raw and it was reopening old wounds in both of us. Despite trying to protect me and save himself, in the end, we both ended up broken and alone.

  The answers he gave me today prove I wasn’t crazy then and I’m not crazy now. He really did love me back then. The pain in his eyes today tells me he still does. But what happens when he needs to leave again? When he needs to walk away again? What then? I’m already broken into a million tiny pieces because the part of my heart I’d let him expose inside me was full of hope we could be again. I am a fool for thinking we were reigniting that old spark again.

  He takes the fastest way back to my apartment. I don’t blame him. I’m pretty sure he was running a million different scenarios in his head about getting away from me as fast as possible or if he could drop me off somewhere to catch my own ride back home.

  He pulls into the parking lot of my complex and parks in Becca’s empty space before he turns to me. “You deserve the world, Ireland, and you deserve it from someone who can give you everything.” His whispered words break the deafening silence in the car. “You deserve to be happy, VeeVee.”

  I set his rock on the center console between us and his eyes go to it. I didn’t realize until now I was rubbing it between my fingers. For the first time in more than six years, I miss its twin. The one I half-ass threw against his house before leaving for college. The tears come harder, faster now. I can’t look at him. How do I tell him the only thing that will make me happy again is having him in my life? Being able to finally find out what this spark, this irresistible attraction and undeniable draw are between us.

  I open my mouth to say something.

  Then I close it, open it again, and close it again. I suck in a shattered breath. “Good-bye, Dyson.” I barely manage to get the words out. My hand goes to the door handle and pushes it open. I climb from the car and go running up to my apartment. I can’t look back, I can’t…

  He hasn’t moved. His car still sits in the same spot, but I can’t see him. He’s not running after me.

  With shaky hands I unlock the door.

  Open it.

  Turn.

  One last look at his car as it drives away.

  It’s like being in that barn all over again. I shut the door and fall to pieces against it as my soul shatters in to a million little pieces right next to my heart.

  Chapter 23

  Ireland

  “Sound of Your Heart” (Workout Mix) - Shawn Hook

  “Don’t You Remember” - Adele

  I couldn’t sleep.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the pain in Dyson’s face, but it wasn’t the grown up version. No, it was a lost, scared seventeen year old version of him. If it wasn’t an imag
e of the pain he was feeling, then it was those violet eyes as they looked down at me as our bodies came together in the most intimate way possible. The love that transferred between us that night was so crystal clear. I realize I was never a fool for believing what we had between us was real. It is real. Even now. It is everything I know now to be true. It’s what I’ve been fighting for all these years. Why I held on to hope that maybe, one day, we would be together again. And now? Now I know he was doing what he could to protect me at the same time as he was trying to protect himself. It was easier for him to survive if he thought I was mad at him, that I hated him or even that it didn’t mean to me what it felt like for him.

  I don’t know at what point I managed to make my feet move to my bedroom. I did a half-ass attempt at putting on pajamas but I ended up in nothing more than a tank-top and panties. Thank god Becca never came in when she got home around three in the morning. I guess my note was enough for her to know I was home so she never bothered to check to see. I don’t need her bullshit. I left her phone on the kitchen island with a note I wrote in the heat of being hurt by Dyson and being angry at her for stranding me at the mall. I needed an outlet and someone to blame. If she hadn’t left me in the mall, Dyson would have never rescued me and I would be blissfully unaware of the pain I would feel during lunch today instead of yesterday.

  A lunch that would never happen.

  When morning dawned, I was exhausted and managed to close my eyes long enough to doze off for a little while.

  My phone buzzing is what wakes me up. I catch a glimpse of the time and panic briefly about being late for my lunch date, only to remember there wasn’t going to be a lunch date anymore.