I grin. “If you were too heavy, could I do this?” I squat to parallel, and then stand up. “Or this?” And then again, but this time leap upward. Not far, but I manage a jump.
She squeals. “Holy shit stop jumping!”
I laugh and walk toward my friend’s house. “You are not too heavy.”
“You can’t carry me all the way there.” The beach is deep, at least fifty feet from shore to the steps up to the deck.
“Can too. Watch me.”
“What are you trying to prove?” she demands, even as she stops squirming and tightens the vise-grip of her thighs around my waist, and the cling of her arms around my neck and shoulders.
“What am I trying to prove?” I ask, as I reach the stairs and ascend them. “That you have a false sense of your own size.”
She breathes deep against my throat. “Oh.” It’s quiet, barely a whisper. “You’re not going to collapse, are you?”
I laugh. “No, now hold on.”
There’s a touchscreen keypad at the back door, so you can lock the house while you’re swimming without having to bring keys or go around front to the keypad there. I input the code, hear the lock disengage, and tug the door open.
There’s a full bathroom steps from the back door, for showering off the sand and salt; the house is open plan, with a kitchen, den, and dining room, all high ceilings and modern lines. It’s all I really notice, though. I carry Delia into the bathroom and set her on the counter of the vanity. Reach over into the shower stall and twist on the water all the way hot—the spray stutters and hits full volume.
She’s shivering.
Her thighs are a V around my hips. I can’t help a quick, appreciative glance at the pretty, delicate pink flower of her sex, and then meet her eyes.
She’s fearful, nervous, turned on, excited—too many emotions to keep track of. God, how do women feel so many things at once?
Yet, I’m boiling with a bunch of feelings myself. The same mixture of worry and nerves and arousal and excitement.
She cups her breasts in her hands, covering herself, shoulders turtling forward. Hunching, closing off.
I grab her wrists and pull her hands away. “No way, uh-uh. Don’t you dare cover such beautiful perfection,” I whisper. “Look at me, Delia.”
Her eyes lift to mine. Wide, electric blue, flitting in the back-and-forth search of my gaze. “I’m not perfect.”
“Nobody is. But you look perfect to me.”
“Not what you used to say,” she murmurs.
“I used to be the world’s biggest idiot and the world’s biggest asshole, all at once.” I cup her face, and her hands clutch my wrists; I love that gesture, her hands on my wrists like this. “I’ve seen the error of my ways.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that. It took ten years and a very winding path to come to this conclusion.”
“What—” a catch in her voice, as if she’s afraid of the answer. “What conclusion?”
“That I have never, ever been so attracted to, so turned on by, so…so enthralled by a woman. Any woman, ever. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
She squeezes her eyes shut. “It’s just not.”
Tears leak out.
“Don’t overthink this, Delia. Please.”
“I’m not overthinking,” she whispers. “I’m…I’m over-feeling.”
“Focus on what I’m telling you now.” I cup her face, rub a thumb over the dampness at the corners of her eyes. “Look at me, Dee. Hear me.”
Her eyes open, hesitantly, fearfully. “What?” Her voice is wet and thick with tearful, overwrought emotion.
“You’re beautiful.”
She shakes her head.
“You are,” I insist. “Back there, in the water—didn’t you feel beautiful? Didn’t you feel how incredible I think you are? There’s no way you could have missed it.”
Steam writhes out the shower, skirls between us.
She nods, a small, shallow bob of her head. “Yeah.” A pause. “But that was…during…sex. Or whatever that was.”
“You think it’s going to stop being true afterward?” I ask.
A miserable shrug. “I dunno.”
“Tell me the truth, Dee. No matter what it is, how it sounds. Hurt me with the truth, if that’s what it is.”
Her eyes fix on me, and now tears stream down in rivulets. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?” I know, though.
A swallow, a deep breath. Gaze drops. “I’m scared that…that once you’re done with me, you’re gonna go back to…to being mean.” Eyes up to mine, then, giving me the full force of her tumultuous flood of emotions. “I’m scared this all a game, some…some long con you’re playing. A big, cruel joke.”
She shakes her head, shrugs again.
“I know you feel guilty for how you were, Thai. And I do believe you’ve changed—that you’re genuinely working to become a better person. And that’s great.” She swallows hard, and she can’t quite look at me, tears dripping off her chin. “But that doesn’t erase how you made me feel. It doesn’t change or undo the damage you did. I want to like you. I want to trust you. I want to let myself just be attracted to you and believe what you’re saying about me.”
“But?” I whisper.
“But…it’s not that easy. I’m sorry, but it’s just not.” A shudder, as of a suppressed sob. “You nearly fucking destroyed me, Thai. You don’t know. You don’t know. It took years of therapy just to be able to look at myself in the mirror. To trust that a guy could actually like me. Be attracted to me. Thai…the scars you left go deep. You wounded me. Damaged me. And then you just left and forgot all about me. And then when you finally waltz back in ten fucking years later, it seems like you’re this brand-new, changed, amazing guy. And I want to believe that. But to the wounds you left on me, the last ten years of time and space may as well have not happened. The fear and the hurt all come sweeping back in, fresh as the day you left for Yale.”
She squeezes her eyes shut even more tightly, and tears trickle in a sudden freshet.
Then, her eyes open and meet mine.
“So, I guess…I know you’re trying, Thai. I do. I see it—” She’s trying like hell to keep it in, to hold it off. But she can’t.
The tears and the shaking of suppressed sobs—it breaks. She breaks.
Hunches forward, shaking her head and covering her face with her hands, shoulders heaving, sobbing. Trying to talk through the sobs. “I’m trying, Thai—I—I am—but…but you just—you hurt me so fucking bad—for so fucking long.”
My throat closes. I knew I was an asshole. But I think…maybe I’ve underestimated how badly I really did hurt her. My eyes burn. Guilt is acidic inside me.
“I’m sorry, Delia.” My voice is ragged. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
“I’m trying.” Her shoulders rise and fall in slow, deep, calming breaths. “I’m trying. It’ll take time, but I’m trying.”
“Nothing I say can fix it. I can’t take away or change what I did. I know that.” I trace my thumb over her lips. “Just…give me a chance, Delia. Please, please, give me a chance to prove that I’m not that person anymore. That I really have changed.”
“No one ever changes as much as you have—as much as it seems like you have.”
“It’s been almost two months that I’ve been back.” I pause, reach out to add some cold to the shower stream. “You’re giving me way too much credit as an actor if you think I can keep up an act this involved.”
A tear-wet laugh. “Maybe.”
“Just give me a chance,” I say, searching her gaze and offering her the fullness of me, in my own expression. Nothing hidden. All my cards out on the table. “Please, just…just give me a chance. That’s all I’m asking.”
“A chance for…what?”
I shrug. “I dunno.” I swallow hard. “This?” I grip he
r hands in mine, squeeze. “You and me.”
Her eyes search me, looking for duplicity, probably. She won’t see it, because there isn’t any.
Tears stand in her eyes, and her chest lifts with a deep, shaky breath. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
I smile. “Yeah, you are.”
She blinks hard, clearing the tears, takes one hand back to dash her wrist against her eyes—and then re-takes my hand. “Baby steps, Thai. Take the win you’ve got, okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“I don’t know that I fully trust you, yet. But…I’ll…I’ll try. That’s all I can give you. But you have to know, Thai—you have little margin for error. No margin for error. Hurt me, and I—I won’t get this back.”
“I know.” I swallow hard. “Just remember that I’m not perfect, okay?” I squeeze her hand. “I don’t want to ever hurt you, ever again. I’ve hurt you enough for a thousand lifetimes, and I regret it more than anything, wish I could take it back more than anything. But as much as I’m not that guy anymore, I’m still not perfect. I’m not…”
She laughs, a delicate, fragile huff. “I don’t mean a misunderstanding or an honest mistake.” Her eyes cut back and forth still. “You have a capacity to hurt me like no one else, Thai. That’s what I mean.” She lets go of my hands and wiggles forward toward the edge of the counter. “Now, let me get in that shower—I’m freezing.”
I pick her up and pivot, setting her on her feet under the spray. She twists sideways and cuts the cold water back, intensifying the wreathing steam. I step back and reach to draw the glass door shut, but she stops the door with a hand.
Her smile is…
Complicated.
Still fraught with emotion, but striving for something brighter, higher, deeper.
“Where are you going?” she says, that smile crooked and so beautiful.
“I—”
I don’t get to finish my thought—she grabs me by the hand and drags me toward her.
“Get in here,” she says. “I’ll wash your back, you wash mine.”
The gleam in her eyes is a spark of joy, a fragment of glimmering heat. A promise of what could be…
If I’m very, very lucky, what will be.
Chapter Eighteen
Delia
Hours later, I’m home. Alone. My living room is piled to the dang ceiling with bags and boxes. All by itself on the coffee table, however, is the shining star of the entire absurd haul: the Birkin.
Before I open it and stare at it and treasure it as my very own, I ask myself a serious question: Did I do what I did with Thai in the ocean this evening as any kind of payback or expression of gratitude for all the stuff he bought me?
I hate having to ask myself that question.
Mostly because it means, if the answer even smells like a yes, I have to return everything. To him, and let him deal with it, or just give it away, or something. Including the Birkin. Especially the Birkin.
I give it true, honest consideration. I search my heart, let my gut speak to me.
The materialistic side of me is gratified when a pretty solid no percolates up within me.
Not just my appreciation of expensive things, however—my pride, my dignity…my willingness to keep exploring this whatever-it-is with Thai.
If I had done anything physical with him in some slutty attempt to say, “thanks for buying me shit,” I’d be hugely disappointed in myself.
I pass no judgment on anyone else, only on me. If your boyfriend or husband or girlfriend or whatever buys you something nice and you want to say thank you in a physical way, go for it. Do you. But I personally don’t do that. I don’t believe sex should be in any way transactional—this for that, you did this so I’m going to do that, and it especially shouldn’t be I won’t do this if you don’t do that.
That’s just me.
So, fears assuaged, I set aside the barrage of other questions batting around in my head and heart like moths trapped in a lampshade. Answer them later. Do more self-reflection later.
For now, I can enjoy all this stuff knowing it represents gifts freely given to me by Thai for reasons known only to him, and that our hanky-panky in the Pacific was enacted purely out of raw human lust.
As much as I want to, I don’t rip the packaging away like a rabid animal. I unfold the tissue paper and delicately remove the purse.
White crocodile Birkin 35…and all the hardware is encrusted with diamonds. Not little ones, either, or cheap ones, but big, real, expensive ones. The kind of diamonds that normally go on an engagement ring or wedding band.
My heart literally stops. More than a nice car? Try more than a nice house. Jesus.
If he dropped less than half a million on this bag, I’m a three-legged goat named Bob.
That didn’t make any sense. But then, with this bag in my hands, nothing makes any sense.
My entire freaking house and my resto-modded vintage Bronco aren’t worth as much as this freaking bag.
I can’t take it.
He has to return it.
Involuntarily, my hands tighten on the rolled leather handles, as if they’re saying hell no, you’re not giving this back.
I immediately call him. It rings four times, and then he answers. “Hey. Didn’t I just drop you off and you’re already calling me?”
“Thai, this bag.”
I hear the grin in his voice. “Let me head you off at the pass, here, darlin’. No, you can’t give it back. No, you can’t give it away. No, you can’t put it in a safe and never wear it or use it or whatever. No, it’s not my way of apologizing. I apologized in words, and I’m going to prove to you I meant it with my actions. Buying you that purse—and all the other stuff along with it? That was for me, Delia.”
“In what upside-down universe is you buying me tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff something you would do for you?” I ask.
He laughs. “I’ve spent my whole life being all about me. Truth is, Dee, I’m a selfish fucking prick. Always have been—no excuse, but it’s how I was raised. I buy things for me. When I was hooking up, it was about me. Everything was always all about me.”
“You’re not making a very good case for yourself, right now, Matthais,” I say with a laugh.
“Not trying to make a good case for myself,” he answers, his tone matter of fact. “Just being truthful about the person I’ve been.” He pauses. “A friend of mine—and no, it’s not a euphemism for me—was an alcoholic. I watched him struggle with it. He’d be out partying with us, and listen, we were out of control, all of us. We all had problems with binge drinking. But the rest of us could sort of pull back, sometimes. Enough to get through classes. Lunch with our parents. Dates with girls. Exams, interviews. We knew we couldn’t be hammered all the time. Dre? He didn’t have that. He was always drunk. I wasn’t close enough to him to ever find out what it was he was drinking to escape, but it was something deep and dark, right?” A sigh. “Okay, so the point. Eventually, he hit bottom. Made a big ruckus at a restaurant at like ten in the morning, embarrassed himself and us and it got recorded and put on social media and he was arrested…it was ugly. And for him, when he got sober enough to realize what had happened, he was like no—no more. So he went through rehab and did the AA twelve steps thing. So here’s the point—he had to face the reality of his problem. He had to admit to himself that he had a problem.”
I let out a long breath. “And you’re saying you had to do something similar.”
“Exactly. Not at all the same as what Dre went through, but it’s just a loose analogy. I had to be real with myself about who I was, who I’d been.”
“And when did you do this?”
He sighs. “Not sure I can pinpoint a precise moment. It’s sort of been an ongoing thing. There was a day I woke up in a condo I didn’t recognize, hungover as hell, a girl I didn’t recognize at all on either side of me, bottles everywhere, and I was just like, man, what am I doing with my life? This is all
I ever do anymore. And then later that day I called a buddy of mine, Adam Prince. Successful as hell. The first of my group of friends to cut the partying and really knuckle down and make something of himself, while I was still douching it up all over the place. So I called him, for, like, support. I’d been hoping he’d cheer me up, like no, Thai, you’re not a useless dick.”
I laugh. “Not what happened, I presume.”
“Not intentionally, but no. I asked him how he was, how things were going, and he told me. He was engaged to a girl he loved. Had a good position doing a job he enjoyed. He was happy. He was contributing to society. He was…” He trails off.
“Everything you weren’t,” I finish for him.
“Exactly.” He sighs yet again, pensive and thoughtful. “That was when I sat down and looked at my life and started trying to do things differently. Stopped partying quite as much. Stopped hooking up with, well, anything with a pulse and a pair, if I’m honest.”
That puts my gut in a twist—a feeling I’m self-aware enough to recognize as the awkward, niggling discomfort which presages jealousy.
“So…” I can’t help but hold the Birkin on my lap, touching the diamonds and the rolled leather handles. “Bring this whole big story back around to how you buying me stuff is for you.”
A laugh, a deep genuine belly laugh. “It’s simple, Delia—there’s even a trite, cliché phrase for it that people trot out around Christmas.”
We say it in unison: “’Tis better to give than receive.”
He continues. “But for the first time, I understand the truth of that statement. It really is. As much as I like going out and buying a new pair of sneakers or a nice watch or a fast car, it’s way more fun to buy stuff for you. It just…feels better.”
“Well…” I sigh, laugh. “Thank you, Thai. Doesn’t seem quite enough considering how much money you spent, but…thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His voice is quiet.
I can sense the welter of emotions and thoughts and questions in his silence, but he voices none of it. Maybe he senses that I need time to process. To accept that there’s something happening between us, and that simply because it’s him, I just need time to work through my feelings. Which are supremely complicated.