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“I’m saying you're mine and I’m keeping you. I like this back and forth shit. It fuels me. If it ended, I’d be pissed as shit. I’m saying I love what’s between us, and you’re not just gonna walk away. That your mind isn’t going to fuck this up because it’s too fucking good between us.”
“I drive you crazy,” I say as an argument, because I do.
“And I love it. And I drive you crazy, and you fucking love it too, Lola.” I try and think, try to get my brain to work, but I already know. I know he’s right.
I do love it.
I love how he doesn’t let me just go on my way, doesn’t just accept whatever I say, but instead, he tries to understand me and make me see what I deserve.
I love how he seems to genuinely like New Lola, the one who isn’t meek and accepting, but who wants to fight back.
But the reality is, a love based on hatred is doomed to fail.
Right? That’s how this works.
Relationships based in chaos and destruction, in quasi-lies and half-truths, they have to be doomed to fail.
And when this does end, if I let myself get in deep and believe this could be more, I will be destroyed by it.
“This won’t work, Ben. It’s . . . It’s too filled with adrenaline to be something real.”
There. Easy, succinct, but still exactly what my mind is telling me.
Of course, Ben does not accept this.
“Are you so scared to be let down, so scared this will end badly, you can’t see it for what it is? Are you—”
“It’s not—”
“Let me finish,” he demands, his forehead moving to press to mine in a sweet, intimate move. I close my mouth. “You will drive me insane until the day I die, I think.” I screw up my nose in irritation, and he laughs.Not helping.“You will drive me insane, but baby, it’s in a way I fuckin’ love. In a way I can’t get enough of. You know me. You’ve met me. Do you think I want some sweet, compliant thing who will always listen to me? Do you think I want things to come easy?” I stop and think about it.
“Babe, I’ve had easy. I had my entire life planned out for me. Could have taken it and ran, never had to look back or think about what to do. Yeah, I’d have had to fix the mess my father made, but the business was there, and it was mine. But it was tooeasy. It wasn’t what I wanted.”
“So you want me because I’m difficult? Because you can’t just have me?” Then I say what I’ve been afraid of from the start. What I’ve always been afraid of. Because I saw my mom give everything to my dad, and itwasn’t enough.“What happens when I let you have me, all of me.”
“I’ll never have all of you.”
“What?”
“Never. There’s too much buried under there. Every day you reveal something new, like a jewel that’s just for me. Every day you fall a little deeper, open a little more. But I don’t think I’ll ever get to the heart of you.”
“So you want me because I’m a challenge?”
“Jesus Christ, Lola. I want you because you’re fucking mine.” That stops me. Stops my mind. “I want you because you’re loyal as fuck. I want you because you do whatever is needed for the people you love. I want you because when you stick up for yourself, it’s a fucking spectacular fireworks show. I want you because evenyoudon’t know what’s at the core of you. You haven’t gotten that deep, haven’t let yourself dig. I think your mom had it, but it got buried. And I’ll fight day in and day out until you let it free.”
“And when it’s done?”
“Then I’ll have all of you.”
“And you’ll get bored.”
“When a man works that hard for something that beautiful? He never lets it go, Lola. Never. He cherishes that. And that’s what you really want, baby, To be cherished. You want me to prove I deserve that last kernel and spend every day until my last breath proving I deserve it.”
And with those words, I concede, a small part of Old Lola breaking through my new shell, making herself comfortable. The part that trusted the words people told her, took them to heart, and let them in.
A part that, from now on, would be only for the man in front of me.
“You’ll work to get me?” I ask, my voice small. His face lights up with my words, and I know then. I know before he answers.
