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Xavier stood, sadness stooping his shoulders. “You shouldn’t have looked on my phone.”
“I know.” Emma hugged herself even tighter, wishing she could take back the last five minutes, wishing she’d played it differently. But, then again, didn’t she need to know?
“Why did you?”
“Because...because... I want to know. Everything about you. I guess.”
“Now you know.” Xavier glanced at the Nost app and frowned. “But I told you...this is who I am. I can’t do commitment. I can barely even do more than a one-night stand. I told you.”
“I know you did.” Emma bit her lip, the tears forming a lump in her throat. He had been honest with her. It’s not like he’d tried to hide his proclivities. “I thought I could do this. Imagining you with another woman...it hurts.”
Now is the time for you to tell me that you’ll change, Emma thought. Now’s the time to tell me that those women don’t mean anything to you, that you’re ready to take a chance on us.
But when she looked up at him, Xavier stared at her helplessly. He seemed unable to give her what she wanted.
The two stood in silence for a moment, the weight of the impasse building an invisible wall between them.
Emma took a deep breath and tried to muster the courage to ask him the question she needed to ask, but was suddenly afraid of his answer.
“Would you have slept with one of those women last night if we hadn’t met?”
Xavier glanced at the floor. “Yes,” he admitted.
The admission hit her hard. It almost felt like a physical blow to her stomach, a deep jab. She took a step backward. She had no right to feel this hurt. He’d told her what he wanted, told her who he was, and yet, she couldn’t deny the pain, the hurt, of realizing she was just a cog in a wheel, one more body among dozens.
Why couldn’t she be enough? It was the question that bounced around her head, and made her feel small and insignificant.
“Would you ever not do that? Would you ever consider quitting Nost?”
Xavier ran a hand through his thick, jet-black hair. “Emma, I told you—”
“Yes, yes, I know. You’re afraid of love. Of risking anything. You’d rather...” Emma bit back her words. She couldn’t say them out loud. You’d rather sleep with a new woman every day.
Xavier took another step closer. “You knew this about me, Emma. I told you the very first day.” Xavier reached up to hold her, but Emma jumped back.
“I know you did.” She didn’t want him touching her. Didn’t want to melt back into his embrace and have all logic fly out the window. She didn’t want to turn a blind eye to this, to pretend it was all okay with her. Because it wasn’t.
“You seemed to be willing to try...” Xavier paused, seeming to have trouble putting a label on whatever it was they were trying.
He was right. She had been willing last night to invite him into her bed. He’d not made any promises, really. He hadn’t even said he wanted a relationship, exactly, only that he’d been drawn to her, intrigued by her. That had been enough last night for her to wiggle out of her panties, but now in the gray light of morning, with his phone dinging with incoming messages from strange women, it just didn’t seem enough.
“I guess I was wrong.” Emma couldn’t look him in the eye. She wanted him to tell her that those other women didn’t mean anything, that he could quit them anytime he wanted to, but the longer he stood there without saying those words, the more she came to be convinced that they mattered to him more than she did. “If you can’t... I mean, if you have to keep seeing other women while you see me, then I can’t do this.”
“Emma.” Xavier let out a long breath. “I just...don’t know if I can do that.”
“Would you even try, though? That’s what I want to know.” Emma met his eyes and saw the conflicting emotions there, and the conflict within him hurt her even more. Why didn’t she mean enough to him to even say he’d try? She knew what they had was special, so why didn’t he?
“Emma, what are you asking me to do? Not see anyone else?”
Emma nodded.
His phone dinged with another incoming message from Nost, another woman looking to have sex with him.
“Would you tell her, that one, right now, that you’re not interested?” Emma pointed to his phone. He looked at it and then back at her. He hesitated too long. Now, whatever he said, she thought, might be a lie. “You need to go.”
“Emma, come on. Let’s talk about this.”
Emma shook her head, the tears threatening to spill, and the last thing she wanted was for him to see her cry.
