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He never said a word to me, but I kept feeling his eyes on me. I tried to chat. I tried to flirt. I wore skimpy outfits in the hopes of teasing him into a reaction. But nothing. He remained an impervious statue, and I couldn’t get him to budge even an inch.
He was a challenge that slowly drove me crazy, and I couldn’t get even the slightest response from him.
Back then I lived my life used to getting my own way in almost everything, so I wasn’t a bit happy with my failure with Caleb.
On New Year’s Eve, I went out with a couple of friends and got sloppy drunk. My dad was already in bed when the driver took me home. It was a warmish night for the first of January—even in the relatively temperate DC area. I liked the feel of the outside air, so I didn’t want to go inside. I collapsed outside on a chaise by the pool and either passed out or fell asleep.
A couple of hours later, I came back to consciousness with someone shaking me.
Caleb. He was leaning over, gripping my shoulder, literally shaking me awake. “Louisa,” he was saying. “Louisa. Wake the hell up. Right now.”
Everyone called me Lulu back then. No one but my dad called me Louisa. For some reason, the sound of my name on his lips struck me strangely. Felt intimate. I smiled up at him groggily. “I knew you had a thing for me.”
I didn’t actually know any such thing, but I used to say a bunch of really stupid stuff.
“I was making sure you weren’t dead or comatose,” Caleb said, his brow lowering into a frown. “Drunk little girls really aren’t my thing.”
I gasped in indignation, horribly offended by the words even in my fuzzy state. “Asshole!”
“Yes. Get up and go to bed. In your state, you’re likely to roll over into the pool and drown.”
“I’m not that out of it. I’m not even drunk anymore.”
“Call it whatever you want. You’re something, so go to bed.”
“I’ll go to bed whenever I want to. You can’t boss me around.”
“So we’re going the little-girl route again, are we?” He must have been sounding snide on purpose to jar me into alertness because the tone really wasn’t like him. Even back then, he was never curt or dismissive with me. He was professional.
“Asshole!” I almost spit out the word that time. I was so, so angry.
“We already covered that. No argument from me. So get your little ass moving and go to bed.”
Then, before I could react, he turned and walked away, as if I weren’t even worth the trouble of lingering.
It was his walking away that made me the angriest. I might not have been dead drunk anymore, but I was definitely not at my best. I never made good decisions in that condition.
I stood up. Glared at him as he walked away. Then I stripped off my little gold dress and bra, leaving me in only my heels, my panties, and my jewelry. With a malicious kind of glee, I followed him across the pool deck.
He opened the door into the house and only then turned around, clearly planning to wait until I got inside so he could lock up.
He froze when he saw me. Stood motionless. Staring. There wasn’t much in the way of emotion on his face, but his eyes did run up and down my mostly naked body several times before he managed to yank them away.
That wasn’t much. But it was something. It felt like a reaction at least.
I had him at a disadvantage. It felt like a victory. A petty, immature victory, but the nature of it didn’t matter to me back then. At least not in the state I was in.
He stayed, frozen except for his eyes, as I sauntered into the house, holding my clothes and bag, and gave him a teasing glance over my shoulder.
Remembering that evening now, I flush hot. Shudder through a full-body cringe of mortification.
I was such a bitch. He must have despised me. Or worse, pitied me.
It’s a wonder he’s treated me so well since he came back into my life. No wonder he’s still keeping me at arm’s length even after our having sex. Anyone with half a brain would be doing the same thing. He can never trust me. No one can.
He’s such a good guy, and I don’t deserve a relationship with him.
I don’t even deserve to have sex with him a second time.
