Page 55 of My Fault
Oh, Mom. You’ve screwed up now.
I forced myself to smile, hard as it was, while William shook Dan’s hand firmly. My mother gave him a hug in turn, and they both stood back to look at us.
“We’ll give you all a little privacy. You must want some time alone,” Mom said. “Dan, I’m having them prepare the guest room. Anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”
Dan nodded politely, and my mother and William vanished through the front door.
When they were gone, I looked at Dan, enraged.
“I can’t believe you had the balls to come here,” I shouted,picking up the bucket and soap I’d brought out for my car. I wouldn’t be able to finish now. I had much more important things to do.
This was wrong. Dan couldn’t stay in my home. I didn’t want him there, and I sure as hell didn’t want him kissing me again.
“It was the perfect opportunity to say I’m sorry in person.”
“You can’t stay here, Dan.”
“I know you’re still mad, and I know you’ll need lots of time before you can forgive me, but just let me be with you these days, Noah. Whatever the problem is, we’ll solve it together, please. You’re mine and I’m yours, remember?”
That phrase struck home.
“I stopped being yours the moment you hooked up with my best friend.” I said that knowing that having to break up with him definitively in the coming days would leave me feeling worse than I already did. “You can stay here because I’m not going to upset William or my mother, and I don’t want them to have to know what you did to me. But when that time’s up, I never want to hear from you again.”
“I know I hurt you, Noah. But I love you, I have always loved you, and without you, my life’s a disaster. Since I saw you just now, everything makes sense again. When you told me you were leaving, I tried to make a plan in my head to be able to deal with it, but it didn’t work. Noah, the thing with Beth meant nothing to me. I just leaned on her because she reminded me of you. You two were always together. You were so much alike. I know I’ve been an asshole, but I can’t let what we have end this way.”
I looked down, trying to suppress the tears that wanted out. I wasn’t going to cry. I didn’t cry anymore. I wouldn’t cry.
“So this is where we are now,” he said. “You can’t even look me in the eyes.”
He grabbed my face again.
“Please, just tell me you forgive me,” he whispered, his lips nearly pressed to mine.
I don’t even know what I said, but he kissed me again, hard, with feeling, and I let him do it,again. I couldn’t control it. It was something I needed. But I knew it wasn’t right. I had a strange feeling as I went along with him; I felt guilty, guilty because I was deceiving someone very important: myself.
At last, I managed to get out the words “I need some space.” And it was true; I needed to think, needed to not have him in front of me.
“Fine,” he agreed. “Can I at least leave my things in the guest room?”
I agreed and led him up there. I couldn’t spend another minute with him, so I walked off to my room, thinking I would just climb into bed and sleep until the next day. I didn’t care how early it was. I needed to think and get my feelings in perspective, but then my body made me stop at a room that wasn’t mine, and before I could stop myself, I was knocking at Nicholas’s door.
I don’t know whether he answered. All I know was I heard a noise and went inside.
He was sitting in front of his laptop at a desk in the corner. When he saw me come in, he closed it. He spun his chair around to look at me, and I observed every inch of his anatomy as if it were a work of art. He was shirtless in gray sweatpants. I could tell he wasn’t expecting a visitor, especially not me. It was the first time I’d ever knocked at his door since I’d lived there, but something in me told me my stepbrother would be able to console me, even as I was trying to grasp why I’d chosen to torture myself by being in his presence.
He must have seen something in my face because he immediately asked what was going on and approached me cautiously, not sure what to do. Just as with every other time we’d been alonetogether, an irresistible attraction crackled in the air. In a way, I was happy to realize Dan couldn’t make me react that way—happy but at the same time confused.
Those eyes of Nick’s only promised darkness. But without thinking twice, I grabbed the back of his neck, pulled him close, and kissed him desperately.
At first, he didn’t react. He was surprised, I guessed, but his body clearly knew what it wanted. He grabbed my waist, and his mouth and tongue took over. He made me forget why I’d even come there, forget everything but him. I had to pull away a second to catch my breath. When I did, he asked me what I was doing, and then his teeth bit into my earlobe before his mouth traveled down to my cheek, my neck… Any notion of pain, loss, or nostalgia vanished from my mind. But then he pushed me away.
“What happened?” he asked.
Why did he have to ask that? Why couldn’t he just kiss me and let me enjoy his undoubted abilities? Since when had Nick cared why someone wanted to hook up with him?
Now I found myself thinking about Dan again. That wound of being betrayed by someone I had loved so much—and I had loved them both, him and Beth—reopened again. That, and the wound of knowing I’d lost them both forever because I would never be able to forgive them because they didn’t deserve it. And the worst thing was the fear—the fear that I wasn’t strong enough to keep away from him.
I rested my head on Nick’s bare shoulder, and he held me. This was the first time we’d ever shared a moment like this. His smell was entrancing—it must have been one of those fancy colognes models advertised on TV—and his chest was warm and comforting, and even though I felt frozen, somewhere deep inside me, a small fire had started to burn.
