by A. J. Sand
“Don’t cry, Erica. I’m fucking this up…” He wiped her cheeks with his palm then cradled her face and his touch brought some solace. “I’ve fucked this up every time I see you. I just don’t know how to…” He trailed off when his cell rang from the carpet near the door.
“I got it,” she mumbled between her sniffles. Someone was probably looking for him, and she knew the possibility of hearing a woman’s voice on the other end would destroy her, but whoever was calling was probably worried and needed to know he was okay. But the screen showed a photo of Bryson’s parents, which might’ve been even worse.
“Hello?” Erica said in a meek voice as she stepped out of the apartment.
“Hello?” his mom said. “…Uh…Stazia?”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Stazia? Stazia was someone who would be answering Bryson’s phone? Is that who he was going to meet up with? Erica clenched her teeth. “No, it’s—”
“Erica?” An obvious sense of surprise raised her pitch.
“Hi, Sue. Yeah. It’s me.” They hadn’t spoken in a very long time, and Erica’s throat felt like she was in the process of ingesting a bag full of sand.
“Oh. Oh! Wow. Hi. I didn’t… Wow.” Sue sighed. If not for the hum of conversation in the background on Sue’s end, there wouldn’t have been any sound. She spoke again after another sigh. “Where’s Bryce? He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Jeff threw me a birthday dinner at Vinci Ristorante. He said he had to do something, but then he’d be right over… Is he all right?”
“Yes. He is.”
“You sound upset… What’s wrong?”
“Me? I’m fine, but he’s not in any condition to drive. I’ll have him call you first thing in the morning.” This woman had been a part of her life for so long, so Erica found herself clinging to the sound of her voice and dreading the end of the call.
“Okay. Thank you… Thank you for taking care of him.” But Sue didn’t hang up right away. “How are you, Erica? How have you been?” Erica smiled. She knew Sue well enough to know that the question was based on genuine interest rather than formality, and a single tear plunged off her chin.
“I’m okay, Sue. Thanks for asking. And Happy Birthday.” Sometimes she wished she had just called her at some point and told her the truth because they had been so close over the years. Sue had never known a life like Erica’s growing up. Prep school. Ivy League. Beverly Hills. Even now, Erica could imagine her floating across the banquet room in Vinci’s, a couture dress draped around her as she graciously greeted her guests.
But Erica couldn’t strongly contend with the humiliation she’d felt at the time, much less open up to anyone about it. So afraid of people knowing what kind of state she had been in. This was the prison Dylan was referring to. The one you were willing to lock yourself in at all costs. Yes, fear was the kind of prison where you made yourself the inmate and the jailer.
Bryson’s phone buzzed an alert of the missed texts from earlier, and they flashed on the locked screen. They were both from Naomi and one said, “Well?” while the other text bubble was nothing but a spastic line of symbols and question marks indicating impatience. Erica wondered what she wanted, and she knew Bryson’s password, but this wasn’t her business. Though, those pangs of irrational jealousy she’d felt in Maggiano’s returned.
The sound of movement inside her apartment drew her attention away, and she swung the door open. “Bryce?” He wasn’t on the couch anymore. “Bryce, are you okay?” She wondered if he was throwing up in the bathroom, but instead, she found him lying on her bed with his feet dangling off. “Hey, we need to get that glass out, so you can’t sleep right now,” she said as she continued to her bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit.
“Not sleeping,” he said, sitting up when she walked back into the room. He tensed a little when she pulled his hand into her lap. He spied the tweezers perched between her fingers and added, “Know what you’re doing?”
“Um, we’re about to see...”
Bryson squeezed out a transitory smile. “Real comforting, E.” His eyes were boring into her, setting her nerves on fire to the point that her hands were trembling. There was so much she wanted to ask, but her brain had become a shaken snow globe, with her disconnected thoughts floating around in a flurry of incoherence. “This might sting a little,” she warned. She clamped down on the largest piece of glass first.
He sucked a slice of air between his teeth with a slight flinch when she withdrew the blood-covered fragment. Maybe it was from the pain, but maybe it was from being here with her, too.
“Am I hurting you?”
His grimace turned up into a smile for as briefly as a blink, and her stomach clenched as the warm itch of tears struck the rims of her eyes. Noticing her shaking hand, he reached over and placed a delicate hold on the underside of her wrist to stabilize it. His arm was at an awkward angle to keep out of her way, and it had to be uncomfortable, but he didn’t budge.
Twice in one night, he’d acted to steady her.
It was harder to fight her tears as a stifling pressure settled in her chest. “Thank you,” she whispered with trembling lips, bouncing her gaze to his face for a moment, and he nodded slowly in response.
“You never have to say that,” he said. “You never have to.” With his hand still firmly grasping her wrist, she worked in silence to pluck out the ones she could get to easily, but for the ones wedged deeper, she’d have to use a needle to tear at the skin.
“I need to get something, okay? I’ll be right back.” Her knees buckled on the way to her dresser to retrieve her sewing kit because she knew his eyes were on her back. The mattress whined behind her, and she took an inconspicuous glance at him in the mirror atop her dresser as she shuffled through her underwear drawer. Bryson was staring right at her, unabashed, his expression confined to sorrow.
“You left, Erica. You left.” The words sliced her so hard she considered for a second whether they had caused a gash inside her somewhere. She braced her hands on the dresser, beating back her tears. Grabbing the needle, she raced to the bathroom and sterilized it with rubbing alcohol.
“You left.” Bryson had followed her to the doorway and stumbled inside the large bathroom. “You walked away. You were my best friend. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” Bryson on the floor. Hands and knees. The memories were like bursts of fireworks in her brain. He closed the door and tumbled down against it, bracing his fall with his palms. “Fuck!” he screamed out when his wounded hand connected with the tile.
“Bryce!” Erica slid across the floor to his side and grabbed his hand. The force had jammed some of the glass further past the surface of his skin while pushing more blood out. “I’ll do it as quickly as I can, okay?”
“I’m all right.” But this time, it was his hand trembling against hers when she cradled it to fish the last pieces of glass out. When she finished, she dabbed ointment over the lacerations.
“This cut looks too big to just leave exposed like this.” Erica wrapped a strip of gauze around his hand and taped it in place.
“You went and got a new life, like it never mattered. You were always the only thing that mattered. I couldn’t even… I couldn’t get off the floor… You went and got a new life, and I still wanted our old one. I can’t get numb, E. I want to, and I don’t want to. But everything fucking hurts.”
“It does,” she whispered. “Everything fucking hurts.” Erica dropped her hands to her lap as her eyes clouded with tears, and his palm was on her cheek before they even fell. “Oh, Bryce… We can’t talk about this right now.” She took his hand from her face and squeezed it. These hands had never done anything but be kind and tender and loving, and she was embarrassed now that she’d ever questioned whether she’d fear them touching her in any way. “But just know that I was in so much—”
“Pain? Pain?” A tormented expression, the same one they seemed to be passing back and forth to each other, crossed his face. “Yes, I know you were in pain, Erica; I c
ould see it, and I’m sorry you were. But you left before I could do anything about it. You just… You left…” he said, keeping his eyes on her as she stood up. Erica raked her fingers through his hair, and when he closed his eyes, a single tear sailed down his cheek. It gutted her, wrenched her insides until it became too agonizing, too crippling, to keep looking at him. She forced a storm of a cry back down, deep into her belly. She felt trapped in a cavernous space, surrounded by tunnels that seemed to stretch into perpetuity without any light to guide her out. Was there even really a way to come back from this?
“I hate that this is where we are right now.” Bryson brushed his face roughly with the top of his hand and he hung his head. It was hacking pieces of her soul away. And she still would’ve traded whatever was left of it to give him peace of mind, which wouldn’t even come when the truth was laid before him.
“We shouldn’t be here…but we also can’t do this now…” He wasn’t sober but it had also been a long day, and she needed to get her thoughts together before having this particular conversation; she needed a certain level of emotional preparedness, too.
Bryson nodded and finally tilted his head up. His hand cupped the back of her thigh. “Come here, E,” he said. Without even giving a response or a thought, Erica curled up against his chest and nestled her head on his shoulder. There was nothing she wanted to do more right now, and when his arms slipped around her, somehow the two of them eased into something familiar, secure. It was still a mess, but for the instant, just being in there with him, it was a beautiful, perfect mess. And it gave her hope.
“I never thought anything would be this hard with us,” he said.
“Yeah.” She hadn’t either. But why wouldn’t it be? Love hard. Lose hard.
“You know I’d never want to hate you, right? I’m so sorry I said that. You just looked beautiful and happy, and I was glad, but it hurt so fucking much to see you.”
“I’m not that happy, Bryce…” she muttered, undecided of if she had wanted him to hear. After a minute or two more, she said, “Okay, let’s get you to bed. So you can get up early and call Sue, and she doesn’t send the cavalry out looking for you tomorrow.” Bryson offered his hand for her to pull him up after she stood again, and it was the first time all night she let out a pure burst of laughter. “I can’t lift you, Bryce.”
“Guess we’re sleeping right here then.” With an earnest look—one right on the cliff of a smile—he kept his hand in place in the air.
She snorted. “Seriously?”
Bryson looked at his extended legs on either side of hers. “I’m actually comfortable like this. I hope you are.” With a sigh in feigned annoyance, she attempted to yank him to his feet, but it was clear that he mostly lifted himself. “Knew you could,” he said, throwing his arms around her and lifting her off the ground.
Looping her arms around his neck, Erica laughed into his shoulder as they both fell against the door. “You cheated!” They were on a slant and maybe seconds away from falling back to the floor, but she let him hold her because she needed another safe, serene moment between them. She needed something for her to hold on to.
Bryson took a breath against her neck, and his lips traced up the side of it until he reached the edge of her jaw. The feel of his mouth was enticing, and it uncoiled a warm sensation of arousal in the lower half of her body. “I hate that our place doesn’t smell like you,” he said, right into a spot below her ear, his lips continuing to graze her skin. They rocked against the door unsteadily as one of his legs threatened to give way. “Whoa, maybe I need to sit down again.”
“I think you do, too,” Erica said as she got back down to her feet, and then she led him out to her room. “You can sleep in here.”
“No, Erica,” Bryson said in an insistent tone. “It’s your room. I’ll take the couch.”
She acquiesced with a nod, but it was heartbreaking to imagine them being in the same place and sleeping separately. “Extra blankets are in the hall closet. I’ll get one for you. And you need water. It’ll stop dehydration and prevent your hangover.”
Bryson began to shed everything he was wearing, and Erica couldn’t help slowing her walk out to the living room as she watched. A prickle shimmied up her back when she paused just short of the doorway. Every muscle along his chest and torso had been whittled into shape. His black boxer briefs hugged him low on his hip flexors, revealing the V-shape definition at his pelvis. Damn, Bryson was sexy, and he really had been spending a lot of time in the gym. She’d liked him before, but she liked this, too. Erica huffed out a breath on her way to the kitchen, and she was so focused on how his lips had felt in that brief moment they were on her skin that she overfilled the glass.
He was already stretched out on the couch and beneath a blanket, struggling to keep his eyes open, but he smiled big and sat up when he saw her. Handing him the glass, she said, “How’s your hand?” She sat when he swung his legs to the floor.
Bryson shrugged. “I’ll make a doctor’s appointment.” He nearly choked after several gulps of water. “Shit. Fuck. Mom’s party. Did she call? She’s going to kill me.”
“Yup. You know how Sue is about birthdays,” Erica said, laughing.
A shade of amusement passed over his eyes before he buried his face in his hand. “Shiiiit. She’s been talking about turning fifty…”
“Since forty,” they said in unison with laughter as they reflected on the inside joke. When it came to birthdays, his mother lived a decade ahead, always planning “the next big one.”
“Was she pissed?”
Erica scoffed at him as she nudged him with her knee. “You’re missing her birthday, Bryce. She didn’t sound like she wanted to build you a shrine.” There was more laughter between them, and it made her feel giddy. “Did you end up getting her something from that really long list she gave you and your dad?”
It was his turn to scoff. “Did I have a choice?” Bryson teased as he peered out from his hand before he dropped it to her thigh. The spot flared heat on contact. “I got her that painting she wanted so badly, but that was before she amended the list.”
“Why’d she amend the list?”
“They remodeled. She thought some things wouldn’t work with the… What’d she say, oh, right, the design scheme.”
“Oh. Of course,” Erica said, giggling.
“Most stereotypical rich people problem ever,” he joked.
“I think she’ll forgive you.” Erica stood up, ignoring the reluctance to lose the touch of his hand. “Well, I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight, Bryson.”
“Night, E,” he replied.
She thought her eyes would remain pinned back, wide open, with her knowledge that Bryson was out there while she was in her suddenly cold, lonely bed, but it was the sound of clanging, emitting from beyond her bedroom door that made her aware of how quickly she must’ve fallen asleep when it jolted her out of it. Hours had gone by but it was still really early in the morning. And shit. Why was there clanging anyway? Erica crept to the edge of her bed. She doubted Dylan was back from Malibu, and she’d forgotten to set the alarm, so there was a real possibility that someone was out there murdering Bryson. But when the noise quieted, the soft sound of whistling followed it, and she snickered when she heard Bryson belting out off-key song lyrics. Definitely not a burglar.
After brushing her teeth, Erica followed his awful singing into the living room and paused when she spotted his bare back in the kitchen. Damn. It was hard not to stare at his muscled frame as he fiddled with the coffee pot on the counter, tapping his foot to whatever was blaring out of his earphones. Bryson in boxer briefs was very pleasant to wake up to. She sneaked up on him, trying hard to contain her laughter as he shifted his hips side to side to the beat she couldn’t hear. Bryson flinched in surprise and then his skin flushed crimson when he spotted her on his left.
“Having fun?” she asked as she leaned with her elbows on the counter, and his stare skittered over to her butt for just a flash.
“How’s your hand?”
Bryson yanked his earphones out. “Bleeding a lot less. I redressed the wound a little while ago.” He gestured at the coffee pot in front of them. “And now I’m trying to cope with how much I drank last night. I think this thing is older than me and you combined.”
She nodded and smiled. “The apartment came furnished and it’s probably the oldest thing in here… Dyl and I don’t really use it. She’s more of a hot chocolate girl.” Erica reached up and grabbed a mug from the cupboard above her head. “You still take it with a little milk and sugar, right?” Bryson was an early riser, so he practically depended on it the way other people did food and water.
“Yup. I couldn’t find the sugar.” He lifted the carton of milk he’d already set aside.
Erica retrieved a miniature jar from way back in the pantry and brought it over as he tipped the pot to his mug.
“Dylan says I bake too much, and she’ll keep eating everything I make, so she limits me to whatever is in here each week. I just re-fill it so it never empties.”
He chuckled. “You still cooking a lot, too?”
Erica nodded. “Only way she’d survive.” Bryson took the jar from her, but his gaze stayed affixed to her chest, and she remembered that she had removed her bra before bed, so her nipples were probably far more appealing than sweetening his coffee at the moment. She took in a deep breath as his stare radiated through her clothes, scorching every inch of her skin. There was a compulsion to kiss him, to just throw her arms around him and have him carry her off to her bedroom. Maybe before, but…how would that play out now? The idea of sex definitely didn’t freak her out; rather, it was the idea of sex with him when things were as fractured as the glass she’d pulled out of his hand earlier.
“So, um, you hungry?” she asked, walking to the fridge. “We have stuff to make omelets. There’s bacon, too.”
“Sure… sounds good,” Bryson said, like he was breathless. Holy sexual tension between exes, Erica thought as she gathered the eggs, cheese, tomatoes and onions. She still remembered what he liked in his. As she prepared their omelets, he tended to the bacon. It was reminiscent of their weekend mornings at their apartment, except for the unreleased sexual tension part. Every so often his eyes would drift over to her chest and she’d feel the nerves in her nipples twinge. Then she’d think about his mouth. His mouth on them. And her eyes would land on him, too. It went on like this for several minutes.