Love at First Fight

by Carrie Aarons

  The kiss is scorching, branding me from the inside out, and we’re fully making out in my childhood home hallway within three seconds. His large, steel erection presses into my belly, and I’m clinging to his neck for dear life. A hurricane swirls low in my core, and I’m needy within the minute.

  “Jeanie?” The screen door slams and my dad’s footsteps echo through the front hall. “Have you seen my tire pressure gauge?”

  Smith sets me down, my back pressing against the wall, as we suck in lungfuls of breaths, our eyes frantically trying to focus on each other because we’re so close.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whisper.

  “I love you,” he answers.

  Right there, in the small hallway of my childhood house, standing on the red shag carpeting, Smith Redfield told me he loves me. A sensation runs through my chest, smooth and languid as a river. It’s one of absolute knowing, that this is the man I’ve waited for to say those words. Others have said them before, but it’s like the universe clicked into perfect view when Smith said them.

  I grab ahold of his hand, heading straight for my parent’s front door.

  “Where are you off to?” Dad asks, but I brush right past him.

  Not only am I furious at my parents for disrespecting Smith, but I’m mad at them for not trusting my judgment. They raised me better than that, and their prejudice against others for wanting a better life for themselves or living a different lifestyle was honestly on my last nerve.

  I’ll call later and apologize for storming out, but right now, I want to get back to my little world with Smith.

  He just told me he’s in love with me, and I need not only the right moment to tell him, but the right actions to show him.

  Because I knew before this day, but now I’m sure.

  I am in love with this man, and it’s deeper and more intense than any love I’ve ever experienced, or any I’ll experience from this point forward.

  33

  Smith

  August twentieth is a day I’ve been dreading since January.

  Normally, I’d be sharing this day with Stephanie, but obviously that wasn’t happening this year. For thirty years, we’d shared a birthday, joined as a pair since birth, and now that tradition would be no more.

  As if this day isn’t going to be shitty enough, it’s also the second to last weekend in the Hampton’s house. Next weekend, we’ll have to pack this place up and head back to our permanent dwellings in the city to wait for the winter months to close in. The weight of it all seems to be slowly crushing me, like an anvil in slow motion.

  I don’t want this summer to end. While this year has been hell, these last three months have been a saving grace. They’ve brought me a love I thought I’d never be able to have, and being in such a beautiful place while it blossomed didn’t hurt either. Now Molly and I would be thrust back into the chaos of Manhattan, of full-time jobs, and the pressure of the East Coast grind. I wasn’t worried about how our relationship would thrive, but it would mean seeing less of each other, which already had me wanting to climb the walls.

  Not that I was extremely pleased with her right now.

  “Come dance with me.” Molly tugs on my hand, her blond ponytail slicked back off her face.

  I can see every thick eyelash accentuated by her makeup, and her body is a wet dream encased in that blush pink silk dress.

  But I can’t seem to bring myself to feel anything. Arousal, bittersweet contentment, happiness. Actually, that’s not true. I feel something. I feel furious.

  Molly has been pushing and pushing all night, whether she realizes it or not. The pushing started about a week ago, when she started asking me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I could barely stomach to talk about the subject and told her that I didn’t even want to celebrate. She’d tilt her head in sympathy and nod her understanding, but then say something like, “but we should make good, new memories on this day.”

  Did she not understand? I wanted to make no kind of memories on this day. I wanted to down five fingers of whiskey and go to sleep.

  Instead, here I am at a crowded, loud lounge after suffering through a dinner at what is usually my favorite restaurant in the Hamptons. I couldn’t even taste the food, that’s how annoyed I was.

  “No, I don’t want to dance.” I all but smack her hand away, picking up my drink and downing the burning, amber liquid instead.

  At least I could get drunk, though the more I consume, the more rage builds up in my veins.

  “Smith.” She looks both shocked and hurt that I would so blatantly rebuff her.

  What does she expect? I’ve told her how hard Stephanie’s death has been on me. I told her about my bad days, even let her in on one when we went to the cliffs above the beach together.

  I also told her I love her. I heard her defend me, and my heart had nearly exploded. She stood up to her own mother to save my name, to prove that I am a good man. It was what I was hoping she’d see in me all along, and I couldn’t hold back the words any longer.

  But Molly hasn’t given them to me, yet. I know it has only been two months since we started dating, but I know that she knows this is more than anything she felt with previous men. Which pisses me off even more. Here I am, sitting at a bar that I didn’t want to be at, on a day I didn’t want to celebrate, with a woman I thought knew me better than anyone, but apparently, she doesn’t.

  And she couldn’t even say I love you back.

  “You know what? I’m fucking out of here.” I stand, knocking over the chair as I do, and don’t bother to pick it up.

  I’m belligerent and ticked off, and I know I’m blowing up, but I’m not unjustified. She claims to really care about me, but will she ever care about me the way I do about her? Fuck, I pined silently after this woman for a year.

  Stomping out of the bar, I make my way to the parking lot, anger buzzing in my blood like poison.

  “Hey, wait!” Molly is coming after me, something I expected.

  I swing around, my fuse blowing at the exact worst time. “No, I won’t wait. I won’t sit through another goddamn minute of your ‘new fucking memories’ because I don’t want to make them! You ever stop to consider how I might feel today, or were you just concerned with being the perfect little girlfriend?”

  Molly rears back, pain flashing in her hazel eyes. “Smith, I didn’t … oh gosh, I’m so sorry. I should have known. I thought maybe if I just kept …”

  “Yeah, you sure thought that, huh?” I didn’t even let her get her thought out, but rational argument is out the window for me. “But you didn’t actually listen to me. You’ve never actually listened to me. Or seen me, apparently.”

  I’m practically shouting at her, but everyone here is drunk. Or maybe I’m too drunk and grieving to care if all these other people hear our fight.

  “That’s not true at all. This summer has been the best time of my life, all because of you. I just wanted to show you that tonight.” Her cheeks are turning a shade of pink that means she’s upset.

  “By dragging me out to every place I didn’t want to be today? I thought you knew me better than that. But then, I forget you spent the first year of us knowing each other in my best friend’s bed. Maybe you’re confusing me with him.”

  It’s a low blow, and it’s pathetic that it feels so good.

  Hurt and fury mix in her expression, and I hear the unshed tears in her throat when she responds to me. “Smith, how dare you say—”

  But I cut her off. “I was in love with you from the very first fucking time I saw you! Justin tapped me on the shoulder the night he first brought you to meet us, I turned around, and there you fucking were. Standing there as if I hadn’t waited my entire life up until that moment searching for you, and I didn’t even know I’d been searching. And you looked at me with … nothing. Nothing but a polite smile as you held my best friend’s hand, and then went home to fuck him the same night every star in the universe aligned for me. I waited, I waited for what felt like an
eternity, Molly, for you to notice me. And then, by some miracle, you did. Except you still don’t feel the way I do about you. I told you I’m in love with you, and you couldn’t even say it back!”

  “That’s not fair. You shouldn’t want me to say it back just because you expressed your feelings to me. I need my own time to do that.” Molly’s voice breaks, and I can hear the pleading in it.

  “So, you don’t love me?” I’m not sure how I started picking on this bone, but I’m here.

  “You’re not really mad over this. Don’t make this something it’s not. I understand you’re upset about your birthday, and I’m sorry I was insensitive of that. But don’t ruin this,” Molly warns, her voice trembling.

  “We were doomed from the start.” The finality in my voice has me wanting to punch myself, but I can’t stop this ball of hate and self-destruction that I have rolling.

  “Don’t say that,” Molly whispers, wringing her hands.

  “Wasn’t it easier hating me? Wasn’t it easier pretending I was an asshole? Because then you wouldn’t have to pretend to try to love me when I confessed those feelings to you?”

  This is the crux of my issue, the thing that will always stand between us. I was a jerk to her for months, and she was okay with it because she was with him. She was with him.

  “None of this is true, Smith.” A tear slips down her cheek, and now I’ve made her cry.

  This day couldn’t get any worse. And not only am I heartbroken and pissed off, but now I’m exhausted, too.

  I walk off, not bothering to add any more fuel to the dumpster fire I started. Maybe I’ll call a cab. Maybe I’ll just walk all the way home.

  It’ll be punishment, and the perfect ending to this fucking awful day.

  34

  Molly

  Waking up this morning, the pounding in my head is worse than any hangover I’ve ever had.

  I barely slept, drifting into a fitful, restless sleep sometime in the night because my body must have figured it needed to do it for my heart’s sake. After Smith had chewed me out, I’d called my own cab and came back to the summer house with Marta and Ray, who decided not to let me leave on my own. Hiding in my room felt like the safe bet, waiting for the inevitable storm to pick back up when Smith returned to the house.

  But he never came. I curled against my pillows, crying like a dramatic soap opera heroine, for what felt like hours. It had been a bad choice to celebrate his birthday, and I’d been the one to push him into it. I thought that if we made happy memories, if I could put on my best cheerful face, that it would make him forget that his sister wasn’t here.

  Of course, he wasn’t going to forget that. It was his first birthday after his twin had all but been murdered, and I was a naive fool to think it would go any other way.

  While I waited for Smith to get home, I cried for him. I cried for the pain he must be in today, for the broken man who confessed all of those deep, buried feelings for me. He’d watched me fall in love with another man for more than a year. And not just any other man, but his best friend. And he stood by and respected that. It spoke volumes about who he is as a person.

  But I also cried for me. For the ugly words that were flung at me, for the messed-up situation I’d gotten myself into. I hate that I hadn’t seen what was right in front of me, that I’d been so wrapped up in the pomp and circumstance of Justin that I hadn’t seen the better man waiting for me.

  I cried because I wanted to tell Smith I am in love with him, but was scared that it was too fast after my breakup with Justin. I should have just said the words, they’re in my heart so clearly, but I hadn’t. And I wasn’t going to say them as an answer to some ultimatum.

  When he finally got home, it was close to two a.m. I was awake, but exhausted from crying, and he never even approached my door. I heard him move swiftly past it, heard his lock click, and then the house fell silent. He wasn’t coming.

  I don’t know where we go from here. I was in the wrong for wanting to celebrate; it was insensitive and I needed to apologize for it. I knew Smith better than that, and should have shown him my support yesterday.

  But the accusations and insults he hurled yesterday were ones that couldn’t be taken back. I don’t even know if we’re together anymore, with the way we left things. That sounds dramatic, but there was this clear hurdle he couldn’t get over when it came to me and my past with his best friend, and I’m not sure I can ever repair that mental block for him.

  My fingers twist the laces of my sneakers as the sadness sits heavy on my heart and shoulders. Heather came to my room this morning and convinced me to get out, that a bit of fresh air and exercise would be therapeutic. It was better than sitting in my bedroom and crying, so I agreed. Plus, I couldn’t sit in here when I knew Smith was occupying another space in the house, not wanting to or not able to come apologize.

  I meet Heather and Jacinda out on the driveway after grabbing a granola bar for breakfast. I barely taste it as I wash it down with a gulp of water, but I know subconsciously that I need fuel for this ride.

  We are about to depart, our feet practically on the pedals of the bikes ready to start, when a cab pulls down the driveway.

  “Who is that?” Heather wonders aloud, because everyone else is home.

  And even though he hasn’t come to see or talk to me, I know Smith is in his room. I heard him shuffling around in there as I tiptoed down the stairs. Because believe me, if this was Smith getting out of a cab after a night sleeping out somewhere, I would be devastated.

  But no. My heart drops, shattering on the driveway, for a completely different reason.

  “Just the girls I wanted to see!”

  Closing the door of the cab, with his arms stretched wide in that cocky, welcoming gesture he always liked to assume, is my ex-boyfriend. Justin is standing on the driveway of our summer house, in a three-piece suit and shining cognac loafers.

  His hair is gelled back to within an inch of its life, I can see the sparkle of the Rolex he constantly brags about on his wrist, and he’s sporting a tan that definitely looks sprayed on. Now that I’m looking at him, his blond hair gleaming with the highlights he puts in it, and his beakish nose too angled and snobby, I have no idea what I ever saw in the guy.

  Smith might be a polished businessman, but he still had that down-to-earth nature about him. He looked just as at-home in sweatpants as he did in a suit, and wore them instead of the clothing wearing him.

  Observing Justin now, I find that there is no pull of attraction. My heart doesn’t flip-flop when I see him, I don’t have any desire to run back to him. There is no angst in my soul remembering what we had.

  “What are you doing here?” The tone of Jacinda’s voice is unreadable, but she does dismount her bike and walk over to him, giving him a hug.

  “I had to close a deal in New York for my new company, and I figured that I’d come out here and surprise you guys! Hey, Heather.” He waves to my best friend as he hugs Jacinda close.

  Heather is not anywhere close to amused. “Um, why did you think it would be a good idea to come out here? None of your friends, or you girlfriend for that matter, have heard from you since you abandoned them four months ago.”

  Well, she certainly wasn’t going for subtlety.

  But Justin just laughs it off, his hearty, rich chuckle sounding way more fake than I remember it being. “Wow, wasn’t the welcome I was expecting but guess it was the one I deserve.”

  He walks closer, and my heart does nothing. This is not the man it belongs to now. The one who has it is upstairs, our relationship in the balance, and I can’t be anything but annoyed at the sight of my ex.

  “Mol, you look beautiful.” Justin’s green eyes take me in, and he lowers his voice. “I owe you a big apology, and I’m hoping we can talk while I’m here.”

  He’s offering something I’ve waited months for, and now that he’s standing in front of me, I realize I no longer need the closure. What he did was messed up, it broke my heart for a
time, and I used to think I had so many questions. But now that Justin was able to give them, I realize I don’t really care what the explanations are. They’ll most likely be lies anyway, and I no longer need his words to put that chapter of my life to bed.

  What I do need is the open road and some quiet time for my brain to process what happened last night, and how I can move forward.

  “Maybe later. We’re going for a bike ride.” I put my feet on the pedals and nod to my friends.

  I don’t miss the way my ex-boyfriend’s jaw drops a little when I so coolly reject his olive branch. He’s not used to that, at all, and his ego will never let him admit that I’m right in doing so.

  But I will say it feels satisfyingly good to stand up for myself, even if this wasn’t the man I wanted attention from.

  35

  Smith

  Justin is sitting in the living room of our rental house, the one he procured, shooting the shit with our other friends.

  I’m upstairs currently pacing my bedroom floor, wondering what the hell I do now or how I should act. On the one hand, I’m glad my best friend is back for a visit. In a peripheral way, I’ve missed him, because he’s been around for most of my life. On another level, I’m absolutely pissed he ghosted us for months without warning, and I’m angry that he left at such a vulnerable time for me right after I lost Stephanie.

  And then on a completely other level, I don’t want him here at all. He’s Molly’s ex-boyfriend, which by default means I don’t want him anywhere in the picture. If he was any other random ex, I’d be annoyed to be in his presence. But I’m even more so now, because I had the agony of watching their entire relationship unfold. I’ve seen him kiss her, heard about their fights from him, and heard him treat her terribly even when they were together.