There’s no point making small talk. We both know that is the million dollar question; the question that will determine what is said next. I hold my breath as I wait for her response, knowing that I will struggle with any answer she can give me. But that’s on me and she deserves for me to be willing to man up and deal with the shit in my head. Rather than speak, I watch as Melanie walks into the kitchen, wrapping my foot around the leg of the chair, willing myself to not follow her. If she needs a bit of space before answering me, I’ll give her that. It’s the least I can do. After getting something to drink, Melanie joins me at the table again, this time pulling a chair over so she’s sitting next to me.
“Where do you want it to go?” she asks, propping her feet on the edge of the seat. I see the faintest hint of the Melanie who was a part of my life back then return in her uncertain eyes. That same look, the one that says she’ll do anything to please me, used to fill me with a sense of love and power, but today it only compounds the sadness. I don’t want that Melanie back because I’m no longer the man I was back then. And she sure as hell isn’t the same woman she was.
“I have no clue what I want, all I know is I can’t look you in the eye and tell you I’m not in love with you,” I admit, reaching over to tuck a stray tendril of hair behind her ear, allowing my fingers to glide down the length of her soft curls. I close my eyes, remembering how I used to comb my fingers through her hair for hours as we sat talking in the dark. “Part of me hates myself for feeling the way I do. I hate that Alyssa has only been gone a couple of months and I’ve spent the majority of that time trying to convince myself that I don’t love you. I hate wondering if I’m deluding myself to think that we will ever be able to love one another without holding onto the bitterness of the past. But, more than anything, I hate the thought of not having you in my life.”
The longer we sit, the faster my heart races. I start berating myself for being so blunt about what I’m feeling. I look over and see Melanie pressing her lips tightly, gripping at the fabric of her jeans.
“Say something,” I plead with her, needing to be put out of my misery. If she’s going to tell me she doesn’t feel the same, that’s fine as long as I know that she means it. She stands again and I want to push her down in the chair, forcing her to stay and talk about this. But she doesn’t walk away from me, she walks to me, wrapping her arms around my neck.
“You know this might not work, right?” she asks, her breath tickling my neck. More than anything, I want to turn around and pull her tight against my chest. Knowing that she’s willing to take a chance on us means more to me than I thought it would. “And I think we need to be careful when Jacob’s around. Until we know for sure what’s going on, I don’t want him to get his hopes up. He’s already lost his mom, I won’t make him go through another loss if I can help it.”
She doesn’t understand that even if we never took this step, Jacob and I would both feel an emptiness if she wasn’t in our lives. I’ve known for a while now that Jacob is so infatuated with Melanie that he’d be devastated if she walked away, but last night proved to me that he’s not the only one. Watching her shield my son from the nightmares as they both slept filled a small void that has been heavy in my chest since Alyssa died.
“I know,” I sigh, turning in my chair. I circle my arms around her waist, resting my forehead against her stomach. Feeling the warmth of her body against my skin as her fingers tangle in my hair, smelling her citrus body wash and hearing her take one deep breath after another has me craving more. Everything about Melanie is so familiar and I want nothing more than to reacquaint myself with the sight of her beautiful body laid out before me and the taste of her kiss. “But I’m sick of telling myself that you’re just a friend. You’ve never been just a friend to me. The way I see it, this is the only scenario that has any chance of working.”
I tilt my head back and see Melanie looking down at me. She brushes the hair off my forehead before leaning in to kiss my brow. It’s not enough, but just feeling her lips against my skin stokes the fire building inside of me. “We can’t be what we were before. You do know that, right? There’s no way to fix what we had in the past because that didn’t work for either one of us. If we decide to move forward, it has to be in hopes that we can build something completely different. Something healthy and functional for all three of us.”
My stomach churns at the notion that she thinks I want to go back to the type of relationship we had back then. While it was fun and felt natural for her to submit to me, that’s not what I need now. At some point, I want to sit down and have a long talk with her about why I decided to turn my back on that part of my life. When she left, it felt like I had gotten so caught up with how I thought a power exchange relationship should work that I lost sight of what was important. I was blinded when I fell in love with her and wrestled myself trying to regain the control I thought I had lost. The experience of loving and losing made it easy to walk away. At least that way I wasn’t constantly reminded of the pain.