the Art of Breaking Up
Page 14
“Can’t offer me more,” I finished for him, half-question.
He looked sorry about it, and I didn’t know why he should be. “I’ve been through enough therapy to know I’m not in a place to do that. I’d feel like a right weak tosser saying that to anyone else. But you’re not anyone else, Norah. I can’t do… I don’t want a relationship – every pressure and obligation I’d fail to meet. But I have this urge to be around you. I can be myself with you whether I’m in a good mood or a bad mood. And when I’m with you, you make me want to kiss you. You make me want to more than just kiss you, if I’m honest. Not that I expect anything,” he said quickly, his eyes meeting mine. “I just meant that…”
“You want a no strings deal.” That wasn’t a question.
And, by the look on his face, I hadn’t hit the nail on the head. “I want…a lot of things. I want to hang out with you without any pretences or us pretending we don’t want to or it being a carefully concocted ‘accident’. I want to talk to you. I want to kiss you. If you want that, too.” He gave a self-depreciating laugh. “And I’ve just realised this has been a whole lot of selfish how I’m feeling and what I want and I haven’t asked you in return. Sorry.”
I smiled. “That’s okay.”
He cocked his head to the side in disagreement. “Eh, my therapist tells me it’s healthy to voice my feelings and wants, but I’m not sure it’s polite to rant quite like that.”
I looked at my feet as my smile grew. “It’s really okay, Wade.”
“Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“You know what.” I heard the smile in his voice and it made me look up to see it. “Have I overstepped a million boundaries? How do you feel about…? Well, me, the situation, what I said? What do you want?”
I sighed. “I want this to be less complicated.”
His eyes darkened. “Norah, I can’t give–”
I shook my head. “Not that.” The selfish part of me was very interested in a no-strings thing. “I mean with Lisa.”
“What about Lisa?” he asked.
“Seriously? For someone so enlightened about your own feelings, you haven’t quite mastered other people’s, have you?”
“I’m very much a work in progress. Stilted progress,” he replied, deadpan. “What do you mean about Lisa?”
I sighed heavily. If he hadn’t noticed, then I wasn’t sure how to put it into words. I just had to try. “Lisa…thinks she’s in love with you. She’s never got over you. It’s… Even she knows it’s tragic. Most of the time.”
I practically saw the lightbulb go off in Wade’s head. “Shit. Everything’s starting to make sense now.”
“Just now?”
“That’s why you always change when she’s around, why you get less flirty-dirty-mean and more snarky-mean.”
I blinked. “I do that?”
He nodded. “For years you’ve done it and I never knew why. I always thought it was girl-code, but because you were supposed to hate me. I always wondered why that meant you couldn’t flirt while you were insulting me. But now I get it. You didn’t want her thinking there was a thing.”
“I still don’t want her thinking there’s a thing!”
“Is that you admitting there is a thing?”
I opened my mouth, but paused before I closed it again.
“I can’t read your mind, Norah,” he said softly. “You have to tell me what you’re thinking. If I overstepped and now you’re weirded out, then tell me. I’m a big boy, I can take it.”
I bit back the current-situation inappropriate quip on him being a big boy. But there must have been something on my face that gave it away because he smirked knowingly. He said nothing about that, though.
“Is it just me, Norah?”
I shook my head. “No. Okay? There is quite clearly something. I…” The least I could do after his honesty was give him some of my own in return. “I shouldn’t like you, but I do. You’re…” I took a deep breath and tried not to lose my nerve. “Somehow you know just what to say. You get me. I do make excuses to talk to you, to hang out with you. I really like kissing you and the idea of more has definitely crossed my mind. Not like ‘dating’ more. I meant sex.”
He spluttered the laugh he failed to contain. “Direct. I like it.”
I smiled at him. “I don’t want to date you. I can’t date you. I won’t date you. You’re more like…a friend with benefits. You know? I like you but I’m not like in like with you but I think about shagging you. A lot.” I grimaced, not sure if I’d made any sense.
His smirk had grown so I assumed he’d understood. That or he found my inability to say something less lame than shagging humorous. He stepped in front of me and one hand alighted gently on my hip. Slowly he looked up and found my eyes. God damn, but the boy was hot. The look in his eyes was hot. It made me hot. It made my stomach squirm, and not at all unpleasantly.
As he took my cheek in his other hand, he leant towards me and said, “I was really hoping you’d say that,” and I felt his breath warm on my lips.
Just before he kissed me, I regretfully put my finger on his lips. “It doesn’t change the Lisa thing.”
“Would she begrudge you someone to talk to right now?”
He didn’t have to bring up the whole my world semi-imploding with my parents’ divorce looming over everything for me to know he was fully aware of how it was affecting me.
“But it’s not just talking, is it?” I said.
“No. It’s a brilliant distraction.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Distraction?”
He took my face in his hands and I let him kiss me deeply. As brief as it was, I felt something in it. The kind of something that was charged with meaning and emotion that didn’t need or want words to be conveyed.
He pulled away slightly, but his eyes were still closed as his forehead leant on mine. “When I’m with you, nothing seems quite so bad anymore,” he whispered, his lips brushing mine softly.
My heart skipped a beat even as I told it not to. “I thought distractions weren’t healthy?”
I felt his smile. “You’re my only healthy distraction.”
I should have walked away weeks ago. I should have at least been able to keep my hands to myself. But I felt free with Wade, the kind of free I hadn’t felt in a long time. Lisa meant the world to me, but that feeling was addictive. It was intoxicating. I felt like I needed it to survive the destruction of my world as I knew it.
So, I kissed him.
I kissed him like I meant it and resolved to deal with my guilt on my own time.
Chapter Fifteen
“Does this mean the whole no-strings thing applies, or…?” he asked against my lips.
“What?” I laughed.
“I just want to know where we stand. No mixed signals or anything.”
I pulled away and looked at him. “Do you want a no-strings thing?”
“I think we’ve established I do. What’s more important right now is what you want.”
“I want to do less thinking and more kissing you.” Less thinking resulted in less guilt.
He smirked. “I don’t hate the sound of that, but I also don’t want any crossed wires or regrets happening.”
I huffed. “I feel great when I’m with you, Wade. Really great. Free. And then I feel awful because my best friend still likes you.”
“She knows it’s never happening, right?”
I nodded. “Of course. But the heart wants what the heart thinks it wants.”
“So, you don’t think she loves me?”
I bit my lip as I searched for the right words. “Honestly, I think she uses you as an excuse not to put herself out there again. If she’s hung up on you, she doesn’t have to commit and she can’t get her heart broken. Again.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is, she doesn’t think so. There is such a thing as a girl-code, bro.
And I’m breaking every single sub-section every time I just think about you!”
He smirked. “You think about me a lot?”
I huffed and tried not to return the smile. “More than I should.”
“Do you want us to both walk away?”
I paused so long I almost thought I’d have the balls to say ‘yes’. Unsurprisingly though, I said, “No. Apparently my guilt doesn’t quite outweigh my selfishness.”
“Putting yourself first is okay.”
“Then why doesn’t it feel okay?”
“Maybe it’s the hiding it?” he offered and I baulked.
It wasn’t that I thought he was wrong, per se, but...
“Lisa can never know about this!” I said vehemently.
He held up his hands. “Okay. Lisa will never find out.”
I felt all sorts of things at hearing him say those words. Things like deathly terrified Lisa would in fact find out and never speak to me again. Things like the only logical place this was going was an end, which I apparently didn’t appreciate. Things like either way – whatever happened – I lost.
I decided not to think about any of those things.
And apparently, I decided that the best way to not think about those things was to push Wade onto the couch – which earned me a cheeky smirk – and climb into his lap to kiss him senseless.
His arms wound around me tightly and he kissed me back. It wasn’t the first time – and I doubted it would be the last – that I felt like I wasn’t the only one who was trying not to think of unpleasant things. There was something nice about avoiding unpleasant things together.
Given our proximity and position, it was inevitable that our bodies naturally rubbed against each other. If I wasn’t careful – of my behaviour, not his – then this had the propensity to get incredibly hot and heavy incredibly quickly.
On one hand, I was very into that idea.
On the other…
“Wade,” I said as I pushed myself gently to sitting.
He nodded, leaning forward to touch his forehead to mine. “I know.”
My voice wasn’t the only one with a little regret in it.
“It’s just…” I started.
He nodded again. “I know.”
“I don’t not want to.”
“Same.”
“But some pretty words…”
Another nod. “Just because we want to doesn’t mean we should.”
Now I nodded. “Right. Exactly. Not right now, anyway.”
His hands trailed to my hips. “Not right now.”
I gave him a quick kiss, then slid mostly off his lap. One of his arms was behind my body against the couch, the other lay on my leg.
“Good choice,” I sighed, feeling torn about how good a choice it actually was.
I heard him chuckle. “Probably. I haven’t got anything with me anyway.”
I looked at him in confusion. “What?”
“You know, safe sex,” he teased. “Or did you miss sex ed classes?”
I rolled my eyes with a rueful smile. “Oh, no. I was there. If I have to put a condom on another banana, I think I’ll rage quit.”
He snorted. “Not that you’d pass up the real thing.”
“Excuse me. Pot meet kettle?”
I felt him shrug as his nose dipped to my neck. “I haven’t actually slept with that many girls, Norah.”
“Oh, really?” I scoffed, totally not believing him.
He nodded. “Really.”
“What about all those girls in the hallway?”
He chuckled, like we were discussing some grand achievement. “Yeah. But a kiss isn’t sex, Norah.”
He did have a point. I turned on the couch to look at him. “All right. How many?”
“Are we swapping numbers?”
I smirked. “A true lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”
He gave me a crooked grin. “You’re not a lady.”
I grinned back. “Stop avoiding the question, Wade.”
He gave me a resigned nod. “Two.”
My mouth dropped open of its own accord and I stared at him in total shock. “What?”
“What?” He shrugged like it was nothing. “Two. Why? How many guys have you been with?”
“I don’t want to say.”
He startled for a second out of surprise. “What? Why not?”
“Suffice to say more than two.”
I made to face back to the tv, but he stopped me and tilted my chin to look at him.
“Why won’t you tell me? I’d have thought you’d relish the opportunity to lord one over me.”
“A guy with a big number is a hero. A girl with a big number is a slut,” I told him.
“That’s fucking bullshit,” he said, his voice hard and I actually baulked a little at the absolute venom in it. He obviously saw and forced himself to relax. “Sorry. I just… I hate that toxic bullshit.”
I lay my hand on his arm because I felt like he needed some kind of reassurance.
His shrug was kind of sad. “I just think we have enough reasons to feel shit. We don’t need to be dumping on each other for stupid things.”
The air around us seemed to swirl with so many unspoken things I could reach out and pluck one down to voice aloud. There were serious things. Things to lighten the mood. Some things that would do both. Being very aware of my SOILED status, I didn’t know if I could be light and serious just then, so I had to go with my gut. No strings didn’t mean no emotions.
“Is this… Do they have anything to do with the years of therapy?” I asked. “Or the unhealthy coping mechanisms?”
He looked at me and I saw the debate raging in his eyes. He didn’t know whether he should be honest with me or not.
“Yeah, maybe.”
I laced my fingers with his. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him.
“I thought we were only focussing on one of us?” His voice was small again, but his eyes held a little humour.
“I’m sure there’s enough room in our relationship for the both of us.”
His eyes lit up. “Big of you to call this a relationship.”
I narrowed my eyes on him sarcastically. “A friendship is a relationship,” I reminded him.
“True. It is.” He rubbed the back of my hand. “You admitting we’re friends?”
I looked at him, our heads resting on the couch as we faced each other, noses almost bumping. “I guess so.”
By the look in his eye, I knew he wanted to say something that would ruin the moment. To his credit, he kept his mouth shut. To mine, I didn’t shy away from it either.
“Provided you don’t dislike me anymore?”
“That you saying you don’t dislike me anymore?”
“I think it’s been well-established I don’t dislike you anymore…” I paused and sucked up the proverbial ‘it’ to admit my mistakes. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick.”
His eyes slid away for a moment. When they came back, he said, “I accept your apology.”
“That easily?”
He shrugged. “Two wrongs definitely do not make a right, but you’re not the only one to blame here. I wasn’t exactly the easiest guy to get along with.”
Wade’s phone vibrated a couple of times and he pulled it out to look at it. He then put it back down again.
“So, I guess I’m sorry, too.”
“You guess?” I smirked as his phone went off again.
He nodded solemnly. “I am sorry, too.”
His phone went off yet again and he looked at his phone screen.
“Do you need to get that?” I asked him, wondering who would be messaging him at that time of night in the middle of the week, and why. No scenario filled me with relief given what we’d been about to do.
He smirked as he turned the screen back off. “Nah. I’ve been arguing all week with my brother about the correct name for twiggy sticks.”
“What?” he asked.
“I just don’t know what to address first.”
“My brother, or the correct name for twiggy sticks?”
“Or how you’ve managed to argue about it for a week?”
Wade shrugged. “Our messaging is kind of random. Between me being lazy and his kids, we kind of just share posts with each other and message when we can be bothered.”
That didn’t totally help. “I forgot you have a brother.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Lucas. Eleven years older than me. Same dad, different mums.”
It was coming back to me. Kind of. “Lives in… I want to say Queensland?”
Wade grinned. “New Zealand.”
That was right. “Other family in Queensland?”
“Yep.”
“And what does Lucas think twiggy sticks should be called?”
“Biersticks.”
“What?”
Wade nodded. “I know! Like what in the actual hell is a bierstick?”
“A twiggy stick, presumably,” I said and Wade laughed.
“Yeah, okay. Fair point.” He looked me over. “How are you doing? I just realised I haven’t really asked you all night.”
I shrugged. “I think I agree with you.”
“Oh, yeah? About what?”
“Everything seems a little less shit when I’m with you.”
It was the truth, but the truth just reminded me that I was betraying Lisa by even wanting to be with Wade. It put a serious dampener on my mood.
As though Wade could sense the shift, he pulled me close and distracted me with kisses.
Eventually, easy conversation and delectable kisses had to come to an end, and I had to go home to try and get some sleep.
I didn’t think about how late I was getting home or how loud I was being until I’d pulled into the driveway and turned the car off.
After getting out, I pushed the car door closed as quietly as I could. The house was dark. I checked my phone; still no messages or calls from the parents wondering where I was despite the fact school started in about six hours.