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I’d dropped Brayleigh off to Lucky and Minty in the morning and spent the day painting my living room. Stepping back critically, I admitted a talent for house painting was not in my wheelhouse.
Ares: I know you’re mad. Can you give me a chance to explain?
I ignored the first two messages, but that kind of behavior reeked of game-playing, and I was not that woman.
It took time, and several tries to get it right. If he was watching my dots, he must have thought I was writing a novel. In the end, my message did not require all that many words.
Hope: You’re not ready for me, and I’m not down with the constantly changing temperature of our non-relationship. Thank you for not taking what I was all too willing to give. I wish you all the best.
The screen blurred as I watched his dots appear and disappear several times before disappearing altogether.
I wondered how I’d cope if he couldn’t take no for an answer. Because we worked together, blocking him wasn’t really an option.
Turned out I worried for nothing.
Ares
It had been so long since I’d cared what someone thought of me, I did not at first recognize the turmoil in my gut for what it was.
Much had changed over the past few weeks.
Every night, when I closed my eyes, my palms remembered the heat of her body under the sheet, the silky softness of her skin, the gentle swells of her breasts pressed into the massage table. I heard her laugh, watched her dance, relived the welcome weight of her body cradled in my arms. Wondered at the way she smiled into my eyes, her sounds as she came, the humor in her soft, blue eyes.
Every night, I reviewed the pictures of her on my laptop.
There were hundreds.
Voyeur.
The endearment, because that’s what it was, was embarrassingly accurate. I jiggled the ice in my glass. More accurate than she’d want to know.
How many pieces of her had I stolen to outfit my hopeless fantasy? Hopeless. I huffed out a bitter laugh.
My Hopeless future.
A better man would walk away and leave her in peace.
I was not a better man.
But I was not the man she reduced me to in her mind, either. And I could not bear to let that stand.
I wondered for the thousandth time if things would have been different if she’d texted me after the shoot.
Putting her in the taxi that morning resurrected a familiar sickness in my gut.
The year they went to Disney and left me with my grandparents. The stark look on my father’s face as they rolled out of the driveway.
The yearly repetition of the same.
My grade eight graduation, when he had to leave early due to some emergency at home. I wanted to go with him, but he made me stay. Didn’t want me to miss it. I watched him drive away that time, too.
The time I was admitted to the hospital overnight, and he couldn’t stay.
The motel he paid for the night she kicked me out. I watched his taillights until the night swallowed them.
“He can’t stay here anymore!” She slashed her hand through the air, spittle flying from her mouth.
I laughed. “Calm down. It was just a joint. You look positively rabid.”
