Lucy

 

I knew I was being dramatic, but I was so fucking bored, and the longer we went without talking or seeing each other while living in the same house, I just got angrier. In all honesty, I did have fun dressing up like it was a Halloween costume; it was even kind of cute. But I knew he’d be pissed, and I was pushing his buttons on purpose. What I didn’t expect was for us to connect even more afterward.

 

Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing. What I expected from this arrangement was something different. I’m not sure what I thought it would be like, but once I was there, living in his home for a few days, I wasn’t excited anymore. I was a big ball of twine on the inside - all wound up, and slowly coming apart. The money was one thing, but it had become more emotional; he still hadn’t acknowledged what happened in the past, really, but we were supposedly moving on. It didn’t feel like a business transaction anymore. It was as if we were on a reality show or something, where they put you together with your ex and you have to tolerate each other on a desert island to win a cash prize. Except, we were pushing each other’s buttons because we didn’t know what else to do.

 

Apologizing to him was the right thing to do, even if I wasn’t completely sorry. I saw the way he looked at me; there was a part of him that enjoyed it. He’d become so stuffy and driven over the last few years that I enjoyed ruffling his feathers, even if it was only for a moment. In his bedroom, I looked around and noticed he had nothing personal there. Not a single picture, nothing indicating who he was or where he’d been in his life. The furniture was, of course, high end and beautiful, but there was no personality to anything in his home. His demeanor had shifted from angry to what seemed like anguish, and that is when I offered to just go back to my own apartment.

 

It didn’t make sense for us to spend the next year silently torturing each other, and the more time I spent with and around him, the more lost in my head I was becoming. To my surprise, he knelt before me, and promised that it would be different. And in that moment, I flashed back to when he first told me he loved me. We were only sixteen, but we’d had a stupid argument about him driving us around too fast in his Camaro. When we finally stopped and I got out of the car angrily, he chased after me. He grabbed my arm the same way he did after our fight in the foyer, and sat me down, professing his love for me. How he’d never do anything to hurt me. He had actually lived up to his end of the deal.

 

As we sat across from each other, eating the amazing chicken marsala that Maybel had made for us, I reflected. I realized that the man he’d become - the cold, unbreakable rule-making man - was of my own making. I’d done that to him. In my selfish pilgrimage to the big city, I left more than my shitty home life behind. I left behind people who genuinely cared about me because my dreams seemed more important; I was desperate. It seemed that perhaps I was always desperate.

 

“What are you thinking about, Lucy? You’re lost in thought,” he interrupted my reflections.

 

“I was thinking about what brought me here,” I replied thoughtfully.

 

“Here, to my house?” he asked, seeming confused.

 

“Here to New York. Here to this place in my life. Here, back to you, actually.” I let a slight chuckle out, recognizing the irony in all of this.

 

“And what are you thinking about it?” he asked me, listening intently.

 

“I’m thinking that I’ve made some incredibly selfish decisions in my life that have hurt people. And while maybe I was young, and naive at the time, I knew what I was doing, and I did it anyway.”

 

Raising his eyebrows at me in surprise, he asked, “Do you talk to your mother at all?”

 

Pursing my lips at the thought of her, I let out a breath. “No. No, I don’t.”

 

“Do you wonder how she’s doing?” he asked me, taking a sip of the red wine he’d poured for us.

 

“Sometimes. But you know how she was…” I started to trail off, and as I grew more uncomfortable with the topic, I tried to close that door. “She didn’t care what I was doing, Ryder. She never cared. You were there. You saw what my life was like.”

 

He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, his muscles tightening and bulging at the sleeves of his shirt. “You didn’t have to run away, Lucy. You realize that, right?”

 

I didn’t want to be having this conversation, but I’d accepted the fact that it was going to happen eventually. “I think that I did, Ryder. I needed to get away. I needed to find myself.” I scoffed at the statement. Finding myself wasn’t exactly a revelation in realizing success for me. “If I had stayed, I’d still be there. Working some shit job, taking care of my mom, who didn’t really like me anyway. It was miserable. And I deserved another chance.”

 

“So, is this your second chance? How is what you’ve been doing any better than it was back then, except that you have nicer clothes?” That stung a little, but it was the truth.

 

“I honestly don’t know. But I had to try.” I gave in to the reality that I was in exactly the same position I was in six years ago, when I’d left for a fresh start. He was right. I was waitressing and working as an intern. At my age, I should have had a real career. Or started a family. Or both.  Something more than doing the same thing in a different town.

 

“Lucy. Look at me,” he said sternly, as I’d lowered my head in remorse for my shitty choices.

 

Trying to break the seriousness of the conversation, I sneered at him playfully. “You’re very bossy these days, Ryder.”

 

Laughing, he relaxed his posture, and leaned forward. Then, in a hushed and serious tone, he replied, “That’s right, I am, Lucy. I’m the boss now. Do you think that you can handle that for the next year? Me, taking care of you. Telling you how it’s going to be. Do you think that you can stop fighting me every day?”

 

As I watched his lips form the words slowly, I licked mine gently as if I were about to have him for dessert. His dominance was so fucking sexy, I was melting into a puddle in my chair. Part of my wanted to verbalize how sorry I was for everything, how it was my fault he’d become cold, but in that moment, he was lighting me on fire. As I gulped, my fingertips made their way to my neck, brushing gently against my skin.

 

“Answer me, Lucy. Can you handle it?” he practically growled at me.

 

I felt myself nod slightly, as I stared into his eyes, burning intensely through me. “Yes.” I managed to force a whisper, completely entranced by his raw manliness.

 

He stood up abruptly, on a mission. Advancing quickly to my side of the table, he grabbed the back of my chair, pulling it back and grabbing me simultaneously. Before it registered with me what was happening, his lips were on mine, feverishly sucking me into his storm. In that second, I forgot everything, and let him consume me. As his lips found my neck, I gasped, grabbing at his waist under the hem of his tight shirt. He dominated me, pulling me to him, his hardness pressing against me, and he grabbed the hair at the back of my neck, granting himself better access as he ran his tongue along my shoulder.

 

If he hadn’t been holding me so tightly, I’d have melted into the floor as my knees buckled, and he pulled me closer. Raising both of his hands to my face, he pulled away, meeting my gaze. “Do you want this, Lucy?” he asked in a low, breathy voice.

 

I nodded to him, unable to speak and wanting his lips on mine again.

 

“I need you to say it. You have to tell me that you want this,” he said desperately,still holding me close to him, almost out of breath.

 

I swallowed to find my voice, replying in a whisper, “I want you, Ryder.” I said the words, and as I heard them come out of my mouth, I had another revelation. I never stopped wanting him.

 

And with that, he planted his lips on mine one more time, before dragging me to his bedroom.