The Price Of Success (Fighting For Fireworks)

by Lee, Corri

No woman could think straight when he was around- his sparking blue eyes projected images of all night headboard-banging fucking directly into their minds. Except mine. Of all the bitches in the lecture hall, he had set his sights on the one that didn’t drool when his shadow cast on the stained yellow Perspex window of the door. I wasn’t receptive to pretty faces, and that baffled him. He had to know why I was immune and made it his mission to find out. And if that meant giving me speed and taking my brown wings in a vacant dormitory, he’d do it.

  He was single-handedly responsible for everything I’d known of deviance before Nathaniel strolled into my life. And at that moment, he was spooning sugar into my coffee like we’d never been apart. “Firstly, I’d like to apologise in advance for your face being all over the internet and gossip magazines later.”

  He sucked on the back of his teeth and grinned. That smile was a kick in the nuts- it was an instant reminder of all the things that mouth had done to me. “I’ll behave. You probably don’t need a fourth wheel on your tricycle.”

  “You’ve seen the pictures.”

  “Pictures of your hot naked body sitting in a confessional- yes. I got hard in a very inconvenient situation.” I raised an eyebrow. “I was having lunch with my mother. And then my little sister was only too happy to summarise the current media focus around you- being one of your boyfriend’s students and all.”

  I bit my lip apologetically and struggled not to laugh, having seen his flustered oh-god-not-an-inconvenient-boner look before. “I didn’t know that those pictures were out yet, they were only taken on Sunday.”

  “You may want to avoid Camden then. Your bare ass is everywhere.” I slunk down in my seat and covered my face with my hands, aware that everyone seated around us may well have seen me mostly naked. “Anyway, you said ‘firstly’. What’s secondly?”

  I gritted my teeth awkwardly and stared down into the coffee he placed before me. “Secondly, I’m sorry I got you fired.”

  A terse silence extended between us for an eternity before he cleared his throat and poked my arm. “Yeah, it was a bit of an over-reaction on your part, but I came on too strong. I get that now. And I wasn’t fired, I left voluntarily.” I could only imagine the amount of students who hated me compulsively for being the only person to bed the hot English Literature professor, and then forcing him out of the university. He fell in love with me- I panicked. “Part of me kind of hoped that you might chase me, but hey ho. Cici Douglas doesn’t chase men.” I opened my mouth to speak but shut it again quickly. Aiden was right, I’d never chased a man in my life- I’d always been chased. I had never found anyone I’d wanted to chase. “So what’s eating you, hun? Must be big for you to drag me out from the rock all men hide under when you kick them to the kerb.”

  I was struck dumb by the sentiment. He had to be exaggerating- men surely wouldn’t hurt so much for me giving them the brush off. “Come again?”

  “I was wounded for years, Cici. And I sulked again yesterday when I saw what I was missing. You’re so easy to love.” My guts twisted. That was the second time I’d heard that phrase in the past couple of weeks.

  I swirled a finger around the surface of my coffee and sucked the dew from the tip of my finger. It didn’t occur to me until later that the gesture could have been misconstrued as sexual. “That’s actually sort of why I called you. Why am I so ‘easy to love’, as people keep putting it?”

  “Seriously?” He puffed his cheeks out and flared his eyes. “Where to begin? You’re impassive, therefore a challenge. You’re mercurial and unpredictable, therefore never boring. You’re modest, so never fish for compliments. You’re very open-minded-…” He smirked and sucked in a laugh, “… you’re critical and don’t take anyone’s shit. You’re beautiful, even when you’re terrifyingly suicidal. You’re painstakingly neutral and don’t put preference or insult to anyone. That’s probably your problem.”

  I murmured a note of pleasant surprise- amazingly nothing he’d said had shocked me. I knew all those personality traits well, but it and never occurred to me that being neutral might have been the source of my problems. “I don’t chase and I don’t place preference. Jesus, I’m made of stone.”

  “The hell you are.” He shook his head and took a quick sip of latte. “The thing that busted my balls the most about you was the depth behind those incredible eyes- the part of your soul that screams ‘wow me and make me love you or you’ll die remembering how you weren’t good enough’. I refuse to believe any man who’s pursued you has done it for the soul purpose of getting his dick wet. Men want to be inside you to prove their worth, and because it’s the closest they can be to your heart.”

  I laughed to cover my discomfort around the intensity of his words. I wasn’t deep, I wasn’t to be idolised. And I sure as hell wasn’t as needy as he made out. “I don’t crave love that badly, Aiden. You make it sound like I exude desperation.”

  “You don’t. Besides, you changed after your parents died.”

  “Don’t.” I warned. “I know I changed but I don’t need to know how.”

  Aiden leaned across the table towards me and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You don’t need to tell me that you’re scared.”

  “I said don’t.”

  “Tell me about your book, Cici.”

  Glad for the swift subject change, I gave him the same synopsis I’d given Nathaniel but went deeper into the specifics of how I’d related events to my own life. Aiden nodded as he absorbed the information and reminded me of smaller details I hadn’t remembered. I noted them all mentally while I chewed on my fingernails- a nervous habit that I’d always had around him.

  “So you wrote a book about us?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Sort of. I always felt a bit like your protégé.” I blinked, taken aback by my own words. That was exactly how I felt about Nathaniel. “I always wondered ‘why me’ and you nursed my co-dependence until I was weak enough to let you in.” Like Nathaniel.

  “So why is there no happy ending? Why did we end, and why does your book end in tragedy?”

  “Because there are no happy endings, Ade. No matter how virtuously you think you live your life, somebody else always ends up getting fucked over. She took reckless risks that hurt the people around her- she deserved to be alone and hanging from a balcony.”

  “Ah.” Aiden shook his head and poured me a fresh cup of coffee. “The crux of the matter. You’re pissed because your mother donated her kidney to your father, and now you think her advice on her deathbed was tainted.” My face twitched with suppressed anger. I had secretly always felt that my mother had been a little selfish in her actions to keep my father alive, and I hated that he’d purposely scuppered his chances of recovery to die with her. They had never thought of me, how I’d cope with no family. I hated that Aiden saw right through me. “It wasn’t about you, Cici.”

  “Fucking tell me about it. It was never about me!” I rolled my eyes in irritation as the tears began to well. “They didn’t care that I’d be left behind. They left me to rot while they made eyes at each other as they died. Their version of love was bullshit.”

  “So you’d rather dodge love at every corner and die alone and bitter than be a little bit selfish, find your soul mate and die as happily as they did? Have you ever been selfish in your life?”

  I pursed my lips and shook my head quickly. “No.” Nothing in my life had ever been selfish. I pushed Aiden away because I didn’t want to drag him into something I couldn’t bear to engage in, I didn’t want the fame and fortune that would come from becoming a published author, I spent most nights at university drugged in strangers’ flats so Bethany wouldn’t have to deal with my grief, and I pushed men away so they wouldn’t be damaged by my fear of loving. My fear of what I revered. I was trapped in contradiction.

  “You should try it, it’s invigorating. For once in your life, stop caring about other people’s feelings. So you dump your boyfriend for the billionaire and he sends out the mob- big deal. The Alexander�
��s pay people to take bullets for them. Or if you dump the billionaire for your boyfriend, who cares? He has the money to buy a new girlfriend and you’ll never socialise with him anyway. You’d never have to see him again.”

  “Nice theory, but who do I go for? The epitome of modern British literature and popularity or the rugged Italian with a dick like a baby’s leg?” Aiden raised an eyebrow at me and glanced down at his lap. “Yes he’s bigger, but not ‘good’ bigger. You use it better.”

  “Oh, well then.” He grinned smugly and reached under the table to pull a tablet computer from his messenger bag. “Show me pictures of you with both guys.”

  We trawled the internet for all the pictures of Cole, Nathaniel and I that had surfaced over the past two and a half weeks and discussed at length the real stories behind them. Some of them sounded truly ridiculous when I said them out loud- both men were jealous fools.

  Aiden leaned back in his seat and folded his arms. “Well obviously neither of them are a spot on me,” he stuck his tongue out and tapped the picture staring up at us, “but I think this is your man. You just look ‘right’ together.”

  “Really?” My forehead creased in surprise. His conclusion shocked me. Well okay, I thought, you wanted the decision to be taken from you, and here’s your answer.

  “No, not really!” He leaned over and slapped the back of my hand. “That was a test and you failed miserably. You just answered your own question. Am I an awesome therapist or what?” I murmured in agreement and scrolled to a picture of the first man and only man that I was going to chase. I had never laid myself out on the line before- opened myself up to rejection. I didn’t know what I’d do if he told me I was too late and I’d said too much that pushed him away. “You’re dying on your ass right now, aren’t you?”

  Aiden’s never failing way of reading my mind still lived strong. Through university, he had been my closest male friend until our association heated, then my parents died and he was the person who gave me methods to vent my frustration while Bethany did her best to keep me level. He had been bad for me- very bad for me, and she had blamed him for so much. She had no idea that he had saved me as much as she had. I had been self-destructive, but he’d been there with me every step of the way, making sure I’d misbehaved safely. I couldn’t advocate the dark world he’d introduced me to, but I could sure as hell defend the way he’d protected me.

  “I have no idea how to follow this through, Ade. You know me- I don’t have to look for it.”

  “I know, Cici. You have to go to him and tell him exactly how you feel, but remind him that his behaviour has been appalling. He can’t just throw around threats to get his own way- that won’t make you love him. Neither can he throw out bribes and incentives- I can tell him myself that it won’t work for you.”

  “And the spare?”

  “Be honest. Tell him that you don’t love him as much and that you’re sorry. He’ll hurt for a while but he should want you to be happy.” I sighed heavily and combed my fingers into my hair, massaging my scalp with the tips and rubbing my eyes with my palms. I wasn’t built for those kinds of conversations. I couldn’t verbalise as well in person as I could on paper. There had always been someone around to fill in the blanks for me, so I’d never had to learn to speak for myself. I was walking into a foreign land with no knowledge of the language, just a crap phrase book with no phonetics. “Why don’t we take a trip down memory lane first?” I shifted one hand to look at him inquisitively. “Let’s get you high. Really high.”

  We spread ourselves across the grass underneath a tree in Hyde Park, the way we had done so many times in the past. The clouds above pulsed and emanated a gentle white light that hooked me in. When he helped me feel like this, the world just seemed so… fucking beautiful.

  Aiden took the tightly packed joint from my hand before it burned out and his voice echoed around me. “Feeling better?”

  “Hmm.” I fixated on the psychedelic trail left by my fingers when he pulled them overhead, and spent a long moment holding my hands out in front of me, concentrating hard on the way they throbbed and tried to determine if it coincided with my heartbeat. “Hands.” I laughed dopily and threw an arm over my face.

  I had enough bad experiences in university to know better than to mix drugs, but Aiden had a way of making the combination exquisite just by being there. The psilocybin mushrooms made me feel like I was everything, everyone and everywhere at once, but the cannabis lamed me and ensured that I didn’t test the theory that I was ‘at one with the fish’. I always fled to water- that was a lesson he had learnt the hard way and the consequences had been an extended period in accident and emergency spent smuggling packets of Haribo to the kids in the waiting room.

  My brain was idle while I stared up into the leaves of the tree, and then I started to contemplate how I’d lived. “Did I ruin your life, Ade?”

  He rolled onto his side and walked his fingers up the zip of my Armani jacket. The fact that I wore something so high end while I did something so low brow made this experience so wrong. “Well yeah, sort of. Did you ruin my life when you threw up in my Maserati? No. Did you ruin my life when you ran to the university principal and told him we were screwing? No. You ruined my life when you walked out of it.” I pouted guiltily and battled to pull the neck of my jacket up over my head. “Don’t sweat it. I knew you’d come back eventually.”

  “But I’m-…”

  “I know, Cici. You’re not available. But sometimes just having someone in your life in a friendly capacity is enough.”

  I shoved his arm playfully and rolled my eyes. “Sentimental bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Always. Hungry?” Like he had to ask.

  We ate cheap burgers one handed and walked through Mayfair with our arms hooked together- him with his bountiful muscles sticking from the arms of his Animal t-shirt and legs of his cut off three quarter length jeans, and me in designer leathers. We were the regular odd couple, and it was symbolic of how much I’d changed.

  He purposely bumped into me to make me stumble sideways and was rewarded with a swift punch to the top of his bicep. He grinned and tossed an arm around my shoulders, quickly pulling me down into a head lock. Considering we were in the middle of Grosvenor Street, there was no way that this tomfoolery wouldn’t end up splashed across magazines. I did have to wonder if he was doing it on purpose to sabotage me.

  “So what the hell do I do now you’re off the market?”

  “I dunno- get over it? You’ve had six years to get used to it.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me and nodded slowly. “Yeah, I guess there’s always my wife.” I stopped in my tracks and gaped at him, appalled that he would have spoken so affectionately to me when he had a wife at home. “Relax, Cici! I’m joking!” He got another punch in the arm for that spot of cheekiness. “I always knew you’d come back. Who knew you’d come back in the midst of one extremely public love triangle looking way more out of my league than you used to though?”

  “Yeah life’s a bitch.” I paused again as I felt two strong rumbles shake my core. “Crap, earthquake!”

  “Or your phone?”

  “Oh yeah.” I snickered and dug into my pocket for my phone and found something that was the perfect example of my situation. Two identical text messages from two evenly matched men.

  Are you free for lunch?

  “So reply.” Aiden peeked over my shoulder and shrugged. “No time like the present.”

  I shook my head as I looked at the time and shoved my phone back into my pocket. “I’d have to leave now- I don’t want to ditch you in the middle of London.”

  “Are you fucking kidding?” He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me into a hug. He smelled the same as he always had- Lynx body wash and dripping with pheromones. “Go get him, Cici. Before you lose your buzz.”

  “Yeah, that’d be awesome. ‘Sorry I’m barging in on you at work, let’s hook up, by the way I’m high as a kite.’ ” I scoffed and hooked my arm bac
k through his.

  He didn’t budge when I tugged at him. “Stop making excuses. I know it’s unchartered territory but the sooner you take that step, the sooner you can make that domain your own.” He held a hand out to summon a black cab and pushed me towards its door. “I’m insanely jealous of this guy, Cici, but I want nothing more than for you to be happy. Two great talkers will not travel far together. We get on too well to be a couple. Conflict is essential to a healthy relationship.”

  I paused with my hand on the door’s handle and took a moment to absorb Aiden. We had been through so much together and he had been so understanding through everything. Part of me thought that maybe he was the one I was supposed to be with.

  So I grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. It was welcome and familiar- he moaned with pleasure against my mouth- but I released him and sighed. “Nothing?”

  I shook my head apologetically and pulled my phone back from my pocket. “Not even a tiny spark.”

  “Bugger.” He smiled at me warmly and closed the door, leaning through the open window to ruffle my hair. “Thanks for the memory though. Don’t be a stranger, Cici.” And with that, he stepped back with a wave. The man who had made me while I broke him- unreservedly forgiving and still hot for me after all this time. I knew I had a lot to thank him for, and not just for what he’d done for me that day. And I knew that I’d see him again.

  I paced the corridor outside his office nervously, feet clicking loudly as I travelled back and forth, rehearsing what I would say. I could only distract myself by sending his thwarted foe a reply.

  Sorry, I have plans.

  Those four vague words didn’t seem like enough, but a text message was no way to explain that I hadn’t loved him enough to part ways with his enemy. That was something I had to tell him to his face.

  He had somebody in his office and it sounded heated. He was annoyed- this wasn’t the time. But if I didn’t tell him now, I wasn’t sure that I ever would. Still, I should have replied to his message too, or called in advance. I’d descended on him at work- I hadn’t thought this through at all.