It was better that way. A clean state. Over and done.
Except as I dropped my phone next to me and closed my eyes, riding out the muscle spasms, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what I wanted.
Then I remembered that the world had shown me often enough that what I wanted didn’t matter in the least.
“Hey, Kace,” I said into my boss’s voicemail early the next morning. “I hate to bail on you, but I seriously tweaked my back. I won’t be able to make it in tonight. Sorry, man.”
The words weren’t enough to actually encompass all that I was feeling.
But they did enough.
He knew about my injury, wouldn’t question it.
Which was good because my back was hurting. It was just that the hurt was minimal when compared to everything else—my neck was stiff and I could barely turn it side-to-side, my right leg was riddled with knots, my shoulder throbbed along with my pulse, and the muscles in my back were so tightly contracted that just pushing out of bed to take a piss that morning had been agony.
And that said nothing of making it to my bed the night before.
Or the way my insides felt flayed open and exposed to the elements.
“Fuck,” I said, still unable to believe that I’d told Iris what I had, but also that telling her had stirred up so much shit in my soul. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t ashamed of being a virgin, that I didn’t have anything to be ashamed about, and yet . . . I felt shame.
I was twenty-eight. I’d served two tours in Afghanistan, had shot and killed people, had survived a blast that killed my friends, including my best friend, had managed to relearn how to walk when that hadn’t been guaranteed, worked a job where I stood on my feet, where I lifted heavy shit, where I reached and bent and stretched—all of which had definitely been things my doctors had told me I’d probably never be able to do again.
And it all came down to sticking my dick in someone’s vagina.
Pathetic.
I meant me. Not the fact that I hadn’t slept with anyone, that life had dealt me some blows and tricky circumstances and it just hadn’t happened. It wasn’t even a religious requirement any longer, since I was no longer a parishioner in my parent’s church. In fact, I hadn’t been for years. Not since I left my small town in Alabama for two years in the middle Middle East, not since I’d seen too much shit to think of the world in such black and white terms then had returned home to have my heart shredded and my parents pass away within a month of one another.
A lot of the comfort of religion disappeared when I couldn’t find the answer to why bad shit happened to good people, or at least, not something more than God has a plan.
I couldn’t.
It hurt too much, and I’d left that part of my life behind when I’d returned for my second tour.
Then the deaths. My injury.
And still when it came down to it, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t had sex. I almost wished it was something I was holding on to, something I viewed as precious, as valuable, rather than something I just wanted to be done with.
But instead of valuable, it was just this heavy ass burden I was desperate to be rid of.
“That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Fuck, Iris had looked so playful then, so expectant that I was teasing her, but all too quickly the horror had come, and then the pity.
I’d spent too long in the V.A. tolerating help and pity to deal with more, especially about something that concerned my sex life. And yet, I wasn’t pissed at her. I was pissed at myself, pissed that I’d reacted like it was a shameful secret and then pissed that I hadn’t been able to hold it together for a date before finding a way out of there with my dignity intact.
Instead—
“Ugh!” I groaned. “Enough.”
I couldn’t keep going in these mental circles.
It was clearly over with Iris. She’d been horrified, rightfully since I’d all but shouted my truth at her. She’d looked on me with pity and clearly didn’t want to take on a twenty-eight-year-old virgin.
That was fine.
It would be fine.
“Definitely fine,” I said, carefully shifting in bed so I could put my pillow over my face. Maybe I’d accidentally asphyxiate myself with excess carbon dioxide and I’d forget all that I’d told Iris. Maybe I could pretend I dreamed it and then think up something better than screaming, “I’m a virgin!” thirty seconds after she’d come on my tongue.
Maybe—
I fell asleep to a constant, repeating pattern of maybes circling through my mind.
But none of those maybes brought me any closer to dispelling the tornado of shame swirling there, of ridding myself of the tenterhooks of my past, my failures, my hopes for the present and future. Because they’d all collided into something that just wouldn’t pan out.
I’d known that.
I’d yearned for a partner, had hoped it could be Iris because she was incredible.
But that wasn’t to be.
It couldn’t be.
Ten
Iris
So, it turned out that searching my family room for my underwear was a uniquely embarrassing experience.
“Though,” I muttered, tugging my purse strap over my shoulder and girding my loins. “Not as embarrassing as revealing something to the person you were dating, the one you were supposedly building some sort of a meaningful relationship with, and having said person laugh in your face and make a tactless comment.”
So. Fucking. Terrible.
That terrible being me as a person.
I’d texted Brent no less than twenty times, had called him at least a half dozen, and I probably would have kept on texting and calling and pestering if not for the fact that midnight had come and gone. I’d already been an asshole. I didn’t need to keep bugging him into the wee hours of the night.
So, I’d called off the cellular assault, had put on my rattiest sweats and a holey sweatshirt, and I had baked into said wee hours.
Which meant I’d had a good start on orders before I even headed to work.
It also meant that I had baked a giant platter of brownies in a pathetic attempt at an apology. Bribery, causing a sugar crash, I was willing to take any and all steps if it might mean that Brent would just hear out my apology.
I didn’t even have grandiose plans of him giving me another shot.
I’d been a total ass and didn’t deserve another shot.
But he deserved an apology.
Which was why I was carting my platter of brownies down the sidewalk to Bobby’s, already dreading the conversation that was going to take place, but knowing it had to anyway. I also knew that this was probably going to be the beginning of the end of my time in the cool bar and that my proffered advanced copies of Brooke’s books were certainly going to be rescinded.
Well-deserved.
God, I wasn’t used to being the asshole.
That was Frank’s job.
I’d paused outside the door to Bobby’s, feet halting even as the self-flagellating continued, but because I was lost in thought, I didn’t see Brooke until she was almost on top of me.
“Oh!” I jumped, nearly upending the platter.
“Hey, Iris,” she said, smiling with her backpack hanging on one shoulder. “You coming in to hang out?”