Chapter 18 - Athena
It’s late. I have no idea where Adrian is, and he isn’t answering my messages or calls.
I don’t like this feeling.
I have no right to demand to know where he is, but it feels wrong of him to do this. Why can’t he just tell me he’s ok at least? Then I could go to bed and stop worrying.
I pace up and down in the living room. I’ve topped up the fire so many times that the living room is almost too hot.
He left late afternoon, and now it’s dark outside, and I haven’t heard from him all day.
Where could he have gone?
After our trip to Chinatown, I thought things might be good between us. Maybe they are, but something happened to him? What if he were in an accident? I don’t even know who to call!
My stomach is in knots and churning with anxiety when my phone buzzes loudly against the glass coffee table. I almost fall over my own feet running to see the message.
But my heart sinks as soon as I see my father’s name on the screen.
Groaning loudly, I swipe to open WhatsApp.
It’s images.
It takes a second for them to download, and as soon as they do, my heart hits the pit of my stomach.
I click, even though I don’t want to, to open the first image fully.
Adrian is standing at a bar. It looks like one of his usual fancy places. There is a girl in a black dress, a very, very short black dress that is glittering in the colorful lights of the bar. She’s leaning against his chest with her fingers toying with his shirt buttons as she looks up at him.
He’s looking down at her, and their faces are very close together.
I quickly flick to the next image.
She has her hands around his waist, and her dark brown hair is hanging over her shoulder, half obscuring her smile.
But what I can see is how she’s biting her lower lip and how her eyes are half closed as she looks at him.
The intimacy is intense. The sexuality is practically oozing from the photograph.
His hand is resting on her lower back, and it looks like he’s about to kiss her.
My stomach churns so intensely that I want to throw up.
So, this is where he is? Is he still with her right now? He’s busy… doing things… with a beautiful woman somewhere in town, and that’s why he can’t answer my messages.
I thought…
I thought…
I was so fucking stupid!
My phone beeps again, and I don’t think I can bear to see another picture. But it’s a text from my father.
Ricardo: I was having a drink with some friends in town and saw this. Just thought you’d want to know. Miss you.
A spike of anger bolts through me, and I throw the phone onto the sofa. I don’t want to speak to my father. I don’t want to see those photos. I don’t want to think about Adrian being with another girl!
Painful rejection floods my chest and aches all through my body. I actually thought I meant something to him. It shows you how naive I am. It was just sex. Something fun. Of course he wasn’t going to say no. But to me it was so much more. And I thought…dammit, Athena! You clearly thought wrong!
I spin on my heel, wanting to run to my room. But the idea of lying there unable to sleep with those images in my head is horrible. So, I turn back to the fire and throw in two more logs.
I watch the flames. I try to focus on them and nothing else.
Tears are streaming down my cheeks as the pain engulfs me.
I pace up and down the living room, wondering if he’s going to stay with her all night or if he’s going to come home. I don’t want to see him. But I don’t want him to stay with her all night. What difference does it make? There is nothing between you. There never will be after this.
The door slams open, and I hear Adrian grunt with effort and mutter something angrily. Then the door slams closed again.
At the sound of his arrival, the anger becomes ten times worse than before.
I storm out of the living room and into the foyer.
I’m ready to scream at him about what a complete asshole he is when I realize how drunk he is.
“You can’t even walk!” I shout angrily.
He staggers, looking up at me and closing one eye.
“Are you fucking kidding me!” I groan. He is plastered. I don’t think he can even see me.
“Who the fuck…” he mutters, taking a sidestep and trying to reach for the wall. I quickly grab his arm to stop him from falling.
“Hey, let me go!” he snaps.
“Oh, should I let you fall!” I snap back. “Lean on me, you idiot, you need to go to bed!”
“I’m not fucking going to bed with you!” he shouts angrily.
“For fuck’s sake, Adrian. Just let me help you. And you’re damn lucky I’m bothering after what you did tonight. I should let you fall flat on your face in the foyer and sleep there!”
I half-drag him, coaxing him toward the stairs. It’s a massive effort, and it’s not helping that I’m so angry with him.
Every time I slip my arm around his back to try to support him, he tries to pull away from me, growling at me about touching him.
Jeez. Is he that against me suddenly? I guess he’s got more beautiful, more experienced women to please him now.
I push him against the railing of the staircase. “Hold onto that, you moron!” I huff because he keeps pushing me away. “Lift your foot. Fuck sakes. How much did you drink?”
“I told you! I don’t want your hands on me. How hard is it to understand!” he shouts at me.
“I heard you! Ok! I heard you loud and clear!” I shout back, fighting tears at the harshness of his rejection.
But still, if I step away now, he’s just going to fall down the stairs and break his damn neck. I’ve got half a mind to let him.
It takes almost fifteen minutes to get him to the top of the stairs. He holds onto the wall as I guide him, rage fuming inside me, toward his bedroom.
“Come on, you idiot, you’re almost there,” I huff, slipping my arm around his back.
“Dammit, girl!” he snaps, trying to move away from me for the hundredth time.
But I don’t let. I grab onto his shirt and pull him with everything I have until he is right next to the bed, then I push him hard so that he falls onto it instead of onto the floor.
Except he’s still fighting against me and ends up dragging me on top of him.
He literally lifts me, clean off him, holding me in the air above him like a rag doll.
“Leila, I told you! I only want Athena! She’s the only one I can ever be with again!”
My eyes shoot wide as shock slams into me. “What!?” I stammer.
“Athena! Ok. I don’t want you. Only her…” His words falter. Muddling into each other.
He drops me onto his chest, and the air is knocked out of me.
“Hey!” I slap him lightly on the cheek, still lying on his chest. “What did you just say!”
“Athena is the only one…” he whispers, his voice fading and his eyes closed. I stare at him for a moment, still not quite believing it. But he said it more than once.
He starts snoring softly.
“You need to sleep on your side!” I groan, worried about how drunk he is.
I wiggle off him, kneeling next to him on the bed so I can try to roll him over.
He swats me away, grumbling something I can’t understand.
I manage to roll him by propping my back against his hip and using my legs to leverage strength.
He flops onto his side and carries on snoring.
My mind is repeating his words, but my heart struggles to believe them.
Leila, I told you! I only want Athena! She’s the only one I can ever be with again.
Leila must have been the girl at the bar.
The pictures my father sent me were misleading then. Only half a story. The girl came onto him, but he said no. Is that what happened?
My father lied to me again.
Will he ever stop lying?
I sigh heavily as I climb off his bed and scrunch my nose, staring at his sleeping form.
What am I supposed to make of all this?
I turn away from him and head to my own bed. At least I’m not angry anymore. I’ll be able to sleep.
In the morning, I wake up and head down to the kitchen, half asleep, padding barefoot on the heated floors in my sweatpants and crop top, unable to feel the cold outside.
I walk into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes and yawning.
I didn’t sleep that well after all. I wasn’t angry, but I was so confused about what Adrian had mumbled in his drunken state.
I’m the only girl he can ever be with again.
What does that mean? Or was he just so drunk he didn’t know what he was saying?
I pull the fridge open in a daze, and when he speaks behind me, I almost jump right out of my skin.
“Morning,” he smiles.
I spin around in disbelief.
“How are you awake? It’s so early! And how are you showered and dressed? How are you standing?”
“What do you mean?” he asks with a nervous laugh.
I rub my eyes again and sigh. “Do you remember last night?”
He pulls his mouth to the side. “Yes, most of it. up until Jackson dropped me at home. I uh, I have the curse of being able to remember things even when I’m stupidly drunk. Although last night was a new level for me. Were you awake when I got home?”
“Drunk? Sheesh. I don’t know if there is a word that maybe describes being a level up from drunk,” I muse, letting my eyes drag up and down his body. He looks fresh. It’s shocking. “I was home. I helped you get to bed; otherwise, you would have been sleeping on the floor downstairs.”
“Shit. I am so sorry,” he sighs. “I guess there is a level where I can black out on what I did. I remember Jackson driving me home. I remember being angry at how many steps we have leading to the front door…”
“Aren’t you hungover?” I ask, knotting my brows.
“Well, I am cursed with remembering most of my own embarrassment, but I am gifted with never having experienced a hangover,” he smirks.
I shake my head, sighing softly.
“I think I feel worse than you, and I only struggled to sleep a bit; I didn’t drink all the alcohol in Chicago.”
I push my hand into my pocket and pull out my phone. Navigating to my father’s messages, I click on the picture and hand it to him.
“My father sent me this last night,” I say without further explanation.
Adrian looks at the photo and groans, closing his eyes for a moment. He hands me back the phone.
“I’m so sorry, Athena. It’s not what you think,” he sighs. “Nothing happened. I swear it.”
“What is it then? Who is she? You two look quite comfortable with each other, like you know her well enough?”
“I do. Leila and I have known each other for a while. She is someone I used to be intimate with, but it was never a relationship. It never went further than a night together. In fact, I never even hung out till morning,” he mutters with guilt.
“A booty call?” I ask bluntly.
“Yes. I guess you can call it that.”
“Why were you there? Why did you drink so much?” I ask. I never thought of Adrian as the type of man to drink like that.
“I was trying to calm myself down. It was a stupid idea. But it was better than the alternative.”
“What was the alternative?” I frown.
He sighs and pushes his hand through his hair. “I went to see your father. I wanted to tell him to respect your wishes not to contact you, and he was so arrogant that it made me furious. We got into a fight. It got really heated. Look, I know he’s your father, but I hate how he treats you.”
Adrian falls quiet, then mutters, “I guess he followed me to the bar after I left him… took those pictures to send to you.” He shrugs.
I look down at my feet, rubbing my foot back and forth over the tiled floor.
Adrian watches me, waiting for my reaction.
I look up at him and am still looping over what he said last night in his drunken state.
“You thought I was her last night,” I remind him.
“Did I?” he says, surprised. “Did I say something?”
“You called me by her name,” I nod.
“Fuck, you must be furious. I promise you, Athena, I have no interest in her. I made it very clear to her that…”
I giggle.
“What?” he stammers.
“Well, you also made it very clear to me, when you thought I was her, that you weren’t interested.”
“I did?” he asks, one side of his lip curling up. “Was I rude?”
“You were very rude. And you made it almost impossible to get your drunk ass upstairs to bed because you kept telling me to get my hands off you.”
“I did?” He laughs at himself. “Shit, I have never been that out of control ever. I don’t remember that part at all. Thank goodness I got Jackson to drive me home!”
“Well, even out of control, you were still having none of it from Leila. You said…” My words fade away.
I struggle to admit what he said. I’m scared he will say it was an accident or that it didn’t mean anything. This is when I realize that I actually want it to mean something.
“What did I say?” he asks gently. Taking a step toward me.
I bite my lip, then look up at him. His eyes pierce into mine. “You said that you don’t ever want to be with any other girl but me,” I say, almost a whisper.
My heart is racing as I wait for his response. He lifts his hands and threads them around my waist, pulling me closer to him. He looks down at me, his lips hovering over mine.
When he speaks, it’s a whisper against my mouth, “I guess my drunk ass isn’t such a complete idiot after all.”
Then he kisses me.