She wipes her tears away with the back of her hand and shakes her head. I grab her body, hugging her tightly against my chest and kiss the top of her hair. She stands there for a few seconds with her arms down and it worries me. Then she clings to me, crying.
I wrap my arms around her back, welcoming the closeness. Welcoming the fact that she’s not running from me. I can’t lose her – period! In the short time that I’ve known her, she means more to me than I ever imagined. She might mean as much to me as Arion did, and that was something I never dreamed would happen.
I’m afraid to move or say anything. I’m really pissed at myself for not handling the Andrea situation better when I was still seeing her. I should have never let things progress with her. I knew it was wrong all along, but I’d been thinking with my dick and not my head. My head just couldn’t handle anything.
And now here I am trying to clean up things with El. We stand frozen, she is tucked so comfortably in my arms that I hope for us to move past this, for her to know that she’s all that matters to me.
“I’m sorry, Andrea,” I tell her, only making the tears run more.
“I don’t understand, I thought we had a connection,” she says between labored breaths.
I hate to be honest with her, but maybe that’s the only way to get through to her. She’s acting like I led her to believe we had a future when all we ever did was fuck. She’s been sitting in my car for almost fifteen minutes and we’ve done nothing but go over the same things.
“Andrea, sexually we did. But for me it wasn’t for the right reasons. You remind me so much of my ex that when we started to hook up it was just to fill that void. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do and I apologize for that. But I was a mess when we met and when I look at you, I see her. You deserve to be wanted for you. And that’s not healthy for me. I need to move past that part of my life. I need a fresh start.”
“We can have a fresh start together,” she says grabbing my hands. “I’m your type. I can give you everything that you need.” I pull one of mine away and pat the top of hers. “No, you can’t. I’ve moved on,” I finally tell her, fed up with her fucking persistence.
She looks a little stunned and I do feel terrible for hurting her. I really do, but it has to be done. I didn’t want to tell her about El, or even bring her into this, but I can’t have her continue to blow my phone up the way that she has.
“You moved on?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“A while ago.” I smile just thinking of El.
Andrea nods her head as if she finally gets it. “I had no idea. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I truly want nothing but the best for you. Maybe you and Ronnie could make things work?”
“I doubt that.”
“Why?” I ask curiously.
“I told him about you.”
“You did—”
My sentence is cut off by a baseball bat smashing through my window. “Shit, that’s him!” Andrea screams. I start my car and pull out of the parking spot. He hits it again just as I peel off.
“What the fuck?”
“Oh my God, Nate.”
“How the fuck does he know where you are?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dammit,” I scream, looking at my window, so pissed at the situation. “Did you tell him you were gonna see me?”
“No.”
I keep driving, my internal wheels spinning. I always thought one day I’d come face to face with the douchebag, but I never thought that it would be in these circumstances. Looking over at Andrea, she looks fucking scared and I trust that she didn’t tell him, as she says. The crazy fucker must’ve followed her.
I soak down deeper into the warm water of my bathtub and just want to scream. My insides are a mess. Part of me believes Nate; that he has nothing to do with this girl anymore. But the other part of me, the part that is nagging in the back of my head, is telling me that he’s lying. That trusting him is a mistake.
Why else would he have been coming on to me so strongly and making all these huge plans, like wanting me to leave my job? Unless it was a cover up for his lies, to make me think he was more into me than he is, so he could have the best of both worlds. Me and her.
I take a gulp of wine and dry my hand to decline his incoming phone call. I just need some time alone tonight. I need to process everything and figure out what my heart really wants. I told him everything was fine, but then the more time I’ve had to think about things and the more anxious that he seems, I just feel like something isn’t adding up.