It was embarrassing.
“How are you feeling?” Cheryl came into view when I peeked one eye open. Although, she was a little blurry. And there seemed to be two of her. “Do you think you’re gonna throw up any more? Or are you done?”
“Done.” That one word burned my throat, which had become raw with the bile that I’d started to believe would never end. “For now.”
She giggled, and it made me wonder how she could stand being around drunk people all the time. I never enjoyed being the sober one in a group. I’d hate to have her job, though she seemed to like it.
“Things are a little fuzzy. I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t. So tell me . . . did I get laid?”
Cheryl sat me up and handed me yet another bottle of cold water. “I was almost convinced you’d get ’er done with that last one. But unfortunately, it just wasn’t in your cards tonight. Maybe next time. You really mastered the art of asshole, though.”
I smiled, proud of myself for overcoming the stigma of the nice guy. “So you think I would’ve gotten with that last chick if I hadn’t thrown up?”
Her brows dipped, gaze narrowed. “Uh . . . the vomiting didn’t start until after she left. Luckily, no one but me saw that.”
“Then why’d she leave?”
“Gee, Aaron . . . it might’ve had something to do with you calling her Kelsey and telling her that you wanted her to have your babies.”
“But I was mean about it, right?”
“You sure were. When she corrected you—for the sixth or seventh time—that her name is Emily, not Kelsey, you told her you’d call her what you wanted, and if she didn’t like it, she could . . .” She covered her lips and ducked her head, stifling her laughter long enough to finish speaking. “She could sprout wings and fly like a bird . . . ‘faw, faw, faw away from here.’”
I stared at her, blinking, unsure why she couldn’t stop laughing. “I don’t get it.”
“Yeah, she didn’t, either. I’m pretty sure she’s too young, because she didn’t understand why you kept saying, ‘Life is like a box of condoms.’ I thought it was clever. I laughed. She didn’t.” Clearly, considering she was still laughing.
I leaned forward, pressing my elbows into my thighs while I cradled my head in my hands. “I need to get out of here.”
“Don’t worry . . . I called someone to come pick you up.”
Dropping my hands, I stared at her—more like tried to stare at her, since my vision was still off, but stared all the same. “Who’d you call? Uber?”
“I would’ve, but you deleted the app, and I couldn’t get it reinstalled without your password. So I went through your contacts and found someone willing to get out of bed at one in the morning to come get your ass and take you home.”
“Who?” Please say Jason.
“Kelsey.” Wrong answer. “She’s on her way.”
“Kill me now. Why the hell would you call her? Of all people, why her? I have, like . . . a lot of people in my phone. You had . . . a lot of options to choose from. Are you trying to make my life worse? I thought we were friends.”
She took my hands in hers and drew herself closer. Compassion curled her lips and dimmed her eyes. “It’s obvious you came here tonight to drink away whatever issues you have with her. And it’s not working. I don’t have a clue what is going on or what’s happened between the two of you, but I know it’s big enough that it drove you here. The only way you’ll be able to deal with it is if you talk to her. So yes, I called her because you live with her, and she’s the best person to get you home safely—but also because there’s clearly something you need to get off your chest, and she’s the only one you should talk to about it. Not strangers at a bar. Not an empty beer bottle or shot glass. Her.”
Just then, someone cleared their throat and caught our attention, drawing my focus from Cheryl’s fuzzy face to the redhead near the office door. Double vision still troubled me, though I could see enough to notice the confusion on her taut brow. As I lowered my gaze, I became aware of the flowing tank draping over her perky breasts, the yoga pants accentuating her legs, and her flip-flops, which showed off the dark polish on her toenails. I’d rubbed those feet countless times, always contemplating if she wore black or some really dark shade on the perfectly manicured nails.
“What color is that?” I pointed to her toes without a care in the world that I likely made no sense to anyone. The question was out of the blue, but then again, I was drunk off my ass, so I didn’t give a shit. “Is it black?”
Kelsey’s toes wiggled, and I could picture her staring down at her feet, though I never glanced up to verify if she was or not. Instead, I kept my attention on the polish and awaited her response. A second later, I heard, “Yeah, it’s black.”
I sucked in a lungful of air and pushed to my feet, meeting her eyes for the first time since realizing she was here. “Good choice. Matches your heart.” Passing her, I added, “Let’s go.”
Murmurs cascaded behind me, though I refused to turn around to see Cheryl and Kelsey talking, and I certainly didn’t bother waiting around to find out what they had to say. I’d gone from hopeless to hopeful to drunk to sick and now to angry . . . all within a few hours. I was beyond ready for this night to be over.
“You could show a little more gratitude, you know. I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed to come pick you up, so it’d be nice if you didn’t act like me driving you home is a prison sentence,” Kelsey called out as she followed me into the parking lot.
I had no idea where I was going, considering I didn’t have a clue where she’d parked. I could’ve scoured the lot for her car, but that would’ve required focus and single vision. Currently, I was too busy fuming over Kelsey being here to pay any attention to anything around me. Oh, and my eyesight rivaled that of an elderly man with cataracts and glaucoma.
I turned around to face her, telling by the sounds of her steps that she wasn’t far behind. I only meant to pivot on my foot, yet I likely resembled a ballerina with the way I spun, nearly losing my balance. “Maybe I don’t want you to drive me home.”
“Too late. I’m already here.”
By now, we were face to face—couldn’t have been more than a foot separating us. Anger fueled our fight, though betrayal burned in my veins, igniting more than an argument. Resentment kindled within me until my breaths were labored and ragged.
“Why are you so mad?” She held up a hand and shook her head, keeping me from responding. “You know what? I don’t care. Be pissed. Throw a temper tantrum until you’re blue in the face. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with it. For a thirty-two-year-old, you certainly don’t act like a man. You’re acting far more like a little boy who didn’t get his way. Find your own ride home, and don’t wake me up when you get there.”
I wouldn’t let her get away with this that easily, so when she turned to walk off, I followed. Every step she took, I matched with my own until I was a breath away, suffocating in the scent wafting off her clean hair.
“For your information”—no, I wasn’t aware at the time how my choice of words proved her right about the way I was acting—“I came here to forget about you. So excuse me if I’m pissed that the one person I wanted to block out of my mind is here to drive me home.”
She stopped suddenly, nearly causing me to run into her back. Shifting on her heel, her body only slightly angled toward me, she peered at me, as though studying my expression or attempting to read my mind. “Why were you trying to forget about me? What’d I do to you other than prevent you from doing to me what my ex did?”
It seemed I’d never be able to escape the assumptions, the preconceived notions that took on a life of their own. No matter who it was, what it was about . . . they’d always be there. They were my skeletons in the closet. Inescapable. Always there, hiding in the dark corners, waiting to take me down every time I thought I was about to move forward.
“I’m so hung up on you, and you can’t even see it because you�
��re too hung up on what someone else did to you. You say you want a good guy.” I held my arms out and leaned my chest forward. “But you wouldn’t recognize one if they stood right in front of you with a sign around their neck. If you’d stop looking behind you, stop focusing on what he did, and turn to look at what’s ahead, you’d see it. I’m right here. I’m constantly turned down for being the nice guy, yet you, someone who might actually want that in a person, dismisses me because you can’t accept the fact that there just might be a guy out there who doesn’t wanna fuck you over.”
Without a word, she dropped her gaze, shuffled her feet, and continued to make her way toward her car. Or at least, I assumed that was where she was headed. I didn’t really know, though I doubted she’d wander through a parking lot at night for any other reason. In her pajamas, no less.
Taillights flashed ahead of us after Kelsey pressed a button on her key fob. She went to the left, making a beeline to the driver’s side, while I made my way to the passenger seat. And as soon as we were both in, doors closed, all outside noise blocked out, she muttered, “I know what I saw, Aaron. I know what I heard.” She cranked the engine and turned toward me while pulling the seat belt across her chest. “It doesn’t matter what you say—you won’t convince me that I’m wrong about you.”
“I wasn’t even there.” The truth burned the back of my throat so badly I wasn’t able to keep it in any longer. Defending myself had never been something I’d bothered with—it was pointless to prove someone wrong when they never gave me the benefit of the doubt to begin with. “I was at the hospital, evaluating a patient in the ER. I’m sure there are lots of people who can confirm that if you don’t believe me.”
She drove in silence, keeping her thoughts and arguments to herself, likely waiting until I finished speaking so she could metaphorically hang me with what she presumed to be a lie. Little did she know, the noose actually hung around her neck—not mine.
“You know what? I don’t give a shit if you believe me or not. You’re the same as everyone else. You see something, hear something, and without taking a second to question it, you make assumptions. No one ever assumes I’ve got a big dick or that I can make a woman come like no other. They don’t assume I’m capable of loving someone with my entire heart, giving my all to one person. No . . . they hear my name and conjure up an image of me performing brain surgery, only to think less of me when they discover the truth. They hear me admit that I lived with my parents and then run before they can learn why. You hear someone having sex in my office, and you automatically slam the gavel without once recognizing that not everything is as it seems.”
Her hands grew tighter around the steering wheel. It was obvious she had a lot to say, but she wouldn’t get a chance until I was done.
“I told you Noel was married. But since one guy fucked you over, lied to you about who he was—cheated on his wife with you—the only conclusion your brain could come up with was that she had to be cheating on her husband with me.” I quit speaking, hoping she’d take the stage and fight back.
I needed a fight. I needed her rampage. The amount of resentment that burned within me would be catastrophic if I didn’t find an outlet for it. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed her to make this pain go away.
Kelsey cleared her throat, though she never turned my way. Instead, she kept her attention on the road ahead while lacerating me with her sharp words. “The only reason I stopped on my way home was because your truck was in the parking lot. Two people were having sex in your office. If it quacks like a duck . . .”
“Have you ever heard a duck call?”
She stilled for a moment but then said, “A what?”
“It’s a whistle that hunters use to lure game birds. When they hear it, they come closer, not realizing they’re about to be shot and killed, likely someone’s next meal. It quacks like a duck . . . but it’s not a duck.” I turned my head toward her, making sure she didn’t miss the meaning of my next words. “Assumptions can be dangerous.”
Thank God for TV. Anyone who said reality shows were ruining our culture was wrong.
“Then why was your truck there?” she asked, her words thick in her throat.
“I couldn’t get it to start, so I took Noel’s car to the hospital. She had her husband pick her up from work. This all happened the day after Jason’s dinner announcement, right? The day after we slept together?”
Still, without taking her eyes off the road, she nodded.
“Do you by chance remember that I came home late? Around eight o’clock, I think. Do you recall that I walked in with my sleeves rolled up, my hands greasy? Probably not. You were too busy stewing on the couch. Anyway, that’s because I stopped to change the battery after leaving the hospital. I returned Noel’s car and drove my truck back to the apartment. I wasn’t there.”
Nothing more was said for the next three minutes. But when she pulled into the parking lot, she remained behind the steering wheel, the engine still running. It seemed she had something to say, maybe had to work her way up to speaking the words aloud. Yet I didn’t wait around for it. She was a week too late.
Instead, I climbed out of the car, closed the door, and left her behind.
I might not have successfully pushed her from my mind, but with time, I would.
Chapter 17
Kelsey
When I was in fourth grade, my teacher had shown us all a picture. She’d kept it on the screen for sixty seconds, not telling us what it was or why it was up there. After taking it down, she’d gone back to her desk, ignoring the class for two full minutes. She didn’t tell anyone to stop talking or even give directions about what we needed to do. After those two minutes were up—twice as long as the picture had been on the screen—she moved to the front of the class and asked us all to get out a piece of paper. On that paper, we had to describe what we’d seen, using adjectives to draw the image she’d shown us a couple of minutes before.
I’d felt confident I was right. Beyond right. And as my classmates had read their assignments out loud, I had become more and more impatient for my turn, knowing how pleased my teacher would be at the details I’d remembered. The parts of the image no one else had mentioned—or that they’d gotten wrong. The woman had worn a green dress with feathers along the bottom and black shoes with silver buckles, her purse clutched in one hand while she held on to a child with the other. The little boy, a towhead, squatted at the woman’s feet, petting the belly of a beige-colored dog.
No one had mentioned these things. And I couldn’t wait to be praised for my memory, my perception, my incredible attention to detail. I’d never forget it, the way all the other kids had stared at me as I read my assignment aloud. When I finished, several of them had called out rebuttals, arguing with me about how I had gotten things wrong. But I knew I hadn’t. I knew that out of the entire class, I had been the only one who’d gotten it all right.
Until our teacher filled the screen with the image again.
Her dress hadn’t been green but blue. And there were no feathers at the bottom of the long skirt—it was snow piled around her feet. The silver buckles on her black shoes had turned out to be light reflecting off pieces of ice that sat upon two small rocks. She held on to a purse, yes, but the little boy turned out to be a little girl, a bonnet on her head. The dog wasn’t a dog at all; in fact, it wasn’t even an animal. Just more snow.
I’d been so sure of myself. Only to have it all come crashing down with one more glance at the same picture.
Last night had been a reenactment of that day in fourth grade. And as I lay in bed, exhausted from a long night, I couldn’t help but compare the two different yet similar situations, once again baffled at how I had been so wrong when I’d felt so sure.
Yes, his truck had been in the parking lot. And yes, there were two people having sex in his office. However, I hadn’t seen him, only assumed it was him based on what I knew—and heard. But when I stopped and thought about it, thought about what had been s
aid, the voices, the words, the tone . . . it became rather obvious that it hadn’t been Aaron in that room.
I’d always thought Aaron had a rather normal voice for a guy—deep and manly without the burly gruffness that came with super deep baritones. The man in his office had grit, like his words had been dragged along a gravel road as he spoke. Even though I’d only had sex with Aaron twice, I couldn’t ever forget the way he sounded in the heat of the moment, during both rough and sensual times. His voice became hoarser the closer he got to his orgasm, and when I came, he growled. The sounds—what I’d heard in his office that day and what I knew of Aaron during sex—weren’t even close to the same.
Also, Aaron had told me he loved me. He’d said those exact words to me a few times. Granted, he’d been pretending I was someone else, but that didn’t mean I was deaf to what that sentiment sounded like falling from his lips while in the throes of passion. And as I thought back to how the man in his office had sounded as he told Noel he loved her, I realized it was a far cry from the strong, powerful way Aaron had spoken those words to me.
I dragged myself out of bed, knowing there was a lot I had to make up for and with no idea where to begin. Glancing at the clock on my nightstand, I noticed it was just after eight. With how intoxicated Aaron had been last night, I figured he’d still be in bed. So I took a quick shower, threw on the first outfit I pulled from my closet, and went to him.
Only to be gutted at the sight of his empty room.
I was too late.
I’d woken that morning with a sliver of hope on the horizon, and I rested my head on my pillow that night in total darkness. No sliver of anything, just an invisible weight that wouldn’t relent. And the later it got, the heavier the weight became until it was crushing.
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