Breathless (135 page)

Shit, this is worse than I thought.

“Come on, baby. This isn’t fair.”

“Fair?! Fair?! What the fuck are you talking about? Fair for who?” She was fuming and I wasn’t sure how to respond. This was completely new territory for me.

So I decided to play the innocence card.

“Well I thought we’re having dinner tonight. How come you walked into my place at”—I looked at my watch—“three p.m.?”

“Are you serious?” she asked incredulously.

“Well you didn’t say you were coming back so soon.” I avoided her eyes. I knew I should probably shut up because I was making things worse, but somehow, I couldn’t. I felt a need to explain myself, to justify my actions to her—and to myself.

“I called you! I called the bar an hour ago and left a message with Beth that my class ended early!”

Shit, Beth! She did mention earlier that Alexis called.

“Sorry, I didn’t get the message.” I knew my apology was pathetic and possibly inappropriate.

“I figured from our conversation earlier, you’d want a quickie before dinner.” I saw the hurt in her eyes as she explained herself. “I guess that’s exactly what you wanted and you just couldn’t wait for me to get home, so you called someone else.” She was seething with anger as she spit out her words at me.

“Can we talk about it? I don’t know what I did wrong,” I lied.

“You’re kidding, right?! I just caught you red-handed with that girl, Damian!” She was fuming and I wasn’t sure how to alleviate the situation.

“You mean wet-handed?” I joked, trying to lighten up the mood.

She looked at me in disgust. “Who the fuck are you?” I heard the anger in her voice but I saw only sadness in her eyes.

This cannot be happening
, I thought to myself.
You don’t have a girlfriend. You didn’t do anything wrong!
a voice inside me screamed defiantly.

“Hey, come on! I thought we had an understanding,” I needed to reason with her. “You know I’m not the commitment type. I made that clear to you from day one. I thought we were just hanging out,” I lied again.

“What understanding? We’ve been sleeping together every day for the last two months, Damian! I’m pretty sure whatever understanding
you
had when we first met went out the door a long time ago!”

I knew that I couldn’t play this off anymore and pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. It was now clear that it was a big deal to Alexis, and if I wanted any chance of keeping her in my life, I needed to acknowledge that it was a big deal.

“Please, baby,” I begged. “I think I made a mistake. I don’t want you to be mad at me. Please tell me what I can do to make things right.”

Her face twisted in anguish as she choked out the words, “It’s too late, Damian.” The pain on her face cut through my confidence that there was still a chance I could still make things right again. At that moment, I knew I had lost her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Alexis

I FOUND IT HARD TO BREATHE as I ran out of his apartment. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.
Again
! I had caught Chris cheating on me earlier this year, and that moment had been painful. But that betrayal had not prepared me for the heartbreaking agony I’d felt when I walked into Damian’s apartment today. When I saw him naked with the redhead, it felt like he had ripped out my heart and crushed it in front of me. It felt like every happy moment in my life had been uprooted and destroyed by a category five hurricane.

“
I thought we were just hanging out.
” His gut-wrenching words echoed in my head, like endless cold daggers to my heart.

“It’s too late, Damian.” I could barely get out the words before I was accosted with a wrath of excruciating pain that crashed through me. I turned away from him and fought back the tears that were burning my eyes.

“Alexis, please. I can’t let you walk away from me right now. Please, can we go back inside my apartment and sit down and talk about it?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“
Please
,” he pleaded. There was something in his voice that made me look up at him. I saw the conflict and pain in his eyes.

What is there to talk about?
I wanted to scream.

But I didn’t.

Instead, against all reason, I followed him back to his apartment.

When we walked through the door, I took a quick glance around his apartment. While the redhead was gone, I could still smell the faint floral scent of her perfume that lingered in the air. And each time I inhaled, the naked image of them I had just witnessed flashed before my eyes.

We walked over to the dining table, and for the first few minutes, we sat there in silence. I watched him rubbed his temples, probably trying to figure out what to do or say.

My whisper finally broke the silence. “Why?”

My entire body felt numb as I sat there. The rational part of me—the smart part of me—was screaming inside and demanding I get up and run to the safety of my apartment. But despite my best efforts, I was rooted in place, waiting for Damian to say something that could possible make things right—waiting for a miracle to happen.

He didn’t say anything for several minutes, and a stiff, uncomfortable silence filled the air between us.

“Why did you cheat on me? This isn’t you, Damian.” My voice cracked as I fought back the tears that were threatening to come.

“What isn’t?” There was a pained look in his eyes, but he refused to look at me.

“You may think you are a perpetual man-whore, but deep down, you’re a sweet guy. I saw the shock and guilt in your eyes when I walked in on you guys. So why did you do it?”

He sighed and finally met my gaze. “Alexis, I’ve warned you that I’m not a sweet guy. I told you that I won’t say any ‘I love yous.’ I’m just a guy you hang out with to have a fun night of no-strings-attached sex. I never intended for you think that we were in a relationship.”

His words stung like salt on my fresh wound, and I searched his face, trying to find the man I had fallen for. He was no longer there. Instead, I saw a stone-cold handsome man with icy blue eyes looking back at me.

“I should go then,” I murmured. I got up from the table.

He looked at me, and I could tell he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.

“You really hurt me today,” I whispered. “I thought that we had something special. I thought that you cared about me the way I care about you.”

“I’m sorry, Alexis,” he whispered. He looked away from me, and in an even lower voice, he said, “The only real thing I can offer you is sex and friendship.”

When he walked me to the door, we stood on opposite sides of the doorframe and looked at each other in silence. I saw the sorrow I felt reflected in his eyes. We both knew that there was nothing left to say between us. We wanted different things and it wasn’t meant to be.

“Goodbye,” I finally said and turned to go.

“Take care of yourself.” His words were almost inaudible.

I turned to walk back down the staircase to my apartment. A part of me wanted him to chase after me, to tell me that he wanted something more from us.

But he didn’t.

I had held in my tears in front of him because I refused to let him see me cry. But when I got inside the privacy of my apartment, I broke down, and hot tears streamed down my face.

Reality hit me. Today was not the day I had lost him. Today was the day I had discovered that I’d never truly had him to lose. I collapsed onto the floor. The splendid world we had built together during the last two months—the world that had swept me off my feet—had come crashing down like a stack of playing cards. For the next hour, I sobbed for my loss as I felt every shard of the pieces of my broken heart cut inside me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Damian

“
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF,
” I HAD
ended up saying. That was the last thing I had said to her. I had wanted to tell her so much more. I had wanted to go to her, hold her, and never let her go. Yet, something had stopped me. I had seen the pain and agony on her beautiful face. It had hit me at that moment what I had done; that I had been the cause of her unhappiness. So I hadn’t fought for her.

A month had passed since we last spoke, and my chest tightened each time this last memory of her entered my thoughts. I looked back on that day and only saw regret—regret for getting close to her, regret for calling the redhead, regret for letting Alexis walk out of my life. Part of me wished that I had fought for her, but I was also glad that I hadn’t. I was never a good idea for her. She knew it, and I knew it. Letting her go was the best thing I could have done for her.

***

I opened my eyes slowly as the morning light filtered through my lids. I moaned as I turned to my bedside table and saw my alarm clock. It was 9:27 a.m.

Argh, why am I up?
It was Sunday—one of those lazy Sundays that were perfect for sleeping in after I’d kindly kicked a girl out of my bed and suggested that she go home. They were over for sex, not for cuddling. But for some reason, I couldn’t seem to sleep in this morning. Something felt missing in my bed, almost as if I were missing my left arm. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I knew something just didn’t quite feel right.

I finally got up from bed, unable to fall back asleep and feeling like shit. I looked down and realized that I had a hard-on. I wondered what I’d been dreaming about before I’d woken up.

I looked at my alarm clock again. 9:32 a.m.
Shit
. I felt antsy and in a funk, and I needed to get out of my apartment. I picked up my phone and texted someone I knew would probably be up at this time on a Sunday.

Hey Emma. Wanna grab some coffee this morning?

Emma was the only female friend I had that I’d never slept with. I met her when she was having some issues with her boyfriend—now fiancé—and she had needed a shoulder to lean on. Since then we had become close friends. Recently, she’d been busy with her wedding plans so I hadn’t seen her much.

My phone beeped. Emma had texted back already.

Hi sweetie! Yes, let’s grab coffee and catch up. I’m at the farmers’ market at the Ferry Building. Wanna meet at Blue Bottle Coffee? 10:30 a.m.?

I texted back.

Perfect! See you at 10:30.

I went to the bathroom and jumped into the shower. I stood there in the shower, eyes closed, as hot pellets of waters cascaded down my face. My hand mechanically pumped up and down on my hard-on, hoping that it would alleviate the funk I was in. After a minute, my body spasmed and I grunted as I rubbed out the erection. As I rinsed off, I tried to wash off the nagging feeling that seemed to have gripped on to me all morning.

I was unsuccessful and the funk remained.

Coffee will do the trick
, I convinced myself.

I took the BART and got off at the Embarcadero Station, and by 10:25 a.m., I was walking through the doors of the Ferry Building. I waded through the hustle and bustle of the usually busy Sunday crowd and found Emma standing near the line at Blue Bottle Coffee.

“Hey!” Emma said as she gave me a hug when she saw me. “How are you?”

“Hey, hun. I’m good, you?”

“I’ve been great! I haven’t seen you in a while. How are things?”

“Yeah, I’ve been a little busy. Just busy with the bar. The same ol’.”

Emma cocked her head and furrowed her eyebrows as she looked up at me.

“What?”

“Something’s different about you.” She narrowed her eyes as she studied me.

“Why do you say that?”
Shit, do women have some sort of sixth sense or something?

“I don’t know,” she said slowly as she scrunched her face. “You just don’t seem like your normal self. You seem…a little down, which is something I’ve never seen from you.”

“Oh. Well, I do feel like I’m in a funk, but I don’t know why.”

She gasped. “Is it a girl?! Oh my God. Do you have a girlfriend and you haven’t even told me?”

“Come on. You know I don’t do relationships,” I scoffed.

“Hmm. I don’t believe you. What’s her name?”

“Alexis,” I heard myself blurt out.

“Yay!” Emma started clapping her hands in glee. “Oh my God, when can I meet her? Damian? A girlfriend? I won’t believe it until I see it for myself!”

“She’s not my girlfriend, and it’s been a month since I talked to her last.”

“Okay, I don’t get it then. You haven’t seen her in a month. So are you not interested in her?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.” I rubbed my face in frustration. “There’s something wrong with me when I’m with her. It’s like I want something more when I’m with her. I feel different when I’m with her, and I have all these weird feelings that are new to me. And I only feel it when I’m around her.”

“You mean, you like her,” Emma said matter-of-factly. She leaned back against her chair and laughed. “Wow, I like this girl already.”

“Well don’t get too happy. I think she hates me now.”

“What? What did you do? Tell me everything!”

Normally I would have said nothing. I never talked about girls after I was done with them. But this time it was different. I wanted to talk about Alexis. I didn’t want to be done with her. So for the next hour, I told Emma everything—from how we met, to the night we met again at Damian’s, to our dates, to the day she walked in on me with the redhead.

“Damian! What the hell?” Emma screamed when I got to the part about the redhead. “You’re twenty-seven years old. You can’t keep sleeping around like this forever.”

“What?” I asked defensively. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

She shook her head disapprovingly. “Do you really believe that?”

I shrugged.

“Damian. I’m only saying this because I care about you as a friend. This Alexis girl sounds amazing,
and
she sounds amazing for you. She seems to call you out on your bullshit and keep you on your toes. Plus, I see the way your eyes light up when you talk about her. You’re whipped.”

“I’m not!” I automatically denied.

Emma simply smiled and gave a knowing nod. “You are. If you weren’t whipped, you wouldn’t be so miserable right now.”

I looked away, knowing she had a point. I didn’t feel like I had been the same guy I was before Alexis entered my life. Something had happened. I’d somehow changed. Because when she was in my life, everything around me seemed rosier and brighter—almost as if someone had brushed a tint of dazzling color into everything I saw. Everything around me was more brilliant and crisp—I felt more alive.