I turn the page and read the last entry in the journal. As soon as I see the date, my stomach lurches.
December 23rd
I did it. Cut the cord.
I feel more broken without her than I ever did when we were together.
What the fuck have I done?
I feel so wrong, and yet, part of me knows I had to do it.
If we’d stayed together I would have systematically broken her. I’d have tried not to and hated every moment of it, but I would have. She’d have spent all her time defending her actions, reassuring me, putting out fires she had no hand in starting.
I couldn’t bear doing that to her.
I tell myself I want her to move on and be happy, but petty fucking creep that I am, I really don’t. I want her to pine for me and not let another man touch her. I want to be magically cured of all the shit that runs through my brain on a daily basis and become the man she deserves.
But most of all, I just want to be with her. Especially after last night.
Jesus fucking Christ. Last night.
I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when she stood in front of me, thinking I didn’t love her, I couldn’t stop myself. My brain was screaming that it was a bad idea, but my body wouldn’t listen.
If anything, it made things worse, because now I’ll always know what I’m missing. The first time we made love, I was so obsessed with being gentle, I couldn’t let myself go. I didn’t have that problem last night.
I wanted to consume her. Brand my name on every part of her body.
By the time we were done, I think I succeeded.
The trouble is, she also branded me.
Last night, I cried in her arms. I don’t usually cry but I couldn’t stop it.
Lying in bed with her, I felt like one of those animals whose leg is caught in a trap, knowing if I wanted to survive, I’d have to gnaw off part of myself and leave it behind.
That’s how I feel now. Like I’ve carved out a huge chunk of my heart and left it with her.
Fuck, it hurts like hell. But I know it was the right thing to do.
She doesn’t see it like that.
I hope one day she will.
I almost laugh, but there’s too much simmering anger to allow it.
When I look up he’s right in front of me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so serious.
“I’m not him anymore, Cassie. Never will be again. You have to know that.”
I nod. Every day, I understand that more.
“From the moment I met you, it was all about you. I just tried to deny it.”
“And now?”
He gives me a hopeful smile. “Now I know I was a deluded asshole.”
I nod. “You were.”
“I know.”
“I mean, really.”
“I’m not arguing with you.”
We stare at each other, and the push and pull of how we are these days makes me disoriented.
“So, what do we do now?” he asks and glances at the book in my hand.
I pick up my wine glass and drain it. “I guess we have dinner. Then . . . I don’t know. See what happens.”
*
Dinner is delicious. Conversation is full but tense. I drink too much wine. It helps me relax.
The thing is, relaxed is dangerous around him. Makes me think I’m ready for things. Builds a different kind of tension. One that has nothing to do with our past and everything to do with the here-and-now of us. The Cassie and Ethan who lapse into silence every few minutes because our brains are too distracted by each other to speak.
Instead, we stare. Avoid touching. Stare some more.
Gentle music plays as he leads me to the couch. The lights are dim, but he sees everything. Studies every movement. Watches me exhale and makes me tingle with need. He squeezes his eyes shut and drops his head back. We both struggle to stay at opposite ends of the couch.
“I should go,” I say, more out of self-preservation than anything.
He sighs. “That is both the best and worst idea in the world. You should get out of here while you still can. My noble intentions to take it slow with you only go so far when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He turns to me and his pupils are so dilated his eyes seem black. “Like you want to make every sexual fantasy I’ve had about you for the past three years a very dirty reality.”
“How dirty are we talking?”
“So dirty we’d have to do it in the shower.”
I clench my jaw against a rush of lust. “Wow.” He’s good at shower sex. I remember.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”
“No.”
He exhales. “Fuck. I’m calling a car for you before I lose all self-control.”
We both stand, and I stare blatantly when he adjusts himself.
“Can I borrow some of these?” I ask and gesture to the journals.
“Take as many as you want. From now on, I’m an open book. Even past-me has no secrets.”
While he pulls out his phone and dials for a car, I pick up a selection of journals. I purposely avoid the ones from our senior year. I can’t even look at them without breaking into a sweat. It’s a safe bet I’m going to need a lot more to drink before I tackle them.
He walks me to the door, and with every step the desire to leave him lessens. He leans forward and grabs the handle as his chest presses against my shoulder. For long seconds, he stays there, not opening the door. Just pressing against me and breathing.
“Cassie, I’m going to ask you some questions now, and I really need you to answer ‘No’ to them. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
He inhales, and I feel the tip of his nose graze the side of my neck. I close my eyes and shiver as I press back into him.
“Will you stay with me tonight? In my bed?”
He can’t—how can he . . . ?
“Ethan—”
“All you need to say is ‘No’. That’s it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “No.”
“Will you let me peel off your clothes and put my mouth on you? All over you? Taste all the parts I’ve been dreaming of since we’ve been apart?”
Jesus.
Breathe.
“No.”
“Do you want me?”
“No.”
Lies.
“Do you love me?”
“No.”
All of it.
“Will you stop me if I pin you against the wall and kiss you like my life depends on it? Which it kind of does.”
My heart kicks into overdrive. We both stop breathing.
Finally, a truth.
“No.”
In a second he’s pressed me back against the wall. Our mouths are open and desperate. Then his hands are on my ass as he lifts me. I wrap my legs around his grinding hips and gasp as I drop the books and my bag so I can anchor my hands in his hair. I open myself up to one tiny corner of my need for him, and let that part grip his shoulders and biceps as he works himself against me.
“Fuck. Cassie . . .”
There’s too much of him, all straining, all hard. The deep parts of me ache for him the most. Not just my body. It’s more than that. Some parts spark. Others melt. A flux of chemistry and catastrophe, the same compulsive need that keeps bringing us back together.
A car horn blares. He freezes and pants against my neck while his muscles slowly uncoil beneath my hands.
“You probably should have said ‘Yes’ to that last one,” he says, lips against my throat.
When he lowers me to my feet, I can barely stand. “Probably.”
He picks up the journals and my bag and opens the door, then escorts me downstairs to the waiting taxi.
&n
bsp; When I’m inside, he leans in and kisses me gently on the lips. “Thank you for coming.”
I smile. “I didn’t quite—”
“To dinner.” He smiles and kisses me again.
“Oh, that. Thanks for having me.”
“Uh, I didn’t quite—”
“We could do this all night.”
“Is that an offer? Because I could send the taxi driver away and take you back upstairs.”
I smile. “Goodnight, Ethan.”
He kisses me one more time, lingering this time. I almost forget why I have to leave.
“’Night. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He closes the door, and the taxi pulls away.
When I get into my apartment and collapse on the bed, I can still feel all the places he touched me. I turn off the light and strip as I let my hands wander, needing to finish what he started or I won’t be able to sleep.
I don’t mean to close my eyes and picture him, but I do. Of all the many faces I’ve seen over the years, the expression that’s clearest in my memory is Ethan’s when he’s touching me. How his mouth drops open in wonder as he brings me pleasure.
It’s that face that lingers behind my eyelids. I pretend my hands are his, and when I cry out in my dark room, I have to stop myself from saying his name.
I’m on the verge of dozing off when my phone buzzes with a message.
I laugh. He always did know me too well.
My laughter sounds way too loud in my silent room, and I realize it’s the first time that’s happened in a very long time.
I’m about to put my phone down when another text arrives.
He signs it with a smiley face, and I snort with laughter. After waiting to make sure we’re really done this time, I snuggle down into my bed. His journals sit on my nightstand, grey in the half-light.
I know they’re probably going to bring up more questions than answers, but I think that inside their pages, I might find some sort of closure. If we’re to even have a chance of being together, I know I have to find a way to forgive him.
The problem is, I’ve had more practice hating him than loving him.
TWELVE
HOPEFUL INDIFFERENCE
Six Years Earlier
Westchester County, New York
The Grove
Two weeks.
Two weeks without talking to him. Two weeks in which every glance has been furtive and fleeting. I can’t say his effect on me is lessening, but I’m certainly getting better at ignoring it.
It’s only when I’m forced to look at him that my control wavers. When he stands in front of the class to perform, the cell-deep magnetism that draws me to him kicks into overdrive and tries to unstitch my resolve.
It’s in those moments, when all I can think of is how much I still want him, that the cast iron around my heart threatens to bend. But then, I dial up my bitterness, and just like that, anger is my insulation. It allows the lust to drain away like murky bathwater.
His performances are consistently good, but I roll my eyes when he continues to hold back, keeping those last few fragile pieces of himself safely hidden away, stifled from either shining or shattering.
When he finishes, I clap with everyone else, but I’m applauding his self-delusion more than his performance.
Bravo for faking it yet again, Ethan.
You’re a perfect counterfeit copy of someone I thought I loved.
*
We’re singing loudly. Twirling and dancing after having smoked some of Lucas’s home-grown pot. Class doesn’t start for another half-hour, and I’m glad because it’s been so long since I laughed, I don’t want it to end.
I don’t know how I know the words to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”, but I do. We all do.
We’re obnoxious and off-key, but some of the weight I’ve carried in my chest since the breakup is finally lifting. Miranda twirls me toward Jack. He picks me up and passes me to Lucas. Aiyah hugs us both and strokes my hair before Lucas yells a heads-up to Connor then throws me into his arms. Connor laughs as he overbalances and then we’re on the floor. Everyone’s laughing. Connor has his arms around me, and as I laugh with him, his smile drops slowly, like paint dripping off a canvas.
He stares at me, and before I know it, I’m not laughing anymore, either. His face is too close. His expression is asking for too much as he sings to me about being too good to be true.
For long seconds I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he flops onto his back and pulls me close into his chest. People dance and sing around us, like we’re the centerpiece in some bizarre pagan ritual, and even though it feels wrong to be in such an intimate position, I stay there. He’s warm and smells nice, and I like the way he gently strokes my arm.
But I don’t want him.
When Ethan dumped me, I filled all the holes he left with concrete. It protects me against feeling too much, but that’s all there is now. No room for anything or anyone else.
I close my eyes. All I get are images of Ethan.
I feel claustrophobic.
“Hey, you okay?” Connor’s worried.
His voice is wrong. His face is wrong. I want to be in other arms. Have a different heartbeat pounding under my hand.
I stand and stagger toward the water fountain.
I drink for forever, and then just let the water flow over my lips and tongue. I feel desiccated.
“Cassie?” Connor’s there, so caring and nice. So different from Ethan. “You okay?”
I nod and try to smile. “Yeah, fine. Just a bit dizzy, I guess.”
No, that description’s too simple. I have full-blown emotional vertigo. I’m completely turned around. Upside-down and inside-out.
I hate how freaking wrong I feel.
I let Connor put his arm around me and escort me to class. I let Ethan see as he hugs me when we arrive. I allow myself to smile when Ethan’s face transforms into a storm cloud of the darkest dimensions.
Good. Let him be pulled inside-out, too.
At least now my wrongness has company.
*
“Miss Taylor?”
Erika is watching me with concern. I’ve been standing near her desk, staring for minutes at the group assignments listed on the board, unable to process what she’s done.
She knows about Ethan and me. How could she not when everyone is still buzzing about it like flies on a rotting carcass? It’s been over two months, and yet there’s no way she could be completely oblivious to the thrill of expectation that still ripples through the air every time we step into a room together. It’s as if everyone’s praying that we’ll fight. Or fuck. Or both.
Is my façade so flawless that she believes there’s any chance in hell I can perform with him again?
I glance at Ethan. He’s staring at the whiteboard with a similar shell-shocked expression.
“Miss Taylor?” Erika says, louder. “Is there a problem?”
Most people have packed up and left, but a few friends remain and go silent, as if frightened that if they move they’ll scare off the drama that’s about to happen.
“Erika, I just . . .” How can I say this without everyone—him—realizing how weak I am? “The groups for s
cene work. I’m not sure I can be in that group.”
Jack and Aiyah are lingering near the door. Lucas is pretending to fiddle with his shoelace. Phoebe and Zoe are keeping one eye on their phones as they slyly watch us. Erika politely tells them all to get out.
Then she turns to Ethan.
“Mr. Holt? Perhaps you should join us. I have a feeling this might have something to do with you.”
Ethan tenses his jaw and unfurls himself from his chair. As he slings his backpack onto his shoulder and walks over, goosebumps prickle my skin.
“Now,” Erika says when he’s standing as far from me as he can without making me look like a plague carrier, “why exactly can’t you work in the group to which you’ve been assigned, Miss Taylor?”
She knows, yet she wants me to say it. In front of him. Sometimes I think she enjoys watching us squirm.
“I just don’t think me and . . .” I can’t say his name. If I say it, both he and Erika will see how not-over-him I am. “I don’t think having both of us in a group would be very fair to other members. There would be tension.”
Erika looks between us. I don’t look at Ethan, but I sense his frown.
“Mr. Holt? Do you agree?”
“Yes. There would definitely be tension.”
“So, you both expect me to give you preferential treatment because you’re no longer dating and working together would be uncomfortable?”
Neither of us answers. That’s exactly what we expect, but saying so would make us seem like selfish assholes.
Erika sighs. “I want to make it clear that during your careers, you’ll have to work with many people you don’t like. People you’d rather avoid. But you can’t run away every time things become difficult. Plus, if I do this for you, I’ll be setting a precedent that will quickly become a major pain in my ass.”
Ethan and I say nothing. Our silent pleading speaks volumes.
Erika sighs again. “Because of the mix of characters I’ve assigned within each group, the only person I could swap Mr. Holt with would be Mr. Bain.” Ethan tenses. “Would that be acceptable to both of you?”
Ethan asks, “What kind of scenes are we doing?”
Erika’s on to him. “Does it matter? Either you want to stay in Miss Taylor’s group or swap with Connor. What will it be?”