What? He has got to be kidding me. I force myself to swallow.
“You have
never
had a one night stand? Mr. Wentworth, I find that very difficult to believe.” I take another sip.
Hayden shakes his head with palpable sincerity. “Honestly, Samantha. I have always found the concept of them very…degrading. I only ever sleep with somebody who I care about, have genuine feelings towards, chemistry––a link with.” I find myself concentrating raptly on his eyes as they become deeper, darker like a plain chocolate fondue––rich, glossy and compelling.
What do I say to that? He wants something more with me? Oh, no…I can’t do this––to me––to him. I suddenly feel smothered, my heart battering my ribcage and my thoughts are racing––doing eighty-five in a thirty mile zone. My head is spinning, and it is not an unwelcomed effect from the alcohol.
“What I told you, before it happened was sincere, Samantha. You have had a huge impact on me since you walked into my office. My days are now tolerable knowing that you are in them…knowing I get to see you.” Reaching his hand over the table, he seizes hold of the fingertips of my right hand. I flinch at the unexpected contact. However, I soon sink into the connection.
With widened, grave eyes, I watch him vigilantly. I’m a fish out of the water. My instincts are screaming at me to run, to remove myself from the position that could ultimately fuck me up more than I am already and save the risk of taking Hayden down with me also.
“Hayden, I…” my subconscious clutches her hands, pleading with me to do what she considers right. “I can’t do this, Hayden.” With a faint shake of my head, I slip my hand from under his.
“What do you mean? What can’t you do? I don’t understand,” he confesses with dubious creases marring his brow.
“I can’t be what you want me to be. I’m not that person.”
“I don’t believe that. What you are saying right now is out of fear…fear of experiencing something which could fail, which could hurt.”
“Excuse me?” I seethe. “How dare you? You have no idea…you don’t know me.”
He fists his hands through his hair and I see his eyes harden. “For God sake, Samantha, that is my point. I want to get to know you. I want you to give me a chance.” He lowers his hands back onto the table between us and cocks his head. “I want to know your likes and dislike, your favorite color, your guilty pleasures.” Extending his arm, the tips of his fingers softly skims over my own. I close my eyes and allow myself to fall victim to the tingles that immediately shoot up my arm. When I open them again, he has already drawn in his lower lip, his perfect teeth sinking into the pink flesh before letting it roll free. “I want to know who is hiding beneath this makeup…I want to know what it’s like to wake up next to you in the mornings.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Wentworth, you have no idea what you are talking about. You say that I am not surrendering because of fear, that I am using this, ‘I don’t need love’ ego to cover up the fact that I fear getting hurt…do you know what––” I shift to the edge of the pew and lean in across the table. I am greeted by his delicious scent and my stomach cinches. “––Damn fucking right I fear it. An animal gets burned when it goes into a fire; it evolves to finally realize that you stay the fuck away from it, no matter how enticing it may be. Fear is what makes you human; it’s what keeps you alert. It’s what keeps you––”
“––Running. Fear is what keeps you running. Dammit, Samantha,” he barks and the cutlery jingles and rattles against the china of the plates as he slams his hands down on the table in irritation.
Seeing this insistent, demanding side to him is doing absolutely nothing for defense. It just makes me want to pin him up against the booth, straddle his hips and force my tongue into his mouth to shut him up.
“I know fear––trust me, I really do. I stared it in the face the day you walked through my office doors, the first contact when you shook my hand. I felt that fear last night. My God, I’m feeling it right now. But I’m not running from it, because it is you. I am running towards my fear, Samantha…I’m running towards you.”
“Regardless, of fear and revelation, of going against your psychological defenses, Hayden––I just can’t. You are too much of a nice guy for me to tangle you up in the fuck-up web that is my life. I can’t hurt you like that…and I will not hurt you like that.” I recover my clutch purse that rests to my left on the pew and begin slipping myself out of the booth. “I’m sorry, Hayden. Thank you…for everything.” I push past the lump in my throat, and brusquely nod my appreciation for the chance that he gave me at work, for the flowers, and in all honesty, just for him being a genuinely charming, gorgeous, generous, and considerate man.
His mouth has fallen open in bewilderment and he looks on with hooded eyes. With every nuance of strength I have, I direct it solely on fighting the part of me that actually wants to stay, the part that wants to face that fear and walk towards the hot, entrancing flames of the fire in hope that I won’t get burned. But that’s just sheer naivety.
With the hefty sphere of reluctance forming in my chest, I will myself to pull my gaze away and flee from the booth, from the restaurant––from Hayden, not daring to even glance back, in fear of destroying us both, if I did.
“Samantha!”
As I open the cab door, I turn to face the location of the straining voice only to see Hayden jogging towards me, his floppy hair bouncing over his brow. I shake my head with a sadness that I have never felt before and grimace at the unexpected and unwelcomed emotions raging incessantly through me, claiming everything in its path like a virus.
God, I hate feeling like this. For fuck sake, just take it away.
Lowering myself into the cab, I hastily slam the door, hoping that his voice will land of deaf ears.
“Samantha!” I hear him again, his voice pained and tense.
But the cab soon pulls away into the traffic, and I hear a terse thump on the roof that makes me jolt and shudder. I turn and look out the back window and watch Hayden getting smaller and smaller. He fists his hands through his hair, over his face, rubbing his eyes before they find each other, and he locks them in supplication and lifts them to his lips. And then he is gone, completely out of sight, but far from out of mind.
I feel a wet tickle course a path down my cheek;
what the fuck am I doing? No man is worthy of my tears…
Irritated at myself for allowing such weakness, I brush the tear away with the back of my hand. Sinking into the sticky bench-seat of the cab, I stare broodingly out of the window, counting the trees that line the streets––and the minutes, until I’m home.
I open the apartment door and turn on the light switch to the right of the threshold. I place my purse on the dining table before strolling listlessly to the breakfast bar. An empty bottle of wine sits undisturbed on the counter, a note resting against it with Jessie’s printed handwriting.
Hope your date went well, sweetie. Gone to bed. I put a new track on the iPod.
See you in the morning, love you. Xx
If only she knew.
I saunter to the couch, and drop into the leather. Throwing my head back against the backrest I close my eyes and release a dejected sigh.
I have done him a favor; he will come to see that…eventually.
But the image of Hayden’s anguished expression haunts me––he chased after me, he tried to stop me. I contemplate the degree of humility that I lie beneath. My God… he didn’t deserve that.
My stomach compresses, my chest and heart is weighty, buried deep in drying cement. Why am I feeling like this? What is it I am actually feeling? Regret? Guilt? Confusion spawns the irritation and annoyance that heats my raging blood. I don’t understand these feelings––I can’t place my finger on it. If I could distinguish the emotion, then I would at least have an idea of how I could rectify it…but I don’t. I am baffled and left restless.
As I clench my teeth and ball my fists with white knuckle force, I relive the night over and over in my mind. His compliments, the way his thumb grazed my lip in a manner that I found disconcerting at the time, but now…his scent. It’s like I am obsessed…fixated on the incidents of the evening. His acknowledgement of me not wanting to be touched intimately when he offered his hand to me…his unwavering acceptance of it.
“Oh, what the fuck am I doing?”
I reach over to the left side of the couch, grasp the pillow and hold it to my chest. Tightly cinching at the velvety smoothness, I search for solace, for comfort. I am unfamiliar with this. After all of the things that I have done––the impulses I have surrendered myself over to freely in all my years––I have never felt this…cruel. Why him? Why am I suffering like this, for him?
I got to get out of here. I’ve got to clear my head of these thoughts…these recollections. I throw the cushion back onto the couch, and heave myself out of the plush material.
I quickly slip on my black leather jacket and recover my keys from my purse and the iPod that Jessie has left in the center of the dining table and swiftly leave the apartment.
Time has escaped me as I meander down the sidewalk. My only companion is that of my music ringing through the earphones. Oblivious as to where my journey will end, I pass the streetlamps that are methodically spaced along the walkway and casts burnish orange beams on to the ground. I push up the cuff of my jacket and glimpse down at my watch, 10:45 p.m. and unusually quiet for a Saturday night, with only a few people wandering the street and one or two cars passing by.
The late-night breeze chills me to the bone and I hug my jacket around me as the introduction of a new song caresses my ears. The sound of a bass drum and the beating of wooden pipes promptly relax me. The rasping voice of a female, gospel vocalist washes over me––pulling me in, captivating me from the very beginning, impelling me to listen. The lyrics send me into a daze and I become momentarily immobile as she warbles about knowing that she doesn’t walk on water, and that she will forgive herself for the way that she has been for so long.
I feel myself tremble as I am slowly consumed by realization as I listen to the lyrics which could have been written about me. My subconscious is perched on the edge of her seat, waiting for the metaphorical cent to drop.
The woman continues about feeling next to zero, and a mirage of all of the times I have been duty-bound to make my
Walk of Shame
––the dirty and undignified combinations of emotions that overwhelm me every time as a result of my promiscuous exploits. I don’t think it is possible to feel that degree of degradation and feel your self-worth lessen, than having exploited yourself, just because you want to feel desired. But the desire fades once the deed is done––nonexistent. You are just a tool in an aid to achieve erotic fulfilment.
As I cross the road and turn the corner, a silky, smooth male voice substitutes the females.
Time will steal your life, so hang on to your soul
, he preaches, and in a pressing moment of clarity, my eyes are no longer hazed…I can see clearly. The weight upon my chest is removed…I can breathe. Feeling suddenly alarmed and out of my comfort zone as the song comes to its crescendo, I franticly scan my surroundings. My eyes fill with tears of my revelation, the lump in my throat impossible to ignore. Adrenaline floods like gasoline through my body making my veins burn and tremble as my body is set alight…an intense, bright light––burning through the thickets and clearing the way for me to advance with my life. And my subconscious jumps from the edge of her seat, throwing her arms in the air as though the 49ers have scored the winning touchdown.
The reality is…I have to take responsibility for my actions––self-acceptance is the first milestone.
He
was the catalyst for my need to feel desired and my current attitude towards sex. But I am the one that pursued this approach.
He
isn’t the one to blame for the years I have wasted in a blur of promiscuity…I choose to become and continue with that perspective.
I rejected Hayden because I didn’t want him to get tangled up in my fucked-up web of thinking, and I didn’t want that guilt on my conscience…but I have already hauled him into it. I used him for my own gratification then discarded of him like all the others. And I am feeling guilty because of it––because he didn’t deserve it. I have freely walked into the two situations that I was trying to avoid.
Jessie was right;
sometimes music is the only way we can comprehend how we truly feel.
My revelation shifts the burden I have weighed down by for half a decade, and I take comfort in the liberation I now feel.
And as I allow the flow of tears that is my deliverance to water my soul, the Heavens open and acclaim me. I welcome the tiny, heavy, cold droplets that connect with my flesh leaving a stinging, prickling sensation beneath their settling. I tip my head back to the night sky; finding further comfort in the downpour––cleansing me of my tribulations, my predicaments and my past. Completely oblivious as to where my journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance has led me.
HAYDEN
“Thank you,” I rasp to the maître d' as he hands me back my platinum card, hastily pushing it back into my wallet, and then into my inner left breast pocket.
I can’t let her leave like this…not again.
Exiting 1300, I scan the street impetuously in desperate hope that I can stop her and have her listen to words of reason. Why does she always run from me? I cannot gauge the mixed messages that she is sending. She wants me––so much so, that she quits her job because she can’t contain the frustration of being around me and not yielding to it. She has me…then discards of me. She agrees to dinner so we can talk…but then flees when I am honest. How am I supposed to keep up with this woman?
My pulse quickens, and adrenaline spikes as I detect her opening the door to a cab. Thank God. “Samantha!” I call, my jacket flapping behind me as I run towards her.
She acknowledges me, yet she shakes her head and sinks into the car.
“Samantha!” I repeat my words, which are weighted and fraught with urgency. My hand makes contact with the roof of the car as it pulls away from the sidewalk, in an attempt to halt the driver from progressing any further. But it makes no difference. The cab pulls away. Samantha glances back at me through the rear window.