I had never had a single complaint in the past when it came to my skills in the bedroom. If, for some reason, my cock decided to play dead for a bit – such as when I drank too much – I had my tongue to fall back on. And my fingers. Oh, the things I could do with both had made her scream on more than one occasion already. I felt my cock begin to harden, and I quickly thought of the least sexy thing I could bring up in my mind. It took me a few moments, but I finally calmed down enough to think more clearly, and less sexually.
I think I love her. I had wanted to keep her safe in the shark tank and when we were surfing. Hell, I’d meant it when I told her I would still be with her if she lost an arm in a shark attack. Now if that isn’t love, I thought, laughing. I knew it was corny. However, I feared love too, and it scared me. I still recalled how badly it had hurt to have my heart crushed by a woman.
I didn’t want to be without her, though. I wanted to date her just to be sure; surely, she would understand that. Not that I had any thought of breaking up with her. I had a feeling that we would work out to be a great couple. I walked to our hut and opened the door. I wanted to talk to her now and figure this all out. I wanted to apologize for getting upset earlier, too. “Tiffany,” I called out when I didn’t see her in the hut.
There was no answer. I wondered where she might be. I walked to Kelly’s hut and tapped on her door. “Hey, have you seen Tiffany?” I asked.
She thought for a few moments before finally shaking her head. “I saw her a while back when we were all on the boat. But not since that time. Go walk the beach, and you’ll surely find her.”
As I walked along the beach, I called out her name every few feet. I thought of reasons why she might not be in our hut, trying to cover every place she might have visited.
15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tiffany
“If I had not drunk so much that night, I wouldn’t be married now,” I’d heard him tell someone on the phone. He hadn’t seen me. I had walked up behind him after spotting him and was going try to scare him. I’d thought it would be funny and make us both laugh. I enjoyed laughing with him. It seemed like we both had the same sense of humor, and it didn’t take much for both of us to be crying and laughing at the same time. I had been so wrong about us and had had no clue about it.
But when I heard those words, my heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest in an instant. I cried and ran. He didn’t love me, not one bit. I had read every single sign wrong. He was just using me, most likely to win Jasmine back, like I had thought before. I felt used, and I felt stupid. I wanted to get the hell off this island and as far away from Archer Roman as I could. It hadn’t been the only thing I had heard; I heard just enough of his conversation to know he didn’t like me at all. In fact, I think he hated me, a lot
I really had thought we had a connection. Could I be so stupid? And the sex had been amazing too. I shook my head. It wasn’t the first time I had been fooled, and now, I felt even more like an idiot. I was a total fool. I’d thought he loved me and that I was falling in love, too. I swear, all men are assholes. I should seriously considering switching teams. I guess I could buy some really nice dildos, or one of those strap-ons. Then I would never know I wasn’t fucking a real man.
I shook my head. Who was I fooling? I wouldn’t switch teams. However, I was seriously considering swearing off men for a little while. I would just stay celibate and use my own dildo from time to time. It sounded like a decent plan to me, even plausible enough that I bought a ticket off the island, snuck back to our hut, and packed my bags. I didn’t know why I was sneaking. Archer would probably be thrilled that I’d left. At least then, his act could end. He would be able to openly flirt with Jasmine and tell her how he felt.
I thought we were getting along well and maybe even falling in love. Instead, Archer was stringing me along until he could get back home and divorce me. He’d been lying the whole time. I couldn’t imagine trying to act like we were still a couple after everything I’d heard him say. I didn’t even want to think about it anymore; it hurt me too much. I felt far too foolish to continue to think about how I’d thought he felt. There was no doubt in my mind now that I had read it all wrong.
Maybe that was my real problem. Not the men, but that I just didn’t read their signals correctly. If I really wanted to find out, I could think back to the signals from Nick. I was almost positive they had been there. I didn’t trust my emotions at all right now; they felt as if they were going all over the place lately. Just look at the other night when his brother had called me Sis. I had run off and cried. What the hell is really wrong with me? If this is how love makes me feel, I don’t want anything to do with it. I had been in love before and hadn’t behaved this way though. Perhaps it was different with him? I didn’t know why I ached and felt horrible before today. Now, I could blame it on the stress of learning how Archer really felt, though.
“I need to buy a flight to Phoenix,” I told the clerk behind the desk. I had packed all of my belongings and gone to the airport. I now stood in front of an American Airlines clerk.
“What time were you looking to fly out, ma’am?” she asked me.
“The soonest flight possible,” I told her, determined to get out of here before I made an even bigger fool of myself.
“I have a flight leaving in two hours. It will cost…”
“I’ll take it,” I cut her off. The sooner I was gone, the better it would be for my recovery from this heartache.
“How will you be paying for it?” she asked.
“I pulled out my credit card and handed it to her. I didn’t care how much it cost. This ticket was worth any price I had to pay; it would help me keep my sanity.
I was thrilled when boarding began and I was in my seat and buckled in. In six hours, I would be back home. I thought of Archer and the words I’d heard him say, “I can’t stand her, man. She’s annoying, and I hate her.” I had heard him say my name a few minutes prior to this statement. I cried once more at the words of hatred from a man I had thought I was falling in love with. How could I have been so wrong? I let the tears flow, and all of a sudden, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Miss, here. I thought you could use this.” An older woman handed me a very nice handkerchief. I felt bad dirtying it, so I only wiped my tears and didn’t blow my nose in her nice handkerchief. The same lady handed me a pillow, and I thanked her again.
I placed my head down and tried to fall asleep. But I kept thinking of Archer and how I had fallen in love with him. I couldn’t help but get angry at my own self; I was the one who had continued to make bad choices. I should never had agreed to go to Maui in the first place. But he had convinced me with that damn sex in his office. Again, sex, I realized.
I really should just become a nun and be married to God, or whatever it was they did. Then, I wouldn’t have to worry about my heart feeling like it did right now. Like a flat piece of road kill that had been run over by a fifty-ton vehicle. I laughed bitterly as I realized that really wasn’t even a close enough description to how I felt. I tried to think of a better way to describe it. That way if any of my fifth-graders came to me and asked me something about love, I could tell them the truth.
I would say that love is a road that is best untraveled, in my opinion. Because you feel wonderful when you think you are in love. But when you find out the other person doesn’t return the same feelings, you get hurt. It isn’t a normal hurt either; it is one that rips you apart. You feel sick. You feel sad and so depressed. You wouldn’t care if you were hit by a car; in fact, you would welcome death. Hell, pray for it. Anything is better than the pain you feel from a broken heart. And that is what love leads to – a broken heart.
But kids, broken doesn’t do it enough justice. Let’s really call it like it is. You feel like you’ve lost everything in the world, and you can’t go on. At least, that was how I felt. But I forced myself to move on; I was too chicken to kill myself. Plus, I had been raised with the knowledge
that if you committed suicide, you would go to hell. And I don’t know about you, but being in burning flames for eternity didn’t interest me. This is why I would move on and move forward. I’d read a book once about a man who claimed he had died and spent only three minutes in hell. His description of hell had given me nightmares for months. Burning, hot, screaming, and torture were some of the words he had used. I don’t know but what if I died naturally I would go down there anyway, but I was pretty sure I would ascend to Heaven. Yes, I had a lot of sex, but that didn’t make me a bad person. I was sure God would allow me into the Heavenly gates, unless I killed myself. I picked up my shoulders and moved forward, one step at a time. I will make it, I chanted inside my own head.
Shredded, torn apart, and wounded, I would never dare try to love ever again. Because there would be nothing left of my heart by the time the little pieces came together. The ones that would make it through all the grieving that was still to come. I could feel bits and piece that had fallen off and felt like they would never come to life again. I didn’t understand how people went through break-ups all the time. I’d known a few women, fellow school teachers, who would get involved with a guy, and the relationship would be over in a few months. They would go through this grieving process an average of three to four times a year. I can’t do that.
“Why did I let myself fall for him?” I asked myself, searching for answers to my dilemma. I thought about the many times Archer had done something I found sweet and examined it closer. I tried to find his lies, but I couldn’t see them yet. For some reason, my heart wanted to hang on to hope. I wanted to smash that small bit of hope into little stones so tiny that you couldn’t even find them all with a magnifying glass. I didn’t want any chance that I would still hold onto feelings for him because I knew that he would then be able to use them to manipulate me, as he had done already. It was all a game to him, I reminded myself, and felt another tear as more hope was ripped away. The truth was being exposed to me.
The worst thing was that I was angry at myself. I had chosen to come along willingly, thinking he had wanted to try at our relationship. After all, we had studied almost everything about one another, and he had learned so many things about me. “And acted like he cared,” I said out loud so that I would not go soft about my feelings for him. I was done; I had heard everything I’d needed to know.
No matter how angry I was, I also felt some relief. Had I not walked up when he had been talking, I would have been with him for a few more weeks. The family stayed for a full month, and we hadn’t been there but for a couple of days. I was relieved that I had found out his true feelings now. had have oten
He had convinced me that he cared about me, and if I had to run into him again, I knew he would have an easy time convincing me again. Because all he had to do was cloud my mind by making me orgasm, or just feeling a little loved, like I thought he had been. I melted even at the thought of him coming back to me and begging me to forgive him. I wanted to be tough and say that I would still walk away; however, I was certain that my will would not be that strong if I was face-to-face with Archer again. I would crumble and let him have his way. I would let him fool me more. No, it is best that I found out now. This hurt a lot, but at least it won’t hurt as much as it could have.
Encouraged by those thoughts, my mind finally shut down, and I was able to sleep for a little bit. I knew I was exhausted, and that was why I had finally been able to sleep. But inside my dream, my mind tortured me with visions of Archer and Jasmine. They were making up; he was cheering with her and celebrating my departure. “Now, we can get back together,” he had toasted.
Jasmine had lifted her glass of champagne. The ring I’d had on my finger in Vegas was now her on her hand. He told her, “I promise to love, honor, and cherish you, my real wife.”
Hearing him say this in my dream had made me sob, and I had woken up with tears streaming down my face. I had felt for the ring on my finger and breathed a deep sigh of relief that it was still there. I knew it was sad, but it was something to remind me of Archer. Right now, I wasn’t ready to remove him from my life completely.
“It’s just a ring, not that big of a deal,” I told myself. But I knew I still clung to a small bit of hope that maybe he and I might one day make this a real thing. I pushed this thought out of my mind, though. I didn’t want to cling to anything. I would put the ring in my dresser and mail it back to him once I knew he would be home. I made up my mind about that, and I was determined to follow through.
The flight landed, and I moved slowly through the airport, not paying attention to anything, just trying to operate on auto pilot. When anyone talked to me, I said the bare minimum amount of words required.
“I need a taxi,” I told the yellow cab driver outside the airport after I had gotten my baggage. I was happy that I had at least bought a couple of souvenirs before I’d heard him on the phone, although I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep them. Right now, anything that made me think of Maui made me think of Archer, and I didn’t need to keep thinking of him. I just wanted to shut my mind off, fall into a deep sleep, and not dream. I planned on taking a sleeping pill when I got home. That way, I would surely be knocked out and not dreaming all night long.
I watched the streets, staring out of the window of the cab as it got closer to my apartment. I cried as I thought of the loneliness that would surround me in my small apartment. I longed to be back with Archer. Again, I had to remind myself of his phone conversation. It was the only way I would keep myself from crying about him all night.
“Thanks.” I handed the taxi driver a twenty. “Keep the change.” He had earned it by not trying to chat with me the whole trip. All he had done was ask for my address and then stopped trying to converse. I’d said a silent prayer of thanks. I surely hadn’t felt like making small chit-chat with a cab driver in Phoenix.
Once I got inside my apartment, the quietness surrounded me, and I felt as if I was being suffocated. Feeling sick, I ran to the bathroom. I knew the feeling was because I was stressed out by this whole situation with Archer. I was angry, yes, but mostly just sad and broken. I knew if he showed up right now, I would beg him to take me back. I wouldn’t even stand on ceremony; I would grovel at his feet if need be. I didn’t want to be alone tonight, but I couldn’t do anything else. I knew Kimberly would be sleeping; she had two little boys now. Tanner, age 4, and the new baby, Charles. And he was only three months old now. I longed to go talk to her; she would know how to make me feel better. However, tonight would be spent here in my quiet, little, small apartment, all alone.
I cried, thinking that I had to do something, so I picked up the bottle of sleeping pills and took one pill out. I knew my mind would keep churning until the medicine took over. I got a drink of water and swallowed what I hoped would be my savior. I waited about twenty minutes, took a shower, and dressed for bed. When my head hit the pillow, the pill did the job it was made to do, and I started to snore.
My dreams tortured me, though, and it wasn’t a restful sleep. I pictured Archer and Jasmine embracing, him saying he was sorry he’d strayed from her, and Archer describing how much he hated me. At those words, Jasmine pulled him down, and they kissed. From there, I was thrust into a dream where the abundantly built Ms. Hart joined Jasmine and Archer, and he had sex with them both. Before I escaped my sleep, Nick joined in with the other three. It was heart wrenching to watch, and I tried to turn around from the sight. Whenever I would turn, though, they would be back in front of me. Archer laughed and told them all how much he had used me for his own agenda and how deeply I had believed his act. They all laughed, and Nick said he had done the same thing to me. They then high-fived each another in the dream.
I woke up in the morning with tears streaming down my face. I hated my life, but I was too scared to go to hell, so I pulled myself out of bed, made myself a small breakfast, and sat watching something on TV. I didn’t pay attention to the show; I was in a deep depression, and all I honestly wanted to
do was die. I prayed for God to kill me, “Just let me die.” However, it didn’t happen right away, so I tried to do something more productive, my laundry.
16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Archer
I looked all over for Tiffany, but I couldn’t find her. I had come to the room but hadn’t looked closely earlier. How was I supposed to notice her things were gone? I hadn’t opened up dresser drawers or anything. All I had done was call out to her. She hadn’t answered, so I’d gone back out to see if I could find her.
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