by Devin Sawyer
I never heard from Lawson again that night. I’m not surprised because I didn’t exactly end the conversation in a way that invited it, but I still hope for it as I lie in bed staring at my phone. In two days, I’ll be back in Columbia. I’ll either take the bus or see if Mom and Dad want to make the round trip now that I have no return ride. I decide to take the extra two days to further evaluate my relationship with Lawson, because it just shouldn’t be this hard, this early in our relationship.
~
When I get back to my dorm, the Sunday before classes start, the room is vacant. Mom and Dad just dropped me off, not wanting to let me take the bus after my breakdown the other night. Cher must not have gotten back yet and I sure could use her incessant talking to distract me from the hurt I’m feeling.
Lawson is a good person. I know that, but he’s a horrible boyfriend unless he has no other responsibilities and can give me his time. I honestly wonder how long that will even last once he starts his internship this semester, once he graduates and gets a job, or maybe even when he just gets tired of me. Everyone has made it abundantly clear that this is Lawson’s first legitimate relationship and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but currently doubt is winning out with the way our break has gone.
I flip on the TV and try to drown out my feelings with a comedy and begin to unpack my books for this semester. I do this for the rest of the afternoon until Cher arrives back and like a heartbroken teenager, I spill everything to her. I cry again, because it feels dramatic that just before the break, we were meeting parents and practically living in his house together and now we feel so distant. Cher calls in pizza for dinner and has it delivered to the dorm, declaring the evening a much-needed girl’s night. We watch Grey’s Anatomy re-runs and she picks apart the scenes that are medically inaccurate until I have to shush her.
We’re deep into a surgery scene when the door handle of our dorm jiggles and then opens. Both of us are a little startled, knowing that the only people that should be coming in this room are already in it. But when we see Lawson’s head poke in, we both relax.
“Unless you are here to be a gentleman and apologize for ditching your girlfriend, you should escort yourself out and hand over whatever key you keep using to get in here, because we are having a girl’s night,” Cher declares with crossed arms.
“I earned this key fair and square and your RA has the A+ to prove it, and I may be here to do some groveling.”
“Well go ahead,” she says, gesturing like the floor is his.
“Scram,” he tells her and pulls out his wallet before finding a twenty-dollar bill and handing it over to Cher. “Can you be gone for the next couple hours? Go for ice cream, a movie, I don’t care but just don’t be back for the next… three hours.”
Cher happily snatches the twenty from his hands, grabbing her purse and skipping out of the room.
“Traitor,” I mumble under my breath at her as she leaves.
Once the door is shut Lawson walks closer to me on the small couch and when he sits, he simultaneously pulls me into him, just holding me. I can hear his deep breaths, breathing me in, his chin resting on my shoulder. He holds tight, not saying anything, and pulls us into a lying position. I want to fight him, but I don’t. I don’t say anything for a while either, because even though I have so much to fight with him about, for a moment I feel relief and I decide to ignore those things.
“Are you done being mad at me?”
“No,” I admit in honesty. “But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
We stay like that for the next few hours, just holding each other. I’ve not fooled myself into thinking that this won’t happen again, but there’s always next time to fight it out. Right now I just miss him and want to move on. He places his head on my shoulder and I curl into him.
CHAPTER 22 – PRESENT
When Reece returned, we celebrated the official contract signing for his restaurant. His excitement overwhelmed our afternoon and evening and I’m grateful his trip went so well as his mood distracted me from the current situation I was in. When I was with Reece, I didn’t want to think about any of my problems. With him, they seemed to melt away. I listened intently to his stories of Paul, and Lorenzo, their evenings out on his trip, their plans for the restaurant, and the financials behind the contract, all of it. I had the next two days off and he called into his job, taking a few extra days while we just enjoyed each other. And I did enjoy him. I wanted to challenge myself. Could I leave this behind? There was no fucking way. Reece had given me life, given me a life, and without a doubt, he knew me better than I knew myself. He wasn’t selfish, but my partner in every sense of the word.
It was impossible not to compare the two. Reece made me feel beautiful because when I was with him. I was happy and always smiling. Lawson made me feel beautiful because he couldn’t stand life without me and that thought felt romantic. Our pull was evident. We had always been drawn to each other, but it had also been dangerous. I lose myself in him. I lose who I am to him. Would it be the same? I couldn’t be sure.
Days went by and I returned to normal life with Reece. Well, mostly normal. Lawson would text periodically. I had changed his name in my phone for now just to be cautious.
One night as I left the hospital he even called and talked to me on my drive home. I sat outside our apartment building an extra fifteen minutes talking to him. I had wanted to get off the phone and go in, but he could sense me trying to pull away, trying to return to my life and instead he brought up old memories and I felt for him. It was an unfair advantage because I was here, across the country and I had a perfect man living in my apartment, and yet Lawson was vying for my attention, trying to win me over and re-spark what once was there, what might still be there. I humored him.
He did this on a few other occasions, always starting with our memories and using them to reel me in until I would just sit there and talk with him about my day, my job. I knew he was trying to know me now, to understand me now the way he got a small glimpse of the first night we’d spent time together at my apartment.
I stay late from work one evening to book my flights to the conference in Florida and make arrangements for my stay. I hole myself up in the employee lounge with my laptop, intending to go home as soon as I’ve submitted all of my costs for the trip to HR for reimbursement. My cell buzzes on the desk beside me.
Driving home? A text from Lawson reads.
Not yet. Trying to sort out an upcoming trip.
My phone rings a moment later, and I know who it is without even looking at the caller ID.
“Senator, don’t you have any respect for the working class?”
“Well, I’m not a senator just yet,” he says it as if it’s just a matter of time before he one day has that title.
I’m sure it is. If he doesn’t win this election, he will win the next. It’s what he was raised to do and the whole state of South Carolina knows that.
“But I kind of like the way it sounds when you call me that.” His voice is deep, and it’s the first time since he’s left that he’s hinted at any sexual tone. We’ve been getting to know one another again, and that all seemed fair, but it’s our chemistry that makes everything feel wrong, and yet I notice when he says that, I dampen between my legs, wanting him to continue. He must notice my hesitancy, “So, where are you going?”
“Just Florida, for a work thing next month.”
“Will you see your parents while you’re out that way?” he asks, seemingly interested.
“I plan to after the conference, but Reece will have to stay here and manage all the things going on with his restaurant. He’s been really busy since Paul and Lorenzo got out here.”
The line goes quiet and I finish typing in the PDF document I have to submit for my time off.
“When exactly will you be there?”
“The end of the month. The twenty-third through the twenty-eighth.”
“Can I see you?” He almost whispers it and I wond
er if I could get away with pretending I didn’t hear him.
“I’m not sure that’s smart, Lawson.”
“Have you made up your mind? Regarding what we talked about when I was there?” he asks.
“No. I just don’t think we should entertain any ideas that could exacerbate the situation.”
“The situation is that I want to see you and you want to see me, it’s just wrong.”
“Yeah, Lawson. It is wrong, and we’re adults. We know the difference between right and wrong.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do we have to always be wrong? Why can’t we be right?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, feeling bad for us, allowing myself to think about if it had ever been different and if I had ended up with him. “We aren’t wrong, Lawson. We just aren’t right either. That’s just life. Whatever is still there, lingering, we need to fight it.”
“Give me five days. Five days in Florida and then I’ll fight it. I swear.”
I don’t know why I consider it. I shouldn’t. I should have already shut down the idea, but Lawson has rarely shown me his vulnerability and every time he did in the past, I broke for him. It’s why I left in the middle of the night.
“I want my final break up with you, Farah.”
I finally speak. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
A disappointed and broken sigh comes across the line.
“But I’ll send you my itinerary and if you show… I’ll give you a few days and then it’s over for good. We both can have that closure.” I tell myself that’s what we need, a week where both of us face our past and overcome it. “After that, I won’t make family events if you will be there and you will go back to being Reece’s brother… a good one. But it’s really done after that, Lawson. What we are doing is wrong and Reece doesn’t deserve that. I choose him, just know that.”
I don’t know why I did that. Self-hatred washes over me. I’ve never cheated on a boyfriend before and the way I acted with Lawson when he was here is disgusting, but I can’t deny that I still feel things for him that I shouldn’t and running away only bought me time all those years ago.
“Farah,” Lawson says. “I know this isn’t ideal, but I think if you just continued to ignore it… we would never have any resolution. I just want a chance to get to know you again.”
“No sex. Like seriously there needs to be a five-foot minimum space requirement between us,” I barter. I want to set the boundaries early. “We can’t touch each other like we did, Lawson. The guilt of that is killing me.”
“We didn’t have sex, Farah.”
“No, but what we are doing is worse. We are exploring it.”
“Just give it a chance. I just want one week.” I’m ready to hang up the phone and go, wanting to escape the commitment I just made.
“Don’t tell anyone, Lawson.”
“Who would I tell, Newbie?”
“Don’t tell Finn,” I clarify.
“You always cared what he thought of you.”
“I still do. Finn is one of my best friends and I don’t want him to know and I certainly don’t want him caught up in our lie.”
“Yeah. I won’t tell anyone. I don’t plan on betraying your trust when I haven’t even gotten the chance to earn it back. Maybe I’ve changed, Farah. Maybe I’m different too.”
I think about that and can’t deny I’ve thought the same thing. He joined the reserves, he runs a successful company and could be the next senator. Maybe his days of schmoozing and lying are soon to end.
I end the phone call and close out of the screen I still have open at work. I’ll send Lawson the itinerary later because just the discussion of it has me mentally exhausted. I drive home and notice all I want is to curl up in bed and be held and I hope that Reece is not working late on the restaurant because I need him tonight. I need to reassure that what we have is everything I need.
When I arrive, I do find Reece sitting at our dining table, talking away on the phone with his brows furrowed and running a hand through his short hair. He looks distressed and while my heart hurts for his frustration, he looks strikingly beautiful. I want him to take me to our room and remind me of all the ways he made me fall in love with him. Because he did make me. I joke with him sometimes about how he duped me into dating him. I think back to how hard I made it for him. I hadn’t wanted this relationship. I hadn’t wanted any relationship at the time, but Reece was persistent in his fight for me. It reminds me of how Lawson is now, and I ask myself again how it’s possible that the only two men I’ve ever fallen in love with are family. The two men made me feel so different from each other and it’s hard for me to determine which love is right, better, or bigger. How do you know which love to pick when your heart wants two.
Reece hangs up with whoever he was on the phone with and rises from the table and I snap out of my daze. He comes over to hold me, always touching me. He wraps his arms around my torso, and I sling mine around his neck, sinking into him without saying a word. He knew I would need this. I don’t know how but he always knows.
“Come shower with me,” he says, and I don’t even have to respond. I just follow.
~
After sending my itinerary to Lawson, I asked him not to reach out to me until closer to the trip. I needed time alone with Reece and to give that relationship just as much of a chance that I was going to give him. I needed to not be thinking of the other when I was with them, it was only fair, and I let him know I would give him that same opportunity. I was in over my head when I made that statement. It’s impossible not to think about the other, although it is much easier when I’m not fielding incoming texts and calls on a weekly basis.
My time went as back to normal as it could. Reece works a little more than he used to prior to signing the contract, but I also feel that he confides in me more than ever with the beginning of a new business. Our lives here are day to day, sometimes we get lost in the mundane responsibilities we have, but we never lose sight of each other. When he is home, he touches me constantly, always looking to hold my hand, caress my thigh while cuddling on the couch or in bed, or just enjoying each other’s bodies. He has always seen me as a way to relieve stress and our lives may not be incredibly exciting, but they are comforting.
While I pack my bag for the conference, I throw in too many outfits meant to flatter and even that guilt gnaws at me. My flight leaves this evening and Reece has made plans to spend more quality time with Lorenzo while I’m out of town. The two are so exhausted from planning and putting out fires that arise that they haven’t gotten to just be the friends they once were. I curse myself when I pack a lacy bra and panty set. Five feet. That’s the rule I made with him and yet I’m packing things he should never even see me in.
“Are you ready? Need to leave here in the next half hour,” Reece states as he wraps his arms around my waist from behind and I stuff the panties I just grabbed deeper into the bag. “I want you to learn everything you can in the next week so that when you come back, that nurse manager position is in the bag.” I spin around and wrap my own arms around him.
“I love when you talk career-goals to me,” I joke in a seductive voice
“Oh yeah? I’ve got a few more things to tell you before you leave then, but I need you naked before I can go on.”
“You have twenty minutes,” I tell him.
“All I need.”
~
I cry on the plane. I know exactly what I’m getting myself into and I haven’t put the brakes on the plan. I do promise myself that I will give Lawson the opportunity to know who I am now, and I intend to do the same with him as long as it doesn’t interfere with my conference training. I want to know that at the end of this, I’ll be clear on my wants and desires and I’m allowing myself to explore all the options I didn’t think were readily available to me.
I have a text from Lawson when I land, letting me know he’s already checked in at the hotel but has a business me
eting to run to, and wants to meet for dinner.
I respond with a simple K.
I have a few hours before then to get unpacked, check my work emails, and get prepared for the conference starting tomorrow. I type out a text to Reece letting him know I landed.
When I arrive at the hotel, I provide the woman at the front desk my name and let her know I’m here to check-in.
“Oh. It looks like your room received an upgrade. Let me just make your card for the penthouse suite.”
“I’m sorry. That must be a mistake. I just booked a regular room.”
“No ma’am. Mr. Calhoun upgraded your suite earlier today,” she says sweetly while handing me the card. She reviews the amenities at the hotel, but I barely pay attention. “I hope you enjoy your stay.”
I walk in a zombie-like mode to the elevators and press the button for the top floor. It’s so like Lawson to upgrade my hotel room without even running it by me, but I really find the penthouse to be overboard. When I let myself in, I’m in awe at the rich and elegant feel. The room is large and open, unlike most hotel rooms. There are wood furnishings and white plush sofas. I see a smaller kitchen area with well-designed cabinets and countertops to coordinate with the rest of the space. This was definitely overboard. I look over to the bedroom to the right and move to enter it but stop when I see luggage partially unpacked lying on the bed. For half a second I consider that I was given the wrong key and I’m in an already reserved room, but I know that luggage. It was in my own apartment just a few weeks ago and anger consumes me. We didn’t discuss this. He most definitely would know what my answer to staying together would be after what happened last time. This trip is not a getaway to play house, it’s an opportunity to understand why there is still chemistry between us and how to handle it.