Impossible Things

by Alexandra McBrayer

She looked up to see that he was unbuttoning his pants, not even bothering with his jacket or shirt and she crawled backwards on the bed. But once again he was too quick and he grabbed her ankle and pulled her back towards him. “Stop it Lucas! I’m not having sex with you.”

  He didn’t say anything as he unzipped his pants and he was already hard and heavy. Desire began to run through her veins and that bothered her. No matter how mad she was, no matter how hurt, the minute she saw him, she was ready for him. He didn’t even have to unzip his pants, the minutes their eyes met across a room she was ready for him.

  She didn’t want to give in to him; she didn’t want him to win, but she wanted him.

  He came over to her, bent his head and she felt his tongue at her neck as he kissed and nibbled his way down and across her collarbone. She fought with everything she had in her not to moan and for awhile she succeeded. When his mouth found her nipple through her thin cotton pajama top she arched her back off the bed to push it more firmly in his mouth.

  He wasn’t gentle and she was okay with that. She gave as good as she got and when it was over and she was drifting back down to reality when she opened her eyes and saw that he was standing next to the bed, looking down at her, as he buttoned his pants. The look he gave her should have warned her but it didn’t. She smiled at him, the smile of a well-pleasured woman and he said, “That was fucking. What we did before was make love.”

  And with that he turned, opened her bedroom door and slammed it behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She woke up the next morning unsure of what she was going to do. She had less than a thousand dollars in her savings account and three hundred pounds in cash and she wasn’t even sure if it would be enough to get her home.

  Home. What was even there for her anymore? She didn’t have an apartment, a job or a boyfriend. To go home would mean staying with her parents while she tried to piece her life back together, and as much as she loved them, she didn’t love the idea of living with them and being under the judgmental eye of her dad.

  Sighing, she got up, took a shower, and because she still didn’t have her things, she had to put on another set of clothes that Rodrigo had bought for her.

  She had to go back to her apartment to get her clothes. It would mean facing Sam again but it didn’t matter. She needed her stuff. She grabbed her purse and made her way down the stairs. It was still early, only after seven, and she hoped that everyone else would still be asleep. She wasn’t that lucky.

  Rodrigo was standing by the door putting his coat on. He saw her before she could turn and run and he stopped and waited for her. “Good morning,” he said and held her coat out and helped her put it on.

  “Good morning.”

  He grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him. “I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. But I honestly had no idea about Lucas. I wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

  Curious at that she looked up at him, “Why if he’s your best friend? Am I not good enough for him?”

  He looked stunned but then he began laughing as he shook his head. “No. You’re far too good for him.”

  She didn’t want to know what that meant and yet she did, so she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

  Rodrigo stepped back, dropped his arm and sighed. “Nothing’s wrong with him. But he’s spent thirty-four years going from woman to woman and I want more for you than that.”

  Unable to help herself she said, “You said you wanted me to find passion.”

  He nodded. “Yes and I meant it. But I want you to find love also.”

  “And you don’t think that someone like him can love someone like me?”

  He shook his head and her heart dropped. “It’s not you. This has nothing to do with you. I love Lucas like a brother but I’m not sure that he can love. He’s spent most of his life alone and I don’t think he would know how to be with someone.”

  Lucy looked up at him, curious more than ever about this young grandfather she had suddenly found herself with, and wanting to know more about him. “You’re the same age?”

  He nodded.

  So that meant that at thirty four-he was forty years younger than her grandmother. It seemed like a huge difference to her, someone who hadn’t even been alive for forty years, and yet it seemed to work for them.

  “What happened to him?”

  Rodrigo sighed and put his hands in his pockets. It was such an unexpected gesture for him, he who always looked impeccable, and had perfect clothes and hair, that she almost smiled.

  “As you said before-life happened. He was a lonely boy who grew into a lonely man.”

  “So you don’t want us together?”

  He looked down at her and it was his turn to be curious. “Are you together?”

  She shook her head. “No. I was just asking.”

  He didn’t respond at first, he watched her and suddenly uncomfortable she looked away. She didn’t know why she had asked such a question.

  When he spoke, his voice was quiet as he said, “If I felt that he loved you, really loved you the way that you deserve, with his entire heart and body then I would be the first to congratulate you. He is a good man. A lonely man, but he has never given me reason to hope that he’d settle down, and you are precious to your grandmother and you have become precious to me. We are family and I protect my family.”

  They parted then, Rodrigo going to a meeting and Lucy going to the apartment that she had shared with Sam. She had expected that he would be at work but he wasn’t. When she walked in he was sitting on the couch, in the same shirt that he had been wearing the day before, with stubble on his face and a bowl of cereal on the coffee table in front of him.

  He stood up when she came in and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  She looked around; avoiding his eyes, and saw that the apartment was a disaster. Clothes, her clothes, were scattered everywhere, on the floor, on chairs and in a trail leading from the bedroom. She leaned over and picked up a dress, one of the only ones that she’d brought to London with her and saw that it was ripped.

  She held it up to Sam and he had the decency to blush. “I’m sorry ba-,” wisely, he didn’t finish what he was going to say.

  He coughed and stepped towards her and tried again. “I’m sorry Lucy. I was mad and I took it out on your things. I didn’t think you’d be coming back for them.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was too angry to speak as she went through the apartment gathering up her clothes and putting them into trash bags that she took from the kitchen.

  She went into the bedroom and saw that not a single item of hers was still hanging in the closet or folded in the dresser. Even her bras and panties were scattered across the floor and many of them had marks on them from the bottom of his shoes.

  She picked everything up, no matter how torn up it was, and put it in a bag. When she turned around he was sitting on the bed holding her nightgown in his hands. As she watched he lifted it to his nose and smelled it. “It still smells like you,” he said.

  She took it from him and stared down at him. His blond hair was messy and she saw that he needed a haircut. He must not have been awake for long because there were still pillow impressions on the left side of his face. All of the things that had once made her feel tender towards him now left her feeling sad and empty.

  “I’ll give you money so that you can buy new things,” he said and she almost told him no but realized that she couldn’t. She didn’t have the money to replace them and he was the one who had destroyed them.

  She moved to the foot of the bed and sat down on the wooden chest that held their blankets. She still wasn’t sure how they had come to this. He was the man that she had loved for nine years, the one she had shared a life, a home, and her body with. Now he seemed like a stranger.

  “Why didn’t you ever say?”

  Not understanding the question she shook her head. “What?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t enjoy
sex with me?”

  That was it? That was all that he got from everything that had happened between them? That was what was bothering him? She felt like screaming at him but she was too tired, so she only said, “When we got together I was too young. I didn’t know any better. I thought it would get better.”

  He looked at her. “But it didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “But you were able to…to…you know, by yourself?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Sam how is it that you can’t even say the word orgasm?”

  His face actually turned red. “I wasn’t raised like that Lucy.”

  She was incredulous. “And I was? My parents never talked to me about sex Sam. Never. But I’m a grown woman. You’re a grown man. We can talk about sex. We have to! Sex is a huge part of any marriage and if we can’t even talk about it then what are we doing getting married?”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “If you loved me you’d want to please me the way that I wanted to please you. You never wanted to try anything new. You spent so little time on foreplay that it was ridiculous and you would never try oral sex. I did it for you-“

  He interrupted her. “I didn’t ask you to!”

  “No you didn’t but that’s what couples do. It’s what people who love each other do.”

  “No one ever showed me how!” he cried and she reached out and curled her fingers. She wanted to wrap them around his throat.

  “No one showed me,” she said, “But I tried because I wanted to give you pleasure. I wanted us to enjoy each other’s bodies. I wanted to be able to enjoy my own body.”

  He shook his head. “Lucy I was never going to be like you. You’re beautiful, confident, and natural. You’re comfortable with that kind of stuff I’m not.”

  “I’m not confident, don’t you see that? Because you made me think that there was something wrong with me, with my body and with my desires. I know it may not seem like it now Sam but I did try.”

  He nodded. “I know. You tried for the both of us. I was always just too worried about failing you.”

  Their eyes met and she saw all of the mistakes that they had made. Instead of talking about what was wrong in their relationship they had just avoided it, hoping it would get better, but instead each of them felt worse and worse about themselves.

  “Do you remember that time you suggested we rent a dirty movie?” he asked and she nodded.

  He laughed. “I had never been so turned on in my life. I wanted to rip your clothes off and do all of those things to you but when I turned to look at you, you were so beautiful, so perfect looking, that I couldn’t. I was afraid.

  She shook her head. What she had hoped would spice up their sex life had instead made it worse. It had been an unsatisfying tumble in the dark.

  Taking a deep breath she asked him, “Did you ever sleep with anyone else?”

  He looked down at his hands in his lap. “You mean while we were together?”

  She nodded, “Yes.”

  He turned and looked at her. “Twice. Once with that girl Megan in my department and once with a woman I met when I went out with my friends.”

  He searched her face, looking for anger or hurt but she didn’t feel either emotion. She felt sorry for him and for herself. They had put each other through so much pain, all in the name of love, which obviously neither one of them understood.

  “Did you?” he asked, and she nodded.

  His voice was thick, “When?”

  She looked away and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to hurt him, but he had been honest with her, she owed him the same. “Here in London.”

  His voice was sharp with pain as he asked, “Rodrigo?”

  “What? No!” she said in surprise. “No. Why would you ever think that? He’s my grandfather!”

  He shook his head and laughed at that. “Come on Lucy he’s not that much older than us and he’s gorgeous. Even I can see that. You have to wonder what a guy like that’s doing with your grandmother.”

  That hurt her far more than his admission of adultery had and she told him so. “Don’t talk that way about him or about my grandmother. They’re my family and they love each other. I understand that you can’t see that, you can’t understand it, but it’s true. Love doesn’t have an age limit Sam. Real love is about seeing someone for who they are, not how they look.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m just not used to that. I’m a small town boy from the Midwest. We don’t see things like that. We don’t see things like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled and it was the boyish smile that had won her over in the beginning. “I saw you walking across campus one day and I couldn’t believe that someone who looked like you even existed. When you talked to me, when you agreed to go out with me, I couldn’t believe it. None of my friends could believe it. They wanted to know if I’d drugged you.”

  That was all news to her and she looked at him in surprise. He was a good-looking man, no, not in the league of Rodrigo or Lucas but he was good-looking in an all-American way. He looked like the kind of man who would have been the quarterback on his high school football team, in fact he had been. She had been the one who felt like the ugly duckling in their relationship.

  “They were so jealous of me. Hell even my dad said something the first time he met you. He told me not to let you get away and my mom said we’d make beautiful babies.”

  She felt a little sick at that. They were all judging her on how she looked, how they perceived her, and she had just been trying to fit in, to be accepted and loved by them, and while they had been admiring her, she had felt ugly and lost.

  “So you stayed with me because people thought I was pretty.”

  He nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, but yeah. You’re so sexy and you don’t even see it. I guess I was just waiting for the day when a better looking guy would come along. I was waiting for you to see that you could do better.”

  He had finally managed to hurt her. She felt tears in her eyes as she said, “You never tried to get to know me Sam. You never wanted to know who I was inside. All you cared about was how I looked.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. I knew you, I know you now. I know who you are Lucy. We shared a life and we shared a bed. I saw exactly who you are.”

  She tried to stop the tears but she couldn’t. She looked down and watched as her tears fell on her hands which were folded in her lap.

  “Don’t cry babe. Please. I love you so much.”

  She looked up at him, and tears were still pouring down her face as she said, “You don’t love me because you don’t know me. You’ve never once asked me about my hopes and dreams. You never asked me what I wanted in life, you made a plan and we lived your life, your dreams, never mine. You used me for your own ends.”

  He snorted. “I think we both used each other.”

  Shocked, she jerked her head up. “What? How did I ever use you?”

  He was smiling and it was a bitter smile as he said, “You used me to bring you to London.”

  It was her turn to snort. She wiped her face off and stood up. She finished gathering her things and then went to the bathroom for her toiletries. She put them in a separate trash bag and went out to find that he was still sitting on the bed.

  She gathered her bags up and went to the door. Before she left the room she said, “Sam I would have been in London a long time ago had it not been for you. I gave up my dreams for you. London was the least you owed me.”

  And it was true. She had given up everything for him, most of all her self-confidence and her dreams and London seemed like small compensation for it.

  She picked up her coat and purse and trying to manage all the garbage bags she opened the front door only to find her mom standing in front of it with her hand raised to knock.

  “Please, please don’t go back to him,” her mom said. “Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

  Lucy sh
ook her head at her mom. “Don’t worry I’m not. Can you help me with these bags?”

  Rosaline nodded and grabbed some of the bags. Lucy closed the door behind her, and followed her mom out to the street and the waiting car.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The driver loaded her things into the trunk and she and Rosaline got in the car. “Would you go out to lunch with me?” her mom asked and Lucy nodded.

  They were silent on the ride to the restaurant and she was okay with that. She needed time to think, time to process her conversation with Sam. They went to a small bistro by Hyde Park. From their table they had a great view of the park. Because of the cold there weren’t many people in it but Lucy enjoyed looking at it.