by Lacey Legend
“Maybe…but when you’ve been burned like I have, you have to harden your heart, in a way. You have to stop yourself from trusting fully ever again. ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ and all that…except that in my case, I was ‘bitten’ no fewer than three different times.”
“Well, what happened, specifically? Will you tell me?”
“Although there’s really not much to tell. The first woman broke up with me when I wouldn’t give her ten million dollars for a seriously ill-thought-out business that she wanted to start, and then she said that she’d only been with me for my money and my dick anyway, not my heart. That hurt, obviously, but I was determined to find love again.
The next time I fell deeply in love, the woman said that she wanted to help make my life easier by helping me manage my finances so that I wouldn’t have to hire a personal secretary. She went on to steal thirty-six million dollars from me before I realized what she was doing. The next time I fell deeply in love, the woman wanted to have a baby right away, but I wanted to wait until we were married. She became pregnant anyway, and although the timing wasn’t perfect, I was overjoyed. .
But then, in her second month of pregnancy, one of her friends came clean to me and revealed that the baby wasn’t really mine. My girlfriend was so desperate to have a baby with me for the financial security that would provide to her that she’d cheated on me while I was on a business trip overseas, later lying to me about when she’d conceived so that I’d think the baby was mine.
Long story short, I believed my girlfriend’s friend over her, and I broke up with my girlfriend. When her baby was born, a paternity test revealed what I already knew in my heart to be true, which was that I wasn’t the baby’s father. So, that was the third time that I was burned because of my money. And these three women were all women that I loved with all my heart and trusted completely.
So, after the third time, I said ‘No more.’ I didn’t want to give up on relationships entirely, because I’ve always liked companionship, but I told myself that that was as far as it would ever go again. Maybe I could allow myself to love, but no more trusting completely. And as a result, I knew marriage was off the table for me from that point forward.”
Feeling horrible for him, I told Fed that I was so sorry for everything that had happened to him. “Not all women are like the ones who burned you, though. I’m not.”
“But I can never know that for sure, though. After I was burned the first time, the next woman who burned me said, ‘I’m not like that.’ The third woman said, ‘I’m not like those two others.’ And yet, in the end, they were all exactly the same. Not to mention that even aside from these three, I’ve also dated many women who I had a sense would burn me, if I let them. Even actresses with a few million dollars in the bank…they were all after my money, too. Some of them were subtler about it, and some were more obvious. One of them asked me if I could buy her a four million-dollar Cartier watch on our very first date.”
“But have I ever asked you anything like that, Fed? We both know that I haven’t. In fact, the very next day after the first day that we met, I believe that I was the one offering to buy you a filet mignon dinner if you beat me in a running race. And you didn’t end up taking me up on that, but…still. I offered.”
Fed cracked a smile at the memory. “Yes…you did. It also made an impression on me when you refused to accept my offer to let you take the rest of the day off work with full pay the first day we met. I thought it was so unusual, charming, and astounding to meet a woman with such ethics when it came to not ‘stealing’ money from the company.”
“Well, see? That’s me. That’s who I am. I don’t cheat people, and I don’t steal, and I don’t just use people for their money.”
“I can never fully trust you about that, though. I can be reasonably sure about that, yes, but only reasonably. I can never be sure. I can never fully trust you. And I’m sorry to so bluntly say it like that, but it’s true.”
“I think you’re thinking about all this in a kind of a funny way, though.”
“How so?”
“Well, it seems like you could fully trust me if you had proof that I’m not into you for your money…trust doesn’t require proof, though. Trust just requires…well, just trust itself, frankly. It just requires you to go out on a limb without a net.”
“Which I’ll never do again.”
“At the expense of never getting married? And at the expense of never having kids? I completely understand why you want to protect yourself after everything that happened to you, but to me, the ‘cost’ of that ‘security’ just seems way too high.”
Fed sighed. “I really don’t want to argue about this, Jas. I feel how I feel, and I can’t change it. Because of this, I can only offer you a relationship with no possibility of marriage, no matter what. In the past couple of days, I’ve realized that this is completely unfair to you, and that you deserve so, so much better. In fact, when you texted me that you’d asked Malcolm to never contact you again, I was actually almost sorry. I’d started to think that maybe he could give you the happiness that I can’t.”
I scoffed faintly. “No…no chance in hell of that. In fact, I think Malcolm just made me even more certain that the only man I want is you. I want all of you, though, Fed. I want you to be my husband someday.”
Sighing again, he raked his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say other than that.”
“You can’t say that you’ll at least try to trust me fully? Even if it takes a few years?”
Raking his hands over his face again, he said nothing, and I debated telling him something. This something was kind of a secret that I’d never told anyone else in my life outside of my family. I had never told a single friend, and I had never told a boyfriend. My mom had always advised me not to, and so I just never had. In fact, in the years since I’d learned about the secret, I’d honestly kind of forgotten about it. At times, anyway. It had certainly never crossed my mind to ever tell Fed.
Now that it finally was crossing my mind to tell him, I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to, even though I knew that it might help him to trust me fully. I didn’t want my secret to make him trust me fully, though; I kind of just wanted him to take the leap on his own, just based on how he felt in his heart about me.
After a few moments spent thinking, I decided that I wasn’t going to tell fed about my secret. Not at present, anyway. Instead, I was going to try to encourage him to take a leap of faith when it came to me.
I broke the silence between us by asking him how he felt about me in his heart. “And when I say ‘heart,’ I mean in your gut, too. Do you feel in your heart and in your gut that I’m deceiving you in any way?”
Getting up from his seat, Fed stifled a groan. “I’m not doing this. I’m not doing this ‘head versus heart’ stuff. It’s people listening to their hearts that gets them burned.”
“No, I think maybe people being too blinded by love or lust to really listen to their hearts is what gets people burned. But people really listening to their hearts above all else…that doesn’t often steer people wrong.”
Raking a hand through his hair, Fed snorted. “Did you hear that line in an after-school special or something?”
Instantly wounded, I said nothing, and he apologized, sinking to a crouch beside my chair.
“Please forgive me for that, Jasmine. That was a horrible thing to say, and I’m so sorry.”
Hastily wiping sudden moisture from my eyes, I said it was fine. “I forgive you, but I think I’m just done talking for right now…and maybe for all time. If you can’t even try to listen to what your heart is telling you about me, then what are we even doing? I guess I made a huge mistake in jumping back into bed with you last night, because as good as that part of our relationship is, I know that’ll never be enough for me.”
Fed didn’t say anything in response, and I hastily wiped my eyes again before continuing.
“Look. Maybe you should just go right n
ow. Maybe we just need some serious time apart or something…and by ‘time apart,’ I mean real time apart without falling back into bed.”
With his eyes full of pain, he didn’t answer right away. “If this is what you really want-“
“It is. I just want you to go right now. I just want you to give me some space. For however long, I don’t even know.”
“Well…all right.”
He lifted a hand to my cheek, maybe to try to wipe a tear away, but I kind of forcefully moved his hand away before he even could.
“I’m serious, Fed. Please just go. Tell everyone at the office that I’m taking the rest of the week off because I’m not feeling well.”
After a long moment or two spent just looking at me, he slowly got to his feet, grabbed his keys from the table, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me to cry by myself, and not for the first time that week.
*
I did nothing but mope for the rest of the evening, wondering if I’d done the right thing by telling Fed that I just needed space. I wondered if I’d done the right thing by deciding not to tell him my secret. However, even though I was second-guessing myself, I knew in my heart that when it came to both of these things, especially the first, I’d done the right thing.
The truth was that although I loved the physical aspect of Fed’s and my relationship, I’d started to feel like it was only clouding my judgment. Maybe it was really affecting his thinking in some way, too, I figured, by not allowing him to take a step back in order to think about what I meant to him on a heart level, and not just a sexual level. At any rate, I felt like spending a little time apart couldn’t make things any worse between us than they already were.
Wednesday morning, I continued with my listless moping, wondering if Fed was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him. Jarring me out of my reverie around ten o’ clock, Sheila called, asking me if I was okay.
“Fed said you won’t be coming in for the rest of the week because you’re not feeling well, so naturally, I’m a little worried.”
I told her I was just fine. “I’m not physically sick, anyway…maybe just a little heartsick. And I guess I just don’t want to see Fed in the office.”
Lowering her voice, she said I could talk to her about it if I wanted. “You know that I’m not an office gossip.”
I knew this was true, but still, I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell her everything that was going on, mostly just because I wasn’t sure if I could even explain it all and have it make any sense. However, after thinking for a few moments, I decided to share just a little with Sheila and told her that Fed and I were simply having “commitment issues and “trust issues” too, I guessed and both issues were more or less connected.
Seeming able to intuit where the “issues” were coming from, Sheila asked if they were “on Fed’s end,” and I said yes.
“He’s just having a hard time believing that I’m not like all the other women he’s dated. He says that despite evidence to the contrary, he can never fully trust that I’m not. So, because of this, we can never move forward in our relationship…which, as you might expect, is kind of a huge deal-breaker for me. I don’t just want to hang out in ‘girlfriend land’ forever.”
“Well, of course you don’t…and of course you’re not like the other women Fed has dated, too. I’ve read about some of them in the celebrity magazines, and you are not them. You’re honest, and selfless, and caring, among many other good things. If Fed is worried about you secretly being a gold-digger or something, he’s dead wrong about that.”
“Well, I wish he realized that. I wish he could just trust me and take my word about that, but he won’t. Maybe he’s really not wrong about not completely trusting me, either. I mean…if I myself had been burned in some of the ways that he’s been burned before…maybe I would actually even agree with him. I know he’s just trying to protect himself from further hurt and betrayal.”
Just then, I heard some kind of muffled commotion or conversation on the other end of the line.
Then, after a few moments, Sheila came back. “So sorry, Jasmine, but I’m urgently needed to scan some paperwork.”
I said that was fine. “I basically just told you everything anyway, and I know there’s not much you can say to help. I think this situation is a ‘Fed does some thinking and decides to trust me’ sort of thing, or he doesn’t…and if it’s the latter case, I just have a sinking feeling that it’s all over between us.”
Sheila told me to hang in there. “And don’t lose hope. Nothing is over until it’s over.”
While I cleaned my apartment and then went out for a run, I thought about these last comments of hers off and on for the rest of the day, knowing that she was right. Fed and I weren’t officially done just yet, and until we were, there was still hope. However, with every hour that passed, I felt like it was fading. Instead of helping me to gain clarity, my time apart from Fed felt like it was only serving to make me more uncertain if I’d done the right thing by asking him for space.
Thursday morning, I woke up, made a pot of coffee, and began crying in the kitchen while I sipped my first cup. I didn’t even know exactly why. All I knew was that some deep part of me just missed Fed. I didn’t call him, though, and I didn’t text him. Instead, I just soon headed out to do errands, hoping that staying busy would help me to distract myself from thinking about him.
It turned out that distracting myself from thinking about him was an all but impossible task. In fact, the harder I tried to not think about him, the more it seemed like I did. While I exited the small corner store on my block, I even thought that I saw him for a moment, and my heart leaped in my chest. However, who I thought was him actually turned out to be the image of a man in a poster advertising organic orange juice, reflected in one of the store’s wide glass windows.
By Friday morning, my heart was beginning to feel like a lead weight in my chest. I found that I couldn’t eat much anymore, and I was starting to lose all desire to leave my apartment, even just to go out for a run.
I spent most of the afternoon crying in bed, not knowing what I should do. Around dinnertime, I finally got up, showered, dressed, and began pacing around the apartment, debating whether or not I should text Fed. I was pretty sure that I shouldn’t, not least of all because I had no idea what the point of it would be or what I would say.
After forcing myself to eat a little dinner, I began sipping a glass of wine, which ultimately served only to lower my mood, just because drinking wine reminded me of Fed. It was one of the little things that we enjoyed doing together, and now I was thinking of giving it up completely. I didn’t need to be constantly reminded of how much Fed had taught me about wine during our travels, or how many good memories we’d made drinking it together.
After a little while, I poured the remaining fourth of my glass of wine down the sink.
For the next hour or two, I tried to watch TV while curled up in a blanket on the couch, although I couldn’t really find a show or a movie I could get into. Eventually, I got up and began pacing around my apartment, for the first time wondering if I should just settle for what Fed was offering me, which was to say, a relationship full of love, laughter, and some very good times in the bedroom, but ultimately, one that would never progress.
Maybe there’s really nothing wrong with settling, I thought. At least for a little while. After all, I was still young. Maybe I could completely put my dreams of marriage and a family on hold, at least until I was well into my thirties. By that time, I figured, I would have at least gotten to experience several years with the man I was sure was the great love of my life.
After doing a little more pacing, periodically looking out the windows at a darkening evening sky made even darker by heavy rain clouds, I suddenly pulled my phone from my pocket, deciding that I was just going to “break down.” I was just going to text Fed that I’d take what he was offering me and I wouldn’t pressure him about marriage anymore, or about him not trusting me f
ully, or anything like that. I was going to text him that I loved him, and that I just wanted to be with him, no matter what. However, before I could type any of this, I received a text from him.
Can I come pick you up and take you somewhere in ten minutes? We don’t even have to speak until we get there. Promise. And even then, it’s completely up to you if you want to talk or not.
Surprised and absolutely baffled, I reread the text twice before sending back a one-word response. Okay.
Fed was at my door before ten minutes had even passed, dressed in one of his work suits. I myself was dressed a little more casually in jeans and a sweatshirt, and I told him that if he wanted to take me out for dinner or a drink or something, I’d go change.
Taking my hand in his, he said there was no need. “Where we’re going, we won’t be out in public very long. You may want to pack a little overnight bag, though.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me where we’re going, so that I know what to pack.”
He said he couldn’t do that, because it was a surprise. “Just pack a bag, and you’ll find out what it is soon enough.”
Thoroughly intrigued, I did as he’d suggested, and we soon left my apartment and got into his glossy black sedan parked outside.
When Fed began driving us through the streets fairly packed with rush-hour traffic, I asked him to give me a little hint about where we were going, but he refused.
“You’re just going to have to wait a short while longer.”
I sighed in response, but didn’t say anything further for the rest of the drive, and neither did Fed.
After twenty minutes or so, he pulled up in front of a new high-rise luxury hotel, where a valet was already waiting to park the car.
Suddenly irritated, I looked at Fed. “This was your big plan? To whisk me away to a hotel just to get me into bed so that we can ‘make up?’ We could have done that back at my apartment, not that I would have. Before we do any of that, I think we need to talk first. Although, on the other hand, maybe we don’t. I was actually about to send you a text to tell you a few things before you texted me, but now I’m not so sure that I even want to say any of those things anymore. I’m starting to think that I just want you to drive me home.”