by Fiona Cole
Swallowing my nerves, I tried again. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my date.”
His laugh seemed loud in the small area around us. “Your date? You mean the dickhole that wanted free drinks because he was friends of the owner?” He stood to his full height and dropped his arms, walking toward me. “That’s who you’re seeing over me?”
Shoulders back. Head high. Voice strong. I repeated it over and over again, trying to fight off the way I wanted to crumble at his feet and beg him to hold me.
“Jamie-Boy,” I laughed, using his nickname to try to break the tension. “It was never one or the other. I was just getting ready to leave and wanted to enjoy my last bit in Cincinnati. I can’t do that with one man. Come on. You know me. You know I don’t do … monogamy.” The words burned my throat coming out like bile. All of them lies.
He’d finally reached me and pressed me up against the wall despite my effort to stand my ground. This close, his eyes reminded me of the way they looked in Jamaica. But behind the challenge sparking in his eyes, sadness lingered, and it pinched my heart knowing he was hurting.
I needed to end this, I kept trying to remind myself. If I didn’t we would keep going until another job possibly took me away and I gave it up again. Or I didn’t and he stood by, putting his life on hold as he waited for me to return. But if an opportunity came up where I didn’t return. What would happen then? I needed to end it before I fell too deeply in love with him and sacrificed my dream to keep him.
Or worse: what if he decided to come with me and gave up his dream of expanding King’s in Cincinnati. I couldn’t be held responsible for that. It was best that we give up now rather than drag it out.
“You know I can help you enjoy anything. Especially more than that pussy out there.” He growled, placing both his palms on the wall on either side of my head.
“Come on, Jameson. Don’t drag this out. You had to know this was coming.” I tried to put the most bored look on my face as I pressed my trembling body against the wall, leaning on it for support.
He leaned in and nudged my hair away from my ear with his nose, returning my words. “Come on, Evelyn. I thought we were done with the games.”
“I don’t want to be with one man for the remaining time I’m here. I’m busy and I don’t feel like keeping up with a relationship,” I stated as coldly as possible.
“Oh yeah? Then why can I see your pulse pounding in your neck?” His tongue dragged up from my throat until he bit my chin. “Are you excited that he could come back here and see you turned on by a real man? I remember how much you love the idea of being watched. How excited it makes you.” His breath brushed against my ear, teasing me.
“Jameson…” I pleaded on an exhale. My ability to turn him away was waning. It was hard enough when he wasn’t right in front me.
His hand moved to my shoulder and dragged its way down to my hip. “I bet if I reach under this sexy-as-sin dress you have on, I would find you hot,” he began scrunching my skirt up, “and wet.”
Moving my head back on the wall, I lifted my eyes to his, hardening them into a challenge. I shouldn’t have been taking the bait, but the spark of familiarity urged me on. Setting my jaw, I met his smirking eyes head on, refusing to back down.
“There she is.” Satisfaction colored his words.
Dragging a deep breath of air in through my flared nostrils, I held his gaze, fighting the desire to let my lids drop and relish the feel of his fist pulling my skirt higher and higher.
“Has he touched you?” he demanded to know. “Has he kissed you?” He pressed his lips to mine and pulled away too quick for me to keep him close. “Hmm?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head against the wall. I could feel the cold air conditioning rushing against my damp panties.
“Are you sure? He hasn’t felt how wet – how tight – this pussy is?” His finger dragged across the silk covering the seam of my vagina and growled. “So fucking wet.” Without warning, his fingers tugged the material aside and pushed to rub against my clit, circling it in wide, languid strokes.
“I’m – I’m sure.” My lashes lowered, and I could barely see him. Chest heaving, my breaths came rushing in and out. “Jameson.” That time his name was a plea. Whether to stop or give me more, I didn’t know.
“He wouldn’t know what to do with this cunt.” A finger pushed in. Then two. “That boy out there would probably waste this precious gift.”
When he leaned in to nip at my lips, I was fast enough to capture his in a kiss first. We exploded. His hand gripped into my hair and held me in place as we devoured each other. His fingers still moved in and out of my core relentlessly: roughly taking what I had been denying him.
The harder he pushed, the less I was able to control the whimpers coming from my throat. In the back of the bar, where this had all started, he was controlling me and I was letting him. I was letting the waves of excitement – of exhibitionism – build. Only this man knew what it was that made me tic, that made me hotter than ever before.
He stroked my clit in perfect rhythm to the way his fingers plunged inside, rubbing my g-spot. My hands dug into his shirt as I held on and let the shocks spread through my body, expanding from my core.
“Jameson. Jameson."
Leaning his forehead against mine, he closed the circles around my nub tighter and tighter until I couldn’t stand the pressure anymore. Biting down on my bottom lip to hold back my cries, I came. The walls of my core clenched around his fingers as I held my breath, trying to staunch the screams knocking at my throat.
His movements slowed and eased me down from my orgasm. My fingers released their death grip from his back and a part of me hoped I’d left marks on his skin for him to remember me by.
Leaning in, he kissed the indents from my teeth biting my lip before leaning his forehead back to mine. “Tell me you don’t love me.”
My eyes shot to his. Panicked breaths sawed in and out of my lungs. “Jameson.” I shook my head slowly until his hand came up to grip my chin. I could smell myself on his fingers, and a flood of regret washed over me. Not because it happened, but because it shouldn’t have. I’d only made brushing him off harder than it needed to be. One more mistake to add to the list of the night. Taking a deep breath, I tried to avoid answering. “I’ve already explained. I’m leaving and I don’t do relationships.”
His soft blue eyes still looked down at me like they had the morning he let me know he loved me. My brush-off wasn’t working. I had to find a meanness in me to push him away. I couldn’t keep letting him hang on. I guarded my heart against my next words. Complete coldness would be the only way to push him back. “Sure. He’s a dick. But I don’t want him for his personality. I only need his dick. Maybe his fingers or tongue.” The fingers on my jaw tightened painfully, but I pushed on, ripping my own heart out and dropping it on the floor between us, letting it mix with the foul words I forced myself to say. “Come on. You know I get bored easily and I don’t want to spend my last few days doing the same damn thing. Or person,” I ended with a shrug that physically hurt to do. “This was nice, but think of it as a goodbye.”
“Evelyn, you think I don’t know you. You think I don’t know you’re scared–”
“I’m not scared. I don’t get scared,” I interjected.
“Bullshit.”
“Just because I don’t want to fuck you anymore, doesn’t mean I’m scared.” He cocked his eyebrow, not believing me, and I snapped. He pushed and he pushed and I was backed into a corner. He would crowd me and hang around and put his life on hold waiting for mine, and I wouldn’t allow it. Trying to fight my way out of the corner, I let an ice fall over me, numbing me, and aimed straight for his heart. “Maybe I’ll like the way his dick feels. Maybe I’ll like the way he licks my pussy. No one ever does it the same and, honey, I like variety.”
He stood back and pinned me to the wall with a hard stare. I needed him to back off and let me go, because the words had broken some
thing inside me, and I could feel it spreading from the inside out. I needed out before I crumbled before him.
“Tell me you don’t love me,” he demanded one last time through a clenched jaw.
Taking one stuttering breath in, I lied. “I don’t love you.”
We stared at each other, not moving. We had just had a battle of words, and I had won. But for the first time, it felt like losing. Tears were burning the backs of my eyes, and I held his angry glare, giving it all I had to hide the storm waiting to break inside.
“Get the fuck out of my bar.” He turned and stomped away, not giving me one glance back.
A lone tear broke loose and rolled down my cheek as I fell back against the wall. Quickly, I wiped it away and fixed my skirt. Keeping my head down, I walked to my table and grabbed my purse with a quick excuse of needing to leave and darted out of King’s.
Twenty-Seven
Staring up at the ceiling, I watched the blades of my fan turn and tried to track each one moving in circles. I was back in my bed where I feared I was going to end up forever. I let the blankets wrap around me as my heavy limbs sank into the comfort of my bed. Not moving. Just wallowing in the mess I was making. Each step I made seemed to be a bigger mistake than the last until I was spiraling out of control and didn’t know who I was anymore.
I needed something to ground me. When I’d stumbled back into my apartment and saw my laptop sitting on the table, I’d made a decision. It was almost laughable that after everything I’d done fighting to go to Italy, that I would let panic and loss of control be the guiding emotions to make my final decision. Making everything leading up to that moment almost pointless.
I couldn’t leave Cincinnati. Not right then. It was the one constant that had been in my life for ten years, and amongst the chaos raging around me, it remained solid. I had lost part of my family when I’d shoved Jameson away, and I’d lost my confidence along with it. Cincinnati was my home, and I needed it more than ever. Italy was a chance and right then, I needed control. Control over my life, my job, my choices.
One of the many rubber bands squeezing my lungs, forming a pinch in my heart, had released when I’d hit the send button on the email to notify the people in Italy of my decision. But there were still too many to relieve the ache.
“Get the fuck out of my bar.”
The words went off in my mind like explosions. I’d wake up from a restless sleep and they were there, waiting for me, dragging me back to reality.
My phone ringing on the pillow next to me drew my attention. In the darkness of my bedroom, the phone lit up with “Mom”. A part of me wanted to ignore it like I was ignoring everything else. But, despite the way things had gone the last time we talked, I knew she would finally understand and support me. And it was one of those times where I didn’t feel like an adult; I felt like a child who needed to hear from the woman who always built up my confidence.
Reaching over, I clicked the green circle. “Hello.”
“Evelyn? Are you okay?” she asked, concerned. She always knew when something was wrong. I’d made the right choice to pick up.
“Hey, Mama.” The words came out garbled from holding back the tears in my throat, choking me.
“Baby…” Her soft endearment broke the floodgate of emotions and the tears began falling. “Tell me.”
I tried to speak, but my chest kept jerking with sobs. I’d lain in bed for a week and only let small tracks of tears escape to make room for more, but there, with my mom on the phone, the excess of pain came pouring out of me, making it impossible to speak. “Mama,” I tried, but it was broken off.
“Evelyn. Shhhh,” she soothed through the line. “Come on, baby. Take deep breaths with me.” When I explained my mother to people and how she raised me – the way she made me promise to never fall in love and always rely on myself – they would look like they were holding back horrified grimaces. But this woman gave me a safe foundation to build myself on. She gave me the building blocks to take myself to the sky and beyond. It may not have always been right, but I would always be grateful for what she gave me.
Hearing her soothing words, I could imagine the way she used to hold me and brush my hair back from my face. Following her cues, I listened to her breathing through the phone and matched mine to it, slowly calming down enough to speak.
“I turned down the job,” I blurted.
“Evelyn…” She let out a heavy sigh and I rushed on before she could continue.
“Mama, I don’t want to go. I already turned it down and I’m not going. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve never felt so lost. But the only thing I do know is that Cincinnati is my home and it’s all I have to keep me grounded. To remind me that I’m me.”
“Oh, baby,” she breathed. It took her a while to speak again and the longer it took the more my fear of letting her down built back up. “What happened?” There was no judgment in her voice, just an honest need to understand.
“I broke it off with Jameson. I thought you were right in saying that he was the only thing holding me back from Italy. I questioned everything, because I thought I would have accepted the job otherwise. I didn’t want to be a woman who held back for a man. You taught me better than that.” I paused to take a deep breath. “But it hurts so much. So much, Mama. And the more I thought about Italy, I thought about leaving the happy life I’ve built here and something twisted inside of me. It felt awful. I like my apartment. I like my friends. I like my job. I like my life.” I punctuated each statement with my hand hitting my comforter. “Why would I change that? Italy was no longer an opportunity as much as it felt like a task I had to complete. I never wanted work to feel like work and that’s what Italy felt like it would be.”
The thoughts had been swimming around my head for weeks, but they were disjointed and I’d pushed them aside. But finally saying them out loud, I was able to piece them together and make sense. Unfortunately, it didn’t make me feel better.
“And I’m so confused about Jameson. I love him. I really do, and I convinced myself breaking it off with him would be for the best so we had no ties when I left for Italy. But I was mean and cold when I did it, and I messed up. I’ve ruined it. You were right. Falling in love is not worth it. It hurts, and I don’t want to feel this anymore. I don’t know what to do. I never should have fallen in love.”
After I finished, the jumbled words tripping over each other in a race to get out, I took a breath and waited for her I told you so.
“Did I ever tell you how I met your father?”
“N- No. You never talk about Dad.”
She let out a small laugh. “He was a firefighter running a drill at our campus. We stood aside clutching our books watching these burly men haul around equipment. When he turned to look at me, I swear Evelyn. My heart stopped and I knew. I knew he was the one.” I had never heard my mom’s voice filled with so much love and affection for anyone other than me. “At the end of it all, he came over and told me he had to take me to dinner because he would die if he never saw me again. It was over the top, but it worked. I was in the middle of getting my business degree. Once I was done with my second year, he asked me to marry him. Over the summer we eloped, and I found out I was pregnant in my third year. I finished, but when it came time to head back for my final year, I looked at your father and put my life in his hands.”
I’d heard that part before. How she’d quit school to be a housewife. But never with such adoration and willingness. It was usually wrapped in anger and bitterness.
“I loved that man more than anything in the entire world. And he gave me you, which was more than I could have ever imagined.” I heard her deep inhale through the phone. “And I would never – never – take it back.” My head jerked back in shock. She’s never said it aloud, but I always assumed that she would go back and change things if she could’ve.
“Mom, I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. I never told you. I was so sad. God, Evelyn, I was broken when I
lost your father. And I didn’t know how to deal with it. So when I felt the first glimmer of anger, I grabbed onto it with both hands and used it to pull myself out of the mess I’d become. I needed something to help me move on. And maybe it was wrong to push my anger and bitterness on you. Maybe I should’ve been more fair and taught you about the wonders of love. Because some of the most wonderful years of my life were spent with your father.”
Frozen in shock, I stared off at the wall, blinking, trying to come to terms with her confession. I wanted to be angry at her for instilling the fear of love in me. But at the same time, I’d gotten to where I was because of the way she raised me.
“I’m sorry, Evelyn. I should’ve done better.”
“You did the best you could, Mom.” I admitted, even if her best wasn’t always right. “I’m successful because of the way you raised me.” I licked my lips and wiped tears from my face. “Why…” I hesitated with my next question. “Why did you never date again?”
“I guess I held on to that anger for too long. And by the time I was ready to move on, I was settled in my ways. I had you. I had the job I’d put on hold and I didn’t want to change that for anything. Watching you grow up into a beautiful woman, I knew boys would be knocking down your door. I needed to protect your future and I did that the best way I knew how.”
Another silence stretched between us. She was always the best at waiting me out.
“So … what do I do now?”
“You love him?”
“Yes. More than anything.”
“Then don’t give up. Love was taken from me. Don’t give up on your first try.” Hearing her say something so far off from what she’s told me my entire life was like a weight lifted off my chest. She always supported me and when she was in opposition to Jameson and I, it hurt to not have her support for the first time ever. But for her to tell me his, was like I had her blessing and it was comforting to be back on the side of her un-ending support. However, I still struggled with what to do next.