“Hey!” I call, spinning around. “I served this country!”
“Shut up,” someone else says, and I’m going to make another smart remark when I realize it was Jason. He’s shaking his head at me. “Don’t use that as an excuse.”
“It’s not an excuse,” I mumble. f*ck
, I’m wasted. And it’s not true that I don’t want to work. I do. I just don’t know what I want to do, exactly. “It’s a fact.”
“It’s also a fact that leaving the navy was your own free f*ck
ing choice, ass*ole
, so get over yourself.”
He’s got me there.
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“We should eat something,” Tag says, rubbing his stomach. “Steak, maybe.”
The hostess at the steakhouse we go into gives us a dubious look, but she seats us in a booth in the back, and by the time we’ve eaten senator-sized dinners, we’re all more or less sober. Not driving sober, but good to make it to the subway station.
I’m just upright enough to think that texting Ali is a good idea. Nobody else is sober enough to stop me.
S: I miss you.
She doesn’t reply. I stare at our messages all night, and for the next week, until I get drunk again with Wilson and delete the entire history.
I still miss her like f*ck
ing mad. But she doesn’t miss me at all, and that’s all there is to it.
Can’t get blood from a stone.
Can’t get love from a broken girl.
I know there’s something wrong with that thinking, but I’m too wound around the axle to see it any other way.
—twenty-nine—
Alison
S: I miss you.
I read this text message every single morning and every single night for two weeks.
It breaks my heart every single time, because my fingers ache to tap out the truth. I miss you, too. I don’t send anything, though, because the rest of the problem—that I really can’t handle how much he wants from me, how much I feel for him despite myself—remains true.
Every night, my body betrays me by dreaming of him. Erotic, filthy imaginings. Sometimes it’s what we did together. Sometimes it’s even more depraved acts we never got to. He ties me down and works me up until I’m begging him to take my ass. He spanks me until my bottom is black and blue. He makes me blow him in public.
That’s the most recurring dream, the public humiliation, and I’m sure a therapist would have a field day with my guilt for exploding at him in London, and how far my dream self is willing to go to make that up to him.
I’m more fascinated by the disturbing reality that my real self isn’t willing to do much at all.
When my thoughts wander in that direction, I force myself to get to work on my research. What’s done is done, and if I’m really that brutal, then I can be matter-of-factly mind-over-matter about it and move on.
It’s an early morning in June when he texts next.
S: Shameful admission: I deleted the history of our text messages.
I gasp when I read that. And where nothing else before worked, this has me firing back a reply before I think about it.
A: Oh no. Whatever will you wank off to now?
S: Secret videos I took of you. Sleeping. Other things.
I laugh out loud. It fades to a bittersweet sigh when I realize that, yeah, that’s definitely just a joke, and not for a second do I feel any panic about the implied threat.
A: If you ever want to see any of the dirty texts I sent you, I’ve still got the complete record
S: Is that a sideways booty call?
A: You want it to be?
S: No
S: Do you want it to be?
A: Maybe
As soon as I send it, I’m squirming in my chair. Damn it. That was not how that was supposed to go.
But it was still pretty hot.
S: Let me know if it gets desperate over there
A: That’s selfless of you
S: Your orgasms have always been my top priority
He’s kidding.
I’m kidding.
Right?
— —
Another week goes by, with a few more text exchanges. And I never intend to actually suggest he come over, until I’m up late one night and the squirming in my chair gets to the point where I’m thinking about heading to bed with my phone.
Damn it. If I’m going to do that, I might as well invite him over.
This is a terrible idea.
Definitely a mistake.
A: You busy?
His response takes just long enough that I start to worry about where he is at ten thirty at night.
S: Depends.
A: Wanna come over?
—thirty—
Scott
I have no idea why I’m letting her suck me back in.
I know she doesn’t want anything other than ex-sex, and I’m gonna be pissed about this at some point down the road.
It doesn’t stop me from heading over to her place anyway.
When she opens the door, it’s a punch in the gut how great she looks. She’s wearing sweatpants, low on her hips, and a girly t-shirt that skims her curves. Casual and f*ck
able and perfect.