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I lift a shoulder, too exhausted and feeling the weight of all thethings I’ve been through in the last few days. “Consider it a goodbye gift, then. From me to you and you to me.”
His hands curl around the tops of my arms and his thumbs trace back and forth. “You’re really leaving?”
“I have to. I’m not welcome in this town right now, and sticking around isn’t doing anyone any favors. I don’t have the first clue what I’m gonna do, but that’s okay. I’ll miss you, though.”
He grimaces and I press my lips together. The look on his face is so self-deprecating and familiar.
“I still think it was a mistake. For the record. Sex always complicates things, and—”
I press my finger to his lips, cutting him off. “No one ever has to know outside of me and you, and anyway, we may never see each other again. So no harm, no foul. I’m glad I got to experience your superpower at least one time.”
I drop my finger and he exhales long and slow.
“Fine. There’s coffee downstairs. I’m gonna run out and grab something for breakfast. Want a doughnut?”
“Sure,” I say lightly, but we both know I won’t be here when he gets back. This is another gift he’s giving me. A chance to escape. I fucking hate goodbyes.
“Great.” He leans forward impulsively and presses a warm kiss to my forehead for a single beat and then turns around, grabbing his keys and wallet and shoving them in his pockets. “The place on the corner is closed, so I’ll be a bit. Take your time.”
“See you,” I say, drinking in his tall, comforting form one last time. He raises a hand in farewell, not bothering to look back, and then he’s gone and the door closes behind him.
I don’t waste much time slipping on my pants and shirt fromlast night, refolding Huck’s T-shirt and placing it on the bed. I consider keeping it, but I don’t. I don’t want any reminders. Not that I could possibly forget, but I’m making a clean break. From everyone and everything.
And when he comes back, I’m long gone.
15LORELAI
BABE
The following day, I’m sitting perched on a rocky shelf in one of my favorite high places outside of Nashville, letting the September sun warm my skin and clear my head. This is as good a place as any to wander amidst the thriving field of my many, many tactical missteps. Steamy excerpts from the night before intersperse with the painful memories of a night all those years ago. A clear pattern emerges, and I don’t love what it’s saying.
Because it appears my gut is unreliable.
Time and again, it nudges me into action, and time and again that action results in a fucking mess.
Like when I loftily decided I was going to make concertgoers stop and think. Reset their minds. Engage with some empathy. Instead, I flushed not only my career but the careers of my bandmates and my manager down the proverbial drain. I thought it would be a flash in the pan. Maybe a headline or two, but certainly everyone would forget about it and move on to the next bit of news…
Except no one forgot. Not country music radio, who refused to play any of our recordings, including the old, politically mundane ones. Not Nashville, where the glass entrance to my condo building was spray-painted with the wordsYankee Bitchand restaurants refused to seat me. Not my bandmates, who had to completely fall off the radar and restart their careers from scratch. Not Jen, who was hired out by the label to someone just getting started.
Not my fiancé, who took three days to call me back (afterpublicly canceling our wedding) just to tell me he thought it was time for a break. “Not because of the Neil Young thing,” he insisted. “But because we’ve been drifting apart, and I need to focus on my art right now.”
Everything, gone. One song to ruin it all. Fucking Neil Young.
Ugh. I don’t mean that. I love Neil Young. And I sang what I sang, and to this day, I stand by it. I just wish taking a stand hadn’t cost me everything I had. Utter cancellation.
And last night? I mean. What the actual fuck happened last night? I squirm on the giant boulder I’ve claimed, darting glances around to double-check that I’m still alone up here, and release a humiliated groan even as my thighs clench against the tiny and persistent residual zings of a phantom orgasm.
How dare he be just as miraculous at oral sex as I’d remembered.
How dare he… what? Give me one hell of an orgasm and refuse to allow me to pay back the favor? The audacity of the man to package up leftovers?
Like, on paper, it was a good night. He didn’t technically “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” me and shove me out the door to call my own Uber. So why does itseemlike that’s what happened?
Why do I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach like it was all wrong? I confessed feelings, he confessed feelings, and then we made out, which led to kitchen-counter cunnilingus. The stuff of literal fantasies.
But my fantasies never ended with me falling asleep alone, in a disgusting puddle of snot and tears. As hot as that was, and it really,reallywas, I would trade it back a hundredfold if I could just have a little platonic cuddling followed by the security of knowing my friend was still my friend and nothing had changed.
I know. I hardly expected it myself.
