Her eyes widen and she laughs harder than ever. It’s like magic and wind chimes in my life, which is feeling lonelier than ever.
“Oh boy. Oh, you have no idea how good that makes me feel.”
I notice that the rain sounds like it’s lightening up, which takes my heart in another, damper, more melancholy direction. This is going to end.
“Owen was my first,” she says. “My only, if I’m being totally honest. I got with him because I chose to settle with what felt…familiar. But it was just okay. Just...whatever.”
“Seriously, most relationships are just okay, until you find one that’s not.” I am talking out of my ass. I have burned through a ton of women, but until now I had no idea of what it felt like to be in a relationship with someone I could really click with - outside of carnal delights.
“I had no intentions of leaving him. I don’t know if that was inertia or boredom or clinginess or what,” she says. “But I hadn’t really thought about going. Lacey--she’s a friend--was always telling me to drop him and go…” she makes air quotes, ‘…fuck everyone who looks at me for an entire year so that I can figure out what I want and like.’ But that definitely wasn’t my style. Eventually he took the choice away from me and I got what I got.” She frowns at the table. Maybe this is still more fresh and raw than she is acting like.
“He cheated? A guy with a coin collection cheated on you? And he actually found someone to cheat with?”
She nods. “I was devastated. Still am, for that matter. But you know what? It’s not even him I miss. I miss being wanted, even though he never really acted more passionate for me than I did for him. What irks me is that someone, without telling me, still found a way to show me that I’m not good enough for him. I’m not wanted. He didn’t even have the courage to tell me.”
“Did he meet her at a coin convention? How did you find out?”
“If only it was so glamorous,” she says. “If only.”
“Curioser and curioser,” I say, and she grins at the Alice in Wonderland reference.
“Indeed, Hugh. Indeed.”
CHAPTER NINE: SAM WASHINGTON
I can’t believe how good it feels to talk about Owen and to be listened to. Lacey was supportive, but she usually wants to tell me what to do, not to hear about how I feel. Hugh was validating to the utmost. Or at the very least he was good at pretending to be.
He didn’t tell me how to feel.
He didn’t interrupt.
He didn’t drool.
I keep thinking about last night. About his body. That cock. How I touched myself. How I imagined him touching me. And now here I am telling him about Owen, of all people.
“I met Owen on a job,” I say. “In high school.” I exhale hard. “This probably won’t surprise you, but I was a reporter for the school newspaper. Mainly I covered football games. I didn’t care about football, but I did like to write and sports was the only opening. So here was the story. There were reports that someone was always creeping around under the bleachers during games. Peeping tom sort of stuff, or so the story went.”
“And so you…?” Hugh is trying not to smile, mostly failing, and is completely adorable.
“I decided to go on stake out. I found a place to hide under the bleachers, three games in a row, ready to confront the dastardly creeper. I figured that if it went bad the football team and all their coaches were only a shout away, not to mention all the people on the bleachers above me.”
“I can’t imagine where this is going.”
“No, you really can’t.”
“First of all, I wasn’t very subtle. The first game there was at least ten people who looked down and accused me of being the peeper. When I flashed my ‘press credentials’ at them, which was just an ID on a lanyard, they calmed down. That first game was gross. I just sat under the bleachers the whole time and saw nothing but people’s butts and dropped trash.”
“I still can’t imagine where this is going.”
“It’s going to the second game.”
“Ah.” Hugh is on the edge of his seat. I know it’s a good story and I’ve only told it to Lacey and my mom so far, and even then, I embellished it to make myself come out of it looking more heroic. Something about Hugh is making me want to be totally honest.
“Ye
ah. That’s when I got my big break, which came in the form of another person hiding under the bleachers. He--it turned out to be a he--was all the way down on the other end, crouched over, even crawling sometimes. He didn’t know I was there because I was very still. He made his way down the bleachers towards me. Still didn’t see me, because he wasn’t looking up at all. He was looking down into the grass through the thickest glasses I had ever seen.”
“Let me guess. Coins?”