My heart feels like it might burst from my chest at any second, just blow up, right out of my body. The pounding of my heart, even booming in my ears as loudly as it is, is doing nothing to disguise the soft sniffling coming from the other side of my truck. As much as I wish I could keep my heart hardened from her, the sound of her crying is tearing me up. I shouldn’t have any compassion left for her; it should have died a long time ago.
I know from my reaction to seeing her again last Saturday that this chat won’t be easy. There are still feelings—feelings I thought were long gone and lost forever—trapped in that box with my heart. This girl ripped my heart to fucking shreds and I never knew why. It would have been quicker if she had stuck around and shot me in the fucking chest. At least I would have died instantly instead of bleeding out slowly for the last twelve years.
Jesus, I can’t get the image of her slender body holding that small excuse for a towel against her chest out of my head. When she let it drop from her tight hold, I thought I was going to swallow my tongue. Her tits had always been fucking perfect but, to see them like that, with her nipples erect and sporting two hot barbells, I might have shot off in my pants. As much as I wanted to drop to my knees and suck her pert, pink nipples into my mouth, I couldn’t help my first thought: that motherfucker had his hands on her. He’d held her tits in his hands. There was no reasoning with my brain that she wasn’t mine; I saw red.
Those are my fucking tits and she is my fucking girl. It doesn’t matter to my mind that it has been well over a decade since I have been able to enjoy them; someone else touched what was mine. If I hadn’t thought she would take off and run again, I would have killed that little shit.
All week I have thought about her. She has been a constant stress that I don’t need when I am trying to get everything in my life in order. Greg and I have been busy enough with all the legal paperwork and issues that keep popping up with the new company. Plus meetings and moving into the office space, briefings with him and the boys, and consultations with new clients. I don’t have time to be strolling down memory lane.
It wasn’t until Wednesday evening that I remembered Greg coming to talk to me about his friend. Iz, with the threat and husband who did not want to let go. Livid—that would be the first thing I felt. I remember thinking, very briefly, when I first saw her about the connection but it instantly fled when all hell followed our collision. I need more information and I need it yesterday. I don’t know what kind of threat she is under and I don’t even really know much about her marriage. I assumed for so many years that she was happy. I was crushed and pissed because I couldn’t bring myself to barge into her life if she was happy.
Even now, craving answers as fiercely as I do, my main focus is figuring out what is happening with this douchebag. The time to get my answers will come, but first we will be talking about this husband of hers.
I waited for her call yesterday, anticipating some bullshit reason why she wouldn’t be able to meet today. I hadn’t expected her to pull some vanishing act and hide all day. I should have. When lunch rolled around today and I still hadn’t heard from her, I set off for her house. When I got there to find it locked tight and no one home, I was pissed.
I called Greg to see if maybe I could gain one fucking supporter in this fight. He said, “Not getting in this. She knows how I feel and she will talk when she’s ready. I don’t agree with this, but I will support her because she’s my girl.” He was not happy when I blew up in his ear. She is not his goddamn girl. It didn’t matter how many times I asked or straight-up demanded—he wasn’t telling me where they were.
Imagine my shock when I got a call not even an hour later from Greg, spitting fire and giving up her location. When I arrived and walked into a tattoo parlor of all places, my rage joined his.
Fuck, those tits looked fucking hot though.
After another five-minute drive and sporadic soft sniffles from Izzy, I pull up to the security gate of my house. After entering the code, I pull the truck up my driveway. I feel like I’m looking at the house from a new set of eyes, trying to see how she will view my success. I might be a thirty-one-year-old man, but even that doesn’t stop me from hoping she sees how far I’ve come, how I have finally taken myself from orphaned and penniless to this. Part of the plans we once made together, only this isn’t the one-bedroom apartment we had our eyes set on. As much of a douche as it might make me, an even smaller part of me hopes she feels just an ounce of jealousy for how good my life is and see how much I was able to accomplish without her in my life.
How laughable that thought is. I would have gladly given every single penny to my name away if it meant I would have had my Izzy with me all these years. But this Izzy? No. I don’t even know this Izzy.