I lose myself too. I let go of the meeting, of the SOS to Cam, of Danielle’s words, of my mom’s insatiable need to hook me up, of the stories Miranda makes me write, of my past. I shed them all. They are vapor, they are nothing, I am new again.
I am no longer that person.
Layla is gone as I am at once lost and found in a kiss like this. A kiss that has nothing to do with power, or games, or control. A kiss that simply has to be. His hands in my hair, then roaming down my back, then grappling at my hips. And all the while we are in this together, we both want this, we both need this, there is no uneven distribution of desire, or money, or want. His lips consume me with desperation, and soon he’s traversing my neck, and kissing the hollow of my throat, and I gasp quietly.
“Oh,” I say, but for me that’s everything because I don’t make noise, I don’t vocalize, I don’t let on when I’m turned on.
“Fuck, Harley,” he says, and grabs my ass and pulls me against him, so I can feel how much he wants this too. He licks his way up my neck, and I melt inside with longing as his lips brush my earlobe. As if he’s about to whisper something. Maybe tell me how much he wants to taste me and touch me.
But then his hands are on my shoulders, and he’s no longer holding me close. He’s holding me back. I’m standing here panting, lost in some sort of crazed moment of lust, and he’s suddenly all cool and calm as he says, “But I can’t. I can’t go there. And I have to get the fuck away right now.”
He grabs his backpack and leaves, the screen door swinging with several creaks.
He’s gone.
And I’m alone in this ridiculously romantic courtyard in the middle of New York. Hot and bothered and utterly left behind. Like an idiot. Like a stupid fucking idiot.
My phone buzzes. I grab it in milliseconds, hoping it’s Trey.
But it’s Cam.
Missing things? Missing me? That can be fixed in an instant, sweetheart. Tomorrow night. Bliss Bar. 7 p.m. Be there.
Chapter Six
Trey
I slam the door to my apartment, lock it and slide the chain.
As if I can sequester myself. As if I can shut myself off from her, and stay inside my home, far, far away from Harley. Like I’m sealed up and safe again.
But the thing is this….
She has to go to SLAA.
She was forced to go.
She’s being blackmailed.
I chose to go. No one made me. No one forced me. I guess you could say Mr. Thompson did when he found me making out with his wife in the elevator at my parent’s apartment building. I run my finger across the scar on my cheek, and the pain echoes, even months later as I head to the cramped kitchen. I don’t think I realized just how strong he was. Or how mad he’d be, but when his fist connected with my face, I felt his college ring rattle through every bone in my body.
They make the rings damn solid at Yale University.
Yeah, it hurt.
When you’ve been pummeled by a man who’s six-five, two-hundred-forty pounds and wears one of those big-ass class rings, I guess that’s how you manage a self-imposed monkhood for a year. The ring sliced my cheek apart. I could actually see several millimeters of the meat under the skin right after it happened. My mom sewed me up that evening without a word. The scar would have been much worse if I didn’t have that sort of access to one of the premier plastic surgeons in Manhattan. She wasn’t happy with me but what could she do? I was twenty, and she couldn’t control me. She could have cut me off from college, but she wants me in school more than anything. Besides, in my family, we deal with the practical. We shut the door to rooms that aren’t used, we stitch up cuts, we take painkillers to numb the day, and we don’t talk about things.
I didn’t talk about my brothers. Because they didn’t talk about my brothers. So why would they want to talk about why I was spending so much time with the married women in the swank Upper East Side building where they lived? But I knew I had a problem, and the cut on my face was my rock bottom. I didn’t need someone else to find the bottom of addiction for me. I fucking found it, and I decided to get my shit together after I spent the better part of my teenage years screwing married women in my building.
I knew what I was doing was messing me up. Had known it for a long, long time. Not because the sex was bad. It was good. It was great. It was the stuff of legend.
But as I toss my backpack on the floor, grab a cold beer from the fridge, and turn up the music on my iPod so I can blast Remy Zero throughout my whole apartment, I am also reminded that it was hollow.
That I was so disconnected from all of them. I was ghosting through life, taking what I wanted, stealing what others had.
But the one night with Harley was the closest I’ve ever felt to right. Maybe that sounds crazy, but I felt like we were both in it together, that we weren’t chess pieces for the other person to move around. We’d showed our cards and there was no bluffing.
That’s the problem, I realize, as I drink my beer, and the band sings about falling to the ground.
She can’t operate like that, and hell if I know if I can either.
So if I get caught up in her, and I will, I fucking will, what happens to me when she realizes she’s not ready? What if I’m just a quick fix to her, and she turns around and goes back to Cam? Or ditches me? And then I’m worse off.
Back to all my old ways.
To all the afternoons in high school I spent tangled up with Cassie Fitzgerald in her penthouse, or Elle Windsor in her husband’s town car, or even the sexy trophy wife – Sloan McKay – of one of the biggest hedge fund manager’s in New York. All while he was busy pulling millions, I was taking care of his wife in the bedroom since he didn’t anymore. She was an artist too, a painter, and the only one I ever felt an inkling of a connection with, the only one who remotely seemed like more than a conquest. She moved out of the building quickly though, and I moved on to the next woman.
Such a rush. Such a thrill. They got what they wanted from me. From how I made them feel. From the high of being the young guy who could turn them on.
If I walked into a frat house and told my story, I’d have high-fives six ways to Sunday. If my friends knew they’d make a statue for me, give me the chair at the head of the table in the cafeteria, build an honorary wing in my name and ask for blessings before any date with a girl, praying to Trey Westin, patron saint of Has A Way with Women.
It’s the tale that gets passed down from one generation of frat brothers to the next. Only there was more to my conquests than bagging the hottest babes.
There always is.
They were a way to forget.
I rub my hand absently against the trio of sunbursts on my shoulder, one of the tats that I designed myself a few months ago. To remember. To never forget. Then I toast heavenward, a futile toast, and finish my beer. The coldness and the fizz roots me back to the moment. Shakes me out of the past, the memories. If I spend too much time there, I’ll never move on. I need to start over tomorrow. See my shrink. Sort this out. Go back to being friends with Harley again. Because I can’t stand not having her in my life.
Almost as much as I can’t stand not kissing her.
I turn my head and sniff my shirt, and fuck…I can still smell her on me. Her wild cherry smell lingers all over my shirt. Her intoxicating, sexy-as-hell scent from when she was all snug against me. I close my eyes, inhale, and I am right back to thirty minutes ago in the courtyard, remembering how she touched me, kissed me, ran her hands in my hair.