by Lauren Wood
I wanted to scream at him, to go running home. But my body betrayed me, as it often did around him, right along with all my good judgment. Our chests heaved with adrenaline, and it was so much like the heat that emanated between us in the climax of desire and want and need. I wished I could take it all back. That we could have finished dinner and come back to my place under a totally different set of circumstances, the one we had originally planned.
I felt myself swaying into him, desperate to turn back time...to undo everything that had gone wrong and set us back on the track we were on earlier in the evening. My anger turned to lust and our mouths crashed together. Of course he did nothing to stop it. He probably thought he could use sex as a bandaid. I needed relief from the hurt so badly, I did nothing to stop it.
“I’m so sorry, Abby,” he whispered against my lips.
He swooped me up into his arms and carried me to the bedroom, tossing me down onto the bed. He crashed over me with a force that was determined to make it all right again. He furiously kissed across every inch of my skin, pulling away my clothes as he went. Then he turned to his own. Before I knew it, I was enveloped in the comforting warmth of his naked body moving over mine.
His tongue and lips danced down in between my legs, sucking me in skillfully. I surrendered to him, basking in the pleasure that could keep the bad feelings at bay a little longer.
Joshua made me cum over and over again before sliding inside of me—another wave of relief. I clawed into his skin and bit his lips, taking out all of my anger on him in other ways. Our hands locked together as we both climaxed and melted into one another.
It all happened too fast, and as soon as it was over, reality started to sink in again. Even though we probably had sex for over an hour, it never would have been long enough to outrun the inevitable.
I laid there awake in his dark bedroom, fiddling with the necklace he gave me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I finally yanked it off my neck and let it slip from my fingers onto the nightstand. Joshua hadn’t said or done anything to make any of this better… and I was terrified that nothing he said ever would.
15
Joshua
It was obvious that the morning smiles I had grown used to were long gone by the time Abby and I woke up. At some point in the night, she had retreated to the far opposite side of the bed. I reached out to her, but she quickly threw back the covers and jumped up. I waited for her to look at me as she rushed to throw on her clothes, but she offered me nothing.
Flashes of the night plagued me. The look on her face when she came back to the table, and how that look only worsened from there. I told myself the fact she stayed the night with me at all had to be some sign of hope.
“Come back to bed,” I asked. “I’m not done making this up to you.”
“I have to work,” she groaned coldly.
“So do I, but we can spare a half hour or so… Can’t we?”
She stormed out the room and slammed the bathroom door without saying a word. I collapsed back down to the pillow and wished I had a magic button to push. I thought back to that night we met, before I had made my big mistake, and desperately wished there was some way to go back. To do it all over again… the right way this time.
The thought inspired me to leap up and meet her at the door as she emerged.
“I have an idea,” I told her, ignoring her obvious disinterest in anything I had to say. “Why don’t we take the day off?”
“I have a test and I can’t take any time off work,” she huffed.
“Come on, Abby. We need a day to sort things out. Just give me a chance to remind you of what we have. One day. That’s all I’m asking.”
“If you’re so certain you can pull it off in one day, then we can wait for the weekend when I don’t have responsibilities and obligations. You have to work too. I told you before that I wasn’t going to mess around with you if it meant shirking our jobs and acting like reckless teenagers.”
“Can’t we be reckless every once in a while?” I argued. “All work and no play…”
“I think you’ve been reckless enough for the both of us,” she fumed, pushing past me to gather up her things. “Just stop, Joshua.”
“You work too hard and you’re stressed. I agree that all these changes you’ve brought on in me have been good. But isn’t there some middle ground?”
She stopped and stared back at me, waiting.
“Move in with me,” I pleaded again. “Sure, you’d still have classes. But no more catering gigs and sore feet. Let me do that much for you.”
“You’re unbelievable,” she grumbled, shoving things into her purse.
“It’s not unbelievable. There was a time when people would get married right after they met, you know. I’m just asking you to move in, and we’ve been seeing each other for months.”
“All under false pretenses!” She snapped, flying around to face me with a venomous stare. “Who knows what would have even happened between us if you hadn’t scared Christopher off. I might not even be here right now. You can’t just manipulate people into doing what you want. You can’t do that to me.”
“I did you a favor,” I argued. “If that guy was so great, you wouldn’t have gone out with me in the first place.”
“But would I have seen you a second time? Or a third? I’ll never know. You tricked me.”
“Abby, please,” I pulled her in, begging her with my eyes to stay. “This can’t be over between us. Not like this.”
She was quiet for a moment, stewing in her own thoughts. But then she pulled away and reached for the door. “I need some time to think.”
The door slammed shut. She was gone, like sand slipping right through my fingers until I was left with nothing. It was just as much as I had before we met, but now it felt like so much less. There was a big gaping hole where she had been, and all I could do was hope she’d come back to me to fill it.
I waited patiently in the coming days, trying to give her the distance she asked for. But with every hour, I grew more hopeless. My sisters kept piling more work on me, just as I had requested. Only now it felt like I was being buried and dangerously close to drowning. I couldn’t complete a single thought in my brain without Abby seeping in.
I would send the occasional message just to remind her I was thinking of her, with no response. The work days grew longer, and I was finding it harder to see the point in proving anything to my siblings. What good was my job and my career if I had nothing worth living for outside of it?
By Friday night, I was more restless than ever. Still no word from Abby. I paced my apartment and wondered where she was, what she was doing. I resisted the temptation to use the IT department to check on any activity from her or Christopher on the Heartstring app. I was completely in the dark, and completely at the mercy of when she might come around, if she ever did.
I didn’t drink or go out or resort to any of my old coping mechanisms, which only made my phone feel that much more sad and pathetic when I checked it Saturday morning. There was nothing but a slew of invites to club openings. No response from Abby. I couldn’t take it anymore. My “thinking of you” texts didn’t feel like enough anymore.
I paced my penthouse again, this time dialing her number as I went. It rang and rang with no answer. Just how much space and distance did she need to decide our fate? My fate?
After several more unanswered calls, I sank down onto my couch and raked my hands over my face. It all felt so hopeless. I jumped when the phone dinged, but it was only an email from yet another new club opening up. I was usually sent things like that, but it seemed to be happening more than ever. These invitations were a temptation begging me to go out and give myself some form of relief from the torture of waiting to hear from her.
Finally, I shot up and hopped into the shower, dressing in one of my nicest Armani suits. An hour later I was being driven to some new spot called Pacifico on the edge of the city—an upscale club in the middle of a newly gentrified neighbor
hood. It felt like the kind of night where I didn’t care who or what I was supporting. I just needed to get out of my own head for a little bit. I knew Abby would never go to a place like that, and maybe that was exactly what I needed. I had a whole life before her, after all. Even if it had grown old and tired.
I relished in the familiar comfort of the strobing lights and blaring speakers. Hot girls grinded around on the dance floor under disco balls and twinkling lights. People cheered, shouted, and sang around the clinking of their cocktail glasses.
“Joshua Meadows,” said a man approaching me at the bar. “I was hoping I might see you here. I’m Georgio Bronson, the owner here.”
I begrudgingly shook his hand and waved down the bartender. He intercepted and told the guy to give me whatever I wanted, on the house.
“Consider that my safety net,” he winked.
“For what?” I puzzled.
“You getting belligerently drunk and making a scene,” he laughed, patting my shoulder. “A place like mine thrives on that sort of thing. The press will eat it up, and attendance will double by tomorrow night. Drink up and enjoy. Wreak your classic Joshua Meadows havoc.”
He was smart enough to disappear into the crowd before I could clock him across the face. I guessed it wasn’t really his fault. I had dug my own grave, sculpted my own bad reputation. The club scene had apparently missed me, and I was starting to realize I had missed it too.
Finally, a martini was delivered into my hand. I tossed it back and ordered another, along with a bottle of champagne. I was celebrating, I decided. Celebrating my freedom from the very thing I had never really wanted—some girlfriend to drag me down.
“I’m back,” I hissed in between bitter sips of my drink, to no one in particular. The warm buzz was already seeping in.
“Welcome back,” a girl quipped from my side.
I looked over to see some brunette standing there, grinning at me. She was petite with curves, her eyes sparking with a tempting mischievousness.
My face wrinkled up. “What?”
“Nevermind,” she laughed, taking a sip of her own drink. “Just trying to join your welcome wagon.”
“I believe this is called falling off the wagon,” I quipped, taking a random shot that was passed down to me. “Not that I’ve been totally sober. Just practicing moderation.”
“Moderation is for boring people,” she rolled her eyes. “Life is too short to be boring.”
“That’s what I keep saying!” I shouted back over the music, feeling validated by being around a kindred spirit for the first time in a while.
She smiled and turned to shake my hand. “I’m Cassie.”
“Joshua,” I nodded. “I’ve got a bottle on ice coming my way. Care to join me?”
“I’d love to.”
We had more drinks at a VIP table in the corner before making our way out onto the dance floor. I lost myself in the adrenaline of sweaty bodies and pulsing music, loud enough to make your ears ring. It felt like I was getting swept up in a pulse or a tide of something beyond my control, and it felt good. I wanted more of it.
As the dancing went on, Cassie kept moving in closer to me. Soon our bodies were all wrapped up with barely any space between us. It was nice, I thought, to have someone who actually wanted to be near me after a week of being shunned by Abby.
I tried not to think of her name… or her face, or body… and how they were so different from the lady next to me at that moment. I thought maybe with another drink or two, I could pretend Cassie was her. No one could ever replace her, but she had left me with no choice. And for all I knew she could have been out there somewhere with Christopher right at that very moment, making up for all the lost time they seemed to think I stole away from them.
My heart ached for how much I missed her, but if I went hard enough, I hoped she would keep slipping away until I could forget.
16
Abby
I hovered over the serving counter at work, looking over both shoulders to make sure no one was looking. When I was sure my boss wasn’t around to see, I secretly slid my phone from my pocket and checked for any new messages. Joshua’s relentless attempts to reach me were both infuriating and comforting. I needed to know he was still there, waiting for me. But my phone had been silent since the morning before. Maybe he had given up, and maybe that was for the best. If he had, it was my own fault for not answering. But that did nothing to make me feel better.
“I haven’t seen you look this down since you realized you had finals and three big waitressing gigs all on the same day,” Valerie said, coming up from behind me. She kneeled down next to me and propped her cheek on her hand. “Still giving him the cold shoulder?”
“Not necessarily by choice,” I sighed. “I just don’t know what to say.”
“Say that you want to talk to him. That you want to see him. Because you obviously do.”
“Do I? I’m not so sure.”
She nudged my arm, shooting me the “don’t try and pull that crap on me look” she was so good at. “We’ve been working together for years now, and I’ve never seen you in such a good mood from some guy. Or so down, for that matter. Come on. We both know you were going to dump Christopher anyway. Joshua did you a favor and did it for you. So what?”
“It was invasive and crossed a major line,” I argued. “It was unforgivable.”
“I can think of way worse things,” she said.
I could think of worse things too. Honestly, Christopher was boring. And if there was anything I could say for Joshua, it was that we hadn’t shared a single dull moment together. It was hard not to get caught up in his contagious fantasies about if that could last forever.
I was seconds away from pulling out my phone again to text him when a commotion rippled through the kitchen. I tried looking busy in case it was my boss coming in. I had waited that long to text Joshua back. I could wait a little longer, even if my heart felt like I couldn’t.
“Look who finally showed up,” Valerie quipped, eyeing Cassie down as she came in.
Her hair was frazzled, she had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked like she had been hit by a train. But the crooked smile on her face told a different story.
“Sorry,” she sang, not really sounding like she meant it.
“Someone had a good time last night,” Valerie grinned, examining her with a hand on her hip. “And from the looks of it, some lucky guy did too.”
The guys cooking by the stove broke out into laughter and chatter. “Oh, she had a good time alright. And now it’s all over the internet.”
“Can’t get away with stuff like you used to,” another one said. “That’s the downside of everyone being glued to their cell phones now. You get caught red-handed in everything.”
“Thankfully my accomplice knows that all too well,” she boasted, blowing a loose strand of hair from her face. “He’s well-versed in the world of tabloids. He’s their poster child, in fact. And for good reason, I learned. But the real party came after we left the club, far out of sight of all the paparazzi.”
“What are you going on about?” Valerie groaned, barely feigning interest.
“I think Abby knows my new friend,” she replied. “Or she used to anyway. But you know what they say. One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure.”
“I assure you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I rolled my eyes.
“Oh no? Huh. I thought you were giving Joshua Meadows the run-around up until recently,” she said. “You obviously never got him into bed. Because if you had… you never would have let that man go. Phew. I’m getting hot just thinking about it.”
My heart started pounding louder than the sound of Valerie grilling Cassie. I knew what she was trying to say, but there was no way it could have been true.
“Joshua and I very much were a thing,” I chimed in when I finally caught my breath. “We still are. We just had a fight. There’s no way he was with you last night. Not like that, anyways.”
“Don’t believe me? See for yourself.”
One of the cooks came over with his phone in hand. I reluctantly looked at the screen only to have my worst nightmare confirmed true. There it was, plain as day. Cassie and Joshua tangled up together, drunk on the dance floor in a state that was reminiscent of his old ways. It was a world I never ventured into with him, but Cassie was apparently all too willing to play his rowdy games. No wonder she was late for work.
“So what? You got drunk and danced. It doesn’t mean anything,” I grumbled, trying to convince myself just as much as her.
“Oh no. I assure you. We did much more than dance,” she shot back. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I better get to work before the big guy finds me and chews me out. But after last night,” she whistled, shaking her head. “Whatever happens to me is more than worth it. You were a fool for letting that one get away from you, Abby. You better believe that if he shows up here, offering to support me and let me quit my job… I’m not going to say no.”
“Whatever you think happened between you two… It was not the same as what happened between me and him,” I fumed, trying not to let my voice crack. “He’s not going to offer you anything. You’re just another random girl at the club.”
“I’m just the kind of girl he needs. Someone who knows how to have a little fun and who won’t fight him and play hard to get at every turn.”
“Someone who’s a dime a dozen?” Valerie laughed. “Please, Cassie. If there’s any ounce of truth to what you’re saying, it’s only because Joshua was heartbroken over Abby and handling it poorly. You were a side effect. A bad decision and nothing more. And definitely not one he’ll be making again. Especially when Abby takes him back.”
Valerie turned back to me and noticed the tears welling up in my eyes.
“You said he could have done far worse things,” I croaked. “I guess he was more than willing to prove that point.”
