9. Taylor
Nine
Taylor
I’m still riding the high I felt climbing the bridge and seeing the world below, the stunning cotton candy-colored sky as we watched it change colors before our eyes. It was exhilarating and freeing, and even though we were tethered with a group of people, when we were standing at the top, it felt like Jake and I were the only people in the world.
But more than this adrenaline rush, my body is hotwired and on fire. Every single nerve is electrified, and my skin burns where Jake’s lips just connected with my neck. I quickly let myself into the room because if I don’t, I can’t be sure I won’t chase him down.
The door closes, and I fall back against it, my head bouncing off it as I close my eyes and process what this all means. Relationships mean trouble, and meaningless sex leaves me feeling cold and empty, and if I’m being honest, used. I’m done being used and tossed aside for the next girl in line.
When I married Trent, I knew he was a player; it’s how we met. A random hook-up that turned into more, and I guess we both mistook our intense chemistry for something more. We had no business getting married, and he never had any intention of staying faithful. Guess he didn’t realize that when he said I do it meant he had to stop sleeping with other women. All we ever had was chemistry and relationships are unsustainable when built off nothing more.
What the hell am I holding out for now, though?
A broken heart is nothing more than a skinned knee at this point. It doesn’t even bleed tears anymore.
“Fuck it,” I mutter to myself, grabbing my keycard as I head down to the hotel bar because I’m going to need a shot of liquid courage to knock on his door. I’m a little rusty in this department, and if I’m being honest, I actually like him. It was so much easier in the past: a random hook-up with no expectations.
But as soon as I hit the bar, I realize it’s a huge mistake. I’ve avoided group gatherings since I’ve changed my outlook on my life, because people still view you in that same light no matter how hard you work to rid yourself of a shitty reputation.
It doesn’t matter what I accomplish in my career or how many flights I’ve made as a captain. It all comes back to how many guys I’ve slept with. That’s my claim to fame. Like it’s something I should be ashamed of too.
Within seconds of sitting down at the far end of the bar and ordering a whiskey on the rocks, I have an overly friendly man standing in my personal space. I can smell the beer on his breath, hot and bitter in my face, and I cringe, my nose turning up as I swallow hard.
He’s a decent enough guy, and it’s not like I don’t know him. He works for Crescent Airways, and our paths have crossed in and out of the bedroom, but he’s obviously drunk, and nothing good can come of that.
“Taylor,” he grumbles, my name thick on his tongue, a garbled mess really driving home how much alcohol he’s consumed.
“Theo,” I say, nodding my head at him as I signal for the bartender, calling out for a glass of water.
“Where’ve you been? I’m in the mood for a good time.”
I almost puke at his feet, his hand running up my thigh and I push it away gently, but he’s not taking the hint. His body is now pressed against mine, the feeling of his already hard dick brushing my thigh.
“What’d ya say?” he asks, the beer in his hand now sloshing out and splashing onto my shirt. “My room?” He dangles the keycard to his room in front of me, a suggestive, smarmy smile on his face.
“I’m going to have to say no,” I reply politely, but my patience is growing very thin, and I look around for some small bit of salvation. The bartender is busy talking to a group of young, perky flight attendants, and anyone else within an earshot is obviously drunk or lonely and drowning their sorrows.
“No?” The appalled tone in his voice radiates through my body, sending a shiver down my spine. “Since when the fuck do you say no?” He lifts his chin in my direction, his shoulders squared, and I think he’s going to step away from me.
He’s hovering over me, his muscled frame and height being thrown around to make me feel small and weak as he grips my thigh with his oversized hand.
“Since now.” I shrug my shoulders and turn away from him.
He lets out a low, condescending laugh and pushes closer to me. Everything about this interaction is disgusting. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get that option after all the shit we’ve done together.”
I suck in a hard breath and shove away from the bar. Standing in front of him I’m prepared to have this out. “Excuse me?” My question comes out loud, and he knows there’s not a chance I’ve missed what he’s said.
“You heard me. Don’t give me this shit. Just fucking put out, Taylor. That’s what you do. You’re the slutty captain.” He smirks at me, slimy and glib, like he’s just won this argument and I’ll willingly go up to his room.
Oh no, he called me a slut. It must be true, so I should just do what he says.
My eyes grow wide at his response and for a second, I’m taken aback by his boldness, suddenly questioning everything I’ve ever done in my past. If I gave my body to someone it now means it no longer belongs to me, and with that thought, something in me explodes.
He has no idea what he’s just ignited inside me.
“You!” I shout, poking him in the chest with a red manicured fingernail. “You are what is wrong with men. You’re the reason women get raped, and no one believes them. Be obedient. Be quiet. Be available. Fuck you!”
He steps back now, but I’m not even close to being finished and now it’s me who’s in his face. He wants me, and this is the Taylor he gets now.
“Call me a slut. Tell me I stepped out of my lane. That neat little lane that men like you put women in, and when you stray from it, it’s a hell of a time getting back in. But you know what? I don’t want back in. I want to be all over the fucking place, making a scene. I. Owe. You. Nothing.” Each word comes out harsh and stabbing, but oddly enough, Theo continues to stand his ground, not fazed in the least by my words. If anything, it just adds to his need to throw around his power.
“Take it easy,” he says, his patronizing attempt at placating me. “You sound a little crazy right now.”
Now it’s me laughing, an offended chuckle falling from my lips. Of course, he’d call me crazy because women can’t control their emotions, and any woman who stands up to a man must be crazy. It’s manipulation at its best.
“Crazy? Oh yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Or maybe I’m just sick of your bullshit, your expectations. I don’t get to live my life the way I want because I fucked you before, and now the expectation is that it will always happen.”
“Fuck, seriously, settle down. A simple no thanks would’ve done the job,” he says, and again he’s back with his manipulation, trying to throw this whole thing back onto me. He’s completely ignoring the fact that he unwelcomely put his hands on me, let his hard-on press against my body, and came into my personal space.
“I did say no, remember? And that’s where the problem lies. This shame is not mine. It’s yours, and I want you to remember this conversation because someday you’ll have a daughter, and it will ring loud and booming in your ears.”
I storm away without saying another word. I know everyone in the bar is watching, gossiping about what just happened and I couldn’t care less. I can’t be the only woman who feels this way, but I’m the only one who wants to be the fighter.
When I’m in the elevator, my heart racing, my mind swirling with everything that just happened, I choke back the feeling of tears that burn hot and angry at the back of my throat.
I will not cry.
Taylor Patterson doesn’t cry.
I made my own bed, and now I have to lie in it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get to advocate for change.
This is not how I thought my evening was going to play out. I headed down to the bar to psych myself up to knock on Jake’s door and finally do what we’ve both wanted since the day we met. But after my encounter with Theo, things have gone to shit.
There’s no way I’m in any mood to get back to the way I used to be, and with the way I’m feeling right now, it would be meaningless sex just to make me numb.
I shove my keycard into the door and tromp over to the bed, falling back onto it and wondering if I’ll even be able to sleep. My mistrust in the past is making it hard to see the future, but I can’t seem to let go.
I pick up the phone and get the front desk, a woman’s friendly but tired voice greeting me.
“Can I have Jake Campbell’s room, please?” I ask, and the woman connects me, the phone ringing.
I look at the clock on the nightstand, and while it’s not late, we have been back in our rooms for a while now. On the fourth ring, and just as I’m about to hang up, Jake’s voice comes on the line.
“Hello.”
As soon as I hear it, a strange calmness comes over me, my chest growing lighter, his voice like warm bathwater, soothing and comforting.
“Promise me you’re not just interested in me because of my past.”
He doesn’t ask who it is, just responds with, “We aren’t defined by our past.”
“I feel like I am,” I respond, being more open with him than I have been with anyone in years.
“You focus on it. You’re allowing it and the regret you feel to control you, but if you just look at it as something that happened in your life, which is all it really is, you’ll get over it.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
His words hold weight. I’ve let everyone else define who I am by what I’ve done; the girl who takes the path less traveled, who owns her sexuality and stands out in a career crowded with men. People are scared by what is different. They judge and shame and assume.
“It is simple. Do you think I thought about the number of men you’ve been with as we climbed that bridge together? Do you think I questioned how many men have pressed their lips to your neck when I did the same outside your hotel room?”
“Did you?” I ask, my words quiet, but still somehow screaming from inside my head, loud and startling.
“All I thought about was being the last. The last guy to touch your body, to be inside your head, to heal your heart, to foster what is amazing about you; all the things you can’t see.”
I fall instantly silent, again stunned by Jake’s words and his ability to make me view my life as something more than a string of one-night stands.
“I got hit on at the bar tonight,” I admit, my words coming out in a rush as if telling someone makes them more real.
“You went to the bar?” I hear him suck in a hard breath, a sharp intake of air that pushes his jealousy to the forefront.
“I was…I was trying to find the courage to knock on your door, but it went south really fast.”
He laughs a little and I can picture his perfect jawline and his striking green eyes that wrinkle up at the corners when he laughs.
“You really don’t have any idea, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s me who needs the courage because when you finally say yes, you’re going to break me.”
I struggle with what to say because with every word he says, I feel like he could break me too.
“Tell me something no one knows about you,” he prompts, the silence now broken, but his words forever etched into my brain. I love the way he can take something serious, something so defining and then change the subject to something that will take us down a different path.
“Um…I don’t have a ton of secrets,” I reply, stalling for time as I’m hit with the realization that even my ex-husband Trent never knew much about me. Sharing my life means people know my weaknesses. I avoid it at all costs.
“You’re a liar.” But his words aren’t meant cruelly, just said definitively like he knows I’ve buried things. There’s an ease in talking to him and I suddenly want to admit all my deepest secrets.
“When I was seventeen, I knocked our neighbor’s mailbox out of the ground backing out of our driveway. Instead of telling them, I just picked it up and shoved it back in the ground and then I colored the bumper on my mom’s car with a Sharpie marker to hide the marks.”
“Taylor,” Jake spits out, his tone fraught with mock surprise. “And to think I had this vision of you as this perfect angel.”
“Stop making fun of me!”
“I’m not,” he teases back, and I love the playfulness in his voice. “So what happened?”
“The next day over dinner, my dad was talking about how when our neighbor went to open the mailbox, the whole damn thing fell over. He went on and on about the ‘asshole’ who didn’t have the balls to own up to knocking it over. Everyone in the neighborhood blamed the mailman.”
“You let the poor mailman take the blame?”
“I did,” I say, letting my faux shame slip through.
“Oh Taylor, you naughty girl.”
Just hearing him call me naughty conjures up images of Jake in my head—images that are far naughtier than a busted-up mailbox, and I need to change the subject.
“Now it’s your turn.”