Kiss Me Now

by Wylder, Penny

  He breaks off. Probably because I’m already shaking my head and taking slow steps backward toward the door. “Lark, I just… I can’t. Okay? I’m working on myself too right now.” Because he’s right, I do have that wall up. Even if I get the feeling he’s not the guy I can let the wall down around—because I’m pretty sure he would wreck me if I did… I know I need to eventually.

  “I need to concentrate on me just now,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I expect him to call out. To chase me again, the way he’s been doing this whole time. But when I turn around and start toward his apartment door, he lets me go for once. Still, I can’t help stealing one last backward glance when I reach the elevator, just before the doors close behind me.

  Lark’s still standing right where I left him in the middle of his bedroom, shirt in one hand. Motionless, as if he’s just been stunned out of motion.

  My heart wrenches. But then the elevator doors shut, blocking him from view, and I sink back out of the clouds, down to the street level again.

  15

  Cassidy

  I lie on my back and count the lightbulbs that stretch along the ceiling of this office. I already know there are twenty inset lights, each one dim, but together they provide enough glow to write by. At least, so I assume, based on the scribbling sound coming from the chair adjacent to my couch.

  “Tell me more about Norman,” my therapist says, her voice low and unassuming.

  My throat tightens anyway. “Do I have to?” I murmur, still squinting at those lights.

  “You don’t have to do anything, Cassidy,” she replies, although not before I hear her scribbling another quick note. “But if your goal, as you just told me, is to learn how to open up to possible relationships in the future, and you believe that this is what’s blocking you, then I think it would be helpful to practice talking about it with someone neutral, don’t you?”

  I sigh. Mostly because what she’s saying makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately. “It… we dated for two years. He was the one who pursued me, hard. I wasn’t sure, but…” I shake my head. “He had this way of convincing me to do things. Things I didn’t always want to.”

  “Are we talking sexually?” my therapist replies, her voice still careful and even.

  “Sometimes.” I shift against the couch. The lights, which earlier seemed so dim, now seem way too bright. “Not as much that though.” I lever myself upright to look at her. “Just, everything was all about what he wanted. All the time. He wanted me to dress up, so I dressed up. He wanted to go to a show, so we went to the show. He wanted to go out to dinner, so we went… He never asked what I wanted. And the few times I tried to ask, he’d flip out at me.” I bite my lower lip, remembering. “He used to tell me that…”

  When my voice falters, my therapist leans forward, crossing her arms on her lap. “It’s all right, Cassidy,” she says. I don’t realize I’m crying until she passes me a tissue.

  After she does, I just sit there holding it for a minute, confused. Like I’ve come unmoored for a minute. “He told me that since he made all our money, it was his decision.” I breathe in slowly through my nose, and out through my mouth, the way I’ve been practicing over the last couple of weeks, coming here. “And if I argued or anything, he’d accuse me of trying to use him for his money, being a gold-digger. But I wasn’t, I swear I didn’t even care, sometimes I used to wish we’d lose all the money just so he’d act normal.”

  “You understand that that is manipulative behavior, don’t you, Cassidy?” my therapist murmurs.

  I bob my head. “But I just felt…” I tug at the tissue so hard it comes apart between my fingers. So I ball it into my fist instead. “I felt like I’d never find anyone better, so.” I clear my throat, scowling. “He knew it, too. He played on my fears. He used to tell me I was ugly, annoying, shrill. He said no other guy would put up with my bullshit, and I believed him.”

  “It sounds to me like you’re describing negging,” my therapist replies. “That’s a tactic used by manipulative people, to do exactly what you’re saying. To keep your self-esteem low enough that you’d stay with him. But it’s important to unearth those beliefs and confront them now, so you can unlearn them.”

  I find myself nodding, my throat still tight, my eyes stinging with unshed tears.

  My therapist sighs and shifts in her seat. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today, Cassidy. But I’m very proud of all the progress you’re making. This isn’t easy. Doing this work. I hope you know that and can feel proud of yourself for confronting all this, too.”

  “Sure,” I breathe, my voice barely there. I’m barely even listening anymore. I’m lost in memories. Of nights out with Norman, how he’d parade me around on his arm, talking over me, introducing me to his friends but never allowing me to speak or have an opinion of my own.

  I was just a trophy for him. A trophy he called ugly and overweight and shrill, in order to keep me trapped. It took so long for me to free myself from him. And to be honest, I forgot how bad it was, after. I was just so relieved to be on my own again, I didn’t stop to think about how badly I’d been manipulated, how much he’d lied to me.

  I should be over this, I keep thinking, and I am. I’m over him, anyway. But the behaviors I learned—the way I hide myself, the way I defer to everyone else in the room… that’s taking longer to forget.

  Across from me, my therapist is smiling, reaching out to offer a hand. I force myself to stand up and shake it, plastering on a smile.

  “Thanks,” I tell her. And I try to believe what she’s telling me. I try to believe that eventually, this will get easier.

  At the very least, I refuse to wind up like Lark. I’m going to learn how to talk about my past. How to open up with the right guy. The right guy, who won’t be him.

  Who won’t touch me the way he does. Who won’t keep me up all night, tossing and turning, unable to get images of him out of my head. The feeling of his body pressing me into a mattress, the sensation of his tongue running down the curve of my neck, his hands tracing the arches of my hips…

  Fuck.

  I force him out of my mind, as usual, and say goodbye to my therapist, before I edge out into the hallway. The lights out here are even brighter, and I squint against them, feeling the same way I usually do after a session—emotionally drained, but a little bit lighter, too.

  I try to hold onto that last part as I stride through the hallways of the building and wait for the elevator down to the ground floor. But as I’m stepping out of the building into the parking lot, taking a deep breath of the muggy, pre-storm air, the sky overhead dark despite the fact that it’s only the middle of the day—my calm is immediately shattered.

  A familiar figure is striding toward the building just as I’m exiting. My stomach clenches, any sense of relaxation or unburdening I felt inside the therapist’s office flying out the window.

  “Cassidy!” Sheryl’s eyes light up the moment she spots me, and she changes direction to hurry toward me.

  That only makes my guilt churn worse in my gut. “Hey, Sheryl,” I reply, and hope she doesn’t notice the tightness in my voice.

  “Long time, no see. I’ve been meaning to call to tell you, you did a great job on that TV interview last week.” She grins, bright and open and apparently oblivious to the fact that immediately after that interview, I did exactly what I promised myself—and what I promised her—I wouldn’t do. I hooked up with her ex-husband.

  Or current husband?

  I don’t even know, and that only makes it worse. I grimace. “Um, yeah. Thanks.”

  “I didn’t realize you go here too.” Sheryl jerks a thumb toward the building, and my whole face turns bright red. That, at least, she notices. She waves a hand. “Oh, I didn’t mean…” She steps closer and glances around the parking lot. “You know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, Cassidy. Going to therapy is great, a really important step. Everyone should have a therapist, honestly. It just helps to have someone t
o unload on about it all, you know?” She smiles again, and I can’t help but smile back, despite my riot of nerves.

  “It is really helpful, yeah,” I agree.

  “I know, it’s done wonders for me and Lark,” she says, and there goes the feeling of guilt again, worse than ever. “I swear, I don’t even know where I’d be without my counselor to talk to.”

  Her counselor? Or theirs? I can’t exactly ask for clarification right now, so I just keep smiling like an idiot.

  “Anyway.” Sheryl reaches out to catch my shoulder and gives it a tight squeeze. The whole time, her smile remains friendly, almost maternal. “Like I said, you did a fantastic job in that interview. I’ve been talking to Lark about how we should get you on more shows like that. The numbers really jumped sky-high afterward, you know. We had so many people searching for the brand, and so many orders pouring in too.”

  I know. I’ve kept close track of the numbers myself. It’s been the only thing distracting me from the mess I’ve turned my romantic life into. At least I still have work to fall back on, and work that’s blooming like it never has before. “I’d love that,” I tell her, meaning it, and her smile widens even more.

  “Great.” She glances past me at the building, and surreptitiously checks her watch—a watch encrusted with diamonds, that looked like silver to me at first, but which I now guess must be platinum. “I’ve got to run right now, but I’ll have Lark get in touch with you about what media outlets you think would be ideal to have our publicist pitch you to, all right?”

  “Oh, I—” I start to say that I’d rather talk to her about it than Lark, but she cuts me off.

  “Perfect!” Then, before I can stop her, she grabs my shoulder once more and squeezes tightly, before she breezes past me toward the building. “Have a great one, Cass,” she calls over her shoulder.

  Long after the door swing shut behind her, swallowing her up, I continue to stand there frozen in the middle of the parking lot, unable to quell the guilt surging in my gut, trickling through my body like slow poison. Lark told you they’re over, I remind myself. But it doesn’t help.

  After everything I’ve been doing to work on my own past here at therapy, I can’t help but relate to the situation Sheryl must be in. She is clearly struggling to improve herself too, despite an ex who she hasn’t gotten over yet. An ex who refuses to even talk about what they went through.

  It’s a little too familiar for comfort.

  16

  Cassidy

  The next few days are a blur of work. I get to bury myself in my favorite activity—experimenting in the studio on new color palettes, new formulas to use to add to the growing line of beauty supplies we’ve already launched. Thanks to all the orders and income flooding in, we have more than enough capital to start to reinvest in more products and additional spinoffs of our first line.

  Whenever I talk to Becky, she’s quick to warn me about expanding too soon, stretching myself too thin, trying to accomplish everything at once. She’s also constantly trying to convince me to come out with her again, go for another club night. “How will you get over this guy until you get under the next?” is her usual motto.

  While I see her point, I just can’t bring myself to do it. Any time I think about it, something always stops me. I tell myself it’s just work.

  But really, it’s memories of his hands tracing the lines of my curves, his lips on mine, the white hot look in his eyes whenever he drinks me in, like I’m the only one for him.

  So the whole clubbing to get over him thing is out. Which leaves working as the only thing that keeps my mind off of Lark. I throw myself into it with abandon, all too happy to be able to force him to the back of my mind, if only for a little while in the heat of the workday, while I’m buried in projects.

  After work, I have to contend with a deluge of messages from him, because Sheryl, true to her word, assigned Lark the job of narrowing down which of the many media outlets we’d like to pitch ourselves to next, where another appearance from me to talk about our makeup would have the biggest impact on sales and word-of-mouth outreach.

  I really think you’d do an amazing job presenting on this show, he’ll text, and I’ll ignore his message an hour before I reply with something curt like If you think so. I’m not unprofessional enough to ignore him completely, but I don’t want him reading anything more than a professional business interaction into my replies.

  I don’t want him to know how much I’m still thinking about him. Dreaming about him, every night, my traitorous body working up images of him wrapping those thick, strong arms around me. Holding me close.

  It doesn’t miss my attention, either, how hard he’s working for my career, in spite of the fact that I’ve basically told him to screw off as many ways as I can count. I have to admit, as much as I believe he’s a bad idea for me personally, he’s there for me when it comes to work.

  I can’t count the number of sellers who have popped up with bulk orders, mentioning that Lark hand-sold the products to them in passing. Or the number of requests I’ve gotten for smaller, blog-style interviews or features with Insta influencers, all because Lark took the time to write them personal messages, gushing about how hard I work, how much I believe in my products, and how long I’ve dreamt of getting these out into the world.

  Every time one of those Insta influencers forwards a screenshot of Lark’s message to me, or says they’ve got to get their hands on the product “if it’s anywhere near as good as Lark claims,” my heartbeat picks up a little, and the nauseous tension that’s been in my stomach all week eases just a bit.

  He’s the perfect business partner, I’ll grant him that.

  Then I remind myself that that’s probably what Sheryl thought, too, when they first decided to start their investment company together, and I kick myself mentally for even going there.

  But my anxious thought spiral gets harder than ever to avoid one night when I’m doing some much-needed cleaning up around my apartment. After all the work and the hecticness of the past month, things have gotten a bit out of control on the home front.

  I decide to take a whole Saturday off and dedicate it solely to tidying up, getting my home back into working order. I’m digging around under my bed, fishing out tossed-aside pieces of clothing that I didn’t even realize got kicked under there, when my fingers graze against an unfamiliar piece of fabric.

  I draw it out from beneath the bed, and my breath hitches. It’s a silk tie, expensive-looking, a little wrinkled from lying under my bed all this time. But I recognize it instantly.

  It’s the one Lark was wearing, the second time we hooked up. Holding it in my hands brings the memories flooding back. The way we’d sat side by side on my old, ratty couch, so careful not to touch. Me, because I was afraid he’d set me on fire. Him, because he was clearly trying to respect my boundaries, despite the flirty smile he wore whenever he caught me stealing glances at him.

  I recall the slow slide, as my stupid ancient couch cushions gave way, like the universe trying to force us toward one another. I remember my thigh brushing his, then my leg, from knee all the way to hip. I remember how I tried to ignore the heat burning through me from the inside out.

  How I reached for the makeup palette he was holding, only to fumble it, have it spill next to us on the sofa as he drew me into his lap, his hands warm and strong around my waist, and already familiar, even though it was only the second time we’d ever let ourselves touch.

  The way his lips tasted that day, his scent enveloping me…

  And the way I felt the next day when the replacement sofa arrived. My stomach both sinking and sailing at once, because no guy had ever done something like that for me. He took care of me, even before he knew me at all. Even before he knew how hard I’d push him away.

  Without realizing it, I tighten my grip on the tie, savoring the smooth silken feeling between my fingers, tears stinging at the backs of my eyes.

  Then I remember something from therapy. In our l
ast session, we talked about how things ended with Norman. I didn’t break up with him, something I’ll forever be embarrassed by. I just wasn’t strong enough. Even though I wanted to, anytime I tried, he’d lure me back in with promises that he’d change, he’d be better this time.

  That, or he’d flat out stop me from leaving by barring the door, trapping me in with him.

  But one day, he told me he’d met someone else. She was younger than me, prettier. I didn’t care. I was so relieved. Now, I regret not warning her. Or at the very least, being the one to walk out the door on my own two feet.

  My therapist tells me it’s not my fault. That this is a normal reaction to what I went through.

  But afterward, I hoarded pieces of my relationship with him. It was like, even though I knew things had been terrible with Norman, I wasn’t ready to let go, because letting go meant I was alone again. And that terrified me.

  She told me it was important to stop clinging to the past. To learn how to move on and let go—of people, of possessions, of memories… And of objects, too.

  I look down at the tie clenched in my fist.

  She’s right. I need to work on letting go. On being able to release things that aren’t serving me anymore.

  Like this tie. Like the man who wore it.

  I look for my phone, buried under a pile of cleaning material, since I’m still only halfway through the apartment. As I should have expected, there’s a new unread message from Lark already waiting. Photoshoot tomorrow, he says, with your favorite photographer, so I know you’ll enjoy it. Say you’ll come?

  I stare at the message, a knot of confusion in my stomach. Actually, I type out, looking from my phone to the tie and back again. Are you free tonight? I was hoping to talk.

  Of course. I’m just at mine, working on some proposals. Come by anytime.

  The speed with which he replies, and the eagerness in his answer, sends off guilty alarm bells throughout me. He might think this means I’m having second thoughts about what I told him last time.