Page 38 of Fragile Touch (Fragile 1)
“I can’t help it when a drunk girl runs off and almost breaks her ankle from wearing those stupid high heels!” He was shouting again. “There’s loose dirt back there. She was having a hard enough time running on flat ground!”
“She kissed you, Cayden,” Lillian reminded him. The words physically hurt her to say, as if they were laced with poison. “She literally kissed you, and you didn’t fight back.”
He nodded and looked down. “Yes, she kissed me. But in that short time she was right here—” he held his arms out in a circle just before his chest, “—she was about to throw up right down my shirt. Just like you did in my bushes. Probably worse.”
She crossed her arms.
“I don’t want to kiss that,” he declared. “If I had pushed her away, she would have vomited.”
“You don’t have to defend every little thing you did.” Lillian stood up again and felt tears sting her eyes. “This isn’t about what you did. This is about how I’m really confused, and what I feel; and what I saw tonight made it worse.”
Silence.
“I probably shouldn’t have come over here anyway,” she murmured. Her face burned. She was an idiot.
“I texted you,” he said quietly. “I really wanted you over here. If you had come, you wouldn’t be so mad now because it wouldn’t have happened.”
“How do you know?”
He looked at her face fixedly. “Because I would have been with you instead of floating around by myself.”
Shit. That was the only word she could conjure up. “I don’t know, Cayden. I don’t know what to think.”
“I swear to you, I don’t have a girlfriend.” With the last word, she heard his voice break. “I have never cheated on anyone, and that’s something I take pride in. Always have. That’s not my style. At all.”
She knew the discussion was over; they’d said everything they needed to. When she opened her mouth to say something—anything—her voice wouldn’t work. No apology or opinion or retort would come out. So, with a last glance at him, she turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness of her own yard.
Chapter 8
Everything hurt.
Lillian had tossed and turned for most of the night, kept awake by the thought of everything she could’ve—and should’ve—said. There were so many better responses she could’ve made. She could have walked away earlier—or later—than she actually did. The doubt that she had really thought through what she wanted to tell him crept in, and she wondered if confronting him was a wise idea after all.
Eventually she hit her chest with her fist, hoping it would slow her heart rate. “Too late,” she croaked to herself as the dim morning sunlight shone through her sheer curtains. “It already happened. What’s done is done.”
It was easier said than done, of course. No matter how she tried to shift her mind to other topics or even mentally prepare for her meeting with Claire, she kept returning to the emotions of last night.
I’ve lost him, she thought, burying her face in her pillow and yelling. Not that I had him to begin with. But the worst part is that I thought I was starting to have him.
She knew she wasn’t going to sleep anymore; there wasn’t time left before her alarm was due to go off in ten minutes. It didn’t help that her back hurt from lying in contorted positions, trying to get comfortable.
When she’d come in last night and gone straight to her bedroom, she couldn’t sleep. She’d tried stretching, yoga, deep-breathing exercises, scrolling through articles on every topic under the sun. Nothing helped, not even wiggling her toes or listening to the cats’ breathing. So she resorted to the good old-fashioned technique of turning the lights out and waiting for sleep to take her.
It never did.
Now, as she pulled the curtains aside, she squinted at the daylight and cursed. Her head felt like it was a raisin, and no amount of water she chugged helped it feel normal again. She dragged her feet to the bathroom and braced herself on the vanity, staring at her reflection.
“I look like shit.” Her eyes were swollen and her lips were so dry to the touch she swore they might fall off. Getting enough sleep every night was the most important thing to her, and it had been for years. In the last several months there had been only a couple of night she was restless, but eventually she was able to sink in
to dreams and remain there until her alarm went off. Last night, however, was the first night in probably a decade or so, she wagered, that her sleep schedule had been truly, hopelessly, disturbed.
“You can’t think about any of it,” Lillian commanded herself, still staring into the mirror. “Nothing matters right now except the appointment with Claire and the coffee with what’s-her-name later this afternoon.” She didn’t even feel bad for not calling to mind immediately the name of the woman she was meeting at the café later. She was a new client and they were meeting to discuss appointment times, décor style, living preferences... All those things I try to stay enamored of every day for the sake of clients who think my home looks like a Pinterest palace. Shifting her eyes down the hall to the living room, the first things she noticed were a ball of cat hair and a tangle of random computer cords she had yet to find a storage space for.
She couldn’t help but let out a laugh that sounded more like a cackle. I’ll just let all those people keep their visions of what they think this place looks like. For now, carry on the morning routine as usual.
That was all she knew to do. Once, she read somewhere that coffee and sugar were the worst things to consume after a night of fitful sleep, since they were dehydrating. She could deal with foregoing the sugar, but the coffee? No way. And besides, it had already started brewing. She heard the water start to gurgle and the pleasant dripping noise of it running into the carafe.
Yes, she nodded to herself while she splashed water and cleanser on her face, coffee will be my savior today. Already she was beginning to hear Claire’s voice in her head. That had to go. She started humming various songs to fill her house with some kind of noise, hoping that it would somehow take her mind off things.
