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“I’m so close baby,” the woman says, and her voice scratches at my scull. I can’t seem to remember her name. Sophie maybe, or Sadie. I hadn’t really been paying attention when she’d dropped into my lap, I just remember staring at those tits and thinking they’d look really good bouncing in my face. God I’m a dick.
Closing my eyes, I focus on clearing my head, because I’m gonna have to come. Women take it personally when you don’t, and I really don’t feel like doing all that back and forth tonight. There’s always anger, followed by tears, followed by talking. Too much talking. Sometimes it’s just easier to force it, to make it happen, because then I don’t have to do the dance. The one where I assure her that it’smethat’s the problem, that’s she’s beautiful, that any other guy would be nutting the second they slipped inside of her.
And to her credit, all that stuff is true. It’s not her fault, not really. It’s none of them. It’s just not good enough. It’s nother. It’s not Kate.
Kate. Kate. Kate.
Always on my fucking mind. Especially in moments like this when there’s a naked woman on top of me whoisn’tKate. That’s when she shows up, that’s when I see her.
Sophie or Sadie comes, louder than ever, but all I see is Kate. I grab the hips rolling against me and I flip her onto her back. Kate. Kate. Kate. I fuck Sophie or Sadie hard and rough the way Kate likes, and it doesn’t take me long when it’s her hair I picture, when it’s her body I see, when it’s her moans playing like a symphony on my ears and it’s her lips I’m tasting.
Kate. Just Kate. Blond hair, perfect face, and that goddamn laugh. Fuck.
I come so fucking hard my legs shake, and Sophie or Sadie pulls me tight against her as she wraps her legs around me. I want to push her off and take a shower and wash her away. Because she’s nother,she’s not Kate. But I don’t. Because then I’dreallybe a dick and I try really hard not to be. Mostly.
Sixteen months. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve talked to her. The first time in ten years I didn’t call her on her birthday, the first time since I’ve known her that I haven’t had her when I’ve needed her. And now it feels like I always need her.
There’d always been periods where we didn’t talk, usually because I was off doing my own thing in some other city or country and somehow it was easy to push her out of my mind. I had shit I was working on, new places to explore, new women to fuck. Always an excuse as to why I needed to walk away, why I needed to hurt her. And I see now that I hurt her. Somehow I didn’t get it before, somehow I didn’t see I’d been breaking her down. This person I cared about, I’d just been chipping away at her, messing with her, playing games because I could.
She made it easy to hurt her, she really did. Despite all my bullshit, she kept letting me in and I couldn’t help but fall right back into her. The woman is like a breath of fresh air, a fucking summer’s day, a constant ray of sunshine amongst all the dark shit in my life. Couldn’t help myself but to go back for more because it always felt so good losing time with her. I’d come out of it a better man, a better artist, and I’d leave her broken, to fix herself just like she’d fixed me.
That last time I finally realized I didn’t deserve her, that she was better than what I was giving her, that maybe I really did love her a little, as much as I could, and I needed to shut that shit down before I could really do some damage.
But I did damage.You are fucking destroying me. That’s what she’d said. And now I’m the one destroyed, now I’m the one who’s damaged. Or I guess I always was, but maybe now I’m just beyond repair.
And now she’s not here. Now she’s nowhere and everywhere. There when I close my eyes, gone when I open them.I don’t love you Kate.I’d said those words, and I’d kept my promise to stay away, but now I feel emptier than ever. And so I’ve turned to Sophie or Sadie, to Jessicas and Angelas, to Chelseas and Kirstens and Stephanies.
No one is good enough. No one isher.
I don’t love you Kate.
She was right, I think, that she’d been my crutch, the person I turn to when it feels like the world has lost whatever that thing is that makes it special. I think it was Kate that made it special. At least, it was in my world.
Rolling over, I push out of bed and peel the condom off my dick, tossing it into the waste bin before rummaging in my luggage for a pair of clean pants. My hand grazes the soft white sheet I keep neatly folded at the bottom of my suitcase. The one with streaks of black and purple, of yellow and orange paint and the outline of Kate and all those fingerprints. The one we made together. That last time. I’d always teased Kate for never being able to pack light. The woman would bring her entire fucking closet and half her bathroom for a weekend visit.
“I bring all the important things, everything I need,” she’d say.
“And why do youneedsix pairs of heels?” I’d asked. “You’re not going to wear anything other than your sneakers and you know it.”
“Will too.”
And she did. She worejusther heels for the whole damn night and made me fuck her in every single pair. Not that I complained. But she’d proved her point. She’d brought all the important things, everything she needed.
I do that now too. I bring that damn sheet with me everywhere I go. Because it’s important, it’s what I need. Or maybe I just like feeling the pain of it, a reminder of what I did, what I threw away. We artists are masochists. We have to be, or else there’d be nothing to our art. What’s art without a little pain?
I don’t love you Kate.
“Do you want me leave?” Sophie or Sadie asks.
I glance at her before pulling a joint to my mouth and lighting it. I take a long drag, letting the thick smoke fill my lungs. “Up to you,” I say. “I’m leaving for the airport at seven. But if you need sleep you can take my bed.”
She tilts her head. “That guy you were with, he said people know you. That you’re like, famous or something.”
I snort. “Or something.”
“But… people know you?”
“People don’t know me. They know my work.”
