by J. C. Allen
There was just one problem with that. Trying to delete photos wasn’t a hard challenge that required enormous time and effort. It was the kind of thing that just required two clicks of the button—one on a trash can icon, and the other just confirming I wanted to delete it.
But I couldn’t.
Yes, they were great photos to look at. They captured Zeke’s body in such a sexy fashion, and from a purely physical standpoint, he looked so handsome that I could use them as vibrator material for the next decade to come.
It obviously wasn’t that, though. I recognized that deleting them was like the final removal; if I held onto them, it was like Zeke was still a part of my life, albeit a very distant and removed one. And didn’t he deserve to be, anyways? For the impact he had had on my summer, didn’t he deserve to be in my mind and in my memories?
I just couldn’t do it. To delete them would be to totally get rid of Zeke, and for whatever it said about me, I wasn’t ready to delete them. Unfortunately for Marissa and Jenna, I also wasn’t ready to confess that, either.
“I don’t like him that way,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as my friends. “And nothing will happen, I’ll just go on with my life. He’ll do the same.”
Jenna gave me an apprehensive look but was interrupted by Marissa barging in with the tray of cookies. I’ve never been so happy in my life to see cookies as a conversation interrupted.
When I finished and the two of them had gone off on some tangent about some guys they had met at a bar that wasn’t also the Kinsmen club, I took my leave and slipped to my office. I made a compromise with myself as far as the photos went. I printed off a few, only then deleting them from my camera. I made a few copies, just in case I decided to use them to apply to any jobs.
But there was one problem with that.
Even through the subjective haze that was my attraction to him, there was no denying that the photos that had come out were some of my best ones to date. So many studios and professionals who wanted associates wanted human subject photos, even if the photos erred on the erotic side. I couldn’t get rid of these photos; not only were they great material for self-pleasure, they were great materials for me getting a job.
And there was one job in particular I had seen but that I had deliberately avoided for one particular reason.
It would have kept me in Minnesota.
I pulled up the job and read through it carefully.
The job role was to be a creative associate for a mood photographer. I tried to tell myself I didn’t want to be a mood photographer, that I didn’t want to deal with people—but that was just me trying to convince myself. The job required a portfolio, and wouldn’t you know it, Zeke’s photographs were the absolutely perfect thing for that. The photos of Zeke were beyond good—they were the kind of thing that were almost hauntingly good.
I knew that if I applied to this job and got it that everything Zeke and I had discussed about me leaving at the end of the summer would suddenly become a whole lot more complicated. I knew that this was bound to make matters more, not less difficult. But I also knew I needed work, and at this point, beggars couldn’t be choosers. It was either get some crap job for a few bucks an hour, or do something I loved and accept that it would be here.
“Goddamnit, Allison,” I muttered to myself as I filled out the application.
I clicked Send before I could think otherwise.
I really hope I know what I’m doing.
Especially since there are no real signs that Zeke is going to call you back anytime soon.
17
Zeke
“Zeke, you don’t call or text anymore. I’m starting to think you want to ignore my existence.”
I sighed as I looked up at the woman before me. I knew that it had been a few days since I had messaged her, but I realized that I needed to face her now—because if I didn’t, it would just make things worse when I finally did run into her.
So I decided to show up that morning, the day after the club warning from Jaxson, and get it over with.
“Mom, stop acting like a chick. I got busy, you know.”
Still, I laughed at her and set the tray of doughnuts in front of her, my peace offering for not being a present son. She smiled in her nurse’s uniform, having just wrapped up work.
“You think sweets will help you,” she said with an arched eyebrow.
She shook her head at me but went in on the doughnuts anyways. Mom was predictable in that fashion.
I leaned over the counter and ignored the lingering gazes of nurses, who were staring at my visible tattoos. It was something I was pretty used to, honestly; it was kind of funny how sometimes, I felt like a chick, having to ignore all the glances and awkward stares that came my way.
“I do think so,” I said with a smile, nodding to the spot where three doughnuts had used to be. “How is work?”
I was more than eager to have anything to talk about that didn’t involve Allison.
It had now been about three days since I last saw Allison or even communicated with her. I had spent them at the club with Jaxson, figuring out what to do with the lingering Cavaro threats. Unfortunately, I really wasn’t able to focus on either well—when I was with Allison, I was thinking about Jaxson’s warnings, and when I was with Jaxson, despite my best efforts, I found myself thinking about Allison.
By the time I had gone to bed last night, I found myself thinking about her so much that I couldn’t help it. I didn’t exactly text her, nor did I even reach out to her, but I instead decided that at some point, I had to give an indication of how I was really feeling.
And so it was that I found myself before Mom, wanting to ask her a question that I couldn’t believe I was about to ask.
“Fine, pretty busy. I hope you’re coming to dinner Sunday.”
She wagged her finger at me, wiping sugar from her fingers.
“Yeah, I am,” I said, knowing missing a Kinsmen dinner was about the worst thing I could have done.
You can’t dodge the question anymore. You need to ask it, one that’s going to change everything for you and how your family looks at you.
“I’m uh… bringing someone by if that’s okay.”
This is definitely not a move you make for someone who is just friends with benefits. This is definitely not even a move for a budding romance.
“You are? That’s great honey! Who is she?”
Mom was way too excited by this. It made me wonder just how long everyone else in the family had been waiting for me to get someone.
“Um… a friend,” I said, trying to calm expectations—even as they were silently flaring inside of me. “Just a friend. Please don’t scare her away.”
“I won’t, you know I’m not like that. It’s your brothers you need to worry about.”
Now that is something we can all agree on!
“Truth,” I said. “But yeah, I just wanted to give you that heads up.”
“Of course, thanks Zeke,” she said.
We chatted a bit longer before I knew that in order to have Allison at my mother’s house for dinner, I actually had to ask her to dinner. Given that I hadn’t texted her in a few days, that wasn’t going to be the easiest request to make; I felt like it might have come across as a bit presumptive to assume she would.
But I honestly didn’t know how else to handle this. This was unchartered territory for me, and if thing went to hell, well, so be it. I’d gotten tired of going back and forth in my own head, and it wasn’t even like Allison and I had had fights about this. She was more than willing to just be friends, but by now, it was readily apparent I couldn’t do that. I felt like I had no choice but to bite the bullet.
I pulled out my phone to text her as I walked away from my mother, leaving her to do some work at the hospital, but I couldn’t bring myself to make such a request by text. It felt too… lame. There was another word that popped to mind, “unromantic,” but even with this sudden change, Zeke didn’t do things romantically.
He just did the cool, fun things.
I thought about calling her, but that still wasn’t enough. No, I had to surprise her. I had to show up at her front door, unannounced, and make the proclamation. She might get confused at first by the request, but she would eventually come around on it. I saw no way that she wouldn’t.
I got on my bike and revved the engine full of confidence. This was new territory for me, but it was exciting territory. Giving up sex with a lot of women at once was tough, but there were so many things I could do now with Allison that I hadn’t been able to do before. We could explore our sexuality on a deeper level, I’d never have to use condoms…
And who knew? Maybe I’d even grow a little as a person! I didn’t want to get too carried away, but…
Ah, fuck it. I let myself get carried away a bit. I thought about how she would get along with my brothers and my sisters-in-law. I thought about how she could interact with my mother. I thought about what us being together would be like for me and the club. I thought about a lot of things, in short.
When I pulled up, I saw her car at her townhome, giving me the assurance that I wasn’t going to suddenly have an awkward conversation with her friends. I couldn’t remember their names or if she had even told me their names, but no matter what, the one thing I knew was it wasn’t anyone I really wanted to interact with at the moment. There was only one person who had that distinction.
I knocked on the door. I heard footsteps coming from the other side, causing me to crack that smile that I knew got Allison to swoon so easily. The door slowly creaked open.
And Allison stood there, shock on her face.
“Hey, you,” I said, arching an eyebrow and licking my lips.
But instead of the reaction of excitement and eroticism, she almost seemed… annoyed?
“Zeke,” she said, a sigh coming from her mouth and a long expression on her face. “I thought that you had just decided to call it quits. It’s been multiple days since I last heard from you.”
“I know, I know, I can explain that,” I said. The start wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t overcome. “I just needed a few days to figure out what was going on between us, but I know now what it is!”
“Really, that’s what you needed.”
Uh oh. That is not the tone of someone happy to see me. Quite the opposite, in fact; that is the tone of someone who is disgusted by my return.
“You know, I could understand if you thought that things were getting too heavy or you just thought this was over. If I never saw you again, it would be disappointing, but I could understand. But now you come here and say it was just you trying to figure out what things were? Really? Rude.”
I bit my tongue before I could make another smartass, ill-fated attempt at humor. If I’d come here to have a serious question about dinner, well, unfortunately, I had gotten half of it right—and it wasn’t the dinner part.
“I could have handled it better, baby, but it’s all good,” I said. “Nothing has changed between us.”
Even though you were about to ask her to dinner!
“Really?” Allison said. “Then what were you coming over here for? Just a quickie?”
“No, no,” I said, although right now, that seemed a hell of a lot better than the alternative. “I came here for… for…”
The words eluded me. It was right then and there, as I saw Allison’s demeanor remain doubtful and disappointed, that I realized offering her something as serious as a chance to meet my entire family at one of our family dinners was nothing short of dangerous. She didn’t want that. I was a fool for thinking otherwise.
I knew then that if she had wanted that chance, that opportunity to meet my family, she would have said something about it. This was my fault for failing to listen to my own rules and letting my emotions get the best of me.
“It was nothing,” I said. “Sorry. I was just, I don’t know, thinking—”
“You don’t know?” Allison said, arching an eyebrow. “Or you don’t want to tell me?”
I found myself tongue-tied. The words didn’t come out. I didn’t know what I could say then.
So, unfortunately, I said something that was about as bad as it could be without offending her.
“I can’t tell you unless I know you’re in.”
“In?”
I left her asking so many questions about how I phrased things that I couldn’t even be mad at her for getting frustrated with me. How sad it was that I had come here to be more direct and serious with her, and instead had just become more circuitous and vague in my speech.
“This whole thing is a game to you, isn’t it, Zeke?” she said. “I thought I knew the rules of the game, and I was more than happy to play that game, but now, I have no idea what those rules are. And apparently, the rules include tricks, deception, and vanishing for periods of time.”
She shook her head and refused to look at me, her eyes staring at the ground. It was then that I first had the feeling that something was terribly amiss—and when I got that feeling, it was usually for a pretty damn good reason.
“You know, the night I met you, the sex was so good that I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “You are a Sex God, I will give you that. But you’re a devil in a lot of other ways, and that’s not a compliment. And at some point, the sex isn’t worth the headaches and the grief that comes with it. Most especially when it comes to the emotional games of getting ignored for days on end, only to have some coy conversation you can’t even tell me about unless I agree to it. Do you see how that sounds bad?”
I could only nod my head in silence. I was left a little speechless at myself for how badly I had screwed things up.
“Zeke, please leave. Don’t come and see me again.”
18
Allison
I felt like the world’s biggest fool.
There were many ways I could have looked at my time with Zeke and thought myself a massive idiot, but perhaps the biggest one was in believing that if I saw him again, we might be able to progress forward to something. What “something” was, I didn’t know—well, I did know, but I wasn’t given to admitting it easily. It was, let’s just call it for what it was, a relationship.
Of course, a relationship could take on many forms, but I think the idea was that Zeke and I could build toward feeling better with each other and feel more open. Both of us could be honest about what we wanted, we could talk about our lives, and we could just get to know each other better. Maybe that didn’t mean we’d get married someday or even that we’d be boyfriend-girlfriend on a serious level, but I thought it would at least mean we’d go beyond sex.
We had just a tad, but Zeke’s actions today showed me that all he seemed to enjoy doing was confusing the hell out of me. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed the fact that it had been days since I had heard a peep from him, let alone any flirtatious activity, but it was even more upsetting when he showed up at my front door and tried to tell me there was a reason why he couldn’t hang out and that he wanted to ask me something… but only if I committed to joining in.
Maybe that was fun when we had just started dating and the idea of being novel and fresh was so exciting, but it was not the case when we’d had sex multiple times and had begun to get closer and closer. It instead felt like a mind game, like he wanted to manipulate me into one of his sexual fantasies or something. Perhaps, if I could have chosen to be ignorant, I could have gone along with it, but that was impossible now.
So I asked him to leave.
Zeke seemed stunned more than hurt or confused at my request. He didn’t look at me with anger or disgust; he just seemed surprised. He sought the right words, but in what may have been a Kinsmen first, he didn’t have anything he could say to us. His mouth gaped open, as if a great plea for forgiveness could come at any second, but none came.
Eventually, he stared at me, locking eyes, and admittedly, that stare was beyond intoxicating. Even in moments when I
felt unbelievably hurt and upset by him, he had a certain aura to him that made it very difficult to stay focused. But this was not a gaze I was willing to give into, and I was not going to let him do anything to me.
He nodded, turned, and slowly walked down the steps. I shut the door on him before I could change my mind and felt tears begin to form in my eyes. I told myself not to cry—this was a casual relationship, nothing more than sex—but I couldn’t help it; if anything, telling myself not to cry was only making things worse.
I slumped against the door, sobbing into my hands. I’m not sure who saw me first, Marissa or Jenna, but it wasn’t long before both of them were sitting by my side, all three of us on the hard tiled floor of the townhome.
“I’m sorry, Allison,” Marissa said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Even if I did, the tears were too much. I was hurt by the games. I was hurt by the changing of the mind every few days. I was hurt by the uncertainty.
But more than anything, I was hurt for thinking I could do casual. I was hurt for not listening to myself and understanding that I was more of a relationship gal than a casual sex gal. I had never given myself the truth, and because of that, this is what the day had come to.
Finally, I found it in me just long enough to stop sobbing.
“I hate Zeke,” I said, even though that was the furthest thing from the truth. “Didn’t call me or text me or anything for three days, and then just showed up at my front door just now, acting like it was no big deal. It was so rude.”
“Aw, Allison,” Jenna said, patting my knee. “It’s alright. You’ll be fine! We can find someone else here in this town. We’re not too far from Minneapolis, you know.”
That was the thing though—I didn’t want to find anyone else. I just wanted to spend the next couple of months with Jenna and Marissa until school started, and then go wherever the job market took me. Right now, the only job I had applied for was here in Minnesota, but there was little doubt that in the coming days, I’d be applying to as many jobs closer to Texas and Oklahoma and that region than I was here.
