Aurnia
I should have known it was one step forward, five massive fucking steps back.
I should have known when I woke up the next morning to find the bed empty of him.
I knew I’d slept alone, the pillow next to me undented, the sheets untousled. He’d convinced me to use the bed at long last but, of course, he wasn’t going to sleep beside me, no matter how much I might have wanted it. No matter how much I suspected he wanted it, too. It was just another one of his stupid rules for us. His “right” and “wrong” bullshite, the “allowed” and “not allowed” algorithm, the logic so complicated I wasn’t sure even he truly understood it.
I should have known after last night—after I came apart all over him—he’d pull away, yet again. Like I said, one step forward, five massive fucking steps back.
He was not anywhere else in his apartment, my calls out for him coming back empty. That left very few places in his small and sparse life to sleep.
I ate a bowl of stale cereal alone and tried to comfort myself. He must have driven his bike over to Dublin Ink after I was asleep. There was the floral monstrosity of a couch in the parlour that was comfy enough. Or the rooms upstairs if he got lucky and Miss Last Night was rather quiet during playtime with Mason.
But he wasn’t at Dublin Ink when I arrived.
Maybe he’d gone out for breakfast; a meal after he’d made a meal of me last night. I smiled to myself at the memory, hiding my cheeks when Mason clomped downstairs. Or perhaps he was out buying flowers for me. I’d never been bought flowers before.
With every passing hour with no sign of Conor, my heart began to sink. We’d made a connection the night before. There was an intimacy to being peeled apart by someone’s hands, a vulnerability. He’d given that to me. He’d relented.
After work, I took the bus back to his apartment. I found it still empty, the lights all off, everything on the drying rack where I had left it. I checked the sink for another dish, checked the trashcan for added trash just to see if he’d been here during the day at all.
“Conor?” I spoke into his message bank after his phone rang out. “Where are you?”
I waited, praying he’d pick up with a rushed, “Sorry, I’m here.”
But seconds ticked past and the messaging service was a silent void.
“Just let me know you’re okay. Okay?”
I hung up, feeling more and more like a woman who had missed all the signals.
Had I been wrong? Had last night been a dream? A childish fantasy?
I wanted to think that it was possible for me, at nearly eighteen, to make a real connection with Conor, at thirty-one. But all night the doorknob did not turn. All night I remained alone on his bed. Awake. Listening for his key in the lock.
I knew he wanted me, but…what if that was all? What if his attraction was just a desire for something he couldn’t have? Maybe I had made our connection up. Imagined the intensity of his gaze. The way he seemed to hold his breath when I was near.
I awoke from a sleepless night with my fingers already in my wet sex to sheets messed only by me. His absence just seemed to deepen the ache.
Had Conor just been palming me off, giving me a pity release after he’d found me so upset? After I’d thrown myself at him, practically forced myself onto him? What if his absence was him trying to tell me that he didn’t want me? What if he just couldn’t find the words to say that he wasn’t interested in anything more?
Could I have read everything so wrong? The sensation of our thighs together on his motorcycle as he rode me away to safety. The way his tongue had claimed me as he held me against the bed. The pain in his eyes as he watched me cry on the sidewalk in that sea of black.
Neither Mason nor Rian were particularly worried when Conor failed to appear that day. And the next. And the next.
“It’s certainly not the first time he’s done this,” Mason said.
“It certainly won’t be the last,” Rian added.
They both laughed. I couldn’t muster the energy to do the same. If they became worried about anything, it was me.
“What’s his name?” Mason asked one rainy afternoon, coming to join me at the big front window.
I jolted. “What?”
Mason slung his arm over my shoulders and I saw a flash of concern. I felt it, too: my body was held tight as a bow. I was sure I had knots in the back of my neck the size of golf balls.
Mason looked at me like a ticking time bomb; I certainly felt like one. Mason forced one of those smiles that seemed to usually come so easy to him and nodded across the street.