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ONE MONTH LATER
There were so many times in my life that I wished I could think less. Feel more. Now I wanted neither. I felt like all I had done for thirty days straight was turn around and around my relationship with Cain. Every word. Every touch. Every smirk on his face and every flash of desire in those ice-blue eyes.
I couldn’t shake any of that.
But even worse, I couldn’t stop feeling. Feeling desire, longing, loneliness.
Love.
I didn’t expect to hear from Cain, but I was still disappointed when I didn’t. I spent a lot of nights in my apartment fighting an internal battle with myself as the temptation to text him grew stronger and stronger. At first, throwing myself into my schoolwork had been distracting enough. Numbers soothed me. Then I had decided to let my fixations just do their thing. I retraced my steps, I counted ceiling tiles endlessly, I monitored my neighbor’s TV volume, mentally noting when he took it up over 40. I grabbed onto any routine, any calculation that I could just to avoid thinking about Cain and how he had not even reached out to me once.
Nothing.
In my ever-present logic I had thought he would be quiet during the day but that I would hear from him at night, when he was drinking. That he would drunk-text me. I had frankly been counting on that.
When it never happened, I was shattered all over again. Rejected all over again.
At night, I lay awake trying to figure out how to let go. It wasn’t working. I had finally taken to working out after dinner to exhaust myself so I could fall asleep more readily. Me, working out. It was ridiculous. Nerd girl in the gym tested all my germophobia but I did it anyway because fixating on someone else’s sweat on an elliptical was actually preferable to fixating on Cain.
It also helped to quiet my aching desire. What a cruel irony that my sexual awakening at the hands of Cain meant that my lust was wide awake and looking to party and I was back to square one. Getting myself off in the shower. My water bill was going to be outrageous.
Even in my darkest moments I had debated joining a dating app but had the sense to realize you can’t chase the dragon. No one was going to give me what I needed right now.
One Saturday I found myself throwing on basketball shorts that I had bought to feel serious about exercise and decided to go for a walk. The walls of my apartment were closing in on me, and my friend Cassie had canceled our plans to go to lunch. I was grabbing my keys when there was a knock on my door.
When I looked through the peephole my heart almost stopped. It was Cain standing in the hallway. Looking sober, solemn. Sexy. God, he was so sexy. My heart squeezed and I tried to weigh the pros and cons of talking to him, reopening all those deep, painful wounds.
In the end, I couldn’t resist. There was no way. It was the pull of something so elemental there was no way the intellect could control the physical draw of my body to his. I slowly pulled the door open and tried to keep my expression neutral. I failed miserably, I was sure.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t answer that. He did rake his eyes over me, head to toe, his nostrils flaring. “You look beautiful, Soph. Just beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Puzzled, I studied him. I wanted to be angry and I was, but mostly I felt sadness for what we could have been. Or rather, what I had wanted us to be. The urge to touch him was profound. He looked different. There were no dark circles under his eyes. He had gained a few pounds of hard-packed muscle. He stood straight, not the slightly slumped shoulders he had when he was hungover. Mostly startling though was the clarity in his eyes. They were brighter, sharper. His voice sounded smoother, less gravelly.
“You look good,” I said, because it was true. I knew now why I hadn’t heard from him in thirty-one days. It was obvious. He’d been drying out. But would I have heard from him otherwise? I wanted to think now I would have if he had been able to.
We had left it at goodbye and I had avoided going anywhere in Camden where I might see him or his brother. Then I had returned home to my apartment and tried to resume my life as if he had never been.
Which had been impossible. He’d been in my dreams every night, making love to me, slowly, sensually. I had once told him I couldn’t spend the whole night with him, but in a way, I’d been spending every night with him since.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Thanks. I’ve been in rehab. Learning to self-soothe. Without alcohol.”
My heart squeezed. He remembered our conversation that first night. And he had gotten help. That made me so happy for him. “What’s your pacifier?” I asked, curious. It couldn’t be easy to replace alcohol. It had been his best friend, his coping mechanism.
“Thinking about you.”
Tears instantly appeared in my eyes and I was mortified. I hadn’t meant to do that. But for him to say he had been thinking about me…it was overwhelming.
“I’m glad you decided to get help. Like I said, you look good,” I said. My throat felt tight, a myriad of emotions rushing over me.
“Thanks. Can I come in, just for a few minutes?”
I started and backed up. “Of course, yes. Come in. What are you doing in Cambridge?” I gestured for him to come in, my heart starting to race. He wasn’t just passing through. The only explanation was he had come to see me.
“I’m on a day pass. I have to go back to rehab. I’m doing a full ninety days because I think it’s pretty obvious I need it.” He stepped into my apartment, glancing around at his surroundings. “But I had to see you.”
“Come have a seat.” I felt nervous. My palms were sweating. Did Cain being sober change everything? Anything? I wasn’t sure. I pushed aside some books on the couch and sat down. I patted the cushion next to me. I wanted him near me. I wanted to touch him so bad. I wanted to feel his arms around me.
