Chapter Twenty Come Together to Fall Apart
Chapter Twenty
Come Together to Fall Apart
I made her come twice.
That shouldn’t feel like such an accomplishment, but making Miss One and Done fall apart twice feels important. Heavy. Like I’m reclaiming her body the way we’re reclaiming our history, our friendship, our futures. Like
we’re setting the train back on the tracks after our dinner argument derailed us.
I crawl up the bed and nuzzle in beside her, wrapping myself around her body like a vine, one leg draped lazily over hers
as I run my hand down her side. My fingers catch on that same new-old scar and the familiar pang rises back up in me, the
homesickness for the years we were apart. Familiar thoughts cascade through my head, reminding me that this is more than just
sex and companionship, no matter how I try to tell myself it isn’t.
I made her come twice.
I’m drawing lines in her skin with the pads of my fingers, leaning over to kiss anything I can reach as she drags her nails
across my scalp in slow-motion circles that leave me even more blissed-out and relaxed than I already am.
“I love your hands,” I sigh, twisting my head to press a kiss to her sternum. She laughs, digging in her nails, just a little, in a way that leaves me arching my head against her like a cat.
“At least you love something about me,” she teases. “I’ll get you to forgive me yet, Andy, even if it’s one good lay at a
time.”
My hand stills when she says that, my brow furrowing as I soak in her words.
Suddenly the hand on my neck feels suffocating, the pleasing scratch of her nails turning to needles. Because we’re not falling into old patterns, no. We’re already there. This is the old pattern.
How many times back then did we use sex to distract ourselves from the bigger issues? How many times did we rely on sex instead
of communication to get us through?
Constantly, and now we’re doing it again.
“Andy?” Nikki says, her voice full of quiet confusion when I grab the blanket and sit up on the edge of the bed.
“I need a shower,” I say, crossing the room and shutting the bathroom door behind me. I turn the water up as hot as it goes,
trying to wash her off me as best as I can with some generic brand of cabin soap. If I use her body wash—if I smell her right
now—I’ll probably explode.
I can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t even trust myself right now, when I’m fuck-drunk and lovesick. The hazy butterflies in my belly roil around and I feel nauseous.
Is this a panic attack? I haven’t had one of those since LA.
I guess all the avoidant orgasms aren’t the only pattern rearing back up.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” Nikki asks, slowly pulling back the shower curtain.
I startle, so wrapped up in my own head that I didn’t even hear her come in.
Nikki frowns and steps into the tub, pulling me against her in a gentle hug. She only lets go for a second, just long enough
to adjust the spray to cover both of us, before she’s back. I let her hold me, too exhausted and spun out to do anything else
but bury my head against her warm skin. The water makes every bit of her feel slippery and new and how? How is this my life? How is it that the one person I most want comfort from is also the one person I should probably not be around right now?
“I need you to talk to me, Andy,” Nikki says, tipping my chin up so I look at her.
I take a shaky breath, meeting her eyes with such sorrow because I know what I’m about to say is likely going to ruin everything.
How could it not?
“We’re doing it again.”
She looks at me with pained confusion and my heart cracks open.
“Old patterns really do die hard, Nik.” I step away from her, shoving back some of my hair that’s become plastered to my face.
“What does that mean exactly?”
“Do you remember when we were fighting all the time? When it got really bad between us?” I ask.
Nikki gives me a sad smile. “Yes, of course I do. I’d rather think about the making up, though.”
I think she means for that to be an out, a way to steer this back into safer waters with a little joke, but instead it’s just
proving my point.
“That’s the thing, though. We didn’t really make up, did we? We’d fight till we were exhausted and then we’d screw until we convinced ourselves everything was fine again. We used sex as a distraction, and we’re doing it again tonight.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“We are!” I insist. “It’s the first time we’ve really talked about what happened to us, like really talked about it, and then . . . and now . . .”
“That’s not why we had sex! At least it isn’t for me.”
Nikki reaches for me again, but I shake my head. “It’s exactly the reason! We bickered and then we landed in bed and suddenly
we didn’t care what we were even bickering about! You’re winning me over one orgasm at time, you are, you said it yourself!
It’s the same way you kept me on the hook, kept me home for you, back then. It’s what you do.”
“It was a joke, Andy!” she says, stepping out of the tub. “Jesus Christ! You’re the one who initiated it tonight!”
“For the wrong reason!” I shout.
“You don’t mean that,” she says, going still.
I shrug, terrified that if I open my mouth the dam will break, and I’ll be the girl in the tub sobbing about Nikki. Again.
She looks at me, stunned, and then grabs a towel off the rack and storms out of the room. I give her a second to cool down
and then roughly twist the water off, quickly wrapping myself in one of the big fluffy robes that we brought home from the
farmers market a few weeks back.
My heart falls to the floor when I find Nikki already mostly dressed, rushing around the room to find where each article of
clothing landed in our haste to tear them off each other.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I need to take a walk. I need to clear my head. I’m . . . you should go home too.”
“You’re acting frantic. You’re worrying me—”
She scoffs at me, finally finding her missing shirt and tugging it over her head, hiding her final expanse of skin from me.
“I have to go, Andy,” she says, sounding like she’s on the verge of tears, and no. No. That’s not how this is supposed to
go.
“Nikki—”
“Don’t ‘Nikki’ me,” she says, pulling on her socks and hopping on one foot as she does. “I’m not going to stand here and get
dumped in my birthday suit.”
“Dumped?” I say, the word shattering like glass in my mouth. Because being dumped implies a relationship and a relationship
implies commitment and—
“Wow,” she says, the same realization seeming to hit her. “Now who’s pretending not to notice. You can tell yourself whatever
you want, Andy: that we were friends with benefits, that the chemistry was good, that we’re just screwing each other out of
our systems—”
“That’s not fair!” I yelp.
“You keep telling yourself whatever you need to sleep at night, whether it’s the truth or not.” Nikki drags her fingers through
her hair. “Maybe I deserve this, maybe I do for what I did to you in the past, but I don’t have to stand here and listen to
it. I don’t have to be an active participant.”
I reach out for her, but she pulls away. “No, you know I don’t . . . it was more than that for me too,” I plead. “If it wasn’t,
I wouldn’t be so freaked out right now about falling into old habits. I want us to be something more, but I don’t know if
we should. I can’t afford to get lost in you again,” I say. “I can’t be the person chasing you anymore. I can’t go back to who I was!”
“Be honest, Andy, for once in your life!” Nikki shouts. “It’s not you doing the chasing! It hasn’t been since the day you ran out on me! You’ve flipped the script entirely,” she says, tears welling
in her eyes. “I got it, though, at first. I did. I was happy to chase you, I was happy to wait, but I can’t keep . . . If
you want to run—run. But just do it already. This back-and-forth is killing me! It was easier when you hated me. At least
I knew where I stood!”
“You’re writing a book!” I yell back. “How am I supposed to trust anything you’re doing when I know you’re writing a book!
For all I know, this, us, now, is just more content.”
“Fuck the book!” she says. “Fuck you too, if you really believe that. I don’t know how to prove myself to you any more than
I already have! If you had told me to get lost forever after we finally talked for real, I would have respected it. But you
didn’t. You let me keep crawling on broken glass with my stupid little cups of coffee to try to prove my love for you, and
you know what? I didn’t even mind. I would have done it forever. Because you are the good thing that got away for me. You
are.” Her shoulders slump, her breath coming in ragged pants as she struggles to hold herself together. “I’ve had to do a lot
of work to become someone who I was proud of. I’ve had to put a lot of effort into changing for the better. You don’t owe
me another chance, you don’t, but don’t sit there and act like I haven’t done the work.
“Tonight wasn’t falling back into an old pattern.
Not for me anyway. It was a gentle way to reconnect after a difficult conversation and a week away.
I’ve been daydreaming about you since I left.
I wasn’t trying to distract you from anything!
Anything! I missed you and I missed being in bed with you.
” She squeezes her hands together and sighs.
“You know, I was actually happy that our conversation didn’t ruin our night.
I thought it showed growth that we could set things aside for more appropriate times—because god knows that’s not at ten p.m. after a seven-hour flight
on three hours of sleep. I had no ulterior motive for going to bed with you. None. It hurts me that you think I did and it
devastates me that you—”
“It wasn’t intentional. I just think we fell back into it when things got hard tonight,” I say. “Growth would be resolving
the issue and finishing the talk. We—”
“There’s always going to be more to talk about! We’re going to be healing forever. I’m going to be healing forever. There are things you don’t know and I’m positive there are things I don’t know—but tonight,
I just wanted to hold you after being gone. I wanted to kiss you and be in this moment, now, instead of the past. Of course we were always going to talk about things more! It was never meant to be a one-time
conversation! I get that you’re scared but—”
“How do I know that? How do I trust that?” I cry, wiping at my eyes. “You don’t get it. I missed you. I missed you so much it scared me! And I don’t just mean this week, I mean the first time you left after coming back
here and the second and . . . and . . . I can’t let myself get so wrapped up in you that I forget who I am again! I can’t!
I can’t go through that.”
“I would never, ever want that. Is that how you feel? Now?” she asks, looking stricken. “If I’ve done anything to make you
feel like that, Anderson, I don’t—”
And then it hits me . . . She hasn’t. She really hasn’t.
“What if it’s me?” I ask, our eyes locking. “What if I don’t know how to love you any other way but full throttle? What if
I keep forgetting where you end and I begin? Do you know what it feels like to love someone that much? Do you?!”
“Yes, I do,” she breathes, looking at me with such pain in her eyes that I nearly fall to my knees.
“It’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, it’s just not. Other people don’t feel like that. Other people just . . .”
Nikki hangs her head, taking a heaving breath before asking, “Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure about anything! That’s the problem!”
“You’re not,” she says—a statement, not a question. Nikki nods to herself, wiping at her eyes. “You should get dressed, Anderson.
You should go home.”
I cross the room, shakily pulling on my clothes while she stares down at the carpet. I drop the robe onto her bed beside her
towel, pulling on my clothes with a growing panic in my belly.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say.
“But?” She looks up at me and I feel like I’m going to be sick. I want to hug her, hold her, take everything back, even though
I know I shouldn’t.
You can do this. You need to do this.
I take a deep breath. “But you’re right.
I should go home and you should go back to LA.
We need to take a break. You need to finish the book on your own terms, without me telling you how to feel about it, and I have more orders than I can count, plus a wedding expo in a couple weeks I really should already be prepping for. ”
“That’s it?” Nikki asks. “You’re running again?”
“No, I’m not, but I can’t keep hurting you like this. I can’t keep jerking you around. I’ve been there, remember, I know how
bad it feels,” I say softly, sadly. “I don’t want to keep blaming you and I don’t want to keep worrying that every time you
leave you’re never coming back.”
“But you do.”
“I want to be with you so bad I can’t stand it . . . But I don’t know if I trust it and I don’t know if I ever will. That’s
not fair to either one of us.” I let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to do here, Nikki. I’m terrified of how much I
still love—”
“Please,” she says, resigned. “Please don’t say you love me while you’re telling me all the reasons you wish you didn’t.”
I shut my eyes, letting the tears fall in earnest now. “Nikki—”
“I’m sure there’s a flight back tomorrow. I’ll be on it. I won’t bother you anymore.”
My stomach free-falls to the floor. I’ve lost her, again, and the fact that it was my choice, on my terms, doesn’t make it
any easier at all.