My father’s words echoed in my mind long after the call ended. In the dark, I sat on the floor with my back to the foot of the bed, eyes closed, face buried in my hands. The persistent headache that had plagued me for days returned, joined by the anxiety crawling under my skin and nausea turning my stomach.
I thought about going downstairs. I imagined the vacant black piano sitting almost invisible in the dark. Tugging at the roots of my hair, I watched myself take slow, tentative steps inside. Still far enough from the piano that I couldn’t quite reach it, I pictured a younger version of myself sitting at the keys.
Beside me, my mother walked in and took a seat at the bench. She smiled while I played, brushing my messy hair off my forehead with gentle fingers. With an audience, I sat up straighter to assume a proper posture. My fingers traveled the keys. Carmen knew the tune well—I’d written it for her—and hummed along with the melody. She had the sweetest voice, a delicate and angelic soprano.
But the lighting changed. Where once it was daylight, the clouds coalesced around the house to shutter the sun and leave behind a gray wash. Her song transitioned. I sat taller, older. Carmen’s skin turned pale. Glancing at her, I saw the discomfort in her unfocused eyes. Her hand reached out to grab mine from the keys.
“Mom?” I held her shoulders, searching her anguished face. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t respond as the last remnants of color fell from her cheeks and sweat gathered on her forehead.
“Mom.” I captured her face between my hands. Worry wrung my heart as I began to panic.
She fell limp and lifeless in my lap. Collapsed across my legs. Blood trickled from her nose.
“Mom,” I pleaded again, holding her. “Wake up. Please.” I wiped the blood from her nose, lightly rubbing her cheek. “No, no, no.”
Caramel eyes stared up at me, but they were empty and unresponsive.
“Shit... shit...” I shook her, a futile struggle to reverse the damage and rouse her.
“Dad!”
The sound didn’t make it past my lips. There was no voice behind it; my throat held a boulder too massive to move.
“Dad!”
“Josh. Hey, it’s me.”
My eyes snapped open and landed on the dark vision of Hadley’s face inches from mine. Warm hands held my face as she crouched in front of me.
“What?”
“You were calling for your dad.” Hadley’s thumbs slid along my jaw. “I think you had an episode. How do you feel?”
I filled my lungs with another deep breath, letting my head fall back against the edge of the bed. She released me, dropping her hands to my shoulders, where she continued to run her thumbs over my damp skin.
“Exhausted,” I said. “Sorry.”
This wasn’t the first time, but I hadn’t had such a vivid flashback in a while.
Hadley’s hands left me, and I sought her eyes. She couldn’t leave me yet.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She walked into my bathroom and returned with a glass of water. I drank it in one mouthful.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She sat beside me, resting her back against the end of the bed with her knees curled up to her chest. “I didn’t get in.”
“Huh?”
“I heard you on the phone with Simon, and I didn’t get in. That’s why I haven’t said anything. It was a long shot anyway. Turning them down once doesn’t engender a lot of goodwill. I didn’t want to tell you if it didn’t pan out.”
“When did you find out?”
“A week ago. I guess I’m still licking my wounded ego.”
“Fuck ’em. Who needs Emerson? A bunch of pretentious elitists who wouldn’t know talent if it shit in their shoes.”
Punky snorted a laugh. “Unlike the unpretentious elitists at Columbia, right?”
“Well, yeah. They wanted me, so they have great taste.”
“Jackass.”
We were quiet for a moment, perhaps both struggling to figure a way in or out of this conversation as we stared out the windows and the black night beyond them.
There was one question I just had to ask. “Why now?”
Taking a deep breath, she rested her chin on her folded arms. “Nothing had changed. I sent off the application over summer break. I thought...” She paused and turned her attention away from me. “I thought maybe I was holding you back or just making it worse. That if I left, maybe you’d—I don’t know—get better or go back to therapy or... something. Honestly, Josh, hitting rock bottom would be an improvement over the last couple of years. This pattern just has to stop. You’re barely living.”
And here I thought I was hiding it well. “You’re right.”
Beside me, Hadley deflated.
“But none of that is your fault. That’s on me.”
“I’ve felt helpless, you know? And I don’t mean I want sympathy or anything. I just...I don’t know how to help.” Hadley shifted to face me, her eyes sincere and steadfast. “I don’t know if you want me to try or if it’s better that I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know when it’s the right time to push or if I’m making it worse. And then sometimes you just piss me off.”
“I’m good at that.”
“Really good.”
“Maybe I pick fights with you, on occasion, just to get you to talk to me.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” But there was a little smile in her voice, and her eyes told me that she understood. “Maybe we’re both idiots.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer until her head rested against me. As only Punky could, she’d chased off my queasy stomach and trembling muscles.
Now for the hard part.
“This is going to suck,” I warned her.
“A big fat one.” Hadley slid one hand across my abdomen and held my waist. “Three days ago we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
“You’re right. Maybe I should be drunk for this. That seemed to work out well the last time.”
“You can be awfully charming when you’re wasted.”
“Noted.”
Like two lungs of the same body, we both took a deep breath and held on tighter. I opened my mouth to begin. This was it. There wouldn’t be another opportunity. I wouldn’t get a better shot. But Hadley spoke first.
“My parents,” she began. “They were murdered in a home invasion. In the middle of the night, my mom came into my room and woke me up, put me in the attic and told me to hide. I’ve never understood why they didn’t come with me. Why wouldn’t they hide and wait for the police?
“When Tom first brought me home, I’d lock myself in my room or hide in the attic for hours. When he took the door off the hinges, I started running away. I thought I could make it back to them somehow. Fix it. It wasn’t until he took me to see Simon that Tom understood.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s not your fault.” Hadley sat up, meeting my eyes. “I’ve slept with my bedroom door locked ever since. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and check every lock in the house. Sometimes two or three times a night. I liked staying here when we were kids and Tom was on the road because nothing bad ever happened to me when you were there, in the foster home. I know that sounds horrible, but I always felt safe with you.
“Tom had me stay over with your family or let you stay at the house because he knew that I needed it. The way I am...” Hadley exhaled, looking down at her fingers picking at the hem of my sweatshirt in her lap. “It’s not your fault. I know you blame yourself, that you feel like you have this obligation to me, but it started before that night.”
“I made it worse,” I argued. “There’s no getting around that and I don’t want you to make excuses for me. I abandoned you, Hadley. Whether I knew what would happen or not, whether I understood the history, I fucked up. I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to protect you. Tom trusted me.” My voice rose until I was all but shouting in her face. “You needed me. I fucked you and left you there. Damn it, Hadley! Why don’t you hate me?”
I shoved to my feet, unable to sit still any longer. My muscles twitched with the need to...I didn’t know what. But I had to move. I paced the length of my room, the anger building until I stopped and rounded on Hadley now standing at the foot of the bed.
With all the confusion and fury coursing through my veins, I shouted at her. “Why are you taking the blame?”
“Why do you have to be the martyr?”
“Fuck!” I tugged at my hair, continuing to pace. “All this time, Hadley. Years. I’ve had this thing hanging over my head. I think about it constantly. Did you know that? I think about it until I’m sick to my stomach and then I lash out at you just to get a reaction. Just to get some kind of emotion from you. Hate me or yell at me or tell me I’m a sorry sack of shit. Don’t stand there and rationalize that my fucked-up bag of crazy is somehow your fault.”
“I took advantage of you.”
I stopped short, snapping my eyes to her. “What did you say?”
“You weren’t ready and I took advantage of you.”
“Fuck off.”
This was a bad idea. My fingers tingled like I’d sat on them too long and a chill ran down my spine. I was wrong; I wasn’t ready for this.
“Josh—”
Hadley reached for me, but I jerked away from her.
“I was the aggressor,” she said. “I instigated it. We went from first kiss to sex in the span of one night and I never stopped to think that maybe we should stop. I didn’t take into account what it would do to you. I fucked up,” she insisted, “because I wasn’t looking out for you. I should have been your friend, but I was selfish and pushed you too hard.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I stalked the short distance between us until I hovered over her much shorter stature and glared down. “You don’t have that sort of power over me. No one does. I fucked you because you were warm, wet, and willing.”
“Don’t do that.”
The sympathy in her eyes infuriated me.
“I don’t believe that,” she said, “so don’t hide behind the act.”
“What act? You’ve had a front-row seat to my highlight reel. I feel nothing anymore. Sex doesn’t mean anything to me. I use women, I get off, and there’s nothing more to it.”
“I thought tonight we were going to be honest.”
I couldn’t handle it anymore. I felt claustrophobic. Cornered. My temples throbbed with a near-blinding headache.
“You won’t convince me that you’re really that person, Josh. If you think fucking through the pain is some sort of desensitization therapy, fine. But I know the real you. You’re not as numb or uncaring as you try to project.”
Her words, the tone of her voice, were like a blade peeling at my flesh. My legs went heavy, forcing me to step back and fall to the futon. I just didn’t have any fight left in me.
“I can’t finish at all with another person. I have this sort of mental block that won’t let me get there no matter how good it feels. Then I dream about being with you our first time and it has me hugging the toilet in the middle of the night. Horrible panic attacks.”
I felt so fucking pathetic saying it out loud. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I understood that I had never wanted to admit as much to Hadley because doing so felt like the final nail in the coffin. Her opinion of me mattered. I knew it was shit at the moment, but showing weakness in front of her was pretty much my least favorite thing. Short of having her, living with the far-fetched fantasy that there could be a future for us had been a small consolation that my heart held on to, no matter how improbable. It got me through the day.
Because I had nothing left to lose, and if I was going to present myself—naked, ashamed, and shivering at her feet—with all my scars and flaws, I looked up into Hadley’s sorrowful eyes and said the words out loud. The truth this time.
“Making love to you is the happiest memory I can’t stand to think about. Nothing has ever felt so perfect. I was right there, Hadley. I was with you completely. And then I wasn’t. That night and every time since, I get to that moment of release and all I see is him standing over me and the things he made me do to him.” The way he’d leave me like a used rag on the floor.
Hadley came to stand between my legs. She wove her fingers into my hair at the nape of my neck, anchoring herself there. My hands found their way to the backs of her thighs, skimming her bare skin.
“I pulled over for an hour on the side of the road that night I left you because I couldn’t stop throwing up. I couldn’t see straight. I damn near wrapped my car around a tree. Every day all I want is to lean on you and get as far away from you as possible. You were the only person I could talk to and the last person I wanted to tell.” By the time the words fell out of my mouth, I was almost in tears. “My life didn’t begin until I met you. I’ve loved you every day that matters. I’m so fucking in love with you and you scare the shit out of me.”
That was it. I had nothing left. I’d bled my fears dry and felt all the more ashamed, embarrassed, and worthless for the experience.
“Are you scared of me now?” Hadley’s voice was gentle as her fingers combed through my hair.
My head lolled into her palms. I was exhausted and unable to fight the simple fact that her touching me was a need I couldn’t resist. I was greedy for her.
“No.”
I didn’t have the energy or good sense to be afraid while both of our open wounds sat exposed to the air.
Very slowly, Hadley hoisted one leg and then the other over mine. “Does this bother you?”
As she sat astride me on the futon, my hands slid up to her ass. I held her, just the lightest touch, but my temperature rose with the feeling of her straddling my hips.
“No,” I responded past a mouth full of sand.
“I want to kiss you,” she said. “I’m going to kiss you unless you tell me not to. You’ve got about three inches to make up your mind.”
I looked at her, dazed, confused, and in awe. In the dark, Hadley’s eyes were their own light. There was no sadness. No pain. She looked perhaps the most peaceful I’d ever seen her.
She leaned forward just a fraction. “One. T—”
I pressed my lips to hers.
My Hadley didn’t live atop a pedestal. Neither of us was under any misconception that we were anything but flawed individuals with extensive backgrounds in mistakes and bad decisions. We’d both inflicted pain on each other and suffered our fair share. Despite all of that, and maybe because of it, her lips joined with mine felt like salvation. Her kiss was acceptance. Forgiveness that I felt I needed whether she agreed with me or not.
Hadley’s fingers curled around the ends of my hair and tightened. That sensation, that awesome feeling of her asking for me, snapped me out of my own head. Every nerve, every ounce of my mental faculties became focused on reciprocating. I slid my hands up her back and held her closer, her chest pressing against mine. When her lips parted to suck in a quick breath, I was too overwhelmed to stop myself from scraping my teeth across her bottom lip and licking the plump flesh I’d fantasized about and obsessed over for the entirety of my sexually active life.
Hadley’s seductive whimper did me in. That was it. That tiny, lustful sound was my breaking point at the very edge of sense. I flipped us over to toss her back to the futon. Hadley writhed under me.
I put up the faintest resistance against my instincts. One more needy moan from Hadley was all it took to break my thin resolve. I ground my cock between her thighs. Jesus Christ, I wanted to taste her. I wanted to slide my tongue along her cunt more than I wanted my next meal.
Shit. I needed to slow down. I hadn’t even copped a feel of her tits and I was already eating her out in my mind while my cock looked for a secret passageway past the button closure on my pants and the seam of her shorts. This was how everything went pear-shaped in the first place.
First rule: Don’t repeat the same mistakes.
“We should stop.” Hadley captured my jaw between her hands, lips swollen and eyes bright.
We both panted as we caught our breath, but all I could do was kiss her again.
Plunging once more into her mouth before nibbling at her lip, I couldn’t hold back a small laugh. Hadley forced my face away from hers. When I met her eyes, a confused crease appeared between her brows.
“What’s so funny?”
“You,” I said. “Me. Us. Get out of my head.”
Hadley smiled, scratching her nails through the stubble on my jaw. Fuck, that felt good. My dick twitched against her thigh.
“If you keep doing that…”
“Sorry.” Punky put on a contrite expression, though her fingers kept right on goading me.
I lifted one eyebrow.
“Okay, not sorry.”
I lunged at her neck, holding her down when she yelped in surprise and pinning her hands above her head. I nipped at her skin, licking the slight flavor of salt from her warm flesh. Hadley arched up, a lustful moan reaching my ears.
“How about right here?” I spoke against her pulse. “My teeth imprinted on your neck.”
“Not for all the dead presidents in your trust fund,” she answered while shoving at my chest. “I’m not wearing the carnivore’s version of a collar around my neck.”
“Fair enough. But your ass is still open for discussion, right? Because if that’s off the table...” I sat up, offering her my hand to help her stand.
“That’s forward, don’t you think? I mean you and my ass have hardly made the proper introductions and already you’re proposing a permanent partnership?” Hadley shrugged, turning away to saunter toward the door.
So sue me, but I couldn’t let her walk away like that. I smacked her ass. She jumped, spinning around with wide eyes.
My answering smile was anything but apologetic. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”
Punky stuck up her middle finger and waltzed out of my room. I stood there feeling equal parts smug and uncertain.
“We still need to lock up,” she called from next door. “And then I thought you could join me for a sleepover.”
“Wait,” I said, calling her back.
She stood in the doorway of my bedroom. “What’s wrong?”
“Haven’t you forgotten something?”
This pit in my stomach had been festering for years. Before we got any further, I needed to hear the words.
“I don’t think so.”
“Anything you want to say?” I hinted.
“Not that I can think of.”
“Come on, Punky. Throw me a damn bone.”
Hadley tackled me to the bed. She straddled me, her hands pinning my shoulders back. “You’re an idiot.”
My hands slid up her thighs to grab her hips. How many fucking times had I pictured this image? Hadley on top of me, her hair loose and soft around her shoulders.
“But you love me.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, and rolled her eyes. “I love you. The hell is wrong with me?”
I reached up and caught her face, running my thumb over her lips. “Not a goddamn thing.”
“Is this still weird?” she asked as her fingers trailed over my shoulders.
“Less so.”
“Now will you come to bed with me?”
I wrapped my arm around her waist and sat up. “We are in bed. On bed, at least.”
“My bed.”
“Does this bother you? It isn’t haunted, you know.”
Now was as good a time as any to get this ugly topic out of the way. If the subject was an issue for her, I’d set the thing on fire in the backyard, but she needed to tell me the truth.
“I’m not interested in punishing you for every random barfly you’ve brought home,” she said. “I guessed the motivation behind it a while ago. Hell, it was my idea. Not exactly what I had in mind, but I shouldn’t be surprised that you took the advice and ran full speed in the wrong direction.”
“Not to get all dickish and clinical at once,” I said, “but you’re the only time I haven’t used a condom and, being brutally honest, I couldn’t give a fuck about anyone else who’s been in this bed.”
Granted, I had the market cornered on quantity in this house, but Hadley had never caught an eyeful. If I could get past the memory of Pencil Dick poking at her on the bed next door, surely she could adjust. Or was that the more dickish attitude?
Oh, fuck it.
“I’ll get a new one,” I conceded before I put my foot any farther down my throat and cockblocked myself for eternity. “New sheets and everything.”
Hadley draped her arms over my shoulders, her eyes alight with humor. “No need to wake the AmEx right this second. I was jealous, sure. Can’t help that. But it doesn’t give me the creeps, like I don’t expect specters of booty calls past to circle over my head at night screaming your name.”
“That would be terrifying.”
“It would. We’d have to move. At that I’d put my foot down.”
“No argument.”
“I just want you in my bed tonight. Nothing against this one. It was very good to me during the blackout.”
I grabbed her hips and rolled us over, both of us lying on our sides. This wouldn’t be the last difficult conversation we had, but she needed to tell me what she wanted, set boundaries. Without them, I’d run her over.
“How do we do this?”
“I’m not sure I have an answer for that,” she admitted. “But here’s what I think: In a totally bent sort of way, it kind of feels like we’ve been in a dysfunctional marriage for five years and just made up after we both realized we couldn’t remember why we were fighting.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Go on.”
“You’re the philandering husband coming to terms with his midlife crisis and I’m the frigid housewife—getting some on the side from the pool boy because my husband hasn’t been in to flush the pipes in years—who set fire to your Ferrari because you asked if we were out of milk, but really because you left a birthday card on the dresser one morning but it wasn’t my birthday, and I can only assume your mistress turned twenty-three that day and—”
I pinched her lips together, stupefied at the thorough and unfortunate history. “You’ve put some thought into this.”
She pulled free of my fingers. “No, this shit just comes to me, rolls right off the top of my head.”
“Extraordinary.”
“I know, right?”
“But you said we make up. The remorseful husband who’s recently pulled his head out of his ass and the arsonist wife who, if just a touch psychotic, knows he can’t survive without her.”
“Yeah,” she said. “He comes crawling back with a château in Marseille and a fifteen-carat diamond pendant. The mistress has been indicted for fraud.”
“Strangely,” I said, “the missing sum is right about the going price for one French château and matching diamond.”
“A remarkable coincidence.”
“They reconcile over a bottle of fine Scotch and mind-altering sex.”
“He’s still middle-aged,” she quipped. “He shouldn’t get his hopes up. Boastfulness has always been one of her turnoffs.”
“But they stay together for the kids.”
“No kids. Those two lack the moral fiber to raise children.”
“Then what’s the glue that holds them together?”
“Love,” she answered, because it was obviously the right answer. “And even though he’s older and has lost some of the stamina of his youth, he’s still got a big dick. She’s shallow that way.”
I winked at her, but she refused to take the bait, even when it was still pointed right at her.
“And while she might have a thing for pretty flames and be just a touch different,” she said, “they’re both fucked in one way or another. They don’t operate correctly with anyone else. They can’t function alone and they don’t want to. They are each other’s preferred brand of crazy.”
“Most people will say they’re sick, hopeless.”
“Most people are vapid imbeciles,” she said. “Besides, they have to stay together for Tango and Cash.”
“Tango and Cash?”
“The golden retriever and Chartreux.”
“Ah, of course. He loves the damn cat that pisses in his shoes and the slobbering dog that has chewed a hole through every Italian leather briefcase he’s ever owned.”
“See?” Hadley threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck, scratching her nails against the grain.
This fucking woman knew exactly how to touch me.
“They’re perfect for each other,” she said. “And now, after the uncomfortable distance has been put behind them, they fall back into their natural routine, picking up right where they left off.”
“That doesn’t sound so hard,” I said as I brushed her hair behind her ear.
“It doesn’t? I was going for horribly painful and embarrassingly awkward. Shit. Okay, let me start again...”