Page 66 of Strum Me

Insightful fucker.

He reaches over and takes my hand and I ignore the spark that runs up my arm.

“Tell me, once and for all, why you can’t. I’ll listen. But you have to tell me.”

I gently pull my hand from his. Because he deserves to know. He deserves to know that it’s not him, that despite the cliché, it really is me. It is that I just can’t…can’t share. Can’t share him with anyone else. I never have wanted to, and I couldn’t live a life doing that.

“Because, I love you too much to share you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the women! The groupies! The talk show hosts! The ex-girlfriends texting you in the middle of the night and you disappearing off with them”

“Whoa whoa whoa, what?”

“You know.”

“I fucking hell do not. What ex-girlfriends? As far as I know, the only close thing I’ve ever had to an ex-girlfriend was you.”

His insistence on denying it grates at me and I jump out of bed, ignoring the fact that I’m dressed only in a nightie and panties.

“Brad! Stop. It’s bad enough that it happened, the least you can do is admit to it.”

“Oh my God. You are insufferable. Pretend I don’t know. Humor me, what did I do?”

“That night…that night, after we …after we had sex. You fell asleep, and all through the night you kept getting text messages from girls, girls I know you’d hooked up with, ‘Oh, Braddy, come see me, I’m home alone, blah blah blah.’ Then I wake up, and you’re not there. No note, no text. And the next thing I know, it’s three months later and you’re on tour, all over the news, pictured with a different girl every night!”

“Oh my God, you’ve got to be kidding me, right?” He actually has the balls to look surprised to be hearing all this.

“No. So, just…just stop. You broke my heat once already. I can’t have you do it again, Brad.”

“But Butter, I didn’t. Oh my God, I didn’t, I swear. I left to go get us some coffees and croissants. Our hangover cure, remember? And when I came back, Silas was there, with his fucking phone with your message telling him to come over and get back together.”

I shake my head at him, amazed he could be so stupid. So, I ask him.

“How could you be so stupid? I never wanted to get back together with him. I wanted to talk to make sure he knew it was a clean break. That it was done. I didn’t want him hanging around trying to get back together. Because…I was in love with you, asshole. Not that it mattered. Not a word, really Brad? After everything we’d been to each other, I understand if after you’d fucked me you didn’t want me anymore, but we were friends for four years. And not a word.”

Talking about it was a mistake. I’m looking at his face now, and all the pain is coming flooding back.

He’s staring at me like he can’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. So then he adds some that have the same effect on me. “I sent you a text. I sent you a text telling you I’d run into Silas. And telling you, for fuck’s sake…I told you, I practically begged you to come see me before we went on tour.”

“I didn’t get it,” I tell him. He wouldn’t lie about this, would he? What would be the point, after all this time?

“I don’t believe you.”

I pull away from him. All this time, I had thought that I was the one betrayed by him, I can’t believe he thought I’d done the same. How could we ever move on from this? So, I tell him, tell him what he should’ve known eight years ago.

“Believe me. If I had gotten your message, I would have been there. Rain, hail, shine, or fucking tornado I would’ve been there, Brad. Hell, I would’ve gone with you.”

“You didn’t want that. You’d said no to Silas.”

“Yes, because it was Silas. He wasn’t you.”

“Or maybe I wouldn’t have left,” he says, as if wishing he’d had the choice.

“Then where would you be today?” I ask him softly.

“Maybe with you.”