Chapter 31 Until It’s Morning
Until It’s Morning
— O NE W EEK TO A MELIE’S W EDDING —
Silence. Well, not silence, but breathing. My heartbeat is pulsating in every inch of my body, every cell of my skin. Drying the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand, I swallow.
What did I do?
I glance at the phone, tight between my fingers, then burst into hysterical sobs as my stomach knots and my lungs struggle to fill with air.
“Amelie…” Ian says in a choked-up voice.
He can’t say my name. Not after how he said it a minute ago; not after what we did. How do I come back from this? How could I have sex with another man twenty minutes after my breakup? How do I live with the fact that it was the best sex of my life?
“I’m such a horrible person,” I cry.
“No, Amelie. You’re not horrible.” He sighs, his voice unrecognizable now that it’s so sad and hollow. “You’re lonely, exhausted, and a little drunk. None of that makes you horrible.”
“I—my wedding was supposed to be in a week.”
That’s all I can think about. A week from today was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. I was going to stand in front of a crowd of people and tell Frank the reasons I love him, then promise to do so for the rest of my life.
And I had sex with Ian twenty minutes after our breakup.
“Do you want to get married to him, Amelie?”
I bring a hand to my face, sobs still shaking my lips. I thought I did. That all I wanted was to be the head chef for La Brasserie, that all I needed was to be Frank’s wife. But now it feels like the only person I want is the one who won’t have me the way I need him to.
“He doesn’t need to know.” His voice sinks lower. “You had a fight. You broke up. And besides, you were in an open relationship, so you’ve done nothing wrong.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my head pounding. Hearing his thin voice as he says those words might just break my heart. I know that I’ll need to make some hard decisions, but all I can think about right now, at three thirty in the morning and drunk out of my mind, is that I’m hurting the best person I know. “Ian, I’m so sorry.”
“I knew what I was doing,” he says with a long sigh. “I knew you’d go back to him. Don’t feel sorry for me, because I’ve done this to myself.”
God. What am I doing? Ian doesn’t deserve this—doesn’t deserve to have me plummeting into his life and causing him pain.
I need to stay away from him. To let him live his life in peace. I should have never called.
With a harsher sob, I glance at my phone and hang up.
It immediately vibrates in my hand, his name blinking on the phone through the wobbly filter of my tears. When it stops, the screen lights up with a text.
Ian:
Amelie, pick up. Please.
He calls again. Again I sob. Again I don’t answer.
Please, I’m sorry. I fucked up.
How did he fuck up? Of all the people involved in this, he’s the one who’s least to blame.
Answer the phone. I know we’re done, but let me hear your voice one last time.
He’s right. We’re done. Getting married has been my dream for as long as I can remember, and being with Ian would mean giving that up. He hates weddings, hates marriage, and he’ll never settle down. And what do I do? I go and fall for him.
The phone lights up with another call, and this time I pick up. If this is the last time, I want to hear his voice too.
He releases a deep breath as soon as I pick up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Amelie. I should have said no, I know I should have, but—”
“It’s not your fault, Ian.”
“It is. You’re obviously going through something. I shouldn’t have said yes—I just…” He lets out a long exhale. “I have no self-control when it comes to you. I’m sorry.”
“ I’m sorry,” I whisper. Tears keep raining down my cheeks, but I’m not sobbing anymore. I don’t want that to be the last image of me he has. “I dragged you down in my mess.”
“I knew I was playing with fire, Amelie. And besides, I’d let you burn me anytime.”
There’s a moment of silence in which it sinks in that this is a goodbye. In which he doesn’t tell me that the mark I left will probably burn forever. And I don’t tell him that I’ll silently feel this way about him for the rest of my life.
It’s a depleting, consuming silence.
“Give me tonight. Just tonight, before you go back to him.”
“Tonight?” I ask, propping myself up against the headboard and grabbing a tissue from the nightstand to blow my nose.
He sighs. “Just for tonight, be mine. We’ve fucked it up anyway. But if I were there, and we had fucked it up in the right way, I’d be kissing you right now. I’d hold you between my arms, touch every bit of you, whisper words in your ear. I’d spend the night fucking it up some more and making you smile. And then I’d be gone in the morning. Let me do that.”
“Ian, I—”
“Please, Amelie. Just one night—not even an entire night. Three hours, until it’s morning. And then I swear you’ll never hear from me again. I’ll let you live your life.”
My head throbs with the first signs of a hangover, and that’s still not the most painful thing going on. Nor is the awareness that Frank and I broke up, although that’s a close second. This is the last time I’ll talk to Ian. Forever. A night with him is the least I can get.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Yes?”
“Yes,” I repeat.
A breath of relief breaks through his lips. “Thank you.” He pauses. “So… hmm… What did you and the girls do?”
I chuckle, drying the tears off my face, although some more follow. I tell him about my day, then he tells me about his. And then we fuck it up some more, superbly. We push the sadness, the sense of guilt down. And instead we spend our last three hours together chatting, laughing, telling each other loving, beautiful lies.
Until it’s morning.
A gentle squeeze of my shoulder drags me away from a dreamless sleep. I blink a few times, waiting for the room to focus before my eyes, a knife carving the inside of my brain. When I see Frank offering me a glass of water, it all comes back to me.
The party, the fight, the night I spent with Ian. My hands pat the mattress until I find my phone, and when I turn the screen on, my heart sinks into my chest. Just like he promised, he’s gone. I fell asleep with his words in my ear, and now the call is disconnected. No new messages.
“Are you feeling better?” Frank asks.
I nod, setting my phone down and grabbing the glass of water. I drink it all in small sips, more memories making heat spark all through my body. “You—you came back.”
“Yes.” He rubs his forehead, then sits next to me on the bed. “Yes, of course I did. Last night was…”
“I think we need to talk.”
He nods, then slowly walks out of the bedroom. “I’ll make coffee.”
After I splash some cold water on my face and pull my hair back with some pins, I join him in the kitchen. There’s a cup on the table, and he points at it as he takes a seat. His shoulders are tense, his forehead furrowed. I have to tell him what happened, and this will likely be the last conversation we have. The last coffee we share. The last time we sit in our kitchen together.
“I’m sorry about last night, Ames. I really am. But at two a.m., and after I’ve had a fucking long day…” He pushes his glasses up and sighs. “I really wasn’t in the mood to discuss our sex life.” Shaking his head, he continues, “And the way you threw yourself at me—”
“Yesterday was my birthday.”
He blinks, and as he runs the numbers in his head, he closes his eyes. “Shit.” His shoulders drop, and with an apologetic look, he takes my hand. “I can’t believe I forgot. Why didn’t you say anything? We would have gone out for dinner or something before the bachelorette party.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say with a whiff of apprehension. “That isn’t what I want to talk about.”
“No, Ames. Of course it matters. I should have—”
“Last night, when you left, I—” I cut him off as my heart skips a beat. Unable to meet his eyes, I focus on the dark brew inside my cup. “I was so angry. I felt lonely, and I needed to—I wanted to—”
Leaning backward, he studies me. “You’re scaring me. What happened?”
“I…” God, I’m going to faint. “I was with Ian. We had—we…”
His hand leaves mine, and though I know I owe him the respect to look into his eyes while I tell him what happened, I still can’t bring myself to do it. “Ian?” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t he live in Mayfield?”
“Yes.”
“So how—you invited him over?”
“I called him.” He watches me with a confused expression. “We had… we—phone sex.”
“Phone sex.”
I nod. He remains still for a while, and I do, too, as I wait for his reaction. Then his lips curve into a smile and he bursts out laughing, immediately clamping his hand over his mouth when he sees the look of horror on my face. “Phone sex? What the hell does that mean? You—you listened to each other?”
“Y-yeah.”
With his cup set on the table, he snorts derisively. His shoulders shake, his fingers pressing his eyes as chuckles bubble out of his lips despite the fact that he’s obviously trying to hold them back.
I’m not sure how to react.
“Okay, well… I thought—” He suppresses his smile, his fingers scratching his head. “It’s not like you had sex with him.”
My eyes bug out. Not that I’d like to dig a deeper grave for myself, but I did. “I—phone sex is… sex. It’s right there in the word.”
“Yeah, but he never touched you. He didn’t even see you.”
So? That’s not what sex is about. Seeing and touching. Okay, I guess those are a big part of it. But the point of sex is an emotional connection, and the point of me doing it with someone else is that I have none with Frank.
“Right. So you don’t mind,” I say, dramatically waving my hand. “No big deal.”
“No, of course I mind. But… it’s like you watched a porno. Less, actually. Like you listened to a guy jerking off.” He bursts out laughing again. “I’m sorry, but it’s so… pathetic. Why would he do that?”
He uses the cup to hide his next chuckle, and I don’t know what to say. It’s not pathetic that hearing me masturbate would turn him on enough to do it himself. It’s not pathetic that what we did was the most intimate sex I’ve ever experienced. What’s pathetic is the way he’s reacting.
“I have feelings for him,” I hear myself say. The words drag out of my lips, but as soon as I pronounce them, I know I wouldn’t take them back even if I could. This is the most sensible thing I’ve said in the past six months, isn’t it? I don’t know why I tried to keep my feelings buried. Why I tried to deny them as strenuously as I did. To what end? It’s so much easier to put it all out there. Now Frank can do with this information whatever he pleases.
He sets his cup down, all signs of amusement gone from his face. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me. I have feelings for Ian.”
We stare at each other, and for a second I hardly recognize him. His brows are taut, his jaw set, his lips twisted in a disgusted sneer. “Because he jerked off on a phone call?”
“No. Last night has nothing to do with it.”
“Really? Because you might think he’s interested in you, but he’s only after one thing. And trust me, it isn’t marriage.”
I open my mouth to speak, then close it. Frank knows nothing about Ian, and I’d point that out if it weren’t for the fact that he’s dead right. Ian doesn’t want a marriage, a wedding. He wants parties on Tuesdays and dates on Thursdays. Still, it has nothing to do with my feelings for him.
“Okay, fine.” He rubs a hand over his beard, his glasses fogging up as if his anger is heating up his face. “You have a crush. We said our agreement stood as long as there was nothing emotional, so just stop talking to him.”
Unfortunately, I’m one step ahead of him. My mind replays every moment after Ian and I had sex. The chatter, the unpopular opinions, the cute pickup lines he looked up and read to me. There won’t be any more of that. Surely, there won’t be any more of his groggy, post-orgasm voice calling me beautiful like that’s my name. There won’t be any more texts and calls and incessant flirting. No more Ian and Amelie.
“Ames? Did you hear what I said?”
“Hmm?”
“You have to stop talking to him.”
With a distracted nod, I look out the window. “I know.” I’m almost numb. All the anger I thought would come up during this conversation, all the built-up resentment and regret, they’re not here. There’s nearly nothing, yet it’s the most overwhelmed I’ve ever felt. Like when a bomb explodes, and for a second there’s just light and noise.
Then everything that exists is wiped away.
“Well, are you gonna?”
I meet Frank’s gaze, furious from behind his glasses, and nod.
Releasing a breath, he shifts on his chair. His hand wipes his forehead, his eyes studying the table as he processes the news. He looks insulted rather than upset. “I can’t believe this, Ames.”
Scornful and bitter, his words burn into my brain. I know he didn’t think this would happen, and, if possible, that pisses me off even more. “Why not?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you not believe I’d sleep with another man?” I ask as I rest my chin on my fist.
“You didn’t sleep with him.”
“Yes, I fucking did,” I snap. “And if he’d been here, I would have done it all the same but without the phone. With all the touching and seeing you’re so fond of.”
Through his lashes, he glares at me. “Listen, I get that you’re pissed off, but—”
“But what, Frank?” I ask in a much more composed voice than I expect from myself. “Do you realize this is all your fault? All of this—do you understand it happened because of you?”
He frowns down at the table. “Right. Blame your feelings on me. I said we weren’t supposed to have anything emotional, Ames.”
I nod. “And I told you there was a risk it would happen.”
He holds my gaze for a while, his jaw clenched and his lips compressed. Eventually he looks away and the silence stretches on, then some more. I don’t know how long we sit there, contemplating our failures and regrets, reflecting on the past six months.
He clears his throat. “Well, I propose we end this whole open-relationship thing. The wedding is in a week anyway.”
I’m somewhat taken by surprise, but the relief I expected to feel isn’t there. I figured it would feel like completing a test, and it does, but with the awareness that I’ve failed. That we failed.
“Yesterday was your birthday and I broke up with you. I was a huge ass.” He stands and holds on to my elbow, pulling me up. Once I’m standing in front of him, he wraps his arms around me, and I can’t help but feel stiff against his chest. “We’re fine, okay? Let’s never talk about it again.”
I stand there as he drops kiss after kiss on my cheek, too stunned to know what to say or think or do.
“How do you feel about eating out? We could call everyone and celebrate your birthday. And you’ll have to excuse me for a couple of hours, because I’m going to go get you the most amazing present of your life.”
When I smile weakly, he kisses the tip of my nose. “I love you, Ames.”
“I…”
I’d let you burn me anytime.
“I love you too,” I breathe out.
His fingers gently graze my cheek, then he takes a step back. “Okay. Give me two hours. I’ll plan dinner, get your present, and be back with cake too.” Pointing a finger at me, he grins. “You make a list of what we need to do for the wedding, take a shower, read. Just… relax. Today’s your day.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
Satisfied, he nods and turns around, then faces me again before he can disappear into the corridor. “Really, stop talking to him, okay?”
Crossing my arms around my stomach, I nod. “I already told him we can’t talk anymore.”
“See? That’s proof of what I’m saying.” He inhales deeply. “Don’t give it a second thought. It was just a stupid mistake.”
Right. A stupid mistake.