by Devin Sawyer
“I’ve missed that,” he breathes out in a whisper.
His voice rattles me, the after orgasmic reality wrecks me and with clarity I lacked just moments ago I realize what just happened. What I allowed to happen. I lift myself from the couch and with tears already surfacing run back to my room, the bedroom I share with a man I just cheated on. I slam the door behind me and find myself cowering on the floor of my closet.
I heave in air, desperate but I’m spiraling, panicking. There’s a ringing in my head that seems to block out any and all present reaction. I lose myself in my guilt, my betrayal. I ask myself over and over, how I let it happen, how after pushing him away, I let him back in. I let my guard down. Last night I thought we could be friends, and I opened up to him, hoping we could mend our broken past and instead I let him finger fuck me on my couch because I was too fucking horned up.
I’m furious. I’m furious at Lawson for not knowing a single goddamn boundary, I’m furious with Reece for being gone and thinking it was okay for me to be alone with my ex-boyfriend in this fucking apartment.
Because that’s what this is, he may also be Reece’s brother, but first and foremost he is my ex and that’s how we should have approached it. I feel a twinge of remorse for putting any blame on Reece, but I can’t deny it’s how I feel in this moment. I want to place blame and his naivety is part of that. I want to be mad at myself, but I don’t quite understand how I ended up in that position and I don’t know where to start with the self-hatred I feel. I actually feel like my life is falling apart. I picture a thousand ways how I will tell Reece, how it will destroy his family, and what I will do if Reece leaves me. His stability has literally altered my life, and it feels for once like it saved me. I wasn’t planning my next move, my next relocation, my next run, and now I feel like I have to. I feel like running from this and just disappearing but for the first time, I’m afraid to leave someone behind. The selfish part of me wants him more than it wants to escape the problem and start over.
I hear the bedroom door creak open.
“Leave me alone,” I mutter through tears. Instead, I find him standing in the closet doorway, looking almost as broken as I feel. “Get out,” I try again.
He kneels down, sitting next to me, and pulls me into his chest, stroking my hair. I let him because I can tell by the look in his eyes, he doesn’t know the answers to the problem we just caused either.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair before kissing the top of my head. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
The guilt hits both of us, one minute we’re letting our obvious chemistry take over, the next we are consoling each other’s grief, because today we lost something. We lost our integrity, our loyalty, and we betrayed someone we both consider family.
When I can’t cry anymore, Lawson continues to rock me in the closet.
“What do we do?” I finally mumble.
“I’ll do whatever you want to do,” he tells me. “If you want to tell him, we can tell him, but I only insist that we do it together. If you want to go back to him and pretend it never happened, I could do that… for him… and for you…” I consider the options. “But if you want to come back with me… be with me… I’d want that too.”
I pull myself from Lawson’s chest and his arms around me loosen. I look up at him to see if he’s being serious. Sure, I had noticed the chemistry, the attraction, the familiar pull, but that’s all this was to me. Uncontrolled attraction. I can’t deny that things with Lawson feel unfinished. That’s definitely my fault, for just up and leaving.
“I’ve missed you. Every day for the last five years I have thought about you and I just want to love you the way I thought I was going to back then, forever.”
Forever. That’s what he just said. He thought he was going to love me forever. I didn’t feel that way with him. I felt like I would always be second to something else, his job, his constituents, the law, his family, and the other women. I had loved him, but I had been exhausted by him.
“Lawson, I…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. “I need to just process everything and I’m far too emotional right now. Let’s get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I suddenly wish I didn’t have the day off tomorrow. I wish I could run straight to work and hide from my problems.
He gives me a nod and makes the first move to lift himself off the closet floor. “My flight leaves at noon. We can talk before then. If you want to come clean, I’ll cancel the flight just until we can tell him.”
He exits the room and I crawl over to the bed and climb under the covers.
~
A knock at the door wakes me, and by the time I clear my eyes, I see Lawson shyly poking his head in the door. “I thought you might have run off in the middle of the night.” Ooh. Low blow. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” he corrects himself.
“It’s fine.”
“I have to leave for my flight in an hour, I just wanted to talk.”
I nod my head and gesture for him to come in. I’m still wearing the wrinkled clothes I came home in last night. He sits at the corner of the bed, giving me my space.
“I wish I could say I fully regretted what happened last night,” he tells me. “I mean, I do regret it, but I’m also glad I don’t have to wonder for even one more day if what I had with you was real. After five years, you can start to question it. Begin to wonder if you’re idealizing something. I felt that small twinge of affection back in Charleston, but I was still angry with you and figuring out how I was supposed to act, and I just needed to know if it was real.”
“And what did you figure out?”
“That I feel most alive when I’m with you. I won’t ask you to make a decision today. I don’t want you to make a decision today, just please, please take a minute to think about us. We’re still drawn to each other and I know... I just know we could be good for each other—”
“I left because we weren’t good for each other then, Lawson,” I interrupt.
“We’re older now. We’re better at navigating this shit.”
“You call this navigating?”
“I call it desperation. I call it needing to touch you and be with you and doing anything to feel that way again. I think you feel it too sometimes, you just somehow managed to learn how to turn it off.”
“I have to face him. Reece comes home tonight. What am I supposed to do while you run back to your campaign, across the country might I add.”
“I don’t have the answer for you. I wish I did. I’m just asking you don’t make any decision just yet. Give it a few days, please.” I can see the pleading in his eyes. “I’ll take a few days,” I finally agree. “But only because I’m not sure I have enough time to figure out the right answer before he gets home.”
A small smile lifts to his face. He knows better than to be too excited. There is no winning in this situation. We’ve hurt someone we love. He grabs for my hand across the bed and I let him hold it. He looks at me and I can tell he’s holding back from saying something, and I’m too damn scared to ask him what it is. He inches closer to me and lightly lifts my chin and leans in for a light kiss. I let him. I want to feel him again and wonder what it’s like, without worry. His mouth prods gently at mine and when he pushes his tongue in, I don’t fight him. I let him pull me closer to him and pour everything we feel into this kiss. I’m breathing heavily despite the softness of the act when he pulls away.
“I have to go. I’ll text you though… or should I call?” he asks, basically questioning the best way to avoid Reece seeing.
“It doesn’t matter. Reece doesn’t go through my phone.”
He nods and I can tell he recognizes that we both feel guilt over his implicit trust.
“I’ll let you know when I land. For what it’s worth, I am really sorry that you have to be left with all of this.”
It’s my turn to nod. “I guess this is what happens when you abandon someone in the middle of the night. It all catche
s up with you sometime.”
He leans down and kisses my temple this time and glides his fingers down my arm.
“Maybe. And maybe I was just always meant to find my way back to you. Maybe this was how,” he whispers before he turns and exits the room, leaving me behind. It’s a romantic thought but also a real shitty idea that all this time the creators of fate would consider using a person as good as Reece as a pawn. Lawson tended to walk into my life exactly when I didn’t need him, and yet, a part of me always wanted to keep him.
CHAPTER 21 – PAST
Being home for the break has been weird. I’ve seen only one of my friends from high school while being back in town, but otherwise this place just feels a bit foreign to me. Christmas is a weird time for my family. Dad has always loved it, but of course it’s not something we celebrated when I was younger and still living in Turkey. Based off my texts with Lawson, it’s a big deal with his family and I don’t hear from him much on the days leading up to the holiday. I give him some space to spend the time with his family he mentioned was traveling in but now that it’s getting closer to New Year’s Eve and I haven’t heard him mention coming down, I decide to broach the topic.
I think I have a New Year’s surprise that you might like, I text with a photo of a small pink Victoria’s Secret bag. I had planned to book us a hotel somewhere close to downtown for the night so we could be within walking distance of the best bars in the area based on my research.
I can’t wait to see you in whatever’s in that bag, he replies, and I feel giddy with his attention. His affection is dangerous, the way it causes me to swoon makes me feel powerless when I expected to come out with the upper hand from this conversation.
Are you packing yet? I can’t wait to see you.
Not yet. I still need to run it by Dad. He’s had me running around helping one of his lawyer friends out here and there throughout the break and of course he chose this week to finalize some paperwork. I’ll check tomorrow and see if I can drive down that day and then we can just head back to campus together if you want.
That sounds shitty, and sometimes I find Lawson’s duties annoying. The only time I hear Lawson not talking about his plans for his future career is when we are at his place alone. If he’s on campus he’s marketing himself, if he’s home with his family, he’s schmoozing with the bigwigs, if he’s in class he’s applying himself and that life has me exhausted just thinking about it, but I’m happy that he’s offering to squeeze me into his schedule.
Lawson confirms everything with me the next day letting me know he will drive down that morning. I’m a little worried he will be too tired from his busy week and the drive, but he promises he will be up for going out. I haven’t done much partying around my hometown because I hadn’t been old enough to get into bars before and being a pre-law student I’ve been pretty obedient with the statutes the country has laid down. Lawson, on the other hand, I think uses knowing the law to his advantage and breaks every rule that has a loophole. I think it’s the one rebellious thing he can to in his politically mandated lifestyle. I book one of the few hotels downtown and lie to my parents that Cher is coming in. I’ve never brought a guy home before and I’m not ready for that step, even though I have told my parents bits and pieces about Lawson.
The night before Lawson is supposed to arrive, I get a text from him.
Change of plans. I have to wrap up some work here in the morning and it should take a few hours but I’m looking at direct flights now.
Ugh, I hate this for him. I’m sure whatever Lawson is assisting with isn’t even imminent or requiring his assistance and I want to tell him to just tell his dad and whoever he’s helping to shove off.
You’ve worked the whole break! They can’t finish the work without you?
They can, he tells me. But I get to put my name on the memorandum if I stay to its completion and it will look really good on my resume. Sorry, babe. I promise I’ll be there. I found a six o’clock flight. If you can pick me up from the airport at seven-thirty, we can head straight out.
I’m annoyed but I don’t want to let Lawson onto that because I feel like a petulant child pouting. I don’t mention that we left my car back at campus for the break and he was supposed to drive us down here to take us both back to campus after New Year’s. I ask Dad to borrow his car and he tells me that’s fine.
Yeah, I can do that. Dad’s going to let me borrow his car.
Great! I’ll purchase it now. I can’t wait to see you. Don’t forget to pack that little surprise you picked up ;)
I giggle at this and am glad that he’s at least making jokes.
~
I start to get dressed for the night out around four, which I know is entirely too early, but I’m antsy and excited and it feels like prom or some shit. I have a glitzy dress I purchased last week lying out, and I put in some extra attention to curling my hair into an updo that took me forty-two bobby pins to figure out and it still just looks like a messy bun tied off the side of my neck. With the airport a full forty-minute drive, I plan to leave around the time that Lawson boards. He text me this morning and he seemed tired but excited. I just hope he isn’t exhausted by the time he arrives, but I decide that even if he is, a night alone in a hotel wouldn’t be the worst New Year’s Eve.
My phone rings on my vanity, and I lean over to see it’s Lawson, who must be at the airport waiting on his flight by now. I’m sure with the amount of work he had to do today he ended up having to rush straight there.
“Hello?” I answer, knowing it’s Lawson, but not having heard his voice since I left him, and I’m suddenly giddy and nervous about the call.
“Hey babe.” Lawson’s voice sounds tired and distant, and I know that I probably didn’t need all the hair and makeup after all. I could go ahead and just change into some pajamas and pick us up some popcorn and drinks for the hotel tonight. “I’m going to miss the flight. I’m still at Dad’s office and the flight leaves in twenty minutes. There’s no way I’m going to make it and I’m fucking sorry.”
That’s not really what I expected to hear. “But you were supposed to leave over an hour ago from there.” I say as if to justify that what he’s telling me must be false. I’m dressed up, I booked a room, and he has a flight paid for and all of it… for nothing.
“I know, but we haven’t finished yet. I’ll probably be done in an hour. We’re getting close but I’m still at the office and the best I can do is maybe FaceTime with you once I get home.”
I might appreciate the gesture if my eyes weren’t welling with tears over my wasted efforts. I know I put too much stock in our evening together but either way, I wasted a lot of energy and fucking money for some goddamn politician to not respect that his son is not a fully functional employee of his.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just call me when you’re done, I guess.” The words sound lame coming out of my mouth. They are defeated and frustrated, and Lawson would have to be a deaf man not to pick up on my tone.
“I couldn’t help this, Farah. I am sorry. I wanted to be there with you, and I do miss you, but I couldn’t do anything about this. Dad even keeps insisting I go out with him and Mom this evening to some stupid fucking function now that I can’t make it, but I don’t want to do that. I just want to go home and talk to you.”
“Yeah. Okay,” I say despondently.
“You’re pissed,” he says, and I can tell he’s frustrated as well.
“I just think the whole thing is ridiculous,” I vent. “There’s no reason you should be working these hours on New Year’s Eve when you gave them both a couple days heads up that you would be gone today. They are abusing your free labor.”
“They aren’t abusing me,” he says, raising his own voice. “This is my resume builder. Not everyone has access to people like this and it’s good for me. They know that. Sometimes these things run late, sometimes they run over. We can’t control that. The work has to be done and I head back in two days to Columbia.”
“Gr
eat,” I say. “I hope it’s one hell of a resume builder.”
I click off the phone as soon as I get my sentence out and I cry to myself, feeling even more idiotic for letting him see how it got the best of me. Lawson doesn’t call back. He’s not the type to chase after me, especially when there’s nothing that could be done to repair the damage. I cry on my bed and when I don’t emerge to leave, a knock ultimately raps on my door and my mom peeks her head in.
“Sweetheart. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you leaving for your party? Your friend is going to be waiting for you,” she asks in her heavy accent when she sees the state I’m in and comes over to sit on my bed. She brushes a hand through my hair, soothing me.
“I wasn’t going to see a friend,” I admit to her. “My boyfriend, Lawson was coming in and he just called to cancel because he’s still working. He chooses work over me every time and I just wish for once he would pick me.”
“Oh honey,” she says with a concerned look on her face. “Men will break your heart. I never want that for you. I hate that you’re hurting but I promise one day you will find someone that will be there for you.”
“I wanted it to be him,” I tell her, and my voice sounds ugly through my tears. I am congested and struggling to breathe.
“I know. Maybe it will be, but you’re right, you deserve to be put first and if you’re this upset, then I’m sure it’s not for a poor reason. My girl doesn’t over exaggerate. You’re one of the most level-headed people I know, Farah.”
She leans down and kisses me on my temple and the comfort she offers me only causes me to sob harder. I hate that shit. I hate that I hurt so badly, and my mom is still the only person that can comfort me. I see my dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom and his face looks destroyed. I can tell he wants to comfort me but isn’t sure what to do, so he just stands there as I cry out all my frustrations.