Did he have to look so inappropriately hot?

It was something I hadn’t considered: how hard it was going to be to have a serious conversation with a man who came into my house looking like that. He was always his sexiest right after gym. That really was his element. He’d swing round to my house after gym all freshly showered and glowing and with that sense of calm he seemed to get on the other side of a grueling weight session. I never pictured myself having anything to do with a buff muscle guy like him, but I had to admit that somewhere along the line it all clicked for me and now I couldn’t imagine ever not appreciating a man who was in peak physical condition. Max was strong and could do anything. Except, apparently, turn off his charm for a few minutes while I said what I needed to say.

So many afternoons like this would go the same way for us: he’d come over, we’d both pretend to be wildly interested in making coffee or chit-chatting about some unimportant thing, all the while both of us were just waiting for the first moment we could drop the pretense and just fuck. We’d tumble into the bedroom or, if we were feeling really naughty, just collapse wherever we were and strip one another there and then. It was always the best game, to find out what new ways I could pleasure him. On the very spot he was standing right now, I had only a few days before knelt before him and slid that juicy cock of his into my mouth and sucked him until every last drop of his hot cum had disappeared down my throat. On this very sofa I was now sitting on, I had kissed him so hard I thought I would lose my breath, sure I’d melt into a hot puddle with the way his body seemed to perfectly close around mine… the whole house was booby-trapped with memories, and now that I needed to talk to him about something serious, all my body could do was remember all the decidedly non-serious things we’d done with one another here. And in the kitchen. Oh, and in the shower, too.

“To talk? Sure, OK,” he said and awkwardly sat on the stool opposite me, trying to find something to do with his hands.

“I was just on the phone with my mom, actually,” I said. Might as well start there. He gave a little hesitant smile.

“She sticking her nose in things again, huh…?”

“Well, yes. Except, I don’t know, she might be onto something this time.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

I sighed and tried to choose my next words. It was so much harder speaking to him in person like this than it had been when I practiced in the mirror this morning. What with his abs right there. And his lips.

“Well, she thinks I need to start settling down a little, you know? Start being a bit more serious about my future.”

It wasn’t my imagination – his eyes really did grow wide when I said that.

“You know, it’s so funny you mention that, Kate, because I’ve been having exactly the same thoughts myself. I’ve been thinking about us, about the gym, about the future, and I couldn’t agree more, your mom’s definitely right about all that…”

“She is. Which is why I think I should go back home.”

His face fell.

“Wait, what?”

I dug my toes into the carpet and tried to think. Spending time with Max had been the most fun I’d had in… well, maybe ever. And now disappointing him felt even worse than I imagined it would.

“I just …I have to start thinking with my head a little, Max,” I said quietly.

“I don’t understand.”

I could feel him trying to catch my eye.

“My mother’s been trying to persuade me to come home for a long time now. Heading out here didn’t quite pan out the way I thought it would. And since my little thing with you is going to end soon, I have to admit she has a point. I could stay with my folks, get back on my feet a little…”

“But Kate, you can get a job here.”

“Haven’t I tried? You know, Derek did a lot of damage before they threw him in prison. I think I’ll throw up if I have to go through another interview process. Maybe I was never meant to be working out here anyway. I only left to get away from him, and now he’s out of the picture…”

“So what? You’re saying there’s nothing keeping you here?”

He came out and said it. Just blurted out immediately the point I was hoping we could skirt. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt the one man who didn’t seem hell bent on screwing me over.

“I didn’t say that, Max. But we both knew that this was always a temporary thing.”

“Are you talking about the job now, or us?” he snapped.

Here I couldn’t avoid his eyes any longer. They were still the same glassy green, but now there was something in them that I hated seeing there.

“Please don’t get angry, I’m just trying to think carefully about my next step. I don’t have a good history of making the best choices for myself, you know? Maybe my mom is right and that I need to make the smart decision for once and not necessarily the one that feels the best.”

We sat for the longest time in the silence. I didn’t know how to do any of this – fights with Derek were, in their own sick way, so much easier. I just had to put up my guard and hope for the best. But with Max… he wasn’t trying to hurt me and I wasn’t trying to hurt him. So why did it all feel so awful anyway?

“Look, Kate, I won’t stop you doing what you need to, but does this mean you’re breaking up with me?”

“Well, we were never really together in the first place…”

The second I said those words I felt a pang of regret. I searched his face and found all the shock and hurt you’d expect.

“Max, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, I’ve been out of the game for so long I guess… that was mean, I don’t know why I said it. I’m not saying we should break up, I’m just saying I should go back home.”

“And you want to keep seeing each other? It’s a 13-hour drive, Kate.”

“I know,” I whispered.

I hated the frown on his face. I hated this horrible sense of doom over everything. Hated now that one more memory, one I didn’t want, was being added to the mix.

“I’m not going to argue with you, Kate. But I don’t see how your situation improves by going home. You don’t have a job there either,” he said at last, but his voice was cold.

“Actually, I might. Mom says she has some contacts there who liked the work I did before I left and they say they’d be happy to take me on. I promised myself I would make smarter choices Max, surely you can understand promises like that, can’t you?”

But this made him frown again.

“What I told you was told in confidence. And my pact has nothing to do with what you’re talking about,” he hissed.

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

His face softened again.

“No, I’m sorry. I just …Kate, I can pay you more, if money’s the issue. Come and stay at my place for a while till you get another job, I’ll help you. There has to be a way…”

I felt the faint sting of tears beginning in the corner of each eye.

“No, Max. I need to find my own way. I can’t do bit jobs and freelance and waste time forever. And you know as well as I do that there’s nothing more for me to do at your gym anyway.”

His eyes were just as green as they always were. That gorgeous rock hard chest of his was still as inviting and those forearms still as distracting as ever.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say then, is there?” he said, and it seemed like an invitation to change my mind, to jump in and say that I was being stupid, that I would stay, and the look he gave me then damn near had me nearly doing just that.

“Please don’t be angry Max. Will you stay here for a while with me?”

He was already on his feet.

“Why?”

That single word cut me deep. Why? Because I was beginning to think that I was in love with him? Because I was afraid of how much I trusted him? Because I didn’t trust myself whenever he kissed me, whenever he touched me or spoke my name? The last time I had felt this way about someone they used it to hurt me in more ways than I cared to remember. Why stay? Because I needed it. I needed his touch again, even if I had nothing to offer him in return.

I said nothing. He shrugged angrily and in a second he had left, slamming the door behind him. My eyes went to the flowers he’d left on the counter. I tried to imagine that they weren’t just a stupid ‘thank you’ for a job well done, but something more. With tears in my eyes, I tried to imagine that they were a sign of something more, flowers to say he cared about me, flowers for our first anniversary…

I smeared the tears from my eyes and tried to think clearly. I had poor boundaries. I had a history of abuse. I was the last girl anyone thought of when they imagined a stable, healthy romantic partner, and goddammit I needed to change that. What good was I to Max anyway, without my shit together? In the past I had been so happy to throw myself into danger simply because I thought that I had the faintest chance of getting someone to love me. I didn’t want to be that woman anymore. Was leaving your hometown to get away from one man that much different from staying in a new town for a different man?

Then, as I always did, I thought of his kisses. The memory of how it felt to have his strong body all around me, under me, inside me, was like delicious torture now. Max was the first man who it felt safe to lust after. Before him, Derek had been my only sexual partner. But Max was the first to make me realize how tiny my concept of “sexual partner” had actually been. Like him, I had my own promise: I needed to create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s.

I slumped onto the couch and thought, but if Max was the man, would it really be so bad?