Authors: Ember Chase
Isaac
I fucking hate airports, always have. The fact that
Gloria insisted I come here to pick her up was not a good sign. I paid her driver $500 to cancel at the last minute so I wouldn’t be trapped in the back seat with her.
The most horrible part of all of this is that I’m actually excited to see her. I’m dreading it even more, but that doesn’t help the guilt. I’m already carrying just about as much
of that as I can take from hurting Maya this morning, even though it seemed to make her feel a lot better. She knows I’m attached and I don’t think the lack of romance helps very much. I’ve tried to tell her the whole story, I know she needs it, but the words don’t come out.
Leaning against my car, I check the
TAG Heuer watch Glory gave me for my sixteenth birthday. She should be here already and if she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to move the car. Chauffeurs earn their fucking money, this traffic is driving me insane.
When I look up, she’s standing in fro
nt of me, smiling. I smile back way too excitedly, inwardly cursing myself and apologizing to Maya. Before Glory can say anything, I hug her
so
hard, burying my face in her shoulder. That surprised her and she’s motionless in my arms for a moment before hugging me back and cupping the back of my head. I’m so glad my mother showed up instead of my former lover.
I hold her for far too long and only let her go because the car behind us
blares his horn. Her hand lingers on my hair as she leans away, pinching her fingers together and playfully tugging at nothing.
“I like it,” she says. It’s my mom’s voice, too. I watch the surprise on her face morph into concern as my jaw clenches and trembles, my eyes betraying me and filling with tears. She reaches up
to stroke my cheek and I exhale raggedly, grabbing her wrist and leaning into her hand. “Isaac, honey… it’s going to be alright,” she soothes me. The car beeps again and the driver shouts something.
“Fuck you!” I screech, flipping him off.
Glory laughs and shakes her head. “We do need to get the hell out of here.” I grab her bags and toss them into the trunk. “Where’s Ethan?”
“I gave him the day off. I’m not completely useless.” Though I’m starting to feel like it as I try to pull out into the crawling traffic. “How was your flight?”
“Miserable. And they lost three of my bags.”
“Here I was thinking you were traveling light.”
She shoves my shoulder playfully. “I’ve been gone for more than a month!”
“Did you have a nice trip?”
“It was okay.
Exhausting
, though. But I think we got everything hammered out, hopefully I won’t have to go back for a while.” That’s disappointing and comforting at the same time.
Fuck
.
Glory’s too afraid to ask my how my summer was, so the rest of the ride home is filled with a bunch of business talk I don’t give a shit about, though the little bit of sightseeing she did sounds pretty cool. She’s also painting again, which is a
really
good thing. She starts chattering about an employee that traveled with her, stopping right before she makes it crystal clear that they’re fucking, but I figured it out as soon as she said his name.
New boyfriend.
I wonder if it’s serious. That could be good for me, but it will complicate things with Roger. Not that he actually has a chance in hell with her, he never will. He’s just too nice and I’d imagine far too boring in bed. Or perhaps loving is the better word, I didn’t understand that until now. Glory doesn’t want that, she’d like to, but she doesn’t. I’m really a shithead for leading him on, but he’s going to stay hung up on her until the day he dies anyway, how much harm could a little hope do? A lot, probably. Too bad. I need him to play his part.
We pull into her driveway. I used to draw on this pavement with sidewalk chalk. My heart goes into overdrive and it’s hard to breathe. I can’t hide it from her
, either and I know I shouldn’t try. Her lips part when she glances over at me. She does look guilty, and that makes my own guilt even worse. She might deserve it, but I don’t care. I hate hurting her like this. Lying to her. Using her.
She remodeled the kitchen. Thank God, that will make it a lot easier. And she even put a pizza oven in, that will be fun to play with.
The steel countertops make me flash on the apartment and the last time I fucked Maya in the kitchen, holding her head down as she went limp, neither of us concerned if it hurt her in the slightest. Until afterwards when I ran away and left her alone, then it nearly killed me. I’ve done a lot worse things to Gloria under this roof.
“I didn’t believe Roger until I saw your face.”
He called her, just like he said he would. Maybe I can trust the bastard. “He told you about rehab?”
“Yes. Don’t get pissed.”
“I’m not. I guess he saved me the trouble.”
“He also
told me…”
C’mon don’t make me say it
. “You’re having panic attacks when you try to have sex now?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, looking up at her sheepishly. The shame isn’t hard to fake, but it’s from being a liar, not a weakling that can’t keep it up. “Something like that.”
“At least it wasn’t just me,” she says, referring to the last time two times I saw her. “He
prescribed
celibacy, for lack of a better term. How do you feel about that?”
“Relieved.” I wince when I say it, peeking at her through one eye.
“That’s fine.” Obviously more than a little insulting, but I think she means it.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. But… it’s not just with me, though, right?”
“No, it’s not you.”
Her eyes grow serious. Mom’s fading into the background. Shit. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
About a thousand things, actually
. “Do you really want the gory details about me dealing with erectile dysfunction at 21? This is humiliating enough as it is, Glor.” It’s so ironic. I’ve practically had a non-stop raging erection since I saw Maya’s face. Thankfully, it’s nowhere to be found right now, because she glances at my groin.
“How did you get through that last job?”
“I spent most of my time watching her clean. She never got the hang of it, actually,” I laugh. “Fucking her was okay at first, not so much towards the end.”
“Did you hurt her, Isaac?”
“I always hurt them.”
“You know what I mean.” She’s getting angry,
her voice raising. Why does she keep asking me this?
“That’s not what happened. Why do you think she made it that long?” Glory lets out a relieved breath that makes me uneasy. “I couldn’t go that far, I shouldn’t have
agreed to do it at all. I did such a shit job, Luke will probably send her to someone else and I’ll be even more of a laughing stock.”
“You’re not a laughing stock,” she says with genuine sympathy, leading me out of the kitchen. I expected the living room to be different
, she brings in the newest, hottest Interior Designer every year or so. But it’s still her house and I still don’t want to be here. “You just need a break.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re home now, that should really help.” It’s the total opposite and she doesn’t even suspect it. I’m not sure if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself or she just doesn’t know me.
“Yeah, I think it will,” I lie.
“Do you want me to cook or should we order something? I’m starving.”
“Don’t you want to play with your new pizza oven? I had it installed a few weeks ago, just for you.”
I smile involuntarily as a weight lifts off my shoulders. Mom’s back. Her staff isn’t, though and I can tell she’s more than a little disappointed that the night isn’t turning out like she wanted. But it is what I needed, I can’t believe how easy this is. We chop and laugh, stuffing ourselves with my creations.
It feels like it did when I was younger. Before we started
having sex on our own, back when we only did it for him and dropped it as soon as we got home. And I’m dying to tell her
everything
. The Glory back then always loved to hear about my latest crush, even though she had to gently discourage me from pursuing it. That bothered her so much, back then she didn’t think I was a monster. But I did, and I never dared to hope that a girl would want me if they knew what I was, that I could actually be what someone needed. Now it’s all I think about.
The Glory back then would have been so happy for me. But
soon she starts talking about all the charity events and fancy dinners she’ll be going to soon. She starts thinking about her friends and frenemies, about how I fucked every single one of them just to throw it in her face. God, I was such a whore, I was determined to hurt her as much as she hurt me and I succeeded. The bridge didn’t burn, but it’s still warped and smoldering. And she hasn’t forgiven me yet, not even close. She doesn’t have to bring it up, I can see it on her face, the way her laughing mouth tightens into a straight line when she talks about Mitchell’s Halloween party. It just gets worse from there.
Now that I’m here, she
’s starting to remember just how pissed off she is at me. I didn’t come crawling back because I want her, I came crawling back for help. Her anger isn’t what’s worrying me the most, it’s the fact that she doesn’t trust me. At all. I don’t really blame her, it’s not like I’m telling her the truth. After the third jab at me, I can’t take it anymore.
“
Look, Glory I’m sorry,” I blurt out. She stops mid complaint and stares at me, shocked. “About all of it. All of them. Mostly about hurting you, it fucking kills me to this day.”
“It does?”
“Yes. It really does. I could lie and say that I didn’t want to hurt you, but I did. That was the only reason I did any of it, that was the whole fucking point.” I never thought it would come back at me like this. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, I don’t deserve it. I honestly can’t believe you even still speak to me, let alone let me come home.”
“Isaac…”
“I regret everything.
Everything
. I was just a stupid, angry kid, easily manipulated.”
“Did he push you to do it?”
“He definitely encouraged it. His approval was extremely important to me then. He was fighting to get the upper hand with you. He used me as a weapon and I let him. I didn’t understand what it was going to do to me. All I saw was red.”
“You have to understand why I did what I did by now,
right? Or do you still hate me?”
“
You still don’t get it. I
never
hated you. Losing you was the worst part. I didn’t want that baby, I was eighteen years old. I wanted
you.
All for myself, I always have.” Take a deep breath and fucking sell this thing. You don’t have a choice. “I always will.” I force my feet to step towards her. “I should have come back years ago, before I started to completely lose myself. Hell, I
did
lose myself, I don’t know who I am anymore. I need you. I should have admitted it earlier, but you know how I am.”
She smiles at me and closes the gap between us, a slightly smug grin twisting her lips as she rests her hand on my shoulder.
The eyes looking up at me mean one thing and one thing only, and there’s nothing maternal about it. “I know how you are.”
No, you don’t. Maya does
. “I can’t,” I whisper. She huffs and rolls her eyes, all of the progress I made slipping away. I catch her by the wrist as she turns to flee, digging my fingers in hard, the way she likes it. She gasps and leans into me. “What, you think I don’t want to bend you over right now and work out some of my control issues?” The cold voice is her favorite, it turns her on. It makes Maya worry about me.
“So why don’t you?”
“Because I can’t. This shit Roger has me on makes my dick fucking useless. It’s a side effect, but that’s the reason I’m on it.”
“How long will it take to wear off?”
“A while, but I have no intention of stopping. And if I did, you wouldn’t want me anyway.”
Her eyes rake over my shirt, begging me to take it off. “You know that isn’t true.”
“
It is
,” I snarl. “I want to fuck you, but I don’t want to choke you. I don’t want to call you my bitch, I want to tell you I’m in love with you,” I whisper, the words searing my tongue.
I’m so sorry Maya
.
“We don’t have to do that right away.”
“It will crush me if you fake it. I can’t handle seeing the disappointment on your face.”
“You’ve been playing with girls for too long. You need a woman now. You’ll get your mojo back quicker than you think, Isaac.”
“Not like that.” I can’t say the things I want to say, scream them. I’ll never be able to tell her how much that fucked me up. The way I cried until I fell asleep after every time when we first started. The way it made me hate myself until I stopped feeling anything at all. I became a machine and the only thing that mattered was pleasing her. “I don’t know if we’re compatible anymore and I can’t really bear to think that we’re not even though it’s staring me in the face. I can’t handle the idea that I went too far and burned that bridge. That I’ll never have you.”