Page 50 of Caesar DeLuca
But then I glance around the room and realize Caesar’s been gone for a while.
Hours.
It’s early morning. Which means he must’ve left not long after we’d finished…
Ice chills its way down my spine. I shake off the sensation and force away the thought, moving onto my morning shower.
Minutes later, as I step out of the tub and reach for a towel, I feel more alert, more refreshed.
I shrug on my comfy fleece robe and then go exploring. The morning’s natural gray light pours in by way of the windows and reveals the snow has finally stopped. We’re coming up on the end of this blizzard.
…and the end of Caesar’s time with me.
I breathe through the roiling sensation in my stomach and stop at the window at the front of the house. The snow blanket that once covered my driveway has been cleared. A path has been shoveled off my property onto the main road.
Did the local town send out plowers this morning to clear the area?
I have an answer to my question no less than a second later. I spot Caesar a few feet onto the main road, clutching the large snow shovel I keep in my garage. The shock hits me so strong, I’m on autopilot.
Without even thinking about it, I untwist the locks on my door and wander onto the porch. He couldn’t have…
“Caesar!” I call. “Caesar!”
He looks up the third time I shout his name. He wears the men’s hoodie I gave him as well as the natural scowl that graces his face almost every moment of the day. Pink tinges his pale skin from the bitter cold conditions of the morning.
It’s another few seconds before he’s within speaking distance.
“Did you… you cleared out my driveway?” I ask, stunned.
“It stopped snowing. Weather forecast says we’ve seen the worst of it. The main road’s been plowed.”
You want to leave…
“Oh,” I say. Then I kick myself for sounding so glum. “Oh, great,” I try again, putting on a smile. “How about breakfast and then we can head into town?”
…and you can go on your way.
I can barely keep up the bright attitude as we head back inside the house. Caesar goes upstairs to shower and change after what’s been almost two hours of shoveling snow. I use the time to remind myself to stop overthinking.
This is where I used to get into trouble with Freddie too—I’d sense some distance on his end and let my imagination run wild. Our relationship had always been a rocky roller coaster, but it didn’t help that I was usually swimming in insecurities and self-doubt.
It certainly didn’t help that Freddie seemed to use it as a weapon against me.
I was more in love with him than he was with me. I got attached to a man who could take me or leave me. In the process, I accepted crumbs and poor treatment. I drove myself crazy trying to make him love me more.
My hope was one day it would work; he’d become the man I needed him to be.
I was fooling myself the entire time. I saw things I wanted to see. Things that were never there in the first place…
It’s happening again.
Caesar couldn’t care less about me. He was a man behaving like men do—having sex with an available woman to blow off steam. To sate his sexual appetite. As good as the moment felt for me, as good as he made me feel, it meant nothing to him.
He’s counting down the minutes ’til he gets to leave.
Resigned to this line of thinking, I focus on scrambling eggs and flipping pancakes. Caesar returns to the kitchen to find the breakfast table set up with two plates and mugs of coffee. He raises his eyebrows at me in question.
“You didn’t need to do all this,” he says. “And aren’t you the one saying I shouldn’t be overdoing it? Soup and veggies, remember?”
