What a shit fest of a day. It was one thing after another. Then the thing with Leo happened. I’m still surprised that it happened at all. I wasn’t expecting him to tip my hand, forcing me to reveal my intentions. I told him I want to sleep with him. His response? Thanks, but no thanks.
I’m disappointed. I’m also impressed. He remained polite even when the conversation entered murky waters. He could’ve made things awkward, could’ve gloated at the suggestion. I left myself open for all that. I think a bigger indicator of a man’s character is not how he treats the woman he wants, but how he treats the one he doesn’t.
But that’s what confuses me. His words say one thing, but the messages he sends between them say another.
I can absolutely handle you.
Although I may have coerced the words out of him, they thrill me all the same. In fact, they thrill me even more. The way he looks at me, the way he tries to not react to me. It all tells me that he does want me.
The only thing I can think of is that he's concerned about his job. I can’t blame him. He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know that I would never, in a million years, hold whatever we do or don’t do against him at work. Still, he’s smart to be cautious. I would be smart to be cautious as well. But I suppose this is how it is to jump in without checking the depth.
I’ve put my cards on the table. I need to take a step back and see what happens. I’m done pushing forward. I’m not going to throw myself at him any more than I already have. My pride won’t let me, especially after his rejection.
I’m not sure at what point I decided that I want to have sex with him. But once I came to the decision, the idea has crept into the gaps of silences or lulls in everyday situations. And sometimes, the idea turns into images that slide right in the forefront of my mind, obscuring my view of anything else.
I should stop, but I don’t want to.
Unlike Jacob and his beautiful face, Leo’s rugged good looks don’t beg to be admired, they beg to be fucked. You would not spend too much time staring at Leo; you would want your face on his.
Leo’s trying to resist me and I like it that way. It makes me feel in control. I’m not caught in someone else’s web—I’m luring them into mine. I’m doing it because I can. I can because I want to. I want to because I know I shouldn’t. After such a long time of denying myself many things, I find myself wanting them all at once.
I can absolutely handle you.
Jacob’s voice is a hum I am barely conscious of by this point. I glance at him every once in a while and cycle through a few phrases to pretend I am listening.
When, in fact, I am imagining Leo’s lips on me. Imagining them trailing over my hipbones. I imagine him kissing the part of me that wants him the most. Licking me, biting me gently, as his fingers slide into me. I imagine grabbing hold of his hair and pressing his head farther down.
The waiter approaches us and I snap back to reality, shifting in my seat. I am too aware of the heaviness between my legs as I meet Jacob’s gaze. His eyes are taking me in. I press my mouth together, self-conscious that he somehow sees the images that float over my eyes.
The waiter begins to collect our plates and asks us if we want dessert.
Jacob and I answer at the same time.
“Yes.”
“No.”
Jacob looks at me, his eyes narrowing for a fraction of a second, then changes his answer. “No, thank you.”
The waiter brings out our bill and I fumble through my purse to grab my wallet. By the time I pull out my card, Jacob’s already given his to the waiter.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“It’s my pleasure,” he says. “I’ve had a great time.”
I don’t respond but I think, perhaps, that I smile. I’m not sure. I’m flushed from the effects of the wine.
He reaches for my hand, which is on the table. I don’t realize it until it’s over mine, drawing small circles on my skin. I have to consciously remind myself that he’s related to Julia and she will hear about it if I slap his hand away. Also, he’s my ride home. I realize now it was a lapse in judgment for me to agree to him driving. But it’s too late now.
“You’re beautiful, you know,” he says.
“Thank you.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes as I casually pull my hand from under his to tuck my hair behind my ears.
There is a lull, during which his gaze slowly drops toward the low neckline of my blouse, a cloudy aura forming over his eyes.
“Do you want to go somewhere?” he asks.
I nearly laugh as I shake my head a little too vigorously. He has to be kidding. I am nowhere near that drunk. I see the genuine look he’s wearing and I try to recover by fixing an apologetic smile on my own.
“I’m tired. I’ve had a long day at work. But thank you again for dinner.”
Jacob is looking at me with his head tilted a few degrees. I can tell he is confused and maybe disappointed, but I can’t imagine what else he expects. He says, “I hope to see you again soon?”
I press my lips together and smile again to hide the sudden giggles growing inside of me. I’m not even sure what’s funny. I get to my feet and Jacob follows closely as we exit the restaurant. He places a hand on the small of my back. I let him. But that is the only part of me he is going to get to touch. I feel dangerously close to exploding into a fit of laughter. Oh, Jacob, you’re fine as hell, I’m tipsy and horny, and yet you still manage to blow any chance of getting into my pants. What a pity.
VIII
Leo
A shrill ringing sound cuts through my laptop’s speakers. The video-chat window pops up, obscuring the view of the news article I’m reading. Cereal crunches against my temples as I stare at the picture in the center of the screen. An older woman with sleek blonde hair, hugging a black Lab.
I’ve been ignoring her calls for a week now. If she doesn’t hear from me soon¸ she’s crazy enough to send someone to come find me. I set down the bowl on my desk and answer the call. The screen goes black for a fraction of a second before the picture settles in. I see my mother peering at me through my computer.
“Leo, sweetie—why haven’t you answered my calls? How are you?”
Her voice sounds a bit distorted by the speakers. I choose to ignore her first question.
“Fine, Mom. How are you?”
“I’m alright,” she says. Her eyes dart around at the scene behind me. She presses her lips together and I know she’s thinking my living room is the size of her shoe closet. “Have you heard from William?”
My mother’s innocent probe is a huge yellow highlighter on the fact that I rarely ever think to call William, or think of him at all.
“Not in a while,” I say.
My mother shakes her head at me. I brace myself for the nagging.
“Leo, your brother was kind enough to let you stay with him while you found your own place.”
“I know,” I say.
The rest of my family still lives in Houston, but my brother was the first to move away. He went to medical school in northern California before settling down here in San Diego.
“And Ellie asks about you every time I talk to her. It breaks my heart—you’re not even a twenty-minute drive away and yet you can’t make time for your niece.”
I take a deep breath, feeling the familiar twinge of guilt.
“Mom, I know.”
“You might as well have stayed here in Texas, if your goal was to avoid family that lives nearby.”
I rub the space between my eyes.
I wanted to stay. Texas has been home since I was ten. I love it there; it’s where I went to school and made lifelong friends. But then Janet happened.
Again and again.
Every time she and I broke up, Houston grew smaller and smaller. Until one day, the entire city lodged in my throat and I couldn’t breathe anymore. I needed a change, needed to get out and start fresh. So I headed west until I ran out of land to drive on.
�
��Is this what you called to tell me?”
“No,” she says, frowning at my impatience.
I wait.
“You’re dad isn’t feeling good. He’s got the flu or something. You should really call him.”
Instead of responding, I pick up the bowl of cereal and start eating again. It’s ironic. A man can have billions of dollars at his disposal and still get knocked on his ass by the flu. My father, Daniel Conrad, is the co-founder and majority shareholder of Reed-Conrad Enterprises, which also happens to be the largest natural gas and crude oil pipeline company in the country.
When I told him I was leaving my engineering position at the company’s headquarters, he wasn’t happy. He was less happy about my lack of a plan, about my refusal to touch my trust fund. It was a quarter-life crisis of sorts for me. Still is.
Things haven’t been the same between us. We’re not openly arguing, but there’s a passive aggressive sort of tone to his voice when he speaks to me these days. It annoys me. I make a point to not call him and he isn’t exactly keen to speak to me either. I don’t see how him having the flu translates into me yielding in the stalemate.
I watch my mother as she sighs.
“Sweetie, can I send you curtains?”
Glancing over my shoulders to spy her line of sight, I see the blinds on the living room window.
“No, Mom. I don’t need curtains. I like my windows the way they are.”
“Do you need money?”
“Does it look like I need money?”
I regret the question immediately. As far as my mother is concerned, I am struggling; the salary of an engineer is less than adequate to meet her standards of living. Seeing me sit in my home office chair, eating cereal at ten o’clock in the morning, is probably not setting her mind at ease. She hates my condo. She hates the fact that I didn’t buy a house, the way my brother William did. To her, my condo is a metaphorical dead end, uninviting to the future she wants me to have. A future with a wife and kids and a large house in a gated community on the hills. Never mind that I don’t want any of that. My mother only understands what she wants for others. She can’t wrap her head around anyone wanting anything differently.
She doesn’t answer my question and I’m glad for it. That is, until she asks her own question in turn.
“How’s that little girlfriend of yours?”
I give her a long, tired blink before answering, “Katy isn’t my girlfriend.”
“Could’ve fooled me, what with all her stuff spread out around your place. Whatever happened to her?”
My mother showed up unexpectedly a few months ago. By unexpectedly, I mean on purpose. She was supposed to be staying with William but decided she needed to see what sort of living conditions I subject myself to. She met Katy, who was caught off-guard, wearing one of my T-shirts over her underwear. Needless to say, my mother was not impressed.
“She’s fine.”
“What’s she going to school for, again?”
I run a hand over my hair. My mother doesn’t know how to pick up cues that a subject is irritating me. Or maybe she doesn’t care. Either way, I hate it.
“Biology.”
“That’s right. She wants to be a doctor.” My mother lets out a short laugh that causes me to set my jaw. “You’d never expect it.”
“Okay, that’s enough about her,” I say.
“Just don’t get her pregnant.”
The thought of it alone is enough to suck all the air from the room.
“Jesus Christ, Mom. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
I end the video call. I love my mother but conversations with her always manage to drain the life right out of me.
Later in the day, as I’m getting ready to head out to the gym, I get a text message from Katy:
[Can I see you? I’ve got some free time.]
I consider not answering, but avoiding her has been backfiring on me.
[Katy, we are done.]
[Okay. If you say so.]
I know two things. One, she is purposely trying to get under my skin. And two, her blasé response isn’t the last I will hear from her. I’m sure she thinks she can casually worm her way back into my life one way or another. That isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to get the life sucked out of me by yet another woman.
Been there, done that. And fuck that.
Never again will I give a woman the opportunity to twist me like a puppet into whatever she wants me to be, into something I’m not.
The way Janet did.
Thinking of her brings up a sour taste in my mouth, the reminder of yet another bad decision I made too often. Janet and I dated on and off for five years. I was young and naive. She was charming and deceitful. I didn’t stand a chance.
When she spoke, it was impossible to look away, her big smile with her tongue pressed between her teeth. She leaned into your words and seemed to take in everything about you with her eyes. I swear, she made you believe things that didn’t make sense, just because of the way her lips looked when she said them. Janet lied as easily as she breathed. And she breathed to lie.
She dropped me like a dead fish whenever she felt bored. Each time, it destroyed me. Each time, despite catching her in lie after lie, I allowed her to creep back into my life the moment she decided to want me again. Because I wanted her more than I cared to protect myself from the damage she could inflict. I was an idiot, an imbecile with a bleeding heart.
To this day, I’m not sure how many times Janet cheated on me. That woman knew how to craft words, stringing them together in the perfect combination to slip past my guard. She was an expert at weaving gazes, touches, and phrases into ropes that wrapped around me and made it impossible to decipher the truth from a lie.
Janet simply could not be backed into a corner. She never confessed to any wrongdoing. And she never apologized about anything. Ever. Her attempts at apologies always twisted into excuses. Into blame toward someone or something else.
She made me feel like I was the crazy one. And maybe I was. The suspicion and jealousy turned me into someone I barely recognized. A desperate man who hacked into her email accounts and checked her phone while she slept. All in the efforts of finding solid evidence of what I already knew: Janet’s a liar and a cheater. Possessive and demanding. Worst of all, she’s a narcissist.
I wasted years of my life trying to reach her at a deeper level. But each time, I hit the bottom as soon as I broke the surface. There was no deeper. I kept trying. Because I was young and thought I could change her if only I tried hard enough. If only I said the right things or did the right things. I gave her everything I had, hoping it would be enough to fill her. Not realizing there’s no filling a narcissist. They’re bottomless pits. They take everything you give them, use what they want, and discard the rest.
It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that such a beautiful creature could be so cold and empty inside.
When I met Katy, I knew immediately she’s the exact opposite of Janet. Katy doesn’t love herself enough to be a narcissist. I never once felt worried that Katy could hurt me. I failed to consider the alternative, that I could hurt her.
IX
Alexis
I almost don’t recognize Julia’s backyard. Kid-sized tables are set with precious miniature tea cups and plates. But not a single kid is sitting, they are running amok everywhere else. There are balloons everywhere, a ball pit, a jumping house. White and yellow streamers drape from one end of the yard to the other. Light music is playing from somewhere within the house.
Little hands grasp at the legs of my pants. I have to hold Blair’s present above my head to keep her from tearing the wrapping paper before it’s time.
“Titi!” Blair says in her adorable high-pitched tone. Her brown curls bounce around as she throws her hands in the air toward me and says, “Up! Up!”
Julia takes the present from my hands and I swoop down to pick Blair up into my arms.
“Wow, birthday girl,” I s
ay, nuzzling my nose along her cheek. “You feel a whole year heavier.”
She giggles at the way my nose tickles her. I set her down and she runs off into a sea of balloons and other tiny little feet.
Julia comes in for a hug and whispers in my ear, “Tell me, whose idea was it to have this party anyway?”
I shake my head at her in disapproval. “I asked you if you needed help. You said your mother-in-law was handling everything.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” She rolls her eyes. “Kill me now.”
“Can I help with something?”
She wraps her arms around her protruding belly and says, “Can you hold my baby? He’s kicking my bladder every two minutes and I’m half a second away from yanking him out by force.”
“The miracle of life,” I say, letting out a wistful sigh, then laughing at the way she frowns at me. She leans into me again and says, “Listen, I completely forgot to tell you—”
She cuts off abruptly as her husband, Giles, calls out for her from the other side of the lawn. I glare at Giles, wondering why he insists on making his very pregnant wife go to him. Giles waves at me as Julia wobbles down toward him. I turn my attention to the drink table, where I grab a bottle of water. I see various colored drinks laid out and plastic tea cups, instead of regular cups. It’s all really cute.
I chug down the water, feeling dehydrated. The aftermath of the wine from last night is lingering. I’ve got the ghost of a headache and the sounds of the children’s high-pitched shrieks of laughter do not help. One of the guests standing beside me introduces herself. She’s fairly social and I try to keep up. Her name is Heather and she has a daughter around the same age as Blair. Apparently, they live down the street. We make small talk for a while, she tells me she works in finance, I tell her I’m in solar energy. As always, it peaks people’s interest, since most people think it sounds more like a pseudoscience than a real energy alternative. I really don’t want to discuss work, but I suppose it’s a distraction. Before long, Heather leaves me behind to tend to her daughter.
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