Chapter 31

Grant

When you’re waiting for someone, every minute can feel like an hour. You check your watch every thirty seconds, assuming that minutes have flown by, only to find that time has somehow stood still. This phenomenon goes double when the reason you are waiting for that particular person is to confess your feelings to them. I just hoped that I would be able to do it.

It was 8:30 a.m. and I was at the store, waiting for Kendra. I knew that she had a habit of getting in early, especially on a Monday morning. I wanted a chance to talk to her alone before the store opened. I didn’t know exactly how the conversation was going to play out so I wanted to ensure that the store would be nice and empty should anything go down, during or after.

I knew what I had to do. I knew that I had to admit fault and ask for forgiveness. I had to tell her how I really felt and explain why I had been acting the way I had been.

But I also knew myself too well. I also knew Kendra. I knew that even if I had the right intentions, the simplest of things might send things spinning out of control. I could spend hours planning the perfect apology, but when it came to the two of us, anything could happen. She just had that effect on me.

The streets of New York were different this early in the morning. The tourists weren’t quite out and about yet. That just left the miserable workers. And as it was a Monday, that only served to compound their misery. Heads down and shoulders hunched, they pushed and shoved to get past each other as they made their way to work. No one looked up or made any sort of eye contact. Despite the heat, it was a cold, isolating experience.

I watched this go on for several minutes until I finally spotted Kendra coming my way. Like everyone else, she walked with the same depressed skulk, her eyes down, not looking ahead. It was because of this that she didn’t see me waiting for her. Not until she was literally at the front door, shuffling around the inside of her purse looking for her keys.

“Good morning,” I said, speaking directly into her ear.

“Jesus!” she screamed, jumping in the air as she spun around to face me. I took an odd delight in the reaction that I had given her, as she worked to steady her breathing. “What are you doing here?”

“I can’t visit my own store?” I said innocently, making sure that she didn’t mistake my question for purposeful rudeness.

“I guess so,” she said, blankly. She opened the door to the store and walked in. I followed her inside, only just noticing the way that she staggered a little as she walked. I also took note of her scrunched up face and the way she kept on touching her hand to her head.

“Had a few too many drinks last night?” I asked, chuckling.

She headed over to the counter and proceeded to open the register. I leaned against the counter and watched her.

“Yesterday afternoon,” she said, squeezing her eyes together in an attempt to refocus them.

“I’m actually going to be honest,” I began. “I came here to make a return.”

“A return?” she asked, looking confused. Well, that was at first anyway. Within seconds of her asking the question, I could see her face change to one of realization. She then worked monstrously hard to look anywhere but directly at me.

“Yeah, I was gifted a gummy mold of a pussy yesterday, if you can believe that? The person who gave it to me thought it terribly funny. I, on the other hand, had a different reaction.”

“Sorry about that,” she said in a whisper, still not looking at me.

“That wasn’t very nice, Kendra. Next time, you should just send me a photo of you giving me the middle finger instead.”

“That wasn’t what I meant by it.”

“Then what did you mean by it?” I didn’t raise my voice or shout. I just wanted to know the answer. Was she still interested in me? Was she trying to make me jealous or send me some sort of a message? Women were hard enough to work out at the best of times. Kendra was near impossible.

“It didn’t mean anything,” she said, still looking down. “I just thought. I don’t know.”

“Well, I actually came here to return the gift and to do one other thing.” I then turned around and walked away from the counter into the center of the store. Sitting there, as I knew it would be, was the display with the rest of Kendra’s gummy molds.

The molds sat on a small table, stacked up on one another like a pyramid. Without thought or hesitation, I grabbed the corner of the table and flipped the entire thing in the air.

“What are you doing?” Kendra yelled, rushing from behind the counter toward the now totaled display. Candy vaginas littered the floor, like something out of a weird dream.

“I don’t want these being sold here. Understand?” My voice was more heated now. My heartbeat hammered in my chest and I breathed heavily. Maybe that was a slight over reaction, but I didn’t care. I needed a way to get the point across. She wasn’t for anyone else. Even if it was just a candy piece of her.

“No, I don’t understand,” she said. “You told me I could do whatever I wanted to with them.”

“Well, that was before, and this is now.”

“Now? What’s changed? Tell me? In the last few days, what has changed?” She had her hands on her hips, and her nostrils flared. She was mad and she had every right to be. The fucked-up thing was that she had just presented me with the perfect opportunity to confess everything to her. I could have told her, then and there, that what had changed were my feelings for her. That I didn’t want anyone else but me to have her. But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words for some reason.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, the energy draining from me. “Just do what I ask.” I bent down and scooped up a handful of pussy. With them in hand, I headed across the store toward the back storage room. But Kendra wasn’t letting me off the hook that easily.

As I threw the door open and walked in, she was right behind me. “What is your problem?”

“Me?” I fired back, dumping the molds in a giant trash can. “You’re the one that sent me one of these as a gag. You’re the one that sold my girlfriend a model of your own pussy, after I specifically told you that we were over.” Wow, way to go, Grant. This was not going the way I’d expected it to go. So much for being calm and cordial.

“I didn’t know she was your girlfriend,” Kendra said. “I just thought. I don’t know why I did that, okay? I was mad and upset, and I wanted to get back at you.”

“Get back at me? For what? Being honest with you for once and telling you how I feel? For ending things before either one of us got hurt more than we already had? Is that what you wanted to get back at me for?”

I could tell that I had caught her off guard, even if what I had said wasn’t one hundred percent true. Although, it was close enough. When we had last seen each other and I had given her back the molds, I all but told her that we couldn’t be together because I was insanely jealous and could never get past that. But now it seemed like I wasn’t the only one.

“Wait a minute,” I began. “Were you jealous? Is that why you sold Loren the mold?”

“No. I wasn’t jealous.” She looked away from me when she spoke, back out the door and into the empty store. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was lying.

“I can’t believe that. Why have you been jealous over me? I’ve done nothing to make you feel that way.” I couldn’t believe it. All this time I thought the only problem was my jealousy. I was the one with the history after all. I was the one that had my heart broken. It never once occurred to me that she had been acting that way for the same reason.

“Of course, I am!” she fired back. She was angry. That much was clear. And it was also clear that she had a lot on her shoulders, like I did. She’d just been looking for a chance to get that weight off her somehow. “How could I not be? You think that because of what happened in high school, you’re the only one that’s allowed to get jealous? You’re literally a millionaire bachelor, living in a penthouse in New York City. What am I? A retail manager? How am I not supposed to get jealous of you? Of the way girls look at you? The way that you parade them around in here like it’s some sort of game.”

Despite the moment, I suddenly found myself smiling. She was furious, puffing heavily from her sudden explosion. Me, though? I had never felt better. I had no idea that she felt that way. Sure, I had tried to make her jealous and envious and all of those things, but I never really thought that it worked. Deep down, I was always struggling with my own battles and my own demons.

“Kendra, you never have any reason to be jealous of me, or any of the girls you think you see me with. Surely, you know that?”

“How could I possibly know that?”

“Because, well.” Then it hit me. I had never given her a reason to not think that. Well, that was about to change. “You want to know why?”

“Yes.”

“Let me show you why.”

I didn’t wait for permission. I knew there would be no need. Both of us were acting on pure adrenaline. We were both angry, confused, upset, and presumably horny, all rolled in one. I had wanted her for weeks now. I hadn’t been able to think of anything else. And now I was sure that she felt the same way.

I walked across the room, reaching her in a few short strides. She didn’t move, allowing my body to press itself up against hers. Our faces were less than an inch apart. Our breathing was deep and intense. I stared into her eyes, and she stared back into mine. They were open and truthful. There were no more lies behind them.

And then I kissed her. Deep and passionately, the two of us kissed. I bit her lip and grabbed her hair. Her hands wrapped around my back, and I pulled her entire body into mine. Our breathing became one. I knew that it wasn’t going to stop there.

Taking her by the hand, I silently led her out of the storage room and into the VIP section. Then I threw open one of the curtains and pushed her inside. She stumbled forward, her hands planting themselves against the back wall to rebalance herself. As she went to turn back around, I stopped her.

“I want to show you why you never have to be jealous again,” I whispered into her ear.