Jesus Christ.
“I thought I’d done the right thing.” His voice broke a little, and my heart started to hurt for the little girl I’d seen this afternoon. “But now I was a twenty-two year old kid with a kid of his own, and you were about to go to school, and I couldn’t…” My eyes opened when his voice stopped. “I couldn’t burden you with that. It wasn’t the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do would have been to tell me!” I shouted. “I’m sorry about what happened to Brooke, and I’m sorry you went through that, but you abandoned me too, Dean.”
“I know,” he whispered.
I took a step towards him. “No. No, you don’t know. Where were you when Henry died, huh? My world was falling apart, and where the fuck were you?”
I knew I’d landed a hit with that one when he flinched.
Maybe I was a callous bitch, but he deserved it.
“What happened to Brooke is tragic, but you knew her for weeks. You knew Henry since you were eight years old! You knew me! Where the fuck were you?”
He put his head in his hands. “I drove out for the funeral.”
I stopped yelling and felt my chest heave.
“I saw you, in that black dress, but I couldn’t do it.”
“You’re a coward,” I told him, the tears rushing down my face. “How dare you make me love you and then leave me?” I cried. “Did you really think so little of me that I wouldn’t be there for you? Even as your friend…”
“I—”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to forgive you just so you can feel better about yourself.”
Somehow as I spoke, I didn’t realize I was taking steps towards him.
“Do you know what it’s like on the days I forget to forget you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you?” I screamed, and saw his eyes close.
“No,” he said.
I leaned into his space. “It’s fucking horrible. It’s like being awake while someone cuts your heart from your chest.”
Forgetting was both a blessing and a curse. It knifed you when you were least expecting it.
“Charlie.” His hands settled on my hips, but I was too far-gone to notice.
“I thought I was looking for you in all the men I’d dated—”
He interrupted me, “Baby, don’t.”
“I am not your baby, Dean Porter. I am not your fucking baby.” My heart broke as I yelled at him. “I was wrong. I’d been so fucking wrong. I wasn’t trying to find you in them. I was trying to find me.” I cried black tears. “I was trying to find the part of me that died that year.”
“Please,” he begged me to stop, but I was a runaway train and there was no slowing down.
“That’s why it never works, you know. That’s why sometimes I’m so lonely at night that I have to talk to my dead brother just to feel whole again!” I was wailing now. “I’ve spent nearly a decade chasing men who will never love me back, because I forgot how to love myself. That year broke me.”
He tried to pull my body against his chest, but I pressed my palms into his middle.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he pleaded with me for understanding. “I loved you. I still love you. I’ve always loved you, Charlie.”
My tears came harder as I took that like a knife to the throat.
“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t just get to say that and make the last ten years go away.”
He pulled me tighter and my arms became trapped between us. “Please forgive me.”
“Show me that your heart riots!” I screamed at the wall of his chest. “Show me that you’ll bleed for something. Show me that you’ll fight like hell for once in your goddamn life.” My head was pounding and it felt foggy from the whiskey. “Show me that I matter. Show me any of that, and maybe I’ll forgive you.”
He looked down at me, fire in his eyes. “I’d do anything for you, Charlie.”
I glared at him like a sinner to a sin. “Then fucking do it before I remember to forget you again!”
His lips came down on mine, hard.
I fought his lips with mine and pushed at his chest with my pinned hands.
He was relentless.
Lips touching. Tongue tasting. Breath hot.
My fight engaged and I poured my pain into him.
I made him feel my agony.
We kissed like enemies before a ceasefire.
I pushed at his jacket and he pulled at mine.
Kissing Dean Porter was like coming up for air after you’d been drowning. I was hopeless to stop it.
We fell together like old memories.
Long-lost lovers with too much to say and no words in which to say them.
His shirt. My sweater.
Our jeans.
It was effortless in the way you just knew the beat of your favourite song.
He took me in a way that both broke me and healed me until we lay sweaty and breathless on my hardwood floor.