Page 28 of Give My Everything
Eventually, her shaking subsides. Her tears begin to dry, and she leans back, pulling away from me.
Part of me wants to laugh at how her makeup has streaked down her face, the mascara and eyeliner she wears in excess streaming down her cheeks.
I reach out and take her face in my hands, my thumbs brushing lightly underneath her eyes to clear away the marks I know she would probably hate to see in the mirror.
Remmy is beautiful. All the time. She doesn’t need all this shit on her face, but she’s worn her makeup like this for as long as I can remember knowing her, even back when she was a little high school sophomore just starting to date Lucas.
“My makeup is probably a streaky mess,” she says, laughing in that post-crying way that sounds stopped up because you still need to blow your nose.
“It is,” I reply truthfully, “but you’re still beautiful.”
Her eyes soften and she leans forward, pressing a kiss against my lips. It’s a chaste one, similar to the kiss I gave her yesterday at the country club under the fireworks.
The difference between my kiss yesterday and her kiss now is I planned for that kiss to be in front of the crowd. I wanted people to see us. There was a purpose.
This kiss…this is just Remmy wanting to kiss me, filled with emotion and gratitude.
Two reasons Idon’twant to be kissed.
I don’t want her to confuse things between us. I don’t want her to get wrapped up in the emotional aspect of her pregnancy and see me as anything other than a means to an end. I don’t want her to feel thankful that I’m saving her from a shitty conversation with her family and want to thank me with her mouth and her hands and her body.
As tempting as it might be. Because Remmy really is beautiful. Curvy and wonderful and sexual.
A different man would have fallen into Remmy’s eyes and lips at the drop of a hat. He wouldn’t know how to separate the emotional and the physical from his true intentions and focus on his future, on his plan.
But I’m not a different man. I’m me. I don’t fall into the webs women weave. I don’t want the complications and emotions that come along with relationships.
I don’t need to give anything to this thing between us other than my commitment to see it through and the dedication to give Remmy and the baby the best life I can.
The relationship we’re going to have doesn’t mean I can get emotionally distracted.
My focus has to stay on one thing and one thing only, and that doesn’t include Remmy’s feelings.
Sure, I might need to shift my original perspective, perhaps provide more emotional support than I’ve been planning. She’s dealing with the pregnancy. I can be a man who helps to take care of her financially and ensures she isn’t kicked out of her family because of some bullshit ideas about what is or isn’t morally acceptable. And I can also be a man who listens when she’s emotional.
But there has to be a dividing line somewhere, and this kiss feels like Remmy is interested in crossing it.
What she doesn’t know is that I’m incapable of giving her anything more than what we’ve already agreed to.
And that even if I were capable, she wouldn’t want to get it from me.
“So we’ll go to dinner Wednesday and sort things out then?” she asks me, her face looking soft, a bit of embarrassment coloring her cheeks.
“I think that sounds perfect,” I say, reconfirming the conversation we had after she finally stopped crying.
She was embarrassed about a lot of things, even though she wasn’t vocalizing all of them.
She was embarrassed about getting sick in my bushes. About bursting into tears. About kissing me.
Something inside of me wanted her to say she meant the kiss, to tell me it wasn’t just her emotions running wild.
But I’m glad she didn’t.
That would have opened up a can of worms inside of me that I have no interest in attempting to manage.
“Are you sure you’re okay to get home on your own? I don’t mind taking you and figuring out your car later.”
Remmy shakes her head. “I’ll be fine. Promise.”
