Saoirse
“Idiot,” I tell myself over and over again. “Idiot, idiot, idiot.”
I don’t know what compelled me to say what I’d said to him.
Apparently, your first orgasm in thirteen years can pull down your walls faster than anything else. That’s the only explanation I can think of.
I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, trying to figure out how I’m going to face him now.
Then the door opens. I don’t have to glance around to know it’s him.
“Saoirse.”
I’m about to whip around and tell him I don’t want to talk. That I was being delusional and naïve. That I’d gone temporarily insane.
But before I can say anything else, he does.
“I’m going to take a walk through the woods,” he says casually. “Care to join me?”
I turn and raise my eyebrows. That was not high on my list for guesses as to what he was going to say.
“You… you’re going for a walk in the woods?”
He gives me a lopsided smile that feels like a gut punch in my vulnerable state. My body is still recovering from his absence.
Ironically, despite how close we are right now, I’ve never felt the distance more.
“Your hearing is in excellent form,” he teases. “It’s beautiful out there. And there’s something I want to show you.”
A part of me wants—no, needs—to turn him down.
Warning bells are dinging in my head, telling me that the more time I spend with him, the harder it will be to say goodbye.
Another part of me—the bigger, louder, more desperate part—is telling me to ignore the warning and just be with him as much as I can.
Enjoy it while this lasts.
I’ll have to live off these memories for the next few decades.
That thought is depressing, so I shudder and set it aside. And as I do, I find myself standing up and nodding.
“Sure,” I reply, thankful at least that he hasn’t brought up the awkward moment from before. “Just let me change. I’ll meet you outside in a minute.”
“You got it,” he says with another lingering smile.
Then he shuts the door behind him, leaving me in the echoing silence.
I sit back down on the bed and promptly start to cry.
I don’t even attempt to hold back the tears. It’s the cathartic release I need to get me through the next few hours with him.
I was a fool to think that, thirteen years later, he’d have the same feelings for me that he did back when he was eighteen.
The desperate romantic in me reasoned that I still feel the same way I did then. So maybe it wasn’t too illogical to assume he did, too.
But now, I realize how ridiculous the narrative is.
I’ve lost myself to fantasies and allowed them to dominate reality.