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She gave him a squinty look, then smiled pertly. “I like you, Jake. There’s shit going on in my life that takes some heavy emotional lifting, but when you’re around, I feel like I’ve set that all down.”
“You want me on-call for hookups,” he said, getting it. It felt kind of hollow, which surprised—and worried—him. Hooking up with a woman this hot and great in bed should have him high-fiving himself. Why did his chest feel sore instead?
Petra shook her head. “No.”
Oh. She didn’t want even that.
She still had her hand on his arm; now she slipped it down and laced her fingers with his. “I think just hooking up with you would make things ... complicated. I’d rather try to settle in, to get to know each other more seriously and see what happens. If you don’t want that, I understand. We’ll go our separate ways, no hard feelings.”
Jake had absolutely no idea what she meant. He felt like an idiot, but he wanted to understand, so he made himself say, “I don’t understand.”
Still holding his hand, she slipped off the stood and stood before him. She put her free hand on his belly—every muscle there clenched at her touch—and skimmed it lightly upward, leaving a heaving wake of quivering muscle all the way to his neck as she slipped her fingers into his hair.
“I want to be with you, Jake,” she whispered, pressing on his head to make him bend.
She did? Likewith himwith him?
Jay had had two girlfriends, both while he was in high school. He’d liked them fine, but he’d been with them mainly because high-school girls didn’t let guys get very far unless they were a couple together. He guessed it was a status thing. He’d been a troublemaker in high school, and even back then there were girls who wanted to call a bad boy theirs. He’d been fine with it, because those girls had been eager to get rid of their virginity, and Jay had been equally eager to help them out.
Since then, though, he’d had the Bulls’ girls to sample from, and the girls who hung out at dive bars and honkytonks. So he’d stayed single and banged whomever he wanted.
Did he want to be with Petra?Be withbe with? Maybe he did, maybe that was why his chest ached. But the prevailing thought in his head waswhy. Why did she want to be with him? He had nothing to offer. She didn’t even need his dick.
The real truth: hewasnothing. Just a fuckup.
The thought of trying to be good enough for her made his heart race like it did before an exam. His vision started to go wonky.
She’d drawn him down for a kiss, and their mouths were less than an inch apart. Before things went any further, Jay pushed back against the pressure of her hand on his head. He twisted his hand free of hers. He stepped back.
“I need to go.” The words made him feel sick, and his heart didn’t slow down, but they were the only words he could say. So much so, he said them again. “I need to go.”
Petra blinked, and he saw the flash of pained disappointment in her eyes. But her voice was measured when she said, “Okay.”
After that, there was nothing to do but jump into the rest of his clothes and get out of there as fast as he could.
Petra sat at the island. She said only two more words: “Bye, Jake,” when he went out her front door.
He couldn’t get his mouth even to say goodbye.
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~oOo~
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The next few days werea shadowy blur. Jay did his shifts and went straight home. He supposed he did his job, spoke when spoken to, ate, drank, shit, pissed, all that, but he wouldn’t have been able to describe any of it. If anybody had noticed something was wrong with him and said something, he didn’t remember it.
Except his mom. He’d stayed home last night, Friday night, and sat in the TV room with his folks. He didn’t remember what they’d had for dinner or what they’d watched, or if anybody had had a conversation. He did, however, remember his mom coming to his room after midnight.
They hadn’t really talked. She’d knocked and peeked in to ask if he was riding with them to Dex and Kelsey’s for Tildy’s birthday party, and he’d said he’d ride on his own. She’d hung there a while longer, leaning into the room, holding onto the door and its frame, and stared at him. Then she’d stepped all the way in, come to his bed, sat on the edge and framed his face with her hands.I love you, baby boy.she’d said.As long as I draw breath, I’m here for you when you need me.
Those words, he remembered vividly. They were sappy, sure, but they were also aloe on a burn. His mom always found a way to make things better, even if only a little bit, even if she had no idea what was wrong.
But there wasn’t much she could do when what was wrong was, simply,him.
A cool addition to his acute flare-up of self-loathing was the possibility that he’d totally fucked up something that might have been good. Petra had been obviously disappointed when he’d left. He’d hurt her. He’d left in response to her saying she wanted to be with him, so yeah, obviously that would hurt.
Leaving had been the only thing he could think to do; staying until she realized he wasn’t at all what she wanted would only make him the one getting hurt, and there would be much more damage.
