Fuck you, Beth!
I slam the phone on the kitchen counter causing Ethan who’s beside me to jump. He claps a hand on my back and gives me a little shake.
“You alright man?”
“Better than ever,” I say, eyeballing the cup in his hands rather than meeting him eye to eye. Everything about his body language tells me that he doesn’t believe me. Seeing as I’m not about to pour my tattered up heart out to him, I do the only damn thing I can to prove that I am indeed A Okay. I turn the fucking music up, sending the partiers wild.
Body’s move and fists pump to the beat. The girls find the center of the living room and shake what their mommas gave them. Selina’s a part of that pack. She’s got her eye on me while she swivels to and swivels fro, bending over so that I can see all the way up to her brains through the space in her thong. If I hadn’t had as much to drink as I had, my cock would’ve probably been harder than a metal rod. Not wanting to even drive down memory lane with how easily I could forget the world with her lips wrapped around my cock, I join the guys on the other end of the living room and bust a few moves of my own.
It’s hours later when things finally die down a little. There are still the night owls hanging around trying to squeeze the last bits of entertainment out of the night. Once upon a time, I used to be just like them. Right now, with the vodka souring the pits of my stomach and my eyes leaning to close, I realize that those days are long gone. I dip the music low enough so that my voice can’t go unheard. “I don’t give a fuck about y’all, but my ass is outta here.” There are moans and a few rebels, but I’ve made up my damn mind. It’s been a long fucking day and I’m more than happy to see it end.
I shuffle over to my bedroom and have my hand on the handle when slim fingers tap at my shoulder. “You’re not really turning in that early?” Selina smiles up at me with every bit of her intentions twinkling in her sapphire blue eyes.
“It’s an open bar and I’m not kicking anyone out.”
She leans in a little closer. “It’s not the bar that I’m interested in having a tall, long, drink of,” she whispers and I cringe.
Not tonight.
Not any other night.
Not anymore.
I push the bedroom door open and push her out, practically slamming the thing in her face. With my back pressed tight against it, I wait for a minute to make sure she’s gets the picture. And then, I allow my bed to hold me and drift off to sleep in the sweet scent of the only woman who has ever come close to damaging me.
Fuck you, Beth.
47
There are moments, when I want to be expressive, to be creative. Moments that require silence, reverence and utter darkness. A silent head and empty heart are no strangers to me. They are the necessary features of my most creative space.
I can breathe new life into music that moments before did not exist and I can create a symphony in the dead of night when the rest of the world is fast asleep. I can do this, because for me, the darkness, the stillness, the silence, has always been a birthing place. Eloise taught me that. She taught me how to harness what works for me and not care about what worked for others. I grew up learning how to not fear the places within me that I could not understand, and I embraced this ominous enigma inside me and struck sharp rocks along the edges to test my own strength and to create sparks of light.
That’s what I had forgotten in all of this. I was strong, not even I was able to debate that. But sometimes even the strongest don’t want to have to put up a fight. I knew that’s what I’d have been doing if I allowed Maverick to open up our relationship to the world. But, as I sat in my old bedroom at my parent’s home, alone with my silence, I realized something else. Fighting Maverick is even worse than fighting them.
It’s the reason I came back in the wink of the night. I wasn’t sure if everyone had left, but I knew that the party would be over. If someone saw me now, it didn’t matter because I was okay with not hiding anymore.
Love shouldn’t be hidden. It should be shouted from the rooftop. And home shouldn’t be avoided just because, for a moment, it’s uncomfortable. So I headed back to Maverick, willing to take the beating of insults from his friends if they disagreed with my presence there. Ready to tell Maverick that I am ready and willing to tackle the world with him; to drop the secret and face the reality of our feelings where everyone can see. To kiss him when I want to and not when secrecy allows. To whisper sweet nothings in his ear while the entire world is watching. However, as I stand here, frozen, immobilized by the sight and sounds inside the bedroom before me, I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore. A sudden overwhelming darkness overcomes me.
There is no life here.
My lungs seem to turn to stone inside my chest and I’m pretty sure my heart stops beating. Tears fall from my eyes without much input from me.
My throat feels burnt to a crisp and if I were to speak, I’m certain my windpipe would disintegrate into ash. But what would I say? I can form no words here in the darkness that continues to spread through me, overwhelming me, taking control of my emotions, searing the ends of each breath with a white hot rage that destroys everything in its wake until it reaches my fingertips. I feel them go limp before the cool plastic of the cake container slips dramatically from my fingers and crashes to the ground with an unceremonious thud.
I’d baked this cake for us. For us. To celebrate us. But there is no us in this room. Just them.
My eyes slip slowly from the scene before me and down to the floor where the cake has broken into mulch against the floor and the frosting starts to droop.
There’s no life inside this darkness.
Only destruction.
In the same way that there is no life inside this madness, this glass house I’ve climbed into.
Only deception.
I should have known better.
Gosh! I’m such a fucking moron. I allowed myself to get so sucked in by Maverick, of all people! My guards are so far down that I can’t even begin to think of how to pull them up. And my head. My head spins and it spins fast, a tornado turning on itself.
To think that somehow, I managed to believe he wasn’t an actual fucking bastard. That I actual believed in human decency, that something akin to love could exist in someone so empty. Now, there’s no mistaking that the creature before me is one without a heart. One without a soul. That evil is the only fucking thing that lurks inside of him.
A desperate sob climbs up my throat as my stomach tightens and my hands continue to shake.
The leggy blonde turns to look at me. A millisecond later, Maverick’s head whips around and I’m met eye to eye with his paper white stare. I will my legs to move as he pushes her away from him and jumps up to head over to me. By the grace of God, they don’t fail me. Without waiting for him to utter a word, I rush through the flat and out the door before he catches up to me.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
I tell myself that I deserve this. That I deserve all of it. Every inch of it. Every second of. Because only a fool would have fallen for him. Only a fool would have allowed him in the way I did.
“Close dammit,” I growl at the elevator doors as I push the button.
I can hear Maverick’s feet coming down the hall and the doors close just in time to stop him from getting in. He pulls his fists into a tight ball and bangs against the sealed doors.