Page 13 of Dangerously Tempting

I’m not a big believer in fate, but the draw that I feel to her, the ways that we complement one another and feed off the needs of one another… it’s like the world is loudly telling us, ‘Hey, I’m presenting you with this really good thing. You gonna cherish it or what?’

I want to. Fuck it, I’m going to. I open my contacts list, my thumb hovering over her name when my phone buzzes again. This time, it’s one I like to see popping up on my phone, so I answer.

“Hey, Mom. What are you up to today?”

“Jameson,” she says, and she sounds so small, so sad, that my heart drops. “You need to come home. It’s your father.”

7

Amelia

Playlist: "In A Second," Aly & AJ

I pull out of the parking lot without looking back because I know that if I do, I’ll start to doubt my decision. It’s not an easy call to make to walk away from a guy like Jameson without even asking if he’d be interested in more, but I know that it’s the right thing to do. I have a career to focus on, and it’s all I’ve ever needed.

Men come and go, but my job is a constant that has been with me since I fought for my position there, and it will be with me until I decide to make the move to give it up. It can’t give up on me. I’m the one calling the shots when it comes to its end. It’s the only part of my life that I feel has that sort of stability, and fitting a man in around it? I just don’t feel like it’s doable.

Relationships in the past have always let me down. Everything is great at first, the same way many things begin, but then their true colors start showing. The lying. The cheating. A few have even tried to be controlling, which just doesn’t fly with me. It’s led to me not even being willing to give relationships a chance anymore.

The tightness in my chest and throat don’t give a flying fuck about my reasoning. I don’t make it more than a block down the road before they’re so tight that I know I’m going to start crying. I fucking hate crying, but it’s coming whether I want it to or not.

I look around for the closest place to stop and flip on my blinker to turn into a restaurant parking lot before pulling into a spot. My breathing is already ragged and I’m blinking furiously to hold back the tide, but it’s no use. My fingers are clenched so tightly around the steering wheel I can’t even pry them off to put the car into park, so I work on pulling deep breaths in through my nose and exhaling out through my mouth.

I feel childish, crying over a man who didn’t even ask to meet up again. He would have if he wanted to, right? Maybe one night is all he wanted. Or maybe he thought that’s all I wanted because I didn’t say otherwise. Either way, it’s causing me to tailspin in a way that I can’t fully understand at the moment.

I’m hovering on the edge of hurt over this, and it just makes me angry. I’m a grown ass woman, for goodness sake. I have never needed a man, and with one single night I gave enough power to Jameson that I’m crying in my car like a heartbroken teenager. This is not something I thought would come from our night together… at all.

With a frustrated sigh I look up at the restaurant sign above me and fully contemplate going in to eat my feelings. The temptation is high, but my fingers still won’t uncurl from the steering wheel, like that part of my body, along with my chest and throat, are screaming at me to answer their demands. I just don’t know what that demand is.

He’s probably still back there in the parking lot. My fingers loosen slightly at the thought, and I’m able to pull in a deeper breath. Before I can think about it too much, I wipe my face, pull out of the parking spot, and turn back onto the road towards the hotel.

I don’t need a man to make the first move. Fuck that age old bullshit. If I want something, I’m gonna ask for it. And I want more of him, one way or another. Not enough to go all blondie level creep on him, but enough to lay it all out on the table and see if he feels the same.

Within a few minutes I pull back into the parking lot and look around for him. I don’t see anyone standing there, but I circle the lot looking into cars in the hopes of catching him before he pulls out.

Nothing.

I circle a second time before I stop in the middle of a row of cars, throw my car into park, and get out. I’m not sure what my thought process is with this action. He’s obviously not in the lot anymore, and revealing myself isn’t going to make him just magically appear, but I scan the lot again, one last time. My shoulders fall a bit before I climb back into my car, and I just sit there, not knowing what to do.

I have his number, I could just call him… but I don’t, because somewhere between my decision to turn back and confront him and discovering that he’s no longer here, all of my bravado has fled. All my gung-ho feminist energy has left my body, and I’m left with nothing but self-doubt and tears burning my eyes again.

He’s gone, and it’s as if the world is loudly proclaiming he had more than enough of me and had no hesitation in letting me drive away. All I’m missing is the cherry on top of my pity sundae, but it drops cleanly into place as someone honks their horn behind me. I’m so startled by the sound, I almost scream into the silence of my car.

Hope flares for one singular moment, just enough to have me raising my eyes to my rearview mirror to see if it’s him behind me, before it dies a quick death when I see it’s a disgruntled older woman instead. I give her an apologetic wave over my shoulder before shifting my car into drive and pulling out of the way, and back onto the road.

It just wasn’t meant to be.

8

Jameson

Playlist: "In Case You Don't Live Forever," Ben Platt

I feel like absolute shit by the time I pull into the hospital parking lot. I drove straight through, only stopping at gas stations along the way, for the full 8 hour drive. I may as well be vibrating. I’m buzzing on so much caffeine and sugar from crap snacks I used to keep myself satiated as I made the trek that my hands are shaking.

I’d told Amelia to take care of herself, to stop and make sure she got food for her drive, but failed to do the same for myself. In my defense, I felt like I was barely thinking straight the whole trip. Between the regret of letting her walk away like that, and the fear I have about my father not making it through the day, my brain has been a shit storm of thoughts I can’t even begin to sort through.

“He’s had a heart attack,” was all I heard before I was ripping out of my parking spot. Not only was my father having to be rushed into surgery, but my mom was there dealing with it by herself because I wasn’t there. As a son, and the man that my parents raised me to be, I knew that I had to get to her as soon as I could, to be a shoulder not only for her to cry on, but to help carry the burden of stress so that she wasn’t doing it all alone.

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