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I flush with embarrassment at my little disappearing act. “Lucas. He’s been seeing her. For months. She approached him at a bar, we had just broken up.. Can you believe that I’d seen her walking into his place twice and didn’t even realize it was her?
“Lucas?” he asks in disbelief. I still can’t believe it myself.
“He didn’t know who she was until the day after you left for LA and he overheard…her talking to someone about you.” I don’t want to say her name again.
“He texted me this morning. I didn’t see it until we landed. He was frantic about the news he’d been seeing, and he was scared that somehow, she’d used him to get close to you. I still don’t know what she wanted with him, but he was ready to give her up. He invited her to breakfast and then shared his location with me. So, I called Reena and told her I was going to kill that crone.”
Bile rises in my throat, and I take a few deep breaths before I continue. Graham is staring at the table, his head shaking back and forth.
“She told me she took your virginity,” I grind out. He flushes hot and red. His eyes widen with surprise before they narrow defensively.
“It didn’t mean anything and … I wasn’t your first either.”
“But it should have meant something.” He looks at me wearily like I’m telling him what he already knows. “I wish it had been me,” I add.
“Me, too,” he whispers without looking at me.
Suddenly, I can’t look at him either. But I want him to know what sent me over the edge. “When she told me that … It was like being hurled back in time, at the speed of light. Suddenly, I was back in your apartment, five years ago. And I was enraged.” My hand clenches into a fist at the memory. I stare up at the fluorescent light on the ceiling in amazement. “I was so mad at you. And the thing I resented more than anything was that you had deprived me of giving my virginity to my soul mate.” I wince at the agony I’d been in for the year following our fight. I look up at him then. He looks mesmerized. He doesn’t move a muscle; he’s just watching me like he used to when I read to him sometimes in our hammock.
So, I tell him the story
“Most people lose their virginity before they meet their soul mate. I also know that some people never meet their soul mate. They go on to have perfectly happy lives. Not me … I’m a fucking romantic. I wanted it all.” I shake my head in disgust at how naïve I’d been. How head-over-heels in love I’d been.
“I met my soul mate. And, then I lost him. And my virginity stopped feeling important. What did it matter who it was, where it was ... if it wasn’t you? When I let Lucas fuck me in the back seat of his car, less than two hours after I met him … it had seemed a fitting end to a meaningless token.
His eyes fall to the table. His shoulders slump.
“I know, it’s sad, right?” I sigh wearily and lean back in my chair, fatigue starting to seep in now that my heart wasn’t racing anymore.
“Lucas is a nice guy. He’s not perfect, but he was good to me. Thinking about that …” I search for a word vile enough to describe her. “Medusa touched you is bad enough, but that she was your first enraged me. Reena was at a baseball game for some work league she plays on when I texted her. We didn’t go over there with that bat thinking we were going to use it. I was just going to use my hands.” His bark of laughter is full of shock, but yeah, it’s also funny. I’ve never lifted a hand in anger to anyone in my life. After the way I was raised, it was anathema.
“I was,” I insist. “But then, she said that, and I told her she was going to die. I don’t even remember asking for the bat, but oh, I remember the excitement I felt when I saw fear in her eyes. Ugh, it felt good to chase her around. She’s a viper. And she has always thought she had the upper hand. I only chased her because seeing that look on her face felt like vengeance. When the hunter becomes the prey.”
“God, I’m sorry. This is a mess.” He covers his face with his hands. I stare at his shorn hair and shake my head.
“Why in the world did you cut your hair?”
He shrugs and looks up at me through tired eyes. “I had to get to you. I didn’t want to be recognized and draw any more attention to any of this,” he says as if that’s a good enough reason to cut off what he used to consider his lucky charm.
“For me? You love your hair,” I protest. I was horrified that he cut it off for my sake.
He laughs and shakes his head as if I’d say something ridiculous. “That hair did nothing but make me look good. I don’t need it. I don’t miss it.”
“What? You said that hair was your secret weapon,” I remind him.
He shakes his head. “Nah. At first, it did help me sleep well. It took me a few months to grow it out. By then, we’d started exchanging letters and talking on the phone. I think it was having you back in my life that made me sleep better. It’s gone, and I don’t feel a thing. But, Apollo, it wasn’t even a choice when it came to trying to get to you. Nothing would be,” he says glumly.
“What about your shampoo endorsement? The campaign for Gucci? What’s Dean going to say?” I ask him, still disbelieving.
“I don’t care.” He shrugs.
“What are you saying? What about the life you’ve built?”
“You are my life, Sunshine. My cape, remember? Without you … I can’t fly. I don’t want to lose you,” he says, and God, the bleakness in his voice breaks my heart.
“You won’t. Just let me show you how much I love you. Hit me with your worst shot, Graham. I’m not going anywhere.”
His eyes fly to mine and fill with tears. “Thank you,” he says.
