Page 89 of For Your Heart
There’s a voice in my head calling me a hypocrite. It wasn’t exactly monogamous when we fooled around with Declan and Zarek. Why is that different? Can I convince myself it’s just sex? Is that what makes it different? Because dicks were involved?
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I force myself to get up and move deeper into my house. I don’t look around. Damon has been everywhere. There’s nowhere safe to look right now. Except that as I stand in my bedroom door, I cannot make myself cross the threshold. I teeter there for a minute before backing away.
The lump in my throat, the heaviness in my chest… I can’t go into that room. Instead, I turn and move into the guest bathroom where I stand under the shower. I need to wash this night away. I need to get the feeling of his hands off me. The way they burn. How my skin feels empty without them.
The sudden image of Damon, Simon, and Declan in the shower, naked, soapy, hands everywhere, has me practically falling from the stall and onto the tile floor. A pathetic sob echoes around the room.
Without bothering to get dressed or even so much as dry off, I shut off the shower and head into the guest room, where I fall onto the bed. My eyes burn. My breath is shuddery; making my lungs hurt. I can’t breathe with all the stupid congestion that comes with crying.
While I lay there, the only thing I can think about is the entire night we spent together. The six of us. I really liked it. I liked the entire thing. The way they teased each other and laughed. I loved that there wasn’t ever a point in the conversation where it turned awkward. Declan never let me feel left out or like they were always pausing to explain something to me and Zarek.
I never felt outside of their conversation looking in. I didn’t feel like an outcast because I was part of it all.
The conversations were all easy, and I loved to learn about them. Nothing felt inappropriate or too close. Not even their kisses and hugs and absent touching.
It’s difficult to explain, but it was fine.
Damon kept me in his arms. He was always kissing me and hugging me. Murmuring to me. Sometimes he did explain something to me, but I think it was more for his benefit of doing so than that I was lost in what they were talking about. I knew enough from the context to follow along.
It felt like he wanted me to know some details, though. He wanted me to feel like I was a part of it.
Everything about the night was perfect.
And the dance floor was too. The way he led me through dancing for the first time. How he showed me to move with the beat and just feel it. How he touched me and kissed me. It wasn’t any different with Zarek and Declan. I mean, the kissing was. But the rest wasn’t. Not really.
It wasn’t any different when they danced with each other, either.
I’m not naïve enough to think that they were actually dancing with Simon any differently, either. So why does it hurt like there was something deeper there? Is it all the other stuff that I haven’t seen? Was it in that moment that it became real to me? How inappropriately close and intimate their friendship is?
These thoughts keep me awake most of the night. I might doze here and there, but it isn’t much or for very long. When I wake in the morning, everything in me hurts as if I’ve spent hours crying.
Because I have. Not over the life that I finally grew the balls enough to leave. I really am done crying over that.
This time, I’m crying over a broken heart. I won’t even say myfirstbroken heart. I don’t want it to be my first or last. I want it healed. I want Damon to choose me.
I wait as long as I can before digging my phone out of my pants and calling Jordan. It’s early, but hopefully not too early.
“Sage,” he says, voice thick with sleep. “What’s wrong, buddy?”
I swallow and look at the time. It’s barely past seven, so I managed two solid minutes. “I’m sorry,” I say and try to steady my breath. “You have a baby and you need sleep. I’m really sorry. I just—I don’t know who else to talk to and I really need to talk to someone.”
There’s rustling and then the quiet click of a door. “It’s alright, man. What’s wrong? What happened? Do you need me to come get you and bring you home?”
“No,” I whisper. “I’m home.” Curled up on my guest room bed, but I’m home.
“Tell me what happened. Why are you crying?”
Taking a deep breath, I launch into last night. It’s a damn mess in the way I’m telling it. Bouncing between the club and what I felt then remembering that this was a date and going backwards to give some context. I jump forward again to dancing and then back up to tell him that it was all great. I like Simon a lot. And then seeing them dance together. But they all danced like that with me too. Back to the date itself where I loved to see their friendship for real. To see what it’s really like. Then to the dance floor, where it looked really, really different. But should it? Should it look or feel different? Because it was the same. Am I projecting?
When I run out of breath, though I’m sure I’ve left out a whole lot of stuff, Jordan asks, “You’re upset about how they were dancing, right?”
“I’m sorry,” I whine. “I am really bad about explaining my shit but… yeah. Then I feel stupid for it because they all danced with me like that. Except that I know that dancing is just… Well, it’s nothing. I know they’re closer than what I see on the dance floor. I know they shower together and wash each other. I know they sleep together practically naked. They don’t even have two beds, Jordan! It’s like all those moments that I haven’t seen but have been told about manifested in this little glimpse and I’m suddenly panicking because it hurts too much to see it. But do I have the right to feel that way when he told me all along how close they are? I feel like an idiot for being upset.”
“Okay, okay. Hold on.” I take a breath to let him talk. “First, yes. Whatever you’re feeling, you have a right to feel. I don’t really care if youthinkyou shouldn’t. If you feel that way, then you do. And you even know why.”
“Yes,” I say, though I’m not quite convinced that he’s right and I should be allowed to feel this way over something I already knew happens.
“Also, just because you know about something doesn’t mean that you’re required to accept it. If it makes you feel bad to see the man you’re seeing with someone else in that way, you’re entirely entitled to feel that way. Whether he told you about it or not.”
