Unloved, a love story

by Katy Regnery

  But sooner or later, something would pull me back down to earth, and I’d return to my diary because real life, blunt and heavy, had reemerged. We recognize certain days as the happiest, after all, only because we have something else to compare them with. And because they are finite.

  Somehow able to suspend my sadness about our eventual separation, I have lived in the moment this week with Cassidy, and these precious days have been the happiest of my life.

  We have had sex in my bed and in his.

  On the couch and on the coffee table.

  In the outdoor shower under the stars.

  Wrapped up in a blanket on Brynn’s Rock, beside Harrington Pond.

  We’ve loved each other’s bodies well, reaching for one another at any moment, at all moments, wrapped up around one another until it is impossible to tell where he ends and I begin.

  We have slept tangled together every night, our dreams mingling, our breath shared, clasping each other until dawn.

  We’ve gardened and collected eggs and boiled water to wash our clothes.

  Our mothers sang the Beatles to us as children, and we sing the same songs to each other while Cass thrums his guitar, and we watch the orange sparks of a campfire ascend to heaven.

  He’s rocked me to sleep while the cicadas chirp their lullaby.

  And I’ve traced the peaks and valleys of his face while he sleeps peacefully beside me.

  All the while, we’ve ignored the ticking down of the days, letting one run into another, into another. Almost by tacit agreement, we’ve managed not to discuss leaving each other. I wonder, sometimes, if it’s slipped his mind. Maybe he hopes it’s slipped mine too.

  But just as in college, real life always intrudes eventually. My happy days come to a crashing halt on the morning of July 18. The only way I know that it’s July 18 is because my period is like clockwork. When it arrives, I know the date and am suddenly unable to ignore it.

  There are two days until July 20, our agreed-on farewell.

  If I mean to keep my promise to Cassidy, we have only forty-eight hours left together.

  He is asleep in my bed, naked in the half-light of dawn while I sit on the toilet, staring down at the pink streaks on the toilet paper.

  I love him, and I am certain he loves me, though neither of us has said the actual words. I straighten my back. Certainly we will figure out a way to stay together, won’t we? What we have is special—we need to give it a chance. Things like where we live or my job or his dislike of society don’t matter as much as our feelings for each other, do they? They shouldn’t. They can’t.

  And yet, I remember that he only acquiesced to a relationship with me when I made it clear that it would be temporary and devoid of communicated feelings.

  But would he give me up now? After so many perfect hours in each other’s arms? It breaks my heart to think he would, but another question crowds that one out: are you ready to give up the life you had before you knew Cassidy?

  Yes, I think resolutely. I love him. Of course I would give up anything to be with him. I will sell my house. I will pack up my favorite clothes, put Milo in his carrier, and return to Maine. Return to Cass. I can make a life here. I can be happy here as long as I’m with Cassidy. Right?

  Except . . .

  I wipe again, then ball up some toilet paper and slip back into my bedroom, taking a fresh pair of underwear from the bureau and padding the crotch with tissue before pulling them on. I glance at Cassidy, who snores softly, then take a blanket from the foot of the bed and wrap it around my bare shoulders. I slip out the front door and sit in my favorite rocking chair, watching the sun rise over Katahdin and twisting the leather bracelet on my wrist.

  Except what, Brynn?

  Except . . .

  I miss some of my creature comforts, like my cell phone and satellite TV. I miss plentiful electricity that doesn’t depend on sunny days, a generator, or a propane tank, and unlimited hot running water that doesn’t have to be boiled first.

  I miss being able to walk down the street to the market, and putting a load of clothes in a dryer and having them ready in an hour. I miss movies at theaters. I miss the internet. I miss choosing what kind of music I want to listen to and having it at my fingertips. I miss Amazon Prime. I miss takeout.

  I don’t like my thoughts. I don’t want them, but they continue.

  Though Cassidy is a capable paramedic, his mother died out here without medical care. What if something happened to one of us and we couldn’t get to a hospital in time? What if we had a child and the child got sick? Would I ever forgive myself if that child died because we had chosen a lifestyle that imperiled us all?

  I huddle into the chair and pull the blanket tighter because daydreams are lovely, uncomplicated things and crashing back to earth hurts.

  Are you really ready to give up your life?

  It’s a question I ponder as I stir our clothes in a cauldron of boiling water after lunch, while I let them cool, and when I am hanging them on a clothesline one by one.

  It nags at me while I am cranking the toilet later in the day and taking the refuse to the fertilizer pile.

  It pops up again when I peruse Cassidy’s books before dinner, already knowing the collection by heart.

  But when I watch him cutting wood, and talking gently to Annie, and replacing a rotted board on the side of the barn, my fears are trounced. Because I want Cassidy. I know that to my very soul.

  Maybe what I want, I begin to realize, is Cassidy, but not his entire lifestyle.

  Would it be possible, I wonder, for us to compromise? For us to blend our lifestyles to create a new life together? I don’t want Cassidy to give up sustainable living, but if we lived on the grid, we could have reliable electricity to power my laptop, a satellite dish, a hot water heater, and other modern amenities. We could still grow fresh vegetables in a garden of our own, but we could also jump in our car or truck and drive to town if we wanted something.

  Would it be possible to still live a quiet life without being quite so isolated? Without being so hidden? Would it be possible to have a place where our privacy was at a premium, but not quite so far away from society?

  Because that, I think to myself as I wash the vegetables I’ve harvested today, could be a plan for life. Such a plan makes me feel hopeful and determined, like if Cassidy would just agree to consider it, we could call our shot at happily ever after.

  I look up as Cassidy opens the front door and walks into the kitchen, leaning against the wall to watch me.

  “Those carrots are mighty pretty, Miz Cadogan,” he says.

  I grin at him, feeling buoyant, wanting to share my thoughts with him and hoping he likes them as much as I do. “You think so, huh?”

  “Uh-huh,” he says, sauntering over to me.

  Sexually, he is both instinctive and insatiable, and I’ve watched his confidence double every day. He knows how to make me come quick and hard with his fingers and mouth; he knows how to hold himself back while he’s deep inside me, forcing us both to wait for the intense pleasure of release. He’s good at sex—no, for someone who just had sex for the first time a week ago, he’s great at it—and I can’t get enough of him.

  His flannel shirt is unbuttoned, showing his tan, washboard abs underneath, and my internal muscles clench. I want him. I always want him, and we are almost finished with our eighteen condoms. Yet another reason to be closer to town. Certainly he won’t argue with that one.

  He comes up behind me while I dunk a carrot into the second bucket of water. I use the first to scrub the mud off. The second gets them clean. Set up at the small kitchen table, this system has the unfortunate side effect of getting the table and floor soaked, but it’s not a big deal. I’ll mop it up when I’m done, and we’ll have a delicious, fresh salad with dinner tonight.

  I pick up another carrot and submerge it in the first bucket, which is brown and cloudy. When I take it out, it’s free of mud clumps, but still needs to be rinsed. I switch it to the other
bucket, where Cassidy can see my hands in the light tan water, and I rub the carrot suggestively, feeling his eyes on me. He chuckles softly near my ear and reaches for my hips, pulling me back against him, and I can feel his erection bulging through the denim of his jeans. It’s straining against his zipper in a bid to get inside me, and that’s exactly where I want him to be.

  “You’re giving me ideas, angel.”

  “Is that right?” I ask him, grinning as I pluck another dirty carrot from the pile and rub my ass against his cock.

  “Heck, yes.”

  I want to talk to him about everything going on in my head, but first I want him to make love to me so we’re both relaxed and open. I’m wearing another one of the sundresses I found in the trunk, and my period should still be light enough not to matter.

  I reach under the skirt for my underwear and bunch them up in the middle as I pull them down, stepping out of them and throwing them under the table. Then I lean forward and reach back again to flip my skirt up so that my ass is bared to him.

  I hear him hiss through his teeth, and it’s one of those visceral, animalistic sounds that makes the moment even hotter. I hear the button of his jeans pop open, followed by the opening of his zipper. My eyes are closed, but I hear the crinkle of a condom packet being pulled from his back pocket and wait as he rolls it on. When his hands land on my hips, I flatten my forearms on the table, spilling more water from the buckets with my movement. Through the sundress, my breasts are instantly soaked, and Cassidy reaches forward, slipping his hands inside the fabric to cup them.

  His rigid cock strains against the crack in my ass as he flicks my nipples with his fingers, tugging on them, squeezing them, rolling them, until they’re as hard as he is.

  “Please, Cass,” I beg him, looking over my shoulder and spreading my legs a little wider.

  I feel him probing for the right place, and then, without warning, he thrusts forward, burying himself the hilt with one smooth lunge.

  I cry out, half in surprise and half in pleasure. I am so full of his thick, throbbing flesh, I can barely think of anything except what’s going on between us. My fingers grip the table, and I hold on as he withdraws, then pushes back inside. His hands are on my hips, holding me steady, and he pants in ragged puffs that I feel on the back of my neck. Again he leans away, again the slap of skin as he rams his cock inside me, making more water slosh onto the table, cold against my straining nipples.

  One hand slides from my hip to my pussy, and two fingers find my clit. He massages the turgid bud, pumping into me again and again until my body tenses into one glorious, rigid knot, then explodes with pleasure. He thrusts once more, then stills, holding his breath until he growls my name, coming inside the condom, his hips slowing with his release.

  The hand holding my hip slips around my waist, and he rests, lightly, on my back, supporting most of his weight on his feet. His voice is close to my ear when he says between pants, “Brynn. My . . . angel. My . . . greatest . . . treasure.”

  He is still deeply imbedded inside me.

  He lives in my heart, and I know—in the most profound reaches of my soul—that he always will.

  My eyes fill with tears as I rest my cheek on the wet table, and I whisper, in total and complete surrender, “I love you, Cass. I want to stay together.”

  Cassidy

  I freeze as the words I’ve simultaneously wanted and dreaded fall from her lips.

  I love you, Cass.

  I love you, Cass.

  I love you, Cass.

  For one world-stopping moment, I let them sink in. I feel her love for me in the curl of my toes and in the tips of my fingers and with every throbbing beat of my unworthy heart.

  Then I clench my eyes shut and force myself to reject it. Because I love her too—for that reason more than any other—I cannot accept or return it.

  Kissing the back of her neck, I lean away from her, carefully withdrawing from her body and turning away to pull off the condom. I tie a knot in the top and throw it in the garbage. I zip up and button my pants, then turn back around to look at her.

  She is facing me, the front of her dress soaked, her underwear balled up in her hand, her face hopeful and worried at the same time.

  “I can’t take it back,” she blurts out, lifting her chin.

  “Brynn, please . . .”

  “I need to change,” she says quickly, fingering the bracelet she never takes off. “And then we need to talk.”

  I watch her go—the gentle sway of her hips, the soft touch of her bare feet on the floor. She loves me.

  Which means she’s got to go, Cass.

  You know who you are, whose son you are.

  You’ve lived this fantasy for long enough.

  It’s time to say goodbye.

  When she comes back to the kitchen, she’s dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt, her feet still bare, her hair back in a ponytail. She stands on the edge of the carpet between the living room and the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest, looking at me with an expression that’s breaking my damned heart.

  “I know I said I wouldn’t fall in love with you and that we wouldn’t discuss our feelings . . . but I can’t help it. I love you, Cassidy. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. And when I see my future, I see you in it. I want you in it.”

  Me too, sweet Brynn. I see you in my dreams too . . .

  I clench my teeth.

  . . . but this has gone far enough.

  It’s time to wake up and face reality.

  “I’ve been counting down the days,” I lie, resting my palm on the back of a kitchen chair, unable to look her in the eyes. “In two days I drive you back to civilization or we hike out of here. But either way, it needs to end, Brynn. We agreed that—”

  “No!” she yells, shaking her head as she advances on me, stepping behind the other chair at the table. “No! It’s not over. You can’t mean that, Cass!”

  “I do mean it,” I say, forcing these words to be said because the worst possible fate for my Brynn would be to saddle her with me. “We can’t be together. I made that clear from the very—”

  “Why not?” she cries, slapping her palm on the table. “Maybe you don’t love me yet, but you care for me! I know you do! Don’t lie to me and tell me you don’t, because I know you do, Cassidy!”

  “I can’t love you!” I yell back at her, running my hands through my hair. “I just . . . I can’t. I can’t be with . . . with anyone.”

  She steps around the chair, closer to me.

  “Why not? What happened to you? Why did you move out here? Why did your mother die without medical treatment? Where are the pictures of your family? Why do you change the subject whenever I ask about your father? Why can’t you love me?”

  She screams this deluge of questions at me, and they make me tremble because the answers add up to a truth I must conceal. Those answers remind me, fully and thoroughly, of every reason why I can’t have Brynn Cadogan. She thinks that if we share our pasts and sort through these questions, we might find answers that will help us. But she’s wrong. Answering these questions won’t help her figure us out. They’ll only confirm what I already know—that there is absolutely no future for us.

  I stare at her, my jaw clenched and my eyes burning.

  She takes another step toward me, within reaching distance now, and gentles her voice when she speaks.

  “I don’t care what happened,” she sobs, with tears running down her face. “The past doesn’t matter. Only now. I want to be with you. I love you . . . just the way you are.” She takes a ragged breath, reaching for my arm, but I step back instinctively, out of her reach. Her touch, which I crave, could shatter my resolve, and I can’t allow that to happen. “P-please, C-Cass.”

  “No.”

  My tears are getting the better of me, so I look away from her, dropping my gaze to the floor in misery.

  “Cassidy,” she whimpers.

  “It’s . . . just . . . not . . . possible,” I grind out
softly.

  “Please,” she begs. “P-please listen. We could . . . we could get a little p-place closer to town, b-b-but with lots of . . . of privacy. We could have a . . . a l-life together. R-read and m-make love. We c-could have a c-couple of kids and . . .”

  A couple of kids . . . a couple of kids . . . a couple of kids . . .

  The words clang around in my head like bullets fired into a metal barrel, and I can’t breathe, because having children would be wrong, would be evil, would be breaking old promises that are still essential and must be kept.

  Everything in me rebels against what she’s saying, and a swirling storm of panic whirls up. My fists ball at my sides in protest, and she’s still standing in front of me, talking about little places and privacy and children—everything I want so goddamned desperately and can never have. The world is spinning too fast and there isn’t enough time and I hate who I am and I hear a roar of anguish rise from inside me.

  “Noooooo!” I bellow at the top of my lungs, advancing on her like a maniac as she stops talking. “Never! Ever! Ever!” I raise my shaking fist and hold it in front of me. “SHUT UP!”

  She gasps, her eyes widening in fear, and lunges backward, away from me, her feet stepping in a puddle on the floor. I watch as she tries, almost in slow motion, to regain her balance, but she can’t. She slips and falls, crying out as her wrist slams to the floor first, breaking her fall.

  She screams, then whimpers, curling into herself on the floor and cradling her wrist against her chest as she sobs.

  I am standing over her.

  I am standing over my beloved, broken girl with fisted hands while she cries.

  And suddenly time and space flex and loosen, and I feel the spirit of my father pass through me. And in that split second, I know that there were many, many times that he stood over a woman he had just hurt, watching her cry.

  Just like me.

  Just like him.