Page 100 of Intoxicated
“I’m sorry.” Eventually, my bearings return to me. I look up and realize that it’s Brian sitting before me, and not someone else. Someone I desperately want to see right now. “I… I think I’m with the wrong person.”
Brian sits back. “Excuse me?”
I hand back the cup of water. “That guy. Drew. He’s the one who got away.”
“What?”
I stand. Do I go after him? Do I sit here like a complacent idiot, doomed to make the same mistake over and over? Dare I go after the life that might make me happier than what I’m doing now ever could?
“Ch… Cher!” Brian leaps up after me, but I’m too fast. I pick up the skirt of my dress and fly out of the venue. I don’t head to the coat check to pick up my jacket. I don’t need it. Oh, my God, I don’t need it!“Cher!”Brian’s voice continues to echo behind me, but who cares? I have my clutch. I have my wallet and my keys. I don’t need anything else. I’d argue I don’t really need those, either.
I need Drew.
I don’t bother calling a Lyft. Brian might catch up to me, and I need to hurry before I lose my nerve. No, I catch a damn taxi for the first time in years. When the driver asks me where to go, I tell him the intersection of Drew’s building. I don’t remember its name.
All I remember is how I felt every time I entered it.
Angry. Hot and bothered. Expectant. Humiliated. Desirous.
The car turns toward the South Waterfront. I look down at my phone, wishing I hadn’t deleted Drew’s number from my address book. I do, however, have a voice mail from Brian. A few messages, too.
I delete them all and hold my phone to my chest.
The cost to get here is way too high, reaffirming why I always take a rideshare, but who has time to fret over money when I’m standing outside Drew’s apartment… and he might notbehere tonight! I’m lucky the concierge recognizes me and Drew has apparently not told them to turn me away. I head straight up to his door and knock before I lose my nerve.
He answers.
Time stills. My breath is frozen in my lungs, like ice cubes clinking around with every breath.
He isn’t completely undressed. He’s taken off the tuxedo jacket and undone the bowtie, but everything else, from the shirt to the cummerbund, remains on his person. If I didn’t want him before, I do now. I want him like the earth wants the sun to rise every day.
Drew leans against the doorway and looks me up and down. Is he nervous? Surprised? Can he hear the erratic beating of my heart or how much it sings for him? He calls me a siren, but does he know what that means? Does he know that I’ve spent my whole life singing to him, hoping he’ll come to me?
“Damn,” he says with that low, husky voice that has probably ripped off a thousand panties in its day. “That red is absolutely vivacious.”
I try to speak, but my words won’t come out. Instead, I fist handfuls of my red dress, memorizing this moment so I’ll remember exactly what it was like fifty years from now.
“By the way,” he continues. “I fucking love you.”
Fifty men have told me that they love me, some in the most grandiose of ways. Tears have been shed. Songs have been sung. Violins played and choirs came together in unison. But not until now, when a half-dressed man leaning in his apartment doorway said a vulgarity, have I believed it.
Nor have I ever wanted to hear it so badly.
“I love you too,” I gush. The first words I’ve managed since I got in the taxi. Those are them. The truth.“I love you, Drew Benton.”I’ve said the L word a thousand times in my life. I’ve told a hundred men that I love them. When’s the last time I meant it, though? Must have been high school. Young, foolish, and naïve. I thought love was when a boy puts his face between your legs and doesn’t declare“Ew!”because you’re not porn-star hairless. Now I know.
I think I know what real, adult love is.
It’s when a man wishes you the best in your life and encourages you to go out there and find out what makes you happy. When he whispers sweet nothings in your ear one moment and gives you everything else you want the next. Waking up with blood all over his bed and finding out it’s not the end of the world. Never feeling like you’re defective because you’re “the fairer sex” and carry yourself a certain way. Realizing that you don’t have to pretend or put on a show to keep him interested.
It’s when he looks you in the eye, and all you see is the universe you create together.
“Whoa, whoa.” Drew sits up, arm lowering from his doorway. “Come inside, hon.”
Was I on the verge of tears? That explains the burning behind my eyes. Yet it doesn’t explain why I so easily wrap myself in his arms and press my cheek against his chest. The door shuts behind me. My nose meets one of the buttons of his shirt. Suppose I was crying a little. There’s this wet spot on the fabric that wasn’t there before.
Drew encircling his arms around me only makes me want to cry more.
We stand in silence, squeezing one another as the thump of his heart and the hum of the air conditioner lull me into tranquility. Is this the moment when I memorize every rise and fall of his chest? Or am I doomed to be haunted by the caress of his hand against my cheek for the rest of my miserable life? He can’t want me that badly. That’s not what’s happening here. He’s not really inlovewith me. You heard what he said about me. How can a man love a woman like me? Hell, how can I love a bastard like him? Even if he changes his ways a hundred times over, it will never erase the pain he’s caused others over the years.
