Chapter 7 #2
Something weighted hangs in the air, dense, like the humidity after the rain. I don’t know where I’m going with it, but I think we both know I just dropped those words like it was fated. Like it means something. Like I haven’t spent the last two decades cutting myself off from hope.
You were the first person who made me feel a spark again. You’re the fire that I can’t allow to burn because it will burn us both right down to ashes.
Dramatic but true.
Also? My brain needs more calories. It’s dredging all the sludge from the darkest corners of me, and sludge sucks.
It hurts, and it’s goopy and terrible. It’s a bad side to a really good sandwich.
Partnered with the sludge is the truth about what I felt, and what I still feel, about this woman.
I can’t allow it to have any bearing on my decisions, even if the last remaining wild vestiges of me that have sprung back to life like a seed emerging strangely unscathed from a sheet of ice want to call off the wedding and go on a crazy mission to reclaim my joy.
Go back to doing what I love.
Mend my relationship with Mika.
Ask Bellatrix if she’d ever consider going on a real date with me.
The first two are doable. I should have done them a long time ago, but the last option?
I just…can’t. Mostly, it’s about me. I have issues.
I’ll own that any day. But also, it’s the age gap.
She’s not doing this out of a romantic inclination.
It’s because she has a pure heart, and she’s basically screaming you have to be saved from throwing your life away.
At least she hasn’t looked at me with pity. Yet.
I might be soaked to the skin, and I might nearly have had a pass out after gagging about tacos, but all of that is just a drop in the big old bucket when it comes to the lake of mortification I’m swimming in.
This is the most honest I’ve been with anyone in a long time, including my own family and friends.
My parents have never fully understood what happened, and after a while, they stopped pressing on it. It was a relief at the time, but it was probably the worst thing they could have done.
I have a few friends left from back in my pre-vase era and quite a few from after, but I’ve never told them the whole story. Not that I’ve given Bellatrix all of it. Far from it. But in just a few minutes, I’ve done what I couldn’t do over the past twenty years with others.
I could blame it on my hunger-addled brain, or I could chalk it up to…
To what exactly?
The fact that since I didn’t have to taco vomit, I word vomited instead?
Bellatrix carefully wraps up the remainder of her sandwich. I’m trying to be a gentleman, so I don’t ask her if she’s going to eat that later. The way she tucks it back into the soggy brown bag with so much care says that she absolutely will.
She stands, clutching the bag with one hand at the bottom in case the sandwich rips through the dicey wet paper.
The anguish on her face is clear, and it causes a wave of grief for me, as well as regret that I dumped all of that on her.
Her hair, wavy and bouncy at the start of the evening, is now plastered to her head except for a ball of frizz standing up on top.
Her makeup, though light, is entirely washed away.
There’s one inky dark streak along the edge of her cheek where her mascara ran earlier and didn’t get brushed away.
I know she’d probably joke about looking like a dirty little drowned rat, but in reality, she’s absolutely breathtaking. My heart hiccups and doesn’t go back to beating at a normal rate. It races like it’s competing for a world title.
“I should probably get going if I want to catch the last bus back without the route getting complicated and involving eighteen transfers.”
Now, my jaw is the one going unhinged. I stare at her long enough for it to be weird before I recover. “Absolutely not!” The calories have worked their magic, and I can leap to my feet without getting lightheaded. “There’s no way you should get on public transport like that.”
She crosses her arms in a stubborn pose. “I’m a big girl. I can look after myself.”
“I would never let my daughter get on a bus, especially not…not soaking wet and looking like a…” Like a wet dream. The wet dream of every creep and every normal and decent guy too. “It’s not safe,” I say, dropping my voice and pleading with her.
And yes, I just went into total dad mode. It should be a turn-off, but Bellatrix isn’t gagging. She isn’t digging in and getting more defensive either. If anything, it looks a little bit like she’s pulling a snowbank on a warm winter day and melting.
If I’m in the old-guy mode, I might as well throw in a few dad jokes too.
“I see your point,” she admits.
“Let me drive you home.”
“Oh, goodness, no. It’s all the way across town from you. After the evening from hell, you’re probably exhausted. I’d also never forgive myself for leaking rainwater all over your expensive car.”
“I’m going to leak rainwater all over it,” I point out.
“Might as well not ruin two seats.”
“Please.” I’ll beg if I have to. “Let me take you home.”
She hesitates but shakes her head. “I’ll get a cab. It’s not a big deal.”
“Let me at least call and get a female driver.”
She bites down on her lip, which doesn’t help the blood flow to the groin, wet pants, and hard cock problem. “Okay, I’ll agree to that if you agree to give me one more chance.”
I’d give her a thousand more chances.
That’s also a me problem.
And it’s yet another issue that I seem to be developing.
An inability to tell this woman no and a desire to keep seeing her.
She knows the worst parts of me, and she’s still determined to try to save me from myself.
I have no idea why. Maybe she feels that after our first meeting, she needs to make it her life mission.
She could be soulful like that and believe in signs and past lives and people being put in your path for a reason.
I pull my wet phone out of my back pocket. It’s waterproof, so the soaking wasn’t a problem. On the other hand, my wallet might not have fared so well.
“It wasn’t the night from hell. I’ve been there. In fact, I probably still have one foot in the fiery inferno. This was…kind of fun,” I say.
“Same time, different place a few days from now?”
“I’ll check my schedule and give you some available dates.” I wince at my failure to insert just a modicum of professionalism into this.
As if that’s what we’re doing.
I don’t know what we’re doing.
But I know what I want to be doing.
Though I can’t be doing any of it.
So friend-slash-professional-zoning undergoing Mission Experience Life it is.
“Sure.” Her smile is far too ready and far too captivating. I don’t need to go down on my ass for a second time tonight. “Sounds good.” Her lips pull back further into a grin that exposes a flash of her white teeth. There’s the tiniest piece of lettuce stuck between her front two teeth.
I like that.
What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On. With. My. Brain?
Before I can do or say anything silly—or sillier?—I call for a cab. After, I ball up my trash from the sandwich into my hand and hold on to it. We wait in silence.
They say silence can be profound.
But all I feel is a profound sense of excitement and dread that I agreed to do this again when I shouldn’t have even allowed myself a first time.