Darker Water

by Lauren Stewart

  I missed him. He’d become a constant in my life, a support beam I could lean on whenever I lost my balance. I wasn’t mad anymore, just confused. It all happened so fast—I went there to explain what he’d seen at my place and then suddenly my skirt was hiked up and his pants were down. But he stopped as soon as he really heard me. I knew he didn’t want to hurt me. He would never hurt me. I should have stayed or at least said something better than “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t care” sounds pretty final.

  Things between us had just gotten too complicated, and it was better to reassess things before anything else could go wrong. I figured after a day or two, we’d be ready to talk. I waited for his call all week—he always called. Except this time. So maybe me walking out the door was all the goodbye he needed. And maybe I would have to live with that.

  “Shit.” It’s not as if I couldn’t call him. I kept putting it off because I was afraid. What if that really was goodbye? Maybe it should be.

  When I got home, there was a letter on the floor just inside my door. My name was written in his messy scribble and was missing the ‘Y.’ Thank god Hillary hadn’t found it or she might have thrown it away. I hadn’t told her what happened, but she wasn’t dumb and I’m not much of an actress. A weeklong moping session is hard to miss.

  I closed the door to my room and sat on my bed before opening the letter. Carson hated paper, so it made whatever he’d written more personal. Because I knew he would never have done it for anyone but me.

  Lane,

  I can’t do this not-talking thing anymore. I tried being patient and waiting for you to call but you didn’t call and I don’t have any patience.

  I need to talk to you. Please. In public. I promise I won’t touch you again. I just need to make sure you’re okay, have a few more chances to tell you what a fuck-up I am, and say goodbye.

  I’ll be at the café in our regular spot from 6:30 until it closes. If you can’t make it tonight, that’s okay because I’ll be there tomorrow night too. And the next, just in case you’re busy tomorrow too. Then I’ll probably take the hint and leave you alone.

  I want you to know that I’ve done a lot of shitty stuff in my life, but I’ve never regretted anything as much as I regret that moment. I wish there was a way I could take it back.

  If I don’t see you again, was scribbled out, replaced by, I need to see you again.

  Carson

  I thought about it until seven-thirty, the decision flipping back and forth until I got dizzy. Should I go? Or was a clean break better? All of Carson’s other relationships ended that way, after far less time. It was the way all the frogs had done it, too.

  Yeah, and look how much closure that gave me. Shit. Okay, I’d go. But it wouldn’t be to say goodbye.

  Chapter 35 - Carson

  I’d spent the last five days replaying what happened, where it went wrong, what I should have done, why there was no reason on earth for her to forgive me.

  Everything had changed, and our relationship—if we still had one—would never be like it was. I didn’t think I could miss something so much, care about anything enough, to not be able to sleep or work or focus without it. Without her. I’d fucked it up and I’d fucked it up good. Impressive.

  But I didn’t want her to think I was just another frog and that she was wrong to trust herself. That wasn’t fair. She went into this hoping I could help her move past the damage other men had done. It was supposed to be a lesson in getting what she wanted on her terms, instead of being treated like shit on someone else’s.

  I’m not sure when things changed for me. When it became as much for me as it was for her, to watch her find out she deserved so much more than she’d ever gotten.

  Instead, I’d blown it all into itty-bitty pieces in a fit of frustration and stupidity, of not wanting things to change and thinking I could manhandle them back to what they were. I knew better than to trust my instincts and let myself react so quickly. I knew better, and I’d done it anyway. Because it was something I couldn’t control. Not now, not ever.

  So I’d tell her how sorry I was, and I’d tell her how amazing she was, and I’d say goodbye. If she gave me the chance.

  I stood as soon as she walked in, suddenly acting like a thirteen-year-old boy at a school dance. I forced myself to stay still even though my whole body fought me on it. There wasn’t a single part of her I didn’t miss. Not one.

  Her hair was up the way I like it—made it easier to get to her neck. That wasn’t going to happen anymore, though.

  She walked over slowly, cautiously, and then pointed to the coffee cup in front of her chair. “That for me?”

  “Yeah.” I’d been replacing it every fifteen minutes so it would be hot when, and if, she ever came.

  She came. She was here.

  And I’d forgotten all the things I wanted to say.

  We sat down and were silent for a few minutes. This was stupid. After I fucked something up, I was usually pretty good about making things right, so why was this so hard? Because it was going to take words, not cash.

  Determined to say something, even if it wasn’t what I’d planned, I leaned forward and rested my forearms on my thighs. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” Because I didn’t deserve it. “I know what I did—it’s on repeat in my mind. All the ways I screwed up. I didn’t mean to hurt you but I did, so…”

  I took a breath. “I think you’re fucking incredible, Lane. No, that’s not right. You are fucking incredible, no thought necessary. The guy you choose—Kevin or somebody else”—please, let it be someone else—“will be the luckiest man alive. If he forgets that, if he hurts you, walk away. Run away. Whatever you have to do. Don’t stay there because you think he’s going to change because he’s not. People can’t change.”

  “Yes, they can. People change all the time.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with her or discuss how wrong she was, because I’d lost the right to be her friend. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. I’m really sorry.” I stood up when I ran out of ways to apologize. “Just…try not to pick any more frogs.”

  She grabbed the bottom of my shirt as I moved to leave. “We talk about a lot of things but always avoid the important stuff. Why?”

  I shook my head, knowing the answer but not knowing how to say it. It was too hard, too close, too late. If I let her all the way in… I couldn’t let her all the way in.

  “What were you trying to prove?” she asked.

  “I didn’t want you to go back to him. I don’t want you to get hurt again and I know he’ll do it. So I guess… I know it’s hard to believe, but I was trying to protect you. To remind you that you were happier without him. Didn’t work out so well, though.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” she said, letting go of my shirt. “Kevin came by because he wanted to get back together. His wife dumped him, and he needed an idiot to listen to him whine and then screw him, so he could forget about it for a while.”

  I closed my eyes. She could screw whoever she wanted for whatever reason she wanted. The sex meant nothing to me. But she meant everything to me.

  I know sex is just sex. Two bodies combining for a little while, feeling good, and then splitting apart. Except for her and me. For us, it was better than that—our bodies matched, we matched.

  No, we used to match.

  “But I’m not an idiot.” She sighed. “Well, okay sometimes I’m an idiot. But I’m not his idiot anymore. So I told him to go. Nothing happened. I’m proof people can change, Carson. I’m never going back to the person I was. So sit down and talk to me.”

  I slowly went back to my seat and waited for her to tell me what would happen next.

  “You scared me.”

  “I know. If I could do it over again—”

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t ever do it again.”

  I looked at her, unsure of what that meant.

  “A
fter Kevin broke up with me, I swore I’d never give anyone a second chance, but I’m going to give you one. Is that a bad decision?”

  “No.” But a second later, I wasn’t sure ‘no’ was the right answer. I would never screw things up this way again, but I’d screw them up some other way. Maybe a worse one. It was in my DNA to fuck up everything good. But I wanted it to be true and I would try. Really fucking hard.

  “I shouldn’t have assumed you were with him again.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have, but I shouldn’t have let you believe it. I could’ve told you right then, but I thought I needed space. I still do. Not much—I want to keep hanging out if you do, but not as often, especially not overnight. Because…it’s messing with my head.”

  I knew the feeling. “I can do less often.” I nodded even though I didn’t want to. “I’m really sorry, Lane.”

  “You’re a total liar,” she said with a small grin. “You apologize all the time.”

  “Just to you. And only when I mean it.”

  “You make me happy for a bunch of reasons, not just the sex. You know that, right?”

  Oh shit. I couldn’t remember if I knew that or not. All I could focus on was how much I didn’t want to know that. I should get out of this while I still could, use her need for space as the beginning of a larger one. So she’d avoid the damage I could do to her.

  “That’s the biggest problem,” she said.

  No, it wasn’t. I was the biggest problem. She was wrong to give me a second chance. But if I told her, I’d have to walk away now and I couldn’t do that. Because I was weak and stupid and selfish, just like my father. The only difference between him and me was that I hadn’t hit Lane, I hadn’t made her feel worthless. But I would—it was inevitable. Because I was weak and stupid and selfish.

  Chapter 36 - Laney

  I started asking Carson to do more and more with me—mostly carrying raw wood and moving the lily pad tables to the storage area as I finished them so they wouldn’t get bumped. I loved the company, though I wasn’t as crazy about the mess he left behind when he finished one of his Getting Handy projects. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to get worse the more he practiced.

  But I didn’t say anything because I figured the more time we spent together, the faster things would go back to the way they’d been. Unfortunately, all it accomplished was that we had more time to feel awkward and unnatural around each other. And I was sick of it.

  Since a lot of our time together had been in his bed, I planned an ambush as close to it as I could get him. My drawer and his uselessness with tools were the perfect excuse.

  “Can you bring me a screwdriver?” I called from inside his bedroom. “My drawer is stuck.”

  He came in, holding the screwdriver out, glancing at me and the bed uncomfortably. As soon as the tool was in my hand, he flipped around and started walking away.

  I grabbed his arm and tugged so he would face me. “Knock it off.”

  “Knock what off?”

  “I don’t like this, what we’re doing now. I want to go back to the way we were. You haven’t made a lewd comment or touched me in two weeks.” And that meant he wasn’t being himself. “I want you to go back to the way you were.”

  “But you said—”

  “I don’t care what I said.” I stepped in close. “Kiss me.”

  He hesitated, his body at war with his mind. “Are you sure? I thought we weren’t—”

  “Kiss me.”

  With achingly slow movements, he put his hand on my hip, his other under my chin. His lips brushed mine so gently, so hesitantly, so not-Carson-ish. Something I never thought I’d get tired of became irritating. I wanted him to take control and be who he was, who I needed him to be.

  “More,” I whispered. “I want more.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “More of you won’t hurt me, but you treating me as if I’m about to break any second is. Something has to change, and by ‘something’ I mean you.”

  I didn’t wait for him to make a decision. I’d already made it for him. This was what I wanted, so I took it. If he had a problem with it, he’d let me know. I undid his pants and wrapped my hand around his cock, tightening my grip until his groan turned into a curse, and I felt him start to get hard.

  “Lane.” It was a warning. One I wouldn’t listen to. This was how it all went to shit, and this was how we were going to get it back.

  “Do you want me, Carson?”

  He flicked his head as if the answer was so blindingly obvious, the question was insulting.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” The word came from deep in his chest, an almost desperate sound. “I always want you. I want to touch you, kiss every inch of you, and hear you scream my name. I’m amazed I get anything done because being with you is all I can think about.” He put his hand over mine, stopping my gentle strokes that had already made him completely hard. “But I don’t deserve it until you can trust me again.”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  His eyes were intensifying, his breath speeding up, his grip tightening. This was working almost too well. “Yeah, but—”

  “Have you ever lied to me? Hidden anything from me?” Like I might be but didn’t want to think about, especially not right now.

  “No.”

  “Then you should shut up, and do what I want you to do.” I needed this and for everything between us to be right again. I could deal with the other parts later.

  That night was one of the best we’d ever had, both of us focused on one thing—letting the past and the future go. Even though our conversations were severely limited, consisting mostly of exclamations and swearing, I knew Carson was back. Tomorrow, I’d start seeing his eyes light up with desire and amusement whenever I was around. And every time I caught him looking at me and saw his smile grow, I would feel beautiful and special and wanted. For exactly who I was.

  In the morning, he lifted me up and carried my useless body into the bathroom.

  “What are you doing?” I whined, still seventy-five percent asleep.

  “After you become a famous artist, you can lay around in bed all day. But until then, you have to lie around where I want you to, and I want you in the bathtub.”

  A half hour later my fingers were pruney, and I’d never cared about anything less. The tub was so comfortable that I wondered it Carson would let me move into his bathroom. The tub could be my bed and... Yeah, that was all I needed.

  He adjusted himself behind me, pulling me a bit higher. If I tipped my head all the way back I could rest it on his shoulder. His fingers drew lines in the water, little trails where the bubbles didn’t follow.

  His lips grazed my neck. “So you didn’t tell him he was doing it wrong because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings?”

  “Yes, but when you say it in that condescending tone, it doesn’t sound as nice.” I was jostled by his laughing.

  “How is it nice to lie to the idiot who thinks he’s doing it right? You considered staying with this guy, right? Like marriage and all that?”

  “As nauseating as the idea is to me now, yeah, marriage and all the rest of it.” I swept bubbles towards us, and he popped them.

  “You didn’t have a problem knowing for the next fifty years you were going to get sub-par head and would only orgasm when you did it yourself?”

  “Well, when you say it like that...”

  He laughed again. “There is no possible way I could say it to make it not sound completely stupid.”

  “Shut up.” I swatted his knee, splashing water into my own face. “If you weren’t such a selfish prick, you’d understand.”

  “Even if I wasn’t a selfish prick, I’d still be a man. And no man thinks he’s being selfish during sex, especially not when he’s telling you what he wants. I guarantee that if you weren’t as good as you are, Mr. Frog would’ve told you about it.”

  “Would you?”

  “I’m a se
lfish prick, so of course I would. But in a non-pricky way because most of it is about intent. And what’s worse than a woman giving you a blowjob when she’d rather be doing anything else?”

  “When she actually does anything else?”

  “You’re very, very smart.” He spoke into my neck, his voice gravelly, his lips torturous. “And very, very naked. And very, very sexy. And very, very, very about to practice giving a man detailed instructions on how to give you the best orgasm of your life.”

  He’d already given me the best orgasm of my life. He’d already given me every orgasm I’d put in my top thirty.

  He pulled the drain plug. “Detailed instructions. You need to practice saying it out loud and giving orders. I’ll pretend to be one of the totally clueless frogs you’ve slept with. Not Kevin though, ’cause I can’t do that to either of us. But for this experiment, I’ll only do what you tell me to do.” He forced me to stand. “Up.” He got out first so he could help me.

  “I swear I can do it myself, Carson.”

  “Sure, and then when you slip and fall you can sue me for all I’m worth. I know what kind of woman you are.” A fluffy white towel hit me in the face, blocking me from seeing his huge mocking smile.

  “Sorry.”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Why are you so slow? We have work to do.” He wrapped his towel around his waist, then pulled mine out of my hands and dried me off. The heat coming off him helped.

  When I was kind of dry, he tossed my towel over the shower door and took my hand.

  “If we have time, we can cross a few more things off your list. Come on.”

  I got one more quick glance at the tub before he dragged me out of the bathroom. It would’ve been much easier to be mad at him for making me leave if he wasn’t about to make me come.