Bad Romeo (46 page)

My breathing seems obscenely loud in my quiet bedroom, and the tick from my clock fills the long seconds.

“Jesus … Cassie…”

So now he knows. For better or worse, he knows.

“I thought…” He stops, regroups. “When I found out about the men you’d been with after I left, I figured you did it to forget about me. Or punish me.”

“That was part of it. But not the main part.”

“And tonight?”

“I wanted to push you. See if you’d revert back to your old self. And, like you said, hurt you.”

Saying it makes me realize what a low blow it was. How far I’ve fallen. How poisonous I’ve become.

“I get that. I know you think I deserve some pain, considering what I did, but you don’t understand.” He takes a breath. “I know you suffered when I left, but I suffered, too. That European tour was the most miserable time of my life.”

My resentment flares. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure parading around all those exotic places with beautiful girls adoring you was really hard. Deciding which one to take home each night. It must have been like a freaking smorgasbord.”

“Is that honestly what you think happened? That I could do that? Jesus, Cassie, when we were together, I never so much as even looked at another girl. Do you think I could forget about you so easily?”

“After you gave up on us, I thought you were capable of anything.”

He laughs. “Yeah, well, the reality was a little different.”

“How different?”

I wish I could see his face. But all I have is his voice, low and resonant.

“In Europe, even though I was always surrounded by people, the time I spent apart from you was the loneliest I’ve ever been. At first I couldn’t handle it. I was drinking a lot, sometimes during the shows. I’d go to bars. Get into fights. Then, I’d go home and think about you. Google you. Dream about you. I missed you so much, it made me physically ill. Sometimes I considered taking someone home with me, so I could wake up beside another body. No sex. Just … company.”

I feel his pain. So similar to my own.

At least I’d found Tristan.

“So, yeah,” he says. “Other stuff happened that made me reassess everything about myself and what I needed to do to get you back, but that’s a story for another time. The point is, I wasn’t having a party while I was over there. I was completely miserable. And alone.”

“But surely you had other … relationships … while we were apart?”

“No.”

His answer confuses me. “But you had …
sex.
I mean, I’m not sure why I’m asking because the thought of you and other women is…” I shudder. “But you did, right?”

I close my eyes and wait for his answer, tensing in anticipation.

Say “hundreds.” Give me fuel for my fire. Let me be hard.

Please.

He’s quiet, but every word is filled with heavy sincerity. “Cassie, you have no idea how many times I wanted to have meaningless sex, just so I could get you out of my mind, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I tried, I felt like I was cheating. Eventually, I stopped looking at other women. It was fucking pointless. None of them could ever come close to replacing you, even if I’d wanted them to, which I didn’t.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Are you telling me that … the last time you had sex was…”

“With you.” It’s hushed, like he’s confessing.

No.

Not possible.

“But that was…”
That
night.
The
night. “The night before you left?”

“Yes.”

It takes a moment for my brain to respond. “But … that’s … that’s … goddamn, Ethan, three years?!”

He laughs. “Believe me, I know. I don’t say this to make you feel bad, but between my self-imposed dry spell and doing this show with you, my balls are bluer than the entire cast of
Avatar
.”

I still can’t comprehend it. “Unbelievable.”

“You’re making me feel like a freak.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t understand—”

“Look, it’s simple. I didn’t have you, and I didn’t want anyone else. End of story.”

“So, if we don’t get back together, you’re just going to continue being celibate?”

There’s dead silence for a second, then he says, “First of all, us not getting back together isn’t even a possibility in my mind. And secondly, I was never celibate.”

“But, you said—”

“I said I hadn’t had sex with anyone, but being celibate means abstaining from all sexual pleasure. I’ve had plenty of sexual pleasure, usually while having erotic thoughts about you.”

The thought of Ethan masturbating to images of me instantly turns me on.

“In fact,” he says, “I’m having some very erotic thoughts about you right now.”

He lets out a quiet moan, and I have to draw my knees up to my chest to cope with how much I burn for him.

“Can we please talk about something else?”

“Definitely,” he says, quiet and lustful. “Talk about something that will distract me from how much I need to make love to you. Please.”

“Ethan—”

“Fuck, yes, say my name.”

“I’m only going to keep talking to you if I know both of your hands are in plain sight.”

“I can see my hand perfectly well. It’s wrapped around my aching—”

“Ethan!”

I hear fabric rustling, followed by a resigned sigh. “Fine. Hands are above the covers. Killjoy.”

His tone is so petulant, it makes me laugh.

“So,” he says before yawning. “You in bed, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Doing anything interesting?”

His innuendo isn’t lost on me, but I don’t bite. “Actually, I was reading some of your old e-mails.”

There’s a pause before he says, “Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’m trying to figure out how I feel.”

“About me?”

“Yes.”

Another pauses. “Did they help?”

“Not really. I keep looking for something that isn’t there.”

He’s quiet for few seconds before saying, “Did you know that I have a whole folder of draft e-mails? Stuff I wasn’t brave enough to send?”

“What sort of stuff?”

I hear shuffling and the tapping of fingers on a keyboard. “Hang on. I’ll send you some of the less embarrassing ones.”

Almost immediately my inbox lights up with two new messages.

From: EthanHolt

To: CassieTaylor

Subject: Too much of a pussy to send this to you.

Date: February 9th 1:08am

Cassie,

We’re in France. I’ve stopped drinking and have been getting help for over six months now. I’m learning to take responsibility for my mistakes.

I take responsibility for hurting you. If you’d never met me, you wouldn’t be in pain right now. I hate that I did that.

Of all the people in my life that I fucked up, you are the one I regret the most.

I think about you a lot. Dream about you.

I wish I had the guts to send this to you, but I probably won’t. Still, writing it soothes me. I’m working on being open and honest with you, but I guess I’m not there yet. When I am, rest assured, you’ll be the first to know.

France is beautiful. I stood at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower today and looked up at it. There are very few times in my life I’ve felt so small. The day I left you was one of them.

I miss you.

Ethan.

I opened the second e-mail.

From: EthanHolt

To: CassieTaylor

Subject: I need you.

Date: June 9th 12:38am

Cassie,

It’s my birthday. I don’t expect to hear from you, but fuck, I really need to.

I want you here, in my apartment. In my bed. Kissing me and making love to me and telling me you forgive me.

I need it like air. I’m drowning without you. Please.

Please.

Earlier, I was sitting on a bench on the banks of the Tiber, and there were all these people there holding hands and kissing. Happy and in love.

They made it seem so easy. Like giving their heart to someone else isn’t the scariest thing in the world.

I still don’t understand that.

Don’t they know the power they’re giving to that other person? The absolute future-forming dominion?

Don’t they understand how much it’s going to hurt when it all goes wrong? And let’s face it, ninety percent of those couples won’t still be together a year from now. Even six months from now.

And yet, there they are, hugging and lip-locking, completely oblivious to the pain that’s coming for them.

Unconcerned and trusting.

That was always something I struggled to be.

It was almost impossible to turn off the internal countdown clock that screamed at me daily about all the ways you could hurt me. After all, history proved that eventually, everyone leaves me. Why would you be any different?

Now I know that you were.

Are.

The thing is, underneath all the bullshit that made me push you away, there were parts of me that clung to you when I left, and now, without you, I struggle to function.

The thought that keeps me up at night is that I had my chance to be whole and right, and I blew it.

Please tell me I’ll get another chance. Don’t tell me this is how I have to live now.

I can’t. Being without you is too hard.

I miss you so much it hurts.

Ethan.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest.

This is exactly what I’d needed to hear, so many times.

I realize I’m gripping my phone to the point of pain. “They … God, Ethan … They’re beautiful. Why didn’t you send them?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. I thought you hated me.”

“I did, but … if I’d read those e-mails, maybe I would have hated you less.”

“I wish I’d had the guts to lay it all out for you back then, but I just wasn’t ready.”

“And now you are?”

“Ask me anything you like, and I’ll give you a straight answer.”

“Anything?”

“Absolutely.”

I take a breath and ask him the question that’s haunted me for years. “In all your e-mails, why didn’t you ever say you loved me?”

I can almost hear his shock. “What?”

“You never said it. In any of them.”

“Cassie, I did say it. All the time.”

“I’ve just read through them all for the hundredth time, and you didn’t say it once. You said you missed me, that you wanted to be friends, but there’s nothing about love.”

“There’s no fucking way that’s true. I … I—” He takes in a shaky breath. “I thought it all the time. It seemed to be in every word I wrote to you but … I— Shit, Cassie.”

He growls in frustration.

“Ethan, it’s fine.”

“It’s really fucking not. Of all the things I should have told you, that’s at the top of the goddamn list. But whether I said it in the e-mails or not, you have to know that I— I really do—”

“Ethan, stop.”

“Cassie—”

“No. I don’t want you to say it just because I brought it up.”

“That’s not the reason.”

“Still, just don’t, okay? Not tonight.”

He exhales, and thankfully, he doesn’t push it.

We make small talk about the show for a few minutes, but when I stifle a yawn, he tells me to go to sleep. I don’t argue.

In the morning, I feel like crap. My hangover isn’t too bad, but I had terrible dreams in which Holt left me, over and over again, and each time, I took him back, all the while getting angrier with myself each time I did it.

I’ve barely shuffled out of the shower, when my phone beeps with a text from him.

Intrigued, I open my laptop and find a single e-mail.

When I open it, my screen explodes.

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