Use Me! #3
I pressed my foot to the gas. My blood was boiling the entire way home.
She’d given up her practice over what I was sure would be pocket change to me.
Not because she didn’t have access to it through me.
But because she’d rather sacrifice her dreams than risk owing me something.
Asking me for something. The worst part was she hadn’t even told me it happened.
Just swallowed the loss, adding it to the pile of things she’d go through alone. I was sick of this.
It ended today.
She came up ten minutes after I got in, in one of my shirts, and for half a second when I opened the door I almost forgot the whole reason I’d called her over.
She stepped in and shut the door, looking apprehensive. “What’s wrong, Julian? If this is about last night I’m so—”
“Why am I hearing from a realtor that you lost your office space?”
Her face changed. Guilt, shame, then her shoulders squared. Defense mode. “Because it wasn’t a big deal.”
“The hell it wasn’t. You’ve been talking about that practice for months. You found a space, you lost it, and don’t say a word? Instead I get blindsided at a meeting?”
She looked anywhere but at me. “Julian...”
“No. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She folded her arms tight across her chest. She rubbed her lips together nervously and finally whispered, “Because my credit’s destroyed.
From before. From debt I didn’t know existed until it was too late.
My bankruptcy and foreclosure. The landlord wanted triple the deposit, more on top. I couldn’t swing it. So I let it go.”
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“How much, Alyssa.”
“Twenty-two thousand.”
I stared at her, then laughed, disbelieving. “That’s what you thought was too much to ask me for? I spent twice that on studio equipment last week without a second thought.”
She started rubbing her lips together again, then took a deep breath. “That’s for your business. It’s not your responsibility to—”
“Stop that.” My voice rose. “Do you hear yourself? You’re talking about your career, your professional independence, the ability to help people who need you. And you’re willing to let it slip away over money that means nothing to me?”
She flinched. “I don’t want you to think that I’m using you.” Her words came out strangled. “For what you can do for me. You already do so much, Julian. I couldn’t ask you for more.”
“Jesus Christ, Alyssa, ask me for more! USE ME!” The words exploded out of me. “I’m here. I’m literally standing here, wanting to be used by you. Wanting to be needed by you. That’s what people they— what people do in a relationship. They need things. They ask. They receive.”
When they love each other was halfway out of me before I caught it. Not like this. Not by accident, in the middle of an argument, because she’d backed me into feeling it out loud. I shut it down and watched her face. She was too deep in her own spiral to have caught it.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how to do that. How to ask. To accept it without feeling guilty.”
“Because you still think that needing help means being weak. That asking means owing. Or you’re just too used to being let down? But that’s not what this is.”
I moved closer, cupping her face. “This is me wanting to see you win. It’s me having resources that mean nothing if I can’t use them to support the woman I care about. It’s partnership, Alyssa. Not transaction or debt. Just... us.”
“It’s not on purpose,” she said, and the tears came.
“Half the time it isn’t even a decision.
It’s muscle memory.” She pressed a hand flat to her chest. “There’s a voice in here that says if I need too much, one day you’ll do the math and decide I’m too much trouble.
That I should be grateful for what I’ve got and not push. ”
“You’re worth all the trouble, Lyss. You’re worth everything. That voice is lying to you.” I pulled her against me, feeling her relax into me.
“I’m trying,” she said into my chest. “I hear you. I don’t want to lose you over this.”
“Then let me in. I need you to let me be a man. Your man. That’s all I’m asking.”
She was quiet a long time. Then she pushed the words up over years of never letting herself ask them.
“Will you help me? With the office.” A breath. “I’d pay you back, every —”
“You don’t pay me back. That’s the whole point of an us. I will take care of it. I want to.”
I tipped her head up. “And, Lyss? You have no idea what it just did to me that you asked.”
“What did it do?”
I had to go find them. “Most days I feel like I’m standing here with everything in my hands and nowhere to put it down, because you won’t take a thing off me. You just asked me for something that matters to you. That’s not a weight, baby. That’s the best thing you could’ve done.”
Her head rested into my neck, and I wrapped her all the way up and felt the long breath go out of her like she’d set down something she’d been hauling for miles.
“Don’t worry about any of it,” I said into her hair. “Tomorrow we sit down together, and we work on a plan to get you your office.”
She tipped her face up. “And tonight?”
I looked at her a long moment and licked my lips at her.
“Tonight? Go get ready for bed.”