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Then I leave, before I lose whatever self-control I have left around this girl.
Outside, I’m throbbing all over, my skin on fire even with the chill of the fall air. I yank out my phone and glare at it as I stab at the contact. Ares picks up on the second ring.
“Video call myass, jack-off,” I snap coldly. “The next time you fuck your wife in my goddamn office, I’m torching the place and sending you the goddamn bill.”
My oldest brother chuckles darkly. “Sorry, buddy. I did tell you it couldn’t wait.”
I hang up and storm into the night, back toward my place.
I’ve never really considered myself to be someone with “lines”. But it seems I do have them after all, and that I keepcrossing themwhen it comes to Dahlia.
And I’m not completely sure that I see that changing any time soon.
15
DAHLIA
Six years ago:
I need to confess something. I feel like I’ve been holding back in a sense when it comes to our conversations.
I feelmyself grin as I sit on the stone bench, reading this latest diary entry. Which, at this point, aren’t really so much diary entries anymore as they are pen pal letters collected in one book.
We talk about ourselves a lot—dreams, thoughts, random ideas, jokes, etc. But it feels kind of…PG rated.
I’d like to take the brakes off and show you the R-rated version of myself. The real me, the one most people don’t see. I don’t want to wreck what we have right now, but I also don’t want to build whatever this is on lies or a censored version of myself. Is that okay?
I leave a reply saying that that sounds prefect, that I never want him to censor himself with me and that I want to know the real, full version of him.
A day later, I’m back on the bench, learning more about my mystery pen pal that I’ve ever learned about anyone, ever. And my face is instantly blushing.
Reading his reply is the most sexual thing I’ve ever done.
Tell me what turns you on.
For a day or two, I don’t respond. I can’t. Not because I’ve got a chaste, pure mind devoid of sexual fantasies, but because I’mscaredof those fantasies.
I’m a little scared of men in general, to be honest, after what happened in my bedroom in Paris that awful night when I was twelve.
But more than that, the kind of fantasies I have alarm me.Especiallybecause of that night of terror and violence. After what happened to me, the fantasies I have are beyond fucked up. They’re twisted, and wrong, and I shouldn’t have them, and I tryso hardto ignore them and turn them into something more normal, something safer.
But I always come back to them when the normal, safe fantasies fail to do a single thing for me.
This is why I struggle for two full days trying to figure out how to explain to my diary author/pen pal that Ican’ttell him what turns me on.
Because I know he’ll judge me. Or ghost me entirely and never reply again. And then I’ll have lost the one real friend I’ve ever had.
But my friend is clearly a mind reader. Because on the third day, when I go to the diary again to write some lame ass excuse why I can’t tell him the truth, he’s beaten me to it:
I don’t judge people for the things that make them tick. And nothing you say will scare or shock me.
I promise you that I’ve imagined worse.
Darker.
More past any boundaries of normalcy and safety.
And then I read the words that change the entire nature of our relationship:
