by Grace James
My heart was hammering in my chest.
My palms were sweating.
My breathing was shallow.
I swallowed thickly. “You – you want us to get back together?” My voice was barely more than a whisper.
He looked deep into my eyes. “I can’t do this without you.”
100
I left Connor sitting on his bed in the ER, filling out paperwork. They were going to release him soon, after he had seen the Doctor again.
I knew that what I was about to do was going to hurt me more than anything ever had before…
…but I had no choice.
Actually, that’s not strictly true, there’s always a choice, isn’t there?
But when your choices suck the big one? Well, in that kind of situation, having no choice at all would be probably be better. At least then you wouldn’t forever have to ask yourself if you had made a mistake.
At least THAT part of it would be easier.
When I walked back into the waiting room, I saw Blake sitting with his elbows propped on his knees and his head bowed. He didn’t know that I was there yet.
I stood and watched him; I drank in the shape of his broad shoulders, his thick, muscular forearms, his sculpted nose and messy hair. He was still wearing the same clothes that he had on yesterday, when we came back from the cabin.
The cabin…already, our time there seemed like it had happened a thousand years ago.
I let myself look at him unguardedly for the last time, while he was completely unaware of my presence.
Because after that I was going to have to give the performance of a lifetime – and I knew that I couldn’t show him any weakness.
101
I walked towards Blake on leaden limbs.
He looked up when I was a few yards away, his blue eyes were guarded as they locked on me. “You were a while.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “We had a lot to talk about.”
He stood up slowly. “Thought you might,” he said gravely.
Then something occurred to me. “You knew what he was going to ask me, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer the question, but I could feel the tension simmering under his skin. “Tell me you told him ‘no’, Princess.”
My mouth suddenly felt like it was full of cotton wool, and I had to force the words out. “I…I promised I wouldn’t lie to you.”
For a moment he just looked stunned, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “What the fuck are you saying?”
I clenched my shaking hands. “I told him ‘yes’, Blake.”
The look of hurt on his face, the look of utter betrayal, cut me to the bone.
But I made myself recite the words that I had rehearsed. “Connor and I have history, I care about him, I need to be with him.”
“No, that’s bullshit,” he said flatly.
“It’s not.” I looked at him defiantly. “He needs me and I need to be with him.”
“What about what you want?” Blake closed in on me, his eyes narrowing.
“Fine. Then I want to be with him,” I shot back.
“Going back to him won’t change shit, you do know that, right?” he growled. “If he was gonna get clean for you, if he was gonna change for you, he would’ve done it already.”
“Do you want me to stand here and tell you all the reasons why I’m going back to him?” I countered, trying to throw him off even though I knew it was useless. “Do you really want to hear that?”
He clenched his teeth and his brows knit. “Yeah, I fucking do. ‘Cause from where I’m standing it looks like you’re going back to him ‘cause you’re scared –”
“Of course I’m scared,” I said, my voice rising.
“– and that’s a fucking piss poor reason to be with someone.” He lunged forward and grabbed my hands in his. “Especially when you love somebody else.”
I tried to yank my hands away but he wouldn’t let me, he just held on tighter. “Get off me!” I practically shouted, panic entering my voice – not that I thought he would hurt me, it was the fact that his touch was undoing me. And if I didn’t get him off of me soon I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish what I had started.
But I had to finish it, the stakes were too high not to.
I tried to pull away from him again and this time he let me, but the look on his face was wounded. “Don’t do this. Whatever he said to you in there, don’t do this.”
I bit down hard on my tongue to stop myself from crying. “I have to.”
He took a steadying breath and when he spoke again his voice was soft. “No, baby, you don’t.”
I closed my eyes because I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t stand looking at the love and pain in his eyes any longer. I had to make it stop. I had to end it, before it tore me to shreds.
When I opened my eyes I didn’t look at him. I looked out of the sliding doors behind him. The dawn sky was a dusky pink and the sun was just starting to peep over the horizon. It looked calm and beautiful. I could see birds high up in the sky; they were so far above that they looked like tiny black specks circling and diving in the early morning air. They were so far away, so far out of reach.
I would have given anything to trade places with one of them.
And then I knew what I had to say.
I had to make Blake think that I was out of his reach.
My voice was wooden when I spoke. “I started having doubts the moment you dropped me off last night. You’re going on tour in less than a week, and I know you, you won’t be able to resist all the women who’ll be throwing themselves at you.”
I didn’t know he wouldn’t be able to resist them, not at all, but I said it anyway.
“That’s not true,” he snarled. “Princess, look at me –”
I ignored him and plowed on. “The second I saw Connor I realized how much I still felt for him and I can’t hurt him, I won’t hurt him for you.”
“Fuck, I’m not asking you to, I told you we’d figure it out –”
“But that’s not the main reason,” I cut him off again. “The main reason is that I should never have told you that I loved you.” By some miracle, my voice didn’t waver.
Blake’s silence probably only lasted for a moment, but it seemed to stretch forever, like a gaping void of muted torture.
“Look at me and say that,” he demanded roughly. “Look me in the fucking eye and say that.”
I made myself obey his command. “I should never have said that I loved you.” My voice was flat and emotionless as I lied to his face; as I broke the promise that I had made less than twenty four hours before, to always be honest with him. “It was a mistake.”
He looked at me like I’d just stabbed him in the chest.
Then he was striding away, through the sliding doors and out into the dawn.
I managed to hold out until the doors whooshed shut behind him, and then I broke down in wracking sobs.
102
People say that hindsight is a wonderful thing.
They’re wrong.
I don’t think it’s wonderful at all. In fact, I think it can be pretty awful.
There is nothing more maddening that looking into your past and seeing the deeper truths, the ones that you couldn’t see at the time, but are so painfully obvious in hindsight.
Even now, when I think about the way Blake looked at me that day, my heart breaks all over again, and it’s all I can do not to cry.
And if I could just go back and do it all over again, I know I would do it differently. But the past is done, and it can’t be changed.
And the reasons that I did what I did back then are still valid, even if I can now see their flaws.
The truth is that Connor had almost died that night. I wasn’t completely naive, I knew that if he hadn’t got to the hospital in time, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t have made it. But that night he actually seemed to finally realize the danger that he was putting himself in. He was finally ready to mak
e the right choice, the choice that I had wanted him to make for so long.
I desperately wanted him to be okay, and I knew that I could never live with myself if I turned away from him right when he needed me the most. My biggest fear was that he would overdose again and that next time he wouldn’t be so lucky.
The ironic thing is, Connor apologizing and promising to stay clean was all I had wanted to hear a few weeks earlier, but right then it felt like shackles on my soul.
Don’t get me wrong, I still cared about Connor, maybe even loved him in a way…but I wasn’t in love with him, I never had been.
That didn’t matter though, because I had made my choice. I couldn’t allow myself to have the man I truly loved if it meant that Connor could wind up dead because of it. Not least because I knew that losing Connor would break Blake; he had lost so many people in his life already, I wouldn’t let him lose Connor.
At the time, I thought that I was doing the right thing.
But like I said, hindsight’s a real bitch.
103
It’s hard to describe my emotions over the next few days. There were just so many of them warring inside of me. Aside from a bone crushing sadness, one of the main ones was anxiety – I felt that almost the whole time, but others came and went too.
I took Connor to my place after he got out of the hospital on Monday morning, and he stayed with me for the rest of the week, until he went on tour the following Friday.
For the first couple of days, he pretty much slept the entire time. It was clear he had the hangover from hell; add to that the fact that he was coming down and…well, he was wiped out. I kept him topped up with fluids and made him eat; the rest of the time I studied like my life depended on it – because whatever drama was happening in my life, finals didn’t care.
By Wednesday, Connor was ready to face the world again. The band had a lot of promotion and rehearsals scheduled for that week and, while Connor was recovering at my place, the rest of the guys had apparently continued without him. But soon he was ready to join them.
My first clue that he was feeling better was that I awoke to an empty bed…and yelling.
“What the hell Connor?! You can’t smoke in my apartment, I don’t give a crap how antsy you feel!” Mel’s angry words travelled through my partially open bedroom door.
I pushed myself out of bed and followed the sound of Connor’s protests into the kitchen. “Alright, calm down, I opened a window –”
Mel was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “I don’t care! The whole place stinks now!”
Connor stubbed out his cigarette on a dirty plate by the sink. “There. Gone, okay?”
She cast him a final withering glance and stalked out of the kitchen, past me and back into her room, slamming the door behind her.
I had known that Mel wasn’t happy about Connor staying with us, she told me that in no uncertain terms the day I brought him home – when she got me alone, after he had crashed in my room. She was even more pissed that I’d gotten back together with him, especially after I’d ‘finally seen the light’ (her words, not mine). By that point though, I was so emotionally exhausted that I hadn’t even really tried to explain my reasons to her. Since then I had barely spoken to her. Not because I was mad at her or anything, but because I didn’t want to talk about what was going on, what had happened, any of it.
“You can’t smoke in here Connor,” I said quietly. “This is Mel’s place too and she hates it.” I didn’t bother mentioning the fact that I hated it as well, he already knew that.
He sighed and leant against the counter. “I know, I won’t do it again. I just – I’m...”
“Getting antsy?” I asked wryly.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Well, Mel is always right.”
“I know. It annoys the fuck out of me.”
I laughed despite myself. “Me too.”
“Yeah. So, I just called Blake –”
A jolt shot through me, but I tried to act normal. “You did? Is he – is everything okay?”
“Yeah, fine. We’ve got a band practice scheduled for today, starts in an hour. I’m gonna go, I’m ready to get back to it.”
“That’s – that’s great, you want me to give you a ride?”
“Yeah, thanks.” He walked over to me and slipped his arms around my waist. “You want to stay and watch?”
My heart thudded so hard I felt sure he must have heard it. “Um, no, I can’t. I have to study. Finals next week, remember?”
He looked a little disappointed.
“But I can come get you after. Maybe we can grab some lunch?” I said, trying to placate him.
He leant down and nuzzled my nose with his before giving me a soft kiss. “Okay, sounds good.”
After that, Connor was busy most of the time. Aiden had packed their schedule to bursting in preparation for the tour, so Connor was out a lot during the days, but he came home to me every night. He had only been back to his own apartment long enough to pack a bag. It was like he was afraid of being alone. In the evenings we ate a meal together and then I studied at my desk while he lounged on my bed and watched movies on the small TV in my room.
Studying became my refuge, my avoidance tactic, my excuse.
I studied late into the night, every night, so that by the time I finally crawled into bed alongside Connor, he was already fast asleep.
We didn’t have sex.
He only broached the subject once. It was late and I was still studying by the light of the small lamp on my desk. He shut off the TV and came over to me, stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, then started massaging the knots in my upper back and neck.
That lasted all of about two seconds.
Then his hands were sliding down my chest and cupping my boobs through my shirt, while he started to trail light butterfly kissed down my neck.
I went rigid. “Connor, wait.”
He paused his kisses but didn’t remove his hands. “What’s up?” he whispered in my ear.
“I just – I need more time.”
He let go of me and straightened up. “What do you mean?”
I turned around in my chair and looked up at him. “We just got back together and so much has happened with you, with us, that I just need a little time…” I licked my dry lips. “Even before we broke up, things were…off with us.”
“I apologized for all of that, I told you I want to make it right.”
“I know,” I stood and curled my arms around his waist. “It’s just that I need a little more time. Everything has just been so stressful, you know?”
He frowned down at me pensively. “Alright,” he said eventually. “I guess that’s fair.”
I put my head against his chest and hugged him tight. “Thank you for understanding.”
“…yeah.”
I felt a twist of guilt in my gut; I knew he didn’t understand, not really.
How could he understand that when he’d touched me from behind, it hadn’t been him that I’d thought of, but his cousin?
104
I gripped the hot Styrofoam cup in both hands and inhaled the coffee steam spiraling up from the slit in the lid, letting my eyes close briefly as the comforting aroma drifted into my nose.
“You look like you’re enjoying sniffing that coffee a little too much, like it’s turning you on or something,” Connor said mischievously in my ear. “Makes me think you’re sexually frustrated.”
I picked up on the extremely obvious goading in that comment. I opened my eyes a crack and pursed my lips. “Ha ha,” I said, not laughing. “Coffee and I have a special relationship.”
He grinned and took a drag on his cigarette. “Don’t I know it, I had to walk two blocks for that.”
“Says the guy who once carried me over his shoulder for two blocks without whining.”
“Oh, yeah! I forgot about that…that was the night we…” he trailed off and waggled his eyebrows up and down playfully lik
e Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, “…for the first time.”
“Um, no, it wasn’t.”
His brow furrowed. “No?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He chuckled. “Damn, I definitely remember something…pool? Yeah, that’s it! I beat your ass at pool that night!”
I laughed despite being a little pissed that he couldn’t remember that the first time we slept together had come weeks afterwards. “You ass! And no, actually you didn’t beat me, I beat you!”
He laughed along with me and slung his arm around my shoulders, pulling me to him. The familiar feel of his arm around me, and the scent of old leather and cigarette smoke wafting up from his jacket, worked together to transport me back in time to last fall, when I was with the old Connor, the guy that had swept me off my feet.
That lasted about a second, and then, like a pendulum, my mind swung back to Blake, and my anxious-sadness reared its head again. It was made worse by the fact that I was about to come face to face with him for the first time since that morning in the hospital.
Connor and I were standing on the street outside my apartment block waiting for the rest of the band, along with Aiden, to show up in their tour van. They were supposed to pick Connor up and then get straight on the road for Los Angeles, where they would meet the rest of the tour and play their first show that night at the Staples Centre.
“I can’t believe that tonight you’re going to play in front of thousands and thousands of people. You know, U2 played there? You’re going to play on the same stage that U2 played on!” I said, genuinely excited for them despite my inner turmoil.
“And Paul McCartney, and Prince, and Roger Waters,” I heard the smile in Connor’s voice as he spoke.
“You better make sure you send me pictures,” I warned.
“I thought we could go one better than that.”
I pulled back and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”