I really fucked up.
eighteen
. . .
i really fucked up.
“He’s not here?” I ask again, for the third time, my mind spinning. Not just my mind, actually. News of Miller not showing up for work today is making me dizzy, actually.
“No.” Beau looks rightfully puzzled. “Why?” He looks around the waiting room, checking the computer to make sure all of the appointments are accounted for. Returning to me with a questioning gaze, he asks, “what’s up?”
I fall back onto the stool to catch my breath, swiveling quickly to face my computer so that Beau can’t see the tear that streams down my cheek.
Using my shoulder, I brush it away nonchalantly.
“Go work. It’s nothing. Bye,” I deadpan, tilting my chin up ever so slightly to discreetly stop the tears from falling.
I don’t know if his handful of years as a married man has made him smarter when it comes to women or if all my years of audiobook listening have made me a grade-a actor or what but I’m grateful that he leaves.
Except when a large hand clamps down on my shoulder, I sigh. Can I ever just have a moment without Atticus being up my butt?
“Atticus,” I sigh, my voice wobbly with emotion. “Not today.”
He spins me to face him, and I find him sitting on the stool right next to mine. “Why ain’t Miller here?”
I shrug, hoping my tears go away soon because something tells me Atti isn’t going anywhere.
He nudges me with his elbow and though it’s soft, it’s too much pressure. I’m at the max. Last night was about to be amazing, and wham, out of nowhere, we’re… over.
Before we had sex, I wanted him to know. I told him, and he viewed it as a betrayal. But was not telling him actually a lie? I didn’t think so but now, today, feeling like my soul has literally melted out of my body, I think maybe I was wrong.
“Laney, talk to me.” Turning to face him, I let my wall come crashing down, too tired and scared to keep it up. Tears stream down my cheeks as I grab at the sides of my hair, tugging it back, rocking forward, my head shaking.
“I don’t know how this happened. It was fine.
Everything was casual, then it wasn’t, and then we were going to…
and now he’s not here.” Soothing hands rest on my shoulders, righting my body on the stool.
From his pocket, Atticus retrieves a navy blue handkerchief.
You know your heart is really broken when you let greasy Atti wipe your tears with his sweat rag.
But yep, that’s where I’m at. He tucks it in my curled fist, predicting the tears aren’t stopping anytime soon. He pats my knee and gets my attention. “No stream of consciousness crying shit. Tell me what’s goin’ on. Tell me what happened.”
Without sparing a single detail, I pour my guts out to Atti, who doesn’t make a peep the entire time.
He just sits and listens, even helping a customer with an appointment when they walk in mid-story.
And when I’ve caught him up to the part where Miller and I were about to have sex for the first time and what happened, he reaches for his water and takes a long pull.
I twist my fingers together in my lap, searching his features for anything. A reaction of any kind, anything to bring my stress and tension down. But after he’s allowed himself a minute or two to think, he faces me, a large hand stroking down the length of his beard.
“Why didn’t you just tell him when he told you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I think…
” I trail off for a moment, really considering the one question that has been eating me alive since last night.
“I wanted him to, like, look up to me or feel like he needed me or something.” I swipe his handkerchief beneath my eyes.
“I knew I could benefit him and show him how amazing he is, and I also knew he could help me move my shit here forward, too.”
“Which thing was more important?” He taps the toe of his boot on the floor once. “Helpin’ each other out,” he gruffs, tapping his boot again. “Or gettin’ extra time with a guy you’ve been tellin’ yourself you don’t like?”
My bottom lip wobbles and the hinges of my jaw burn with the aggressive sob I’m holding back. Atti pats my back, leaving his hand there for comfort. “Let it out.”
Letting my face fall to my hands, I let out exactly four ugly sobs, my shoulders wracking and my gut clenching hard with each deep cry. And then I sit up and pull it together, doing more damage to Atti’s handkerchief, which smells more like heartache than BO now.
“I didn’t really think it would be anything more than fun for a few months.
I’d move on and get busy with the apprenticeship, and he’d find a girl and get her a ring.
” I shake my head, another errant tear slipping free.
“I didn’t think I’d fall in love.” I let out a long, soul-wracking sigh. “It was a mistake, all of it.”
Atticus shouts at me. Literally raises his voice and drops his other palm to the Plexi. “Hey! Don’t be sayin’ dumb shit like that.”
Startling, the hand he has on my back moves, calming me again. And this is why I tolerate Atti’s lip–because when the going gets tough, he’s here for me like every pseudo-older brother would be. “What’s dumb?” I wipe snot with my sleeve. Heartbreak is ugly in many ways.
“It wasn’t no mistake. So don’t be sayin’ shit like that. That’s the hurt talkin’.” He takes his hand off my back, leaning away as he clears his throat. Linking his hands together on the desk, he looks straightforward as he delivers me the deal.
“You should have told him about you. He ain’t wrong there.
Omissions are lies, Laney. And you know that.
So what you gotta do now is figure out in that smart brain of yours why you didn’t trust him.
Why you omitted. And then you gotta tell him.
Tell him and save that poor man because I think you and I both know he’s hurtin’ right now because he feels like you two ain’t as close as he thought.
” He strokes a hand down his beard. “That aligns with other relationships in his past.”
Oh my god. My stomach lurches into a tight knot of disgust. I made him feel like his family? I slap my hand to my mouth because I can’t stomach this. That I would make him feel that way. “Oh my god,” the words rush out in a panicked breath.
“But if you tell him why you did it, it’ll be okay.” He strokes his beard. “You lied because you wanted to keep spendin’ time with him, and you like him so much that you didn’t think you could stand it if he turned you down if he knew.” He teeters his flattened palm between us. “How close am I?”
I let out a wild, deep sob. “It annoys me,” I cry, “it annoys me greatly that you’re right.”
He sighs with great despair. “It annoys me greatly that I’m the love advice guy now.”
The fact that Atticus is more aware of and, in tune, with my true feelings than I am doesn’t help to ease my woes. And after a momentary sob in which I bat away Atticus’s sympathy shoulder grab or whatever the fuck, I lift my head and take a breath.
“Well, I have to shelve all of my horrible fuck ups for a few hours and then a couple more after work.” I pat beneath my eyes and turn to Atti. “I have to take Mara to karate tonight.” Then more to myself than Atti, I say, “I can’t believe I fucked this up.”
His boot connects with my ankle, and my gaze snaps to his with irritation.
“Ain’t nothin’ too fucked up yet.” He lets his boot crush loudly against the floor as he stands.
“And quit actin’ like you ain’t as good as him.
That’s… just plain fuckin’ stupid talk. You might be annoying, but you ain’t dumb. ”
He leaves, the slamming door making me jolt. My senses are all off if I couldn’t prepare for a noise I hear a thousand times a day.
I get through the rest of the morning leading to lunch with relative ease. I pop my EarPods in and listen to my book, happy to be at the part in the story where they, too, are miserable. Though I know they’ll reach their HEA before me, I’m eager to ride out their misery with them for now.
It loves company, after all.
When it’s time to grab Mara from school– she’s allowed half days twice a month for her pre-comp practices for her adaptive athlete allowance- I put on a nice, fake smile and manage to hide my misery.
I did that by staying silent.
Pulling into the parking lot at her Kumite practice, she prods my arm with her bony finger. “Why are you smiling like a psychopath?”
I laugh uncomfortably because I was pretty much acting just like that.
She’s not wrong. “Nothing, just… tired,” I lie, and not because I want to lie to Mara.
That’s not how our family rolls. My mom always says, there is nothing you can tell me that is worse than you lying to me.
But spilling my guts to a twelve-year-old isn’t healthy, considering the situation is all based around… sex.
“Actually,” I say, sending her a small, awkward smile through the cab as I figure out my words. Because now that I’m thinking about it, it’s not about sex.
It’s about not being real with him when he put it all out there for me and laid it bare.
I did have the perfect opportunity to bring us together. To lessen his nerves and assure him–using my sexually confident self as an example–that he could find and gain confidence with or without sex. That confidence came from knowing yourself and respecting your own truths.
I was teaching him the right lesson but all the wrong ways.
Not to mention, the truth is, I didn’t tell him because… I wanted him to want me, and I thought that experience in that arena was the only way .
God, I really messed all of this up.
“Actually, what? You started a sentence then just drifted off,” Mara says, leaning forward to find answers in my eyes.