My own temper starts to rise, but I hold it down. This is my fucking fault for falling for her. I wasn’t supposed to care. But I got so caught up in how I could protect her that I didn’t protect my own heart, and now I’m fucking paying for it. My one consolation is that she shows very few signs of returning those feelings. I can handle the pain if I know I did right by her.
“You’re right,” I say. “You’re right about everything.”
“Ugh,” she says. “You’re impossible.”
“Goodbye, Eliza.” I twist off my wedding ring and set it gently on her vanity.
Then I turn and walk out of the bedroom. I hear a shoe hit the wall, and she yells after me, “Don’t worry, I’ll be gone when you get home, and you won’t have to deal with my shit ever again!”
I wince, every instinct telling me to turn around, to go back and tell her it’s going to be okay, that it isn’t her fault, that it’s not about her at all. It’s about the fact that I fail, and it’s better to just get it over with now than wait until she cares. I close my eyes and take a breath. “That would probably be best,” I mutter before opening the apartment door and walking out.
sixteen
Eliza
After King leaves, I flop down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Things were just starting to get better between us. I thought we really had a moment last night, when he let me take care of him. But apparently, that just made him feel weak, and now he’s run off to probably find some slut who will want to fuck him all the time and make him feel like a man again.
I roll over and shove my face in a pillow and scream in frustration. Because I know that’s totally unfair. A girl who wants to fuck him isn’t a slut, she’s normal. I mean, look at the guy. What girl wouldn’t want to fuck him all day, every day? Even I halfway want to fuck him, and I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone. I mean, I’ve never even gotten wet for a guy before him.
Sure, I made out with a bunch of guys in high school, but it wasn’t about getting turned on. It was sort of for the rush of saying no, of knowing I was the one in control this time. Kissing boys let me explore that while knowing I was safe, that if anyone ever didn’t want to stop, I had a safety net in the form of a two-hundred-pound bodyguard with a gun.
But King… God, what is wrong with me? I had someone good, someone who was trying to help me, and I fucked it all up. No wonder he wants out of this. He deserves someone who wants to fuck him, someone who lets him fuck her, not a frigid mental case like me. I know that. That’s why I let him walk out like that.
And maybe I knew he would. Some part of me has been waiting for it all along. Not so I could be free—in truth, what do I need with freedom? To party and get drunk?—but because I knew that he wouldn’t stay. If my own mother wouldn’t stay, why would anyone else?
I roll off the bed and storm around the apartment throwing shit until I feel better. If King wants me gone, fine. I’ll leave his fucking ass just like he wants. Of course that’s what he wants. He wants someone like Lizzie, who knows what she’s doing, who owns her body and her sexuality and drowns him in it. So let him go find her. I’m fucking done.
I pack my bags, throwing everything in without folding it. I leave my wedding dress in the closet. Let him look at it for the rest of his life the way I had to look at his ring today.
I’m startled by a knock, and when I look at the time, I realize it’s already time for my lunch date with Bianca. I sigh and open the door.
She comes strutting in with her bag swinging on her wrist and her heels clicking on the floor, only to pull up short. “Damn,” she says. “Did a hurricane come through here last night or were you and that delicious man of yours fucking on every surface of the apartment?”
I snort. “Hardly. We got in a fight.”
“Makeup sex, then?” she asks, wiggling her brows. “How is he, anyway?”
“Ask me tomorrow, and I might have a better answer for you.”
“That bad?” she asks, looking delighted. “Oooh, let’s burn his clothes.”
“Tempting,” I say. “But I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” she asks. “What happened? Didyoufuck up?”
I look at her eager face, just waiting for the juicy gossip, and I know I can’t tell her. Bianca isn’t the kind of friend you tell your darkest secrets. And even though I didn’t mean to tell King, I did. And somehow, that made us better friends. Or so I thought. In truth, it just scared him away. I expected him to think I was tainted, even to pity me so much he couldn’t think of me in a sexy way because every time he tried, he just thought about me being molested and lost his desire. I didn’t think he’d still want me. And stupid me, I had to open my big mouth and bring it up.
God, I’m a fucking idiot.
But there’s no way I can tell Bianca any of that.
I can’t tell her that I’ve changed my mind, that being on my own isn’t the best thing in the world. I’ve had a tiny taste of it today, and all it tastes like is loneliness and regret. I told myself that’s what I wanted, to be a young widow, free of all obligations, but it was just an excuse to keep people at bay, to keep anyone from getting close enough to know the truth. Now that someone knows it… In a way, I was relieved. For a moment, I didn’t have to carry the burden on my own. For a moment, someone knew even the worst parts of me, and he helped me hold up the sky.
Until he fucking left, that is, leaving me to hold it all on my own. Only now do I realize how heavy it was all those years, that I was weakening, slowly crumbling under the weight of it.
And now… Now I have everything I’ve ever wanted. He gave me a way out. I’m standing on the edge of freedom, but it no longer looks like the end goal. It looks terrifying and isolating. That isn’t what I want anymore.
Love is.