Fragile Bonds

by Sloan Johnson

  “Are you okay, babe?” I ask, my thumb tracing small circles across the back of her hand. She turns her head to me, flashing a smile that would make me go weak in the knees if I were standing. As it is, it’s definitely having an effect on parts of my body below the waist.

  “I’m good. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m a bit nervous. I just realized that this is our first date,” she laughs. “How screwed up are we? Four years of history, we’ve been back together for two months and this is the first time you’ve ever taken me on an actual date.”

  I sit back, thinking about what she’s saying, certain this can’t be a first for us. I may have been a self-centered bastard, but I always thought of myself as being a bit of a charmer when I was younger. Wining and dining was the key to making women putty in my hands. I had wooing women down to a science; a few nice dinners where I could learn what they liked and what they didn’t, followed by a night planned to make me seem like their Prince Charming. By the end of the fourth date, they were willing to do anything I asked of them. It’s not right, but it worked for a long time.

  I swallow hard when I can’t come up with a single time that I gave Melanie that treatment. Perhaps it’s because I always knew she wasn’t the same as the other women. She was never the person I wanted to hang onto like a new toy until I got bored. Even when our arrangement was supposed to be something casual, based solely on sex and allowing each of us an outlet for a side of ourselves many didn’t understand, mine Dominant and hers submissive, she was more. I fooled myself for a long time into thinking I could keep love out of our relationship, but my heart wouldn’t allow that.

  If I loved her as much as I claimed to, as much as I know I did, how could I allow myself to treat her as less than a play partner in that aspect?

  “Wow, you’re right,” I say resignedly. “How did you stay with me that long and I never once made you feel special?”

  As I wait for her to answer, I promise myself that, if she’ll allow me, I will do my best to make it up to her. This is a new time for us and I’m not going to allow what we have to become something boring and comfortable. There are times when both of those are appropriate, but it’s more important for her to feel cherished. We may not be able to have spontaneous nights out on the town, but I will make a concerted effort to do something small on the days when life won’t allow for wine, roses and romance.

  “You made me feel special, you just did it in your own way.” She leans over, sweetly kissing me. Her soft, sweet lips press firmly against mine, never deepening the kiss and not rushing. I can taste a hint of her raspberry lip gloss lingering on my mouth as she pulls away. “And it’s not like we didn’t do things together, you just didn’t make a big deal of it and we never called it dating. I guess we fell into spending time together and it was a foregone conclusion that we’d be together every day when I wasn’t in class.”

  I summon her closer with a crooked finger. “Nothing about you should be a foregone conclusion,” I whisper in her ear, feeling her body tense as my warm breath caresses her skin. “I’m sorry you ever felt that way, but those days are over. I love you and will do my best to make sure you know it.”

  I slide my chair closer to hers at the small table. There’s no way we can sit like this once our food arrives, but for now, I want to be as close to her as possible. If I thought it wouldn’t get us disapproving looks from the other diners, I would pull her over so she could straddle my lap.

  After one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time, we start walking, hand-in-hand to the lakeshore. While it’s nothing compared to walking in the sand as the ocean crashes against our feet, there’s a certain comfort to be taken from making this particular walk with her. When Melanie was a student at the university, we spent many weekends at James Madison Park, lying on a blanket in the grass, watching groups of guys playing football or Frisbee.

  “It’s nothing bad,” I promise her even though I’m still a bit anxious. This is the moment where everything will be out in the open. Once I tell her where my head is at, there will be no turning back. It means that, once again, I’m going to be giving up the control that I hold so tightly most of the time. “I want to talk to you about what Jacob said this morning.”

  Her body tenses. This is why I’ve avoided trying to define our relationship. We are a complex puzzle and the thought of trying to put the pieces together is nerve wracking. “Xavier, it’s fine. I know he misses his mom. I think it’s natural for him to wish he had someone to fill that emptiness in his life.”

  Her words do nothing to soothe my mind. “But he doesn’t want someone, he wants you,” I remind her. “And while I want that too, someday, I don’t want you to feel pressured into anything. I need to know that you’re with me because you love me, not because you feel like you need to save us.”

  Melanie turns her body, draping one leg over my lap. Her hands cup the neatly trimmed stubble on my face, holding firm so I can’t look away from her. And right about now, I need to look away because the tender look in her eyes is tearing at my heart.

  “I don’t want to be your savior. If I thought that’s why you wanted to be with me, I would have walked away. But there’s a difference between saving you and being with you because I love you and want to help in whatever way I can.” She slides closer, carefully arranging her skirt as she wraps her other leg behind my back. “I love you and Jacob and that has nothing to do with Alyssa. That has to do with the fact that part of me has always loved you and he’s such an amazing kid, I couldn’t help but fall for him.”

  She speaks with such conviction that her words erase any doubt in my mind that she is with me completely of her own free will. “You have no clue how happy I am to hear that. But please, don’t feel like I expect you to take over as Jacob’s mother. You know me well enough to know that I don’t get scared often, but you terrify me,” I admit, turning to look out over the gently rolling waves. “When you’re in my life, it feels like every plan I make is blown apart. What I think I should do falls by the wayside because of how drawn to you I am. And you are a nurturer. You have always wanted to help people and make things better for others. That pressure led to bad choices by both of us in the past and I can’t have that happen again.”

  “Xavier, a wise man once told me that trust is everything. You need to trust me when I say I know exactly what I’m getting into with you. Just like I have to trust that you are only with me because you love me.” She pulls my head down to place a kiss on my temple before resting her forehead against the side of my head. “And I do,” she whispers.

  “I do trust you. I know there are going to be days when you think about Alyssa. I know there are going to be times when you feel overwhelming guilt for being with me because you think you’re betraying her.” I nod as Melanie continues talking, verbalizing every fear racing through my head. “And since we’re laying it all out on the table, I will say that there are times when I feel like I’m always going to be second best. I know that might not be fair to you, but it doesn’t change the fact that I wish you had done more, pushed harder to get in touch with me after that night. I’m not sure if or when that feeling will go away.”

  I throw my hands in the air, beyond frustrated and feeling as if there’s always going to be something keeping her from fully trusting me. I know it’s my own fault for being an idiot when I was upset that she went to that party without telling me, but that doesn’t make the pill any easier to swallow. My throat tightens, choking off every rebuttal I can come up with. I want to make her see that she has never been second best in my mind, but I don’t want to be defensive.

  I stare past her toward the end of the gravel path, the night I told her to leave replaying in my head.

  “This is Xavier,” I answer when my cell phone rings. Devon Cardinal never calls me, which is the only reason I answer. I wouldn’t say that we’re friends, but we’re both involved in some of the local kink community events. Even if we were close, I know there are plenty of things happening t
onight that should be taking precedence over calling me.

  “Hey Xavier, it’s Devon. Sorry to bother you, but I have something I think you need to know.” His voice is quiet and I can hear music bumping in the background. My spine stiffens as I sit at the square table in my hotel room. It’s bad enough that I have to spend the entire weekend trying to oversee this hospital transition, but I have a feeling my night is about to get even less pleasant.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” I ask, distracted by something on the television.

  “Um…I just…” I take a deep breath, trying to rein in my annoyance at his inability to form a coherent sentence.

  “Spit it out,” I snap.

  “Sorry, this is just uncomfortable for me,” he apologizes. The man is such a little weasel, I’m not sure how he has managed to weasel his way into any sort of leadership position. “Did you know that Melanie is at the Emporium party tonight?”

  The pounding in my ears is deafening as my blood pressure spikes. I know Devon well enough to know he wouldn’t be calling me if he wasn’t certain, which means Melanie lied to me. She fucking lied!

  “Xavier, say something,” Melanie pleads, snapping me out of the horrible nightmare that I wish was a dream. “I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I feel like you deserve to know what I’m feeling if we’re going to make an honest effort this time around.”

  Time slows so that what I know is only seconds, feels like long minutes before I’m able to compose myself enough to speak. I’m pissed at myself for giving her a reason to feel like a thrift store find and I’m livid with her for throwing our demise back in my face. It was her friend that turned into a rabid pit bull, thwarting every attempt I made to rectify the situation.

  “You have every right to feel that way, but I have to tell you that you’re wrong. The only reason it has taken me as long as it has to talk to you about all of this is because I needed to know that I wasn’t trying to replace Alyssa with you.” She’s probably going to be upset with me for being so blunt, but it’s the truth. No matter how painful it may be that is the least I can give Melanie after everything we’ve been through.

  “It took hearing Jacob being so frank with you this morning to realize that if my five-year-old son can tell you exactly what he wants, then I should be able to as well,” I continue. I shift my body, trying to get comfortable. When I’m too close to Melanie, I feel like I can’t think because her scent is intoxicating. When I move further away from her, I feel the loss of her body near mine. I can’t win. “And then talking to Braydon today, he finally got it through my thick skull that we have something special. Crazy and complicated, but what we share is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. Not twice, once.”

  I reach to wipe away the stray tear tumbling down Melanie’s cheek. With downcast eyes, she offers me a weak smile at the gesture. I wish there was a way to get past this part so I could take away her pain, but I’m becoming an expert at dealing with the pain.

  “Yes, I loved Alyssa. But she had to work hard to get me to see that she was a special woman. I may be a bastard for saying that, but it’s the truth.” I tip her chin up with the tip of my finger, needing to see her eyes as I lay my trump card out. “But you, I knew there was something about you from the moment we met. You were dangerous to me because I didn’t want to fall in love. And when I did, I knew I couldn’t fight it. I think that’s why I worked so hard to put the emphasis of what we shared on the kinkier aspects, because it made it so I didn’t have to admit how scared I was that you would leave me someday.”

  I curl my fingers around the back of her neck, noting her sharp inhale at my touch. The first brush of my lips against hers is tentative. She jerks slightly before relaxing into the embrace, allowing me to capture her lips with a ravenous hunger. My tongue plunges between Melanie’s lips, devouring her as my hands work to remove the elastic from her hair.

  Just as I’m about to shift my body so I can lay her out on the grass and worship her body, I feel two delicate hands pressing into my chest. “Xavier, we can’t do this,” she sighs, her voice trembling with emotion. “We need to finish talking.”

  “I thought we had,” I protest. As far as I’m concerned, the only way to prove my feelings for her is to show her what I’m feeling, so there’s really no point in continuing this cyclical conversation. I can already say with certainty how it’s going to go; she’s going to ask why I didn’t try harder, I’m going to explain myself, she’s going to loop back to being second best, I’ll reassure her, and so on. There’s no need for any of that when there’s a growing bulge behind my zipper begging for me to finally make love to Melanie the way she deserves. Slow and tender, refusing to rush no matter how much both of us want to reach that pinnacle.

  I stroke the bare skin of Melanie’s thighs, slowly working my way higher, beneath the hem of her dress. For a split second, I’m nearly certain she’s on board, until I feel her body jolt away from mine. She’s standing before I can reach for her, pacing back and forth along the waterfront.

  “I can’t let you do this to me again, Xavier,” she pleads. Her arms wrap tightly around her middle protectively. “I can’t allow you to make me buy into the fairy tale, only to have you walk away again. There’s too much on the line this time. You want me to be a mother to Jacob? Fine, this is me doing exactly that. I need to figure out how in the hell I can protect not only myself, but also Jacob. If we screw this up again, he’s going to be the biggest loser in the deal. How can I be sure none of us comes out the other side worse than we are now?”

  She starts to walk down the path toward the parking garage, leaving me no choice but to follow her. How in the hell did tonight go from being this amazing date with the woman I love to such a clusterfuck?

  “Melanie, you can’t run away from me again,” I scold, my booming voice slicing through the night air.

  She whips around to face me and the icy glare I see, even in the darkness, warns me that I’ve gone too far. “You know what, Xavier, fuck you!” she screams, closing the distance between us. When her body is only inches from mine, she pokes her finger sharply into my chest, causing me to wince. “I didn’t run away from you the last time. You sent me away. You left me sitting in our living room, stripped bare both physically and emotionally, after telling me that you couldn’t trust me. And now, you expect me to ride off into the sunset with you like none of that happened.”

  I open my mouth to speak but she presses her fingers to my mouth, keeping me silent.

  “You want me to forget about the past seven years I’ve spent making excuses as to why I won’t go on dates with men who were probably absolutely amazing,” she cries, her stance still defiant. “I couldn’t make myself vulnerable again that way because of you. But now that it’s you pursuing me, I should forget the past, right?”

  I reach for her, needing to pull her body to mine, to allow her to feel the way my heart is racing as she screams at me for everything that I did to her. I don’t try to dispute her because these are her feelings and, while skewed from my memories of what happened, there is nothing she’s saying that doesn’t contain morsels of truth coated in hurt. She feints to the left, causing me to come back with an armful of air.

  “Melanie, can we please talk about this?” I beg, tempted to drop to my knees if that will help my cause. “I know I fucked up. It’s something I do incredibly well the moment I drop my guard, which is why I try to never do that. But when it comes to you, I can’t help it. What you make me feel is too much for me to resist.”

  “Xavier, I need some time to think. I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” she says sadly before turning away from me. I watch her, stunned, as she jogs across the park to where row of taxis lines the curb. It kills me to let her leave me standing in the park but this is how it has to be if we’re going to fix us. I’ve already pushed her too far for one night.

  Chapter 23

  Tears stream down my face as I run to the road. With every step, my brain tells me to speed up while my heart tells me
to turn around and run into Xavier’s arms. I can’t look back or I know I’ll cave, I only hope that he’s not following me.

  When Xavier showed up at my apartment earlier, I was hoping for a much different outcome to the evening; one involving the two of us naked, tangled in the sheets. But when he decided he wanted to talk about what Jacob said this morning and started telling me all about his hopes and dreams for our future, something inside of me snapped. At that point, my emotions got the better of me and I acted without thinking rationally.

  Only after I’m safely inside the silver taxi do I allow myself to look back to the water. Off in the distance, I can see Xavier standing, staring, his shoulders slumped forward in defeat. Once I have a bit of time to calm down, I will text him to make sure he understands I’m not running away from him. I just need some time to think about everything we said to each other tonight. I give the driver Tyler’s address and send him a quick text, warning him that I’m coming over for a slumber party.

  “Hey, girly! Why are you here instead of with Xavier? I thought you were going to dress up and melt the pants right off his tight buns tonight.” As soon as his lips stop moving, he sees the mascara streaks running down my face and pulls me in tight to his chest. “Do I need to go kick that man’s ass? I warned him that I would if he hurt you again.”

  Tyler drags me inside his apartment and I curl into the end of the couch, pulling an afghan over my exposed legs. Being the amazing friend that he is, Tyler pours a generous glass of wine and hands it to me as he mirrors my position on the other end of the couch.

  “So, tell me what happened,” he presses, concern etching his face.

  “Everything was great,” I sigh, because it was. The beginning of the night was beyond any expectations I had for a night out with Xavier. “He took me to Coop’s on the Square and we sat outside to eat. I don’t know what it is about being up there, but it was damn-near magical. Seriously, best date ever. I pointed out to him that we’d never gone on a date before and I think he felt bad about that.”