by Annie Jocoby
Luke was almost home, I guess, and I was pacing the floor. Everything was flooding back to me. The past few weeks of torment and heartbreak. Of submitting sexually, night after night, to a man that I loathed. Of wanting to almost die, I was so depressed and hopeless.
And for what? So that Luke can go and fuck everything up in one day? If there was any chance at all that he might be able to salvage something out of his amazing debut, he just flushed it down the drain in one fell swoop.
As I waited for him to come home, I found myself getting irrationally angrier and angrier. Of course, Luke didn’t know what I did for him to make his dreams come true, so, really, I shouldn’t have been as angry as I was. No matter. There was no way that I could have talked myself out of the way that I was feeling right at that moment.
Finally, he turned the doorknob and came into the apartment. I stood there, my arms crossed, and he immediately looked puzzled.
“Hi, Dalilah,” he said. “What’s going on?”
I took a deep breath. “You saw Nottingham. Didn’t I get it across to you that I didn’t want you doing that?”
He looked chastened. “You did. But Dalilah, I had to defend your honor. He can’t get away with doing what he did to you.”
“Oh? Defend my honor? Exactly what did you accomplish by seeing him? I’m sure that he’s really scared now.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Luke, don’t you know? Can’t you see? You’re a bug to him. An ant. Nothing but a nuisance to him, but he can crush you without even thinking twice. And he will. Trust me, he will.”
“I’m not scared of him,” Luke said. “And I felt that I had to do something to defend you. It wasn’t much, but at least he knows now that you and I are together, so that’s satisfaction enough. I wounded him when I told him that, let me tell you.”
I just looked at him, trying very hard to keep my mouth shut before something came out of it that shouldn’t. Something that I could never take back. “Luke,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “You’re an intelligent guy. But you’re also incredibly naïve. You do know that everybody who was at your premiere was there because Nottingham invited them, don’t you? Every single one. You don’t know the power that man has. He has your future in his hands. Why would you fuck that up?”
He shook his head. “Dalilah, it’s going to be okay. I had a great premiere, and I’m sure that I can make that into a great career. And, if nothing happens, then nothing happens. At least I know now that I have the potential to make it. If nothing else, that premiere gave me confidence in myself. If I have to start from square one, then I have to start from square one.”
I paced the floor some more. How could he be so casual about all of this? If there was ever a chance for me to somehow smooth things out with Nottingham, just enough so that he wouldn’t blackball Luke, that chance went out the window when Luke decided to confront Nottingham behind my back.
Finally, I took a deep breath. “Okay, so you confronted him. What did you say? What did he say?”
He looked down at the floor. “I told him that you and I are together, and that he can’t get away with beating you that way. I think that I called him a coward, too. Because he is. Anybody who does something like that is a coward, and he’s no exception.”
“I see,” I said. “And you just talked to him, right?”
“Well, no,” he said. “I punched him twice. Once in the face and once in the gut.”
I got quiet. I knew it. I knew it. I immediately kicked myself for ever putting Luke into the middle of the Nottingham drama.
I shook my head.
Luke walked towards me, putting his arms out, but I pushed him away. “Don’t touch me,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m so angry right now...I think that I need to not be here right now.”
“Dalilah, I’m sorry. I felt that I....”
“Had to do something. I know. As ineffectual as it is. You might have felt that you’ve gotten some sort of revenge by going over and doing that, but I’m here to tell you that you’ve managed to make a bad situation worse. I can’t believe that you can’t see that.”
“Well, I didn’t think that he should get away with it.”
“Luke,” I began. “Don’t you see? He is getting away with it. And he’s going to get away with it. You going over there and doing that did nothing. Well, no, it did something. I would imagine that you were in jail when I was trying to call you. And, I would imagine that he’s going to press charges. So, congratulations! You managed to get into a situation where you’re going to have to spend the money you made from your show on a lawyer. And you’ll be lucky if you don’t go to prison for this. And forget about getting more work. I hope that it’s worth it.”
Luke looked embarrassed. I felt badly for him. He was really from a different world from me. In his world, bad people got what was coming to them, and brawling was one way to make sure that they got their just desserts. He had no idea how people like Nottingham operated.
I did.
Then, it just came out of my mouth. Before I could stop to even think about it.
“Luke, I just can’t believe you. I mean, I fucking married that guy so that....”
I stopped myself, and took a deep breath. I saw his face, which registered shock, horror and bewilderment. But I knew that he knew what I was getting at.
Oh, god. Stupid Dalilah. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I put my hand over my mouth.
“Finish your sentence. You married him because what?”
“Nothing. That’s not important right now. Hey, you punched Nottingham, the damage is done. Let’s go down to your bar and get a beer, huh?”
“No. Finish what you were saying, Dalilah. Finish it.”
“Nothing. I told you already...”
“No, you didn’t. You lied to me. Now, tell me the truth about your marriage to him. Right here. Right now.”
I started shaking my head, and I felt tears streaming down my face. “Please, Luke, let’s not do this. Please....”
“Do what? Oh, god, Dalilah, let me finish your thought for you. Because you obviously can’t be straight with me.”
As I shook my head and the tears flowed, he said “you married him so that he would give me a show. I’m such a fucking loser, in your eyes, that I couldn’t do it on my own. You had to intervene. Is that what you were about to say?”
“No, no, no,” I said. “No, Luke. I didn’t marry him to give you a show. He was going to give you a show anyhow. Really. Honestly. He told me that when...”
“He told you that? When did he tell you that?”
Was it time? Was it time to come clean with what I did for him? Everything?
“Luke, please, I want to talk to you about this, but not until you’re calm. You’re obviously pissed right now, and this conversation is just going to inflame everything even more.”
“No, Dalilah, we’re going to talk about this now. When did he tell you that he was going to give me a show, and why is it that you never said a word to me about this?”
“Sit down,” I said, taking a seat on the couch, and patting the seat behind me. “Sit down, and be calm, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“Everything. That somehow sounds really bad.” He refused to sit next to me. He stood in front of me, his arms crossed in front of him.
I shook my head. “No, not bad. I mean, well, it’s kinda bad. But I did everything for you.”
At that, he finally sat down next to me, and stared at me. The color was draining from his face, and he already looked defeated.
And I knew that, after I told him my story, he was going to be even more defeated.
There was no way around that.
Chapter 32
I sat there and just looked at him for a few minutes. I was so nervous, because I didn’t know how the whole dirty truth would affect our relationship. It really could go either way. Either he would love me more for doing that for him. Or, he could feel resentful towards me for interfering. He
might see it as a sign that I didn’t believe in him. Which, of course, wasn’t the case at all. I did believe in him. 100%. But I knew that he didn’t believe in himself.
Finally, I began. “Luke, bear in mind that I’ve been in love with you since that night you came over. Since the second that you kissed me, I’ve been absolutely lost in you.”
“I’ve been in love with you since I laid eyes on you on that bus. As crazy as that sounds. But, go on.”
“Well, I was concerned. You were so discouraged about your career. And I thought that you were ready to go back to Maine, and I’d lose you for sure.”
“Dalilah, I might have talked a good game, but I had more faith in myself than that. I was only talking when I said that. I never would give up on my dream.”
“Well, I thought that you were. I thought that you were going to give up, and I wanted to make sure that you didn’t.”
“So, what? You kissed Nottingham’s ass so that he would give me a show?”
I took a deep breath. “I did a bit more than that. I, well, I dated Nottingham. I went out with him. I made him believe that I was into him.” The words were coming out, and it was almost a relief. Coming clean was feeling liberating. “I assure you, though, that we never had sex.”
Luke looked astounded. “So, you cheated on me. But, hey, it was for a good cause, though.” He shook his head. “I mean, maybe we weren’t exclusive, but I thought that we were. Stupid me.”
“We were exclusive. I mean, I went out with Nottingham, but we were literally just hanging out. No physical contact. I promise.”
“Dalilah,” he said. “No offense, but with all your secrets and lies, I don’t know what to believe. How can I possibly trust you?”
“Luke, please. I did it for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I mean, it’s condescending as hell, but your heart was in the right place. Too bad you really thought that I was too much of a fucking loser to actually make it on my own.”
“That’s just it, Luke. Nottingham told me that he was interested in giving you a show before I even brought anything up about you. I admit, I dated him because I wanted to butter him up so that he would give you a show, but I didn’t even need to do that. He would have given you a show even without my meddling.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. You’ve been lying to me all this time. Not to mention keeping secrets from me. And you’ve done it so well. So, I don’t believe you. I think that you’re the only reason why I ever got that show in the first place, and that really makes me feel like shit. The last thing that I wanted to hear was that I only got a major showing because my girlfriend was dating the gallery owner.”
“Please, Luke, you have to believe me. He wanted to show you anyhow. I didn’t even have to say a thing to him. He brought it up to me.” Which wasn’t entirely true. I mean, I did bring up Luke to Nottingham, but Nottingham still had informed me that he already was thinking seriously of showing Luke when I brought up the subject. So, I was only half-lying there.
“Okay,” he said, but he looked skeptical. “But go on. You’re stalling. Why did you marry that creeper?”
“Well, he found out about us. And he threatened to pull your show and ruin you if I didn’t do what he wanted. So, I did. I couldn’t see you get your show pulled. You would’ve been devastated and so discouraged.”
He nodded his head. “So, you did that for me. You married him for me. To help me.”
I took his hand, and tried to look him in the eye. But he refused to look at me. “I did that for you. Only for you.”
He was quiet, so quiet. He still refused to look at me.
“Luke,” I said. “Talk to me. What’s going on in your head?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, that’s....that was some kind of sacrifice. It’s...well, it’s something that I never thought was possible. That another person could be so selfless as that, to do something like that. And I love you more than ever for doing that.”
“Okay,” I said. I sensed an undercurrent of tension, which belied his sweet words. It seemed that he wasn’t at all happy that I did that for him.
He hung his head, and crossed his hands in front of him.
He was quiet, so quiet, for what seemed like forever.
Finally, he looked at me. “Dalilah. I thought that you believed in me more than that. And I thought that you knew me better than that.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know what to say.”
I felt the tears coming again. “I do believe in you, Luke. I do. That’s why I did that.”
“No. That’s not why you did that. You did that because you didn’t believe in me. You didn’t have faith in my ability to find an audience, so you just tried to leapfrog me over. Manipulating people to get what you want is never the right thing to do, Dalilah. Even if you think differently.”
By then, I was shaking all over. This conversation wasn’t going well, to say the least, and I was scared to death about what he was about to say to me. “Luke, please, it was the wrong thing for the right reasons. Looking back, it was the stupidest thing that I could possibly do, but I really just wanted you to have your moment in the sun. Not just a moment, either. I wanted you to soar like you deserve to. You’re too talented – “
“I know, I know. Too talented to be broke. But don’t you see? I want to make it on my own, not because the gallery owner is obsessed with my girlfriend. And breaking up with me just so that I could have a successful premiere? God, Dalilah, you really don’t know me at all if you ever, for one second, thought that doing that is the right thing to do. For even a split second. It should have never even crossed your mind. Give me you, and I’m happy. But becoming an A-lister without you?” He shook his head. “Not a good trade-off. Not a good trade-off at all.”
I sighed. “I know, Luke. I just really wanted you to be successful.”
“At what price? Think about that. Think about the price that was paid, not just by you, but by me as well. I lost you, and nothing in this world could be more devastating than that. Was it all worth it?”
I shook my head. “No. Nothing could be worth it. I thought that it would be, but it turned out to really not be.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And, well, here we are, back to status quo. I’m broke again, or at least I will be once I pay Uncle Sam and hire a lawyer to get me out of my assault charge. I don’t think that I’m going to be able to parlay my successful premiere into anything now, so I’m just as much of a nobody as I was before all this happened. And, I think, at least I hope, that you and I are back together. So, you did all that to get us right back to where we were before.”
I smiled. “Ironic, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “Ironic. Eh, well, looks like it’s back to the grindstone with me. But that’s okay. There is one good thing that came out of you doing what you did.”
“What was that?”
“Well, how people treated me the night of my premiere really gave me confidence. It’s not going to be as easy as I thought that it was going to be to get a leg up in the art community, after my awesome premiere, but I now know that people really do like my work. So, that helps. And, who knows? Maybe there’ll be a few people who aren’t totally up Nottingham’s ass, and they might be willing to work with me after all. Anything’s possible.”
I let out my breath. It seemed that the tension between us had passed. My secrets were out in the open, and I wasn’t lying anymore. In all, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of me. For the first time since Nottingham threatened me with pulling Luke’s show, I felt like I could breathe.
Luke put his hand under my shirt, and stroked my back. “Okay, Dalilah, everything seems to be coming out in the open. Now, please answer me this. I noticed the scars on your back. They’re very faint, though. Do you need to tell me anything about that?”
I hung my head. “Oh, well. That. Yeah. Um....”
He was looking at me, his beautiful eyes soft and loving.
&nbs
p; I took a deeper breath. “God, well. Now, you have to know that this happened before you and I got together for real.”
“Go on,” he said.
“I had a drinking problem before I met you. I was so directionless and aimless and I was just so frustrated with my life. I think that maybe I was also majorly depressed. I couldn’t feel. I was numb. And I was looking for something, anything, to wake me up. And I got drunk one night and...”
He was still looking at me, and I was afraid that he was going to judge me. Still, I soldiered on.
“I got drunk one night, and Nottingham was there, and we went back to his place. And, well, it turns out that he’s into BDSM, and he beat me while he had sex with me.”
He nodded. “Well, I’m a little bit shocked. I had no idea that you were into that. No judgment, though. And, you and I weren’t together at that time, so....”
“Right,” I said. “We weren’t. I mean, I had met you, but only that first time when I had modeled for you. I liked you, I knew that. But at that time, I wasn’t even thinking about you and I having a romance.”
“So,” he said. “Is that, is that....is that something that you like? I mean, is that a secret fantasy of yours?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess. I mean, you and I have never been rough with each other, and I love having sex with you. I think that maybe I just wanted to do it at that time because I wanted to be woken up. It was like pouring ice cold water on my face.”
He looked down.
“Why do you ask?” I said to him. “Is that, is that something that you’d be into?”
“No. I mean, I don’t want to hurt you or anything like that. But maybe bondage would be something that would be kinda cool.”
I smiled and laughed a little. “That can be arranged.”
Chapter 33
I smiled at Luke, wanting very badly for him to make love to me. It had been so long, way too long, and all that I wanted was to have him inside of me. He kissed me, longingly, on the mouth, and I started to melt. I could feel my insides doing somersaults. It was such a different experience with Luke than it was with Nottingham. With Nottingham, I put up with it. I hated it, really, but I went into a different kind of reality, one where I really wasn’t there with Nottingham at all. I usually tried to imagine that I was with Luke.