by Lila Felix
He shoves me into his Jeep and we end up at his apartment that he shares with Leon.
“I have to go home.”
“And what if Roman shows up? What if they show up together?”
That’s it. My stomach has had enough. After he opens the door, I plow my way to the bathroom and trip over boxers and shorts. Neil and Leon are pigs. I hear a belt buckle jangle as I get tangled in it before slamming my head as far into the bowl as I can get.
I don’t stop until my face is covered in broken blood vessels and all the hydration has left my body.
My face is on fire. Words and pictures flutter through my conscience without warning.
This can’t be happening.
She can’t marry him.
Exhausted and ready to give up on trying to ignore them, I sit next to the bathtub, more like slouch, and press my face against the cool tub.
“Hey, here’s some water and ice. Your face looks like hell.”
I take the water and the ice and chuck them onto the floor. Ice and water won’t do me any good now. It’s all over. I might as well succumb to death by vomiting.
“Drink the damned water. She didn’t look too happy about the whole thing either.”
After a few minutes, I regain my senses and look at Neil. “She doesn’t love him like that. We don’t know what her answer is.”
I am looking for confirmation more than affirming my point.
“No. She doesn’t. Hell, I’ve been in the room when she told him that they’re only friends. He just keeps pushing.”
I slam the back of my head against the wall behind me, trying to knock the pain out.
“I don’t know what to do. I’m lost without her. I tried. Shit. I tried to be whole without her, but I always felt half full. What the hell am I going to do now?”
Neil sat down with his back to the wall and answered a ding from his phone.
A smile crept up on his face and I want to kick his teeth out for smiling when I’m two steps away from bashing my head in with the toilet cover.
“You’re going to go after her with everything you’ve got.”
This time I do kick him in the thigh.
“Did you not see what I did? They’re probably celebrating their engagement. Ugh, I’m gonna puke again.”
“No they’re not. And I’m going to help you get her back. Look.”
He holds up his phone for me to see, but most of the words are blurry. I’ve probably broken some blood vessels in my eyeballs.
I blink once and everything is clear.
The sickness leaves my body.
The hand of hope offers to help.
I grab the phone from his hands and bring it closer to my face, just to make sure I’m reading Neil’s text correctly.
FUCK ME. SHE SAID NO.
Aysa
The first thing to go is the heels.
Every eye on the place is on me—even Ezra’s—especially Ezra’s. He became my target the moment he walked through the door. I studied him with passionate intent.
Truth be told, I’d spotted the bright red EXIT sign first. The damned thing called to me after Roman asked me to dance.
There is just something about the way he touched me that didn’t sit right.
It doesn’t feel natural.
His hands roam a little too much south.
His lips touch my neck.
By the time the song is over, I’m crawling with ants running paths under my skin and all I can think about is the hottest shower and the strongest antibacterial soap.
I don’t know when things changed between us.
After Ezra, he was such a blessing to me.
Those days were over, and for the life of me, I don’t know why they had to change.
I’m on the floor of my apartment, and I won’t lie, I’m fantasizing being inside of the cabinet, being closed in by four walls and safe. I’m shaking while I rock back and forth with my eyes closed and my arms forming a makeshift straight jacket around my torso. The dress that I wore for only one person feels like it’s on fire, yet ice cold at the same time.
There’s no tears.
I’m way too worked up for tears.
They will come much later.
That’s the kind of person I am now—I allow myself to cry when it’s all over.
When it’s all over and I’m alone—which is never.
This goes on for hours and hours until a knock on my door makes me so freaked out that I splay out on all fours and have to catch my breath before even contemplating opening the damned thing.
“I’m not here!” I scream and don’t give a good damn how stupid it sounds.
“Baby, let me in. I’m just going to stay here all night. You’re not going to make me suffer anymore, are you?”
Still on the floor, I turn and give the door the look of shock.
That voice belongs to the one and only person I want to see in the world.
The voice that just pissed me off.
How dare he.
Make him suffer.
I can guarantee that I was the one suffering in the equation of him and me.
The anger welled up and gave me enough steam to march to the door and wretch it open with more strength than I knew possible.
“What the hell do you mean make you suffer? You have pissed me off for the last time, Ezra!”
The bastard just stands there and smiles.
“Got you to open the door.”
I reach to slam it, hoping it will knock his teeth down his throat, but wishing he would barrel his way through it at the same time.
“I’m here to help you.”
I squint and bunch my lips up in rebellion. There are little red spots all over his face and his eyes look like he’s on drugs. The wind blows outside. It waves his shirt at the bottom hem, the only part that isn’t sticking to his muscles like glue. He’s buffed out, there are places on his body that weren’t as defined before.
I avoid his eyes. I know they were made to break me.
I know they were made to look deep into mine.
The breeze carries his unique scent around me and I can’t move. It’s one thing to look at him, but quite another to have the other senses heightened as well.
It’s too much and not enough at the same time.
“Help me? I don’t need help.”
The only thing holding me up at this point is the door.
“Look at me, Ace. Look at me.”
Chins are the devil. Because as soon as my eyes reach his chin, his perfect clefted chin, mine begins to wobble with emotion.
He doesn’t make me wait any longer. Before I can wrap my head around what’s happening, I’m surrounded by his smell, by the feel of his scruffy chin on my neck, by his fingers digging into my hips. I hear the door shut.
My eyes close in reverence to this moment.
Everything in me untangles as he whispers ‘please’ in my ear.
I don’t even care what he’s begging for—he can have it all.
“I said no—to Roman—I said no.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know that I said no.”
“I need you to know that I would’ve died if you’d said yes.”
I reel back from his embrace as he sits us both down on my couch. “You know me better than that.”
His gray eyes haven’t changed.
Those eyes are my true north, which explains why I’ve been spiraling without them.
We spend minutes learning the sight of each other again.
“You want to hide, baby?”
The blood rushes from my face. He was asking me so much more than just about hiding.
“I can’t. The cabinet is gone.”
“You don’t need a cabinet to hide. You know that. I’m yours for the hiding. Hide with me.”
He is saying more in that one spiel that Roman had the entire five minute speech.
With index cards.
Roman had proposed to be with index car
ds in his hands.
I nod. I’ve been exposed for far too long without him.
“Here or the bedroom?”
“Here. We can watch movies or whatever.”
He chuckles and it rumbles against me. I’ve missed the rumble.
“It’s three in the morning, love. This time, I just need to hide with you. My life has been shit lately. I need to hide just as much as you.”
I lift myself from the couch and take his hand in mine. We stand there for a few seconds, reunited, yet so far from where we need to be. Where I want us to be.
Ezra
I’m not an idiot. I’m a damned fool.
I barge into her life just like I had before. But this time instead of knocking her over in a church, she is my church.
I worship her in thought.
I cower before the power she had over my life.
My mind visits her form in regular intervals.
The guilt she’s exhumed in me. If only I’d met her before Mara.
If only I’d taken the steps to become a better person before trying to be who she needed.
Aysa stirs next to me. Her face is smooshed against my bicep, the angle makes her mouth twist into an adorable shape.
In the case she wakes and comes to her senses, I thread my fingers through her hair, gasping at the touch of the silken strands and how they haven’t changed. The peach tone of her skin with a cluster of freckles dotting her forehead and the crescents just below her eyes are more pronounced.
We hadn’t spoken a word after going to bed.
We didn’t need to.
At least, not yet.
I am drowning in complete satisfaction.
“Hey.” She groans into my side.
“Good morning.” I try to cover the smile brought on by telling her good morning once again.
“I feel like you’re tensing up to make a break for it.”
“I’m here as long as you want me to be.”
“Well, I’m not kicking you out.”
I snort. “That’s a change.”
She looks up at me. The outward marks of her inward turmoil have made raccoon marks around her eyes. Nothing could detract from her beauty, but it killed me to see her pain written on her face so clearly.
“I’m still in my dress, aren’t I?”
I reach for the blanket to tear it back, hoping in desperation that she still is when she grabs my hand and screams. “Don’t look! I am in my dress. The damned thing is probably ridden all the way up to my chin.”
I shrug. “You asked.”
Her face changes from the serene of waking up to the realization of where she was and what occurred the night before. She swipes two fingers underneath her eyes and groan when they come back covered in black smears.
“Why did you tell me I looked like shit?”
“Why are you cursing? It sounds asinine.”
She jacks up out of the bed and crosses her arms over her chest. “I’ll have you know I curse all the damned time now. See? I say damned.”
I am not impressed and it doesn’t sit well with the beauty teetering on the edge of the bed.
“Okay. You say damned. You’re so bad ass. Is that what you want to hear or do you want to hear the truth?”
It takes her a few seconds to make up her mind. The hair in the front of her face has grown back out again and it’s drawing a curtain along the side of her face. I try to disregard her dress and how it’s bunched around her hips.
I fail.
“Give me a minute, please?”
“You still drink coffee, or do you need a shot of whiskey to go along with that filthy mouth?”
“Coffee, smartass.”
I roll my eyes at her insistence on showing me her new habit.
Closing the door behind me, I make quick work of coffee. I can hear the sounds of the shower. That’s when the fear sets in.
I shouldn’t be here.
What if Roman shows up?
Her dismissal might send me down a spiral.
“It’s too early for you to be so worried.”
Her voice shocks me back into reality. It always has. Her hair is tied up in a twisted towel and all signs of the night before are mostly gone, save for her puffy eyes. Since I’ve been gone she’s invested in a robe that does nothing to curb me from wondering what’s underneath.
“I’m not worried.”
Aysa approaches and with every step toward me, my heart ups its ante. Her hand touches my jaw and it relaxes at once.
“This jaw. This jaw grinding always told me everything I needed to know.”
She brushes against me, reaching for the cream. Her eyes only leave mine for split seconds to get the spoon, stir her coffee, and put it in the sink.
I don’t want to be the one who asks. It can’t be about me this time—at all. I will give her all the time and space she needs to get over me or take me back. I’ll hang by Aysa’s string until she twists it into a noose or a lifeline.
It’s her choice.
It’s always been her choice.
We sit at her table and drink coffee in silence. We don’t shy away from looking at each other, but are satisfied with that simple act.
Neither of us can conjure the words.
“What time is it?”
I check my phone which has several unseen messages. “Eleven.”
“I have a tour at noon.”
“That’s my cue.”
She bows her head and rests it on the rim of her cup. This is the Aysa I know, indecisive and over analytical to a fault. Nothing comes easy.
“Look at me, Ace.”
She does. “We don’t have to say everything now. I have a lifetime of thoughts built up, things I want to say to you, words I need you to hear. But they don’t have to be said today. Nothing has to be said today.”
She still looks so torn.
“You still have my number, right?”
She nods negatively and a single tear calls to me.
Reaching over the table, I wipe it away with my thumb. Day one and my promise to never cause a tear to fall on my account has been broken.
“I deleted it—I was afraid I’d call you.”
Her admission breaks the tension and we both laugh. It’s cleansing to laugh with her.
“Well, I still have yours. I’ll text you my number and…no expectations. If you need me, call. That’s it.”
I get up and find my shoes and my keys before I did what my heart wants me to do.
“And if I just want you?”
I look at her, smiling. “Aysa—if you want me—if you need me—anything for you.”
~~
In the past seven months, I’ve become something of an old man, or maybe I just grew up. Sundays are no longer for gaming and eating popcorn out of the hood of a backwards hoodie. Sundays are spent doing laundry and cleaning my apartment.
And today it includes Roman and me acting as if the other didn’t exist.
He showers while I eat breakfast.
I shower while he slams things and cusses the air.
He’s gone before I can break the ugly silence.
There’s nothing I can do about Roman’s pain and I’m sure the last person in the world he wants to talk to is me.
He should’ve known better.
She said she only wanted to be friends.
I send a quick word of gratitude to the heavens for the one time Aysa Branton decides to be a decision-maker.
After cleaning the apartment and doing my laundry, I make my way to the gym. I go through the motions.
If I thought seeing Aysa again, touching her, would quench even the smallest part of my thirst for her, I was dead wrong.
It only makes me salivate more.
“We knew you’d be here.”
Leon and Neil are the only guys on Earth who would come into a gym eating huge cups of ice cream. They are both nerd skinny—thin with just enough muscle to operate a game controller.
“I’m almost done.
What’s up?”
“You tell us. Roman is M.I.A. and you’re smiling at yourself in the mirror of the gym.”
“I was not smiling at myself in the mirror. I was smiling and it just happened to be reflected in the mirror—big difference.”
“Whatever you say, man. I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat and you can tell us what’s going on.”
I put down the weight I’m using and laugh. “You two are worse than you were in high school.”
“You’re stalling.”
“How can you be starving? You’re eating more ice cream than I put away in a week.”
Neil chucks his now empty cup in the trash. All eyes in the gym followed the motion.
“Stalling.”
“Fine. Give me twenty minutes to shower and change and I will meet you at Boudreaux’s.”
I take almost an hour to get ready just to piss them off for the mirror comment.
When I get there, Roman is sitting with them. I’ve been set up. From the look on his face, Roman’s been set up as well. They couldn’t even give us twenty-four hours.
“We suggest a beer before this brawl gets underway.”
Roman and I both answer ‘no’ at the same time.
“There will be no brawl. I didn’t do anything.”
I shrug and look over the menu. Roman is wrong if he thinks I am the old Ezra. I had a lot of things to apologize for in my life, but I also knew the difference now between shit I needed to apologize for and shit I had no responsibility over.
This was one of those times.
Yes, I hope that Aysa is still in love with me.
Yes, I hope that she will one day take me back.
But those things are completely separate from her saying no to Roman.
That’s my rationale anyway.
“Again, Ezra is full of bullshit and is the last to find out.”
Okay. I change my mind. I might clock the bastard.
“Says the man who proposes to a girl who cringes when he touches her.”
“At least she touches me.”
Waitresses always know when the best time to deliver food is. Right when I’m about to stab my friend with the cutlery set.
I don’t justify his accusation with an answer. I’m not sure if I want them to know what happened the night before. I’m pretty sure Neil knows since he witness me tearing out of his apartment and then screaming at him for being at his house and not having my car.