Stay With Me
Authors: Jenny Anastan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Jenny Anastan
Translation copyright © 2015 Elena Mancini
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as
Resta con me
by the author via the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform in Italy in 2014. Translated from Italian by Elena Mancini. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503948747
ISBN-10: 1503948749
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant
To my husband, the love of my life.
To my son, my heart.
To my parents, to whom I owe everything.
To Alexandra, the friend I have the fortune of always having on my side; you’re my sister.
To Carmen, for having prodded me. Thanks, dear.
Prologue
March 13, 2010
San Francisco
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.
This is not happening. It’s not true. Now I’m going to wake up and discover it’s all been a bad dream.
But when my eyes opened, the reality I was trying to deny was right in front of me, looking at me with a coldness that was disarming. Crushing. Clearing away the past year of my life.
Our life.
A year that I knew hadn’t been perfect, but which I nevertheless believed had held something important for both of us.
But it hadn’t.
Not for him.
His eyes bored into my soul, lacerating it and leaving it in pieces.
How could he not understand what I felt for him? My unconditional love for him? Even a blind person could have seen the depth of emotions I harbored.
I was an open book. It was so easy to read me, but he didn’t attempt to. He didn’t seem interested in knowing who
I
really was.
In that moment, he just stood there, as beautiful as on the first day I’d laid eyes on him—when he’d turned toward me and smiled. That smile which always got him what he wanted,
including me
.
His designer suit sat softly on his body. The opened buttons on his jacket revealed his muscular torso, which was emphasized by his perfectly ironed shirt.
His blue-gray eyes stared at me inscrutably. He’d always been good at hiding behind his icy gaze. He was successful at not letting anything he felt seep through. He spoke with an unsettling calmness that would have rocked the nerves of a Tibetan monk. I wondered how he could end it with such ease, as though I were something written on a chalkboard and could vanish with a rapid stroke of an eraser.
Was it really true the past year had left him cold? Was I that uninteresting?
His words echoed in my ears: “I’m going back to New York.”
I always knew he would leave, but every time the thought crossed my mind, I tried to ignore it, to enjoy the little he conceded me. But I could no longer pretend.
The time had come.
I slowly looked up and saw his lips were still moving. He was talking. He’d probably never stopped, but I couldn’t hear any more sounds.
Not since I’d heard my heart breaking. It was a sound I’d never forget. A pain I would carry with me forever.
Forever.
I wanted to get up from the armchair, to run and hug him, to ask him not to leave me. To stay with me.
Stay with me.
That’s what my heart was screaming.
But I neither said nor did anything. I just tightened my grip on the pillows as though holding them were the only thing preventing me from falling into the darkness. And I tried to control my breathing because I felt something growing inside me that I knew well:
panic.
I could not allow an anxiety attack to take hold. I was already on the edge of the abyss. An attack would have pushed me over.
You can do it, Zoe. You’re strong. Panic will not get the better of you.
How stupid I was. I knew it was bound to wind up this way, because he meant
too much
to me and I was
no one
to him.
And yet, like a fool, I’d hoped things might change. With every part of my being, I’d wanted him to grow more attached to me. I’d told myself that perhaps with time, he’d be able to really see me, to look at me just once the way I did him every day.
Every damned day.
And not just be a bed
buddy
.
“Did you understand what I said?”
I nearly jumped at hearing his voice so detached. His glacial tone sounded as though he were concluding his affairs. He treated me as though I were something that needed to be taken care of in a hurry.
I nodded, without being able to breathe. The air was stuck in my throat and my tongue was in knots.
“Zoe? Are you listening to me?” His voice was insistent.
I nodded again.
“Then talk, damn it! Don’t act like a child. You knew this would happen one day, and I never promised you more than I could give.”
“I know,” I finally managed to utter with no small effort. He was telling the truth, but
only God knew
how much I’d hoped that things could change. I sharpened my gaze. I wanted to find a concession, something that would indicate I’d been more than just a pastime, that his words were just . . . words.
But instead I found nothing. No hesitation. No uncertainty.
“I was clear at the start of our relationship. It was just sex.”
Just sex. No feelings. Love complicates everything.
How many times had he said that in the beginning? Many times. Perhaps too many. But then he’d stopped, and I’d stupidly believed something had changed inside of him. That perhaps his heart was binding itself to mine.
I was wrong.
“Is that all?” I asked, hoping he’d leave. After all, hadn’t he said everything he’d come to say?
“We can remain friends, Zoe, if you ever need me . . .”
I raised my hand to stop him from saying anything else. I didn’t want to hear anything else.
I wouldn’t have tolerated it.
The word “friends” was already heresy. We could never be friends. How would something like that even be possible? How could a woman stay in touch with the man she loves, with the man who broke her heart? How?
“You don’t need to worry, Andrew. Everything is OK,” I lied, but he didn’t even notice. Or he pretended not to.
“Good. Like I said, I’m going back to New York in a couple of days.”
“So your work is over?” I asked with whatever voice I had left.
“Yes, the acquisition and restructuring of the company went faster than expected. And now I can leave everything in the hands of my associates.”
That meant he wasn’t coming back. I wouldn’t see him again.
I summoned all my strength, hoping my legs wouldn’t betray me as I slowly pulled myself up to get closer to him. The fear of fainting in front of him was strong. I wouldn’t allow him to see me stripped of my defenses, to know just how strong the pain I felt was.
Ultimately, I was the architect of my own pain. I had allowed him to take my heart and rule my soul, and I had only myself to blame for what I was feeling.
It had been enough for me to see a tiny, minuscule glimmer of hope to fall into a one-way relationship and grab on to an illusion of us that had never existed.
Mustering a smile that didn’t belong to me, I stared at him for the last time. “Andrew, I need to get ready for work.”
“I was hoping to give you a final farewell.”
I wasn’t shocked by his level of frankness. That’s how he was. Sex came above everything else. It was second only to his work.
“I really need to go, Andrew,” I said with resolve.
His hands grabbed my waist and pulled me toward him, into his pelvis.
“Andrew, I have to—”
He put his finger to my lips. “Come on, baby, I know you want me once more.”
“Let go of me,” I uttered quietly, without finding the courage to look into his eyes again. If I’d looked for my reflection in those storm clouds, I would have let him take me right there, on the floor of my studio apartment, and allowed him to shatter the final bit of dignity I had left.
I would have lost everything, and I couldn’t afford that.
“I want you, Zoe. Can you feel what you do to my body?”
Of course I felt it, but it wasn’t enough. I placed my palms on his chest and tried to push him away.
“If you wanted to have a farewell fuck, you should have done it before breaking up with me,” I told him.
“Break up with you?” His tone was one of surprise. “We’ve never been together, Zoe. Our relationship was just—”
“Sex!” I blurted out, completing his sentence. “I get it; I’m not stupid. But now it’s not even that!” I took two steps back. “It’s no longer anything . . . and I have to go to work.”
He laughed as he ran his hand through his raven hair. “I warned you not to get attached.” It almost sounded like a complaint. He took a step toward me. “Come on. I want to feel you come underneath me one last time. I want to fuck you until I leave you breathless.”
The sensual cadence of his voice lit me up like a match. I felt the blood simmering in my veins and that twinge of desire in my lower belly that overcame me every time he looked at me a certain way. My hands longed to lose themselves in his hair.
This was the effect he and his words had on me. All he needed to do was look at me or whisper in my ear and I was his. Inexorably and hopelessly. It had been this way since we first met. From the first time he’d told me he wanted me.
“I have to go,” I managed to say.
“As you wish, baby. I’ll come by this evening after work. I want to leave you with something that will always remind you of me.” He smiled, stroking my cheek with his thumb. A simple form of contact, but it stopped my breath.
Andrew didn’t say anything else. He turned and finally left me alone. I lowered my head, allowing a solitary tear to fall, and I let him leave without telling him I wouldn’t be home that night. I couldn’t bear to see him again, to tell him goodbye. I would have fallen into a thousand pieces and I would have never been able to be put back together again.
But he didn’t need to worry. There would always be something that would remind me of him forever. My hand trembling, I caressed my belly, which was still flat, and I smiled.
“Everything will go be OK, Blueberry . . . Mom will take care of you.”