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“She was smart, and we shared a lot of interests,” I say.
“And…?”
“We were friends first. For about two months, but I was falling hard, and one day I took a chance. I kissed her.”
“And she kissed you back.”
“Yeah. It turned out she felt the same way. She had been dating this upperclassman, and I was so jealous.”
“So she dumped him for you?”
“She did, and we were together for the next six years.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident,” I say matter-of-factly. “She died instantly, which I was thankful for. I mean, later. At first, I wasn’t thankful for anything.”
Frankie pauses. “I’m so sorry. Did you have any plans to get married?”
“We had just set a date. I hadn’t bought the ring yet, though.”
“And did she…share your proclivities?”
I nod. “She did.”
“Did you ever take her to the club?”
“The club didn’t exist at that time. It’s only about six years old. And I didn’t belong to any club back then.”
“So how did you…”
“At home. In our bedroom.”
“So you lived together.”
“We did, since our junior year of college.”
“I’m so sorry, Hunter.”
“I’ve made my peace with it,” I say.
The words are true. If Allison had lived, we’d probably still be together. But she didn’t live. I mourned for nearly a year, until I decided it was time to move on. With the help of a therapist, I did.
“So who’s the next one who burned you?” Frankie asks. “Or I should say, the one who burned you. Because with Allison, it wasn’t her fault.”
“No, it wasn’t Allison’s fault, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Didn’t make it any easier to go forward and try to find a new relationship.”
“But you did,” she says, “because you said you were burned more than once.”
“I did. I figured, what were the chances of me losing another woman I love to a freak accident?”
“Pretty low.”
“Exactly, and call me naive, but because what Allison and I had was so special, I never imagined…”
“You never imagined that a person you loved could turn out to be something different.”
I nod.
I don’t feel any words are necessary.
Frankie and I both know what we’re talking about.
My relationship with Teresa nearly cost me my sanity.
After that, I began masking myself and going to a club. Playing only with submissives who wanted what I want, without a relationship of any kind.
“It’s still difficult to talk about,” I say.
“I’m curious,” she admits, “but if you can’t talk about it, Hunter, I understand.”
“Maybe if you told me a little about you and Penn.”
“Penn and I were together for nearly six years. We were on-again, off-again so often. We actually met at Mellville as well. We didn’t get together until our senior year. He’s a trust-fund baby. He never cared about his studies. He was kind of a bad boy, and, well…I was a good girl, so that attracted me.” She looks down at her lap. “Plus his trust fund didn’t hurt.”
I suppose at some point I need to tell her I have a trust fund of my own. Not yet, though. “College professors aren’t exactly overpaid.”
She grins. “You don’t think I’m after your money, do you?”
“I know you’re not.”
She laughs then, and it’s a joyful sound. A sound that makes me feel happy inside. Like I want to hear that laugh every day.
“But that’s the thing about Penn,” she continues. “He was nothing like what I thought he’d be. He had this bad-boy reputation, but he wasn’t a bad boy. He was a dick but not a bad boy. I can’t believe I actually saw him at the club, because, like I said, all he was into was the purest vanilla sex.”
“And that wasn’t enough for you?”
“I pretended like it was. I pretended a lot of things with Penn. I kind of fell into a routine, and part of it was great. It was great being able to go to the most expensive places in town, to have him buy me lavish gifts. But we fought a lot. He’d say something stupid, and I’d walk out on him. A few weeks later he’d come back, and I’d forgive him. It was horribly codependent. Not healthy at all.”
“Then maybe it’s good that he came to you and confessed that he was cheating, so you could break the engagement.”
“Oh, absolutely. I should’ve ended things with him years ago. But you just get used to the bad parts, you know?”
I know more than she knows.
That was part of the problem with Teresa. We had an intense physical chemistry, and I mistook that for something deeper.
Something deeper that she apparently never felt.
I thought I could replicate what I had with Allison. That it would be the same, just with a different person.
I learned it’s never the same.
“Anyway,” Frankie continues, “I learned a lot. Wasted five years of my life along the way.”
“Time is never wasted if you learn something,” I tell her.
