I held my forehead in the palm of my hand, suddenly stricken with a nauseating pain piercing through my gut.
“What wewere?” Laura finally asked, her voice barely a whisper. “And what exactly was that, Max? Please, enlighten me because I don’t think I ever quite understood the arrangement. What the hellwerewe?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Laura. Friends? Friends who fucked on occasion?”
“Ah, okay, I see. Whenever you felt like stopping by, right? Whenever you needed something other than yourhandto get you off?”
The forced nonchalance I’d been putting forth was fraying rapidly, like an unraveling sweater, and underneath all that yarn was anger and hurt I didn’t want to feel.
“That … that’s not what I—"
“YouknewI wasn’t going to wait forever,” she said through gritted teeth. “Itold youI wouldn’t. But you took advantage of me anyway. Youplayedwith me. You brokemy heart over and over andoveragain every single time you left, and did you everonceask if I was okay with any of it? No! You just took and took and gave menothing!”
I opened my mouth, only to close it again. The scent of the burger wafted up from its plate to my nostrils, and I shoved it away, unable to stomach the thought of eating anything when all I wanted was to throw up and scream until my throat bled.
The worst part of it was, she was right. I knew she was. I’d known it all along. Just as I’d known what we had to be if I was always just …passing through. Whether because of my father or my service in the military, I would never have been able to stay. I would never have been able to do more thantake.
“You could’ve come with me. You could’ve lived with me on base,” I finally croaked, my throat tight as I tried to fight for something that was never mine to fight for. “You could’ve insisted. We could’ve been together. We could have—"
“I wasn’t going to force myself upon you.”
“Oh, but you let me use you, as you so lovingly put it. Why? So you could one day throw it in my face and make me feel like a piece of fucking shit for it?”
“No,” she said, her voice now cold and withdrawn. “I told you I’d accept whatever you gave me. And besides, I felt sorry for you.”
“Wait a minute. You feltsorryfor me?” I barked with a disingenuous laugh. “That’s funny, Laura. Didn’t feel much like pity when you were fucking me. But, sure, whatever you gotta tell yourself.”
“Don’t ever call me again,” Laura replied, her voice strangled by emotion.
I sucked my teeth and gripped the phone tightly. “Don’t worry, babe. I won’t.”
Then I hung up and tossed my cell phone onto the table, letting it slide into the plate with a noisy clatter. I held my face in my hands, scrubbing up and down and wondering what the fuck had just happened.
I was going to ask her out. I was going to tell her I loved her. I was going to—
I should’ve done it a long time ago. This is my fault.
My hands fell to the table. God, fuck, dammit. She wasright. I hadn’tintentionallyused her—of course not—but I had taken her for granted for years. Always expecting her to be there, always expecting her to be waiting for me to be ready—but ready for what?! To grow a backbone? To come to the grand epiphany that I wasn’t, in fact, a soulless piece of shit like my father? And what if that never happened? Had I really expected her to wait endlessly, for all of eternity, losing chance after chance to live her life? God, what a selfish fucking bastard I was.
Just like him.
A wolfish whistle broke through the barrier of my thoughts, and I turned my head to watch that asshole from the bar—Ritchie—walk in my direction. I narrowed my eyes, wondering what the hell he wanted from me now, when I noticed his attention was on a nearby table and not on mine.
“Well, well, well, what are you doing here?”
“Go away, Ritchie.”
I turned my head to glance down the row of booths along the wall. It was too dark, the dividers between each table were too high, and I couldn’t see who he was talking to. A woman, from the sounds of it, and it was clear she didn’t want his attention.
“I don’t think that’s a very nice way to talk to an old friend. How about you invite me to sit down?”
“I said, go away.”
“You know, most girls beg me tostay. It usually sounds more like,Oh, harder, Ritchie. Deeper. Give me—"
“Please,go,” the woman shouted over his lewd mockery, and now I vaguely recognized her voice.
“Oh, baby, you’re hurting my feelings. Why don’t you kiss it and—"
