Chapter 17 #2
He laughs, the mean one, but he goes back to work, so I don’t even care. I stop looking out the window. I stop caring about anything. I press my forehead down against my forearm, and I feel it. His hands and his mouth and everything that is him.
It’s overwhelming, and it’s everything I didn’t know I wanted, and I’m starting to think maybe I can. I can come like this. Just a little more—
The car door slams outside.
Will stops.
“No,” I say to my arm, shaking my head. “No, no, no, I can’t, no—”
But he’s already standing, and thankfully, he fixes my pants for me because I can’t move. My body is trembling with so much need that it overrides any dignity left.
“Will,” I say, and I know my desperation must be all over my face because he smirks.
But it’s not funny this time. It’s not confessing my feelings to him when I know I sound crazy. It’s not coming too fast over a kiss. I need him.
“Sorry. Should’ve been faster.”
“No, let’s go upstairs, please—”
The front door opens.
“We got ice cream!” Ollie shouts from the entryway.
Will picks up a slice of leftover pizza from the box like nothing happened, leaning back against the opposite counter, entirely composed. I watch on, my mouth open in shock that he would actually do this to me.
He winks.
I turn to face the sink. I run the cold water. I try to breathe. Addie comes into the kitchen saying something about the car, and Will responds, like nothing even happened.
The couch makes everything worse.
I take one side, thinking Will is going to take the other like a normal person, but instead, he drops down beside me, close enough that our thighs are touching.
On the loveseat, Addie and Emmett are already tangled together, her legs across his lap, his arm along the back of the cushion behind her head, twirling a curl around his finger.
There’s no way either of them would want to trade spots, so I guess I’m stuck here.
Desperately wishing I had gone on that date with Karen.
Ollie lasts about forty minutes down here with us before he takes his Nintendo Switch upstairs, which is for the best. I’m not sure this is the sort of show he should be watching.
Will is absorbed. He asks questions non-stop, and when things happen, he reacts. A sharp inhale, a what the hell, a flinch when it gets intense.
It would be endearing if I weren’t so angry with him.
He shifts beside me, his shoulder pressing more firmly into mine, and again, I wonder, why are we doing this?
He rejected me. He laughed at my confession. And then he kissed me. And he jerked me off. Shoved his dick down my throat and that whole scene at the restaurant. He said he had been thinking about my ass for months.
I was starting to think—
I don’t know what I was starting to think.
I know that people who aren’t interested don’t do what Will does. I know jealousy when I see it. He doesn’t like that I’m with Karen.
But people who are interested don’t hurt you the way he hurts me. And I think I’ve realized that he’s using me for an easy fuck. Why wouldn’t he? He knows how I feel about him. He hates me, so he doesn’t care if he hurts me in the process.
At some point during the second episode, when everyone is sucked in, and the tears behind my eyes that have been threatening to fall for the last hour are winning the hard-fought battle, I stand up and go upstairs.
About an hour later, there’s a knock on my door.
I don’t answer it, hoping whoever it is will go away. I don’t want to see anyone right now or for the next week, while I grieve something that never should have started to begin with.
Why does this hurt more than Jess leaving?
I never meant anything to him. I was easy, and he was using me. I feel disgusted with myself that I let it go on as long as I—
The door opens.
Will strolls in, shutting the door and locking it behind him. The mattress dips when he sits on the edge of the bed, but I don’t turn around. “Kids are in bed,” he says, like that’s supposed to matter to me anymore. Maybe if I don’t say anything, he’ll go away.
“So…” He continues when I don’t respond.
I pull my blanket tighter, my voice coming out muffled. “Go away, Will.”
The mattress shifts again as he moves closer, his hand landing on my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Don’t.” I sit up with a scowl, shrugging him off, but keeping my blanket wrapped around me. “I’m not doing this.”
“Doing what?” he asks, and it makes it so much worse because he sounds actually confused. He doesn’t even know.
“Whatever this is.” I gesture between us with a flick of my hand. “I’m done.”
“Okay…” he says slowly. “What happened?”
“What happened,” I repeat, my anger making my voice steady for the first time tonight. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe what you did in the kitchen earlier.”
“Really, dude? The kids came home—”
“That’s not the point. The point is that you did it on purpose and you thought it was funny—” I stop when my voice cracks. I’m not embarrassing myself any further. That’s all he wants anyway. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”
“It obviously matters.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I say, staring at the wall because my eyes are prickling and I am not crying in front of him.
“I’m a joke to you. I always have been. You know how I feel, and you use it against me.
I mean, why wouldn’t you?” I shake my head.
“I’m not doing it anymore. Find someone else to mess with. I’m done.”
Will is watching me. I can feel it, that burn of his stare on the side of my face, but I’m not giving him the satisfaction of seeing me upset over him.
“That’s not what this is,” he says, and it would almost sound believable if I didn’t know who I was talking to.
“I mean it.” He reaches for me, tugging on my arm. “Look at me.”
I do, because I must hate myself.
“I didn’t do it to mess with you. The kids came back, so I stopped. That’s it. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You thought it was funny.”
“A little,” he admits, and I start to turn around, to lie back down and end this conversation, but his hand tightens around my wrist. “Hey. Come on. It was just a little edging. I didn’t know you were gonna feel like this.”
“You never think about how I feel.” I pull free from his grip. “You’ve never once considered that I might have feelings in all this. I told you I liked you, and you laughed in my face. You kissed me and said it meant nothing.”
“This isn’t some sort of game,” he says after a deep sigh. “I know, okay? I know I’m not good at this. Why do you think I’ve never had a stable relationship in my entire life? But I don’t think you’re a joke.”
“Then why?”
He doesn’t answer that.
I let out a long, exhausted breath. “I’m not sleeping with you anymore,” I say, and the words feel strange, considering we’ve never actually slept together. “If you want to keep… seeing me, then take me on a date. Otherwise, we’re done.”
The silence that follows hurts more than the first rejection. And then, to no one’s surprise, he laughs at me. Again. “A date.”
“Just go away.”
He runs a hand over his face, pressing his fingers into his eyes with a groan. “You want me to take you on a date.”
“Will,” I say, wishing he would leave so I can go back to my misery. “Go home. I’ll get over it eventually and—”
“Fine.”
“Good,” I start to lie back down, but he stops me with a hand on my leg.
“No, asshole. I mean, fine. I’ll take you out.” He stands from the bed with a stretch, the bottom of his shirt riding up. “But I’m not gonna like it.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
He’s going to—
What?
“Alright then. Now that that’s settled.” He moves toward the door, stopping with a hand on the doorknob. “Tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up. Don’t wear something stupid.”
With that, he leaves. I listen to his footsteps on the stairs, the front door closing, and then nothing.
Fine. He said fine when I asked him on a date. But he didn’t want to lose me. So somewhere, deep down, maybe he does feel something for me.
And right now, that feels like enough.