Page 75 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
Tears sting my eyes. “Audra, come on—”
“No, you need to listen.” She takes my wine from me and sets it down, and I know she’s serious as a heart attack if she doesn’t want us drinking during this. “Nicholas was only doing exactly what was in his nature. He never loved you, and you never loved him. You wanted stability, you wanted to be nurtured, and you wanted to nurture.” She’s sympathetic now, but keeps going. “You wanted kids. You wanted a family.”
I’m so hurt and angry I can’t speak. “Audra, I didn’t come over here for this.”
“Too damn bad. You’re here now and this is what you’re getting.” She pauses, breathes in slowly and lets it out even more slowly. “He was never going to be able to give you what you wanted. Not in any way. He dulled your spark, Imogen.” She sounds emotional, more so than I’ve ever heard her. “You gave him everything you had, literally and metaphorically. And now it’s over, it’s finally over, and you’re still desperate for the one thing you’ve always wanted.”
“Goddammit, Audra,” I hiss. “Don’t.”
“You were an accident. Your parents love the hell out of you, and they did their best, but they were retired by the time you were in high school. You’re lonely. You were lonely in college, you were lonely when you met Nicholas, and you’re lonelier than ever now.” She smiles sadly at me. “And trust me, I get it. But with Nicholas, you had to know, deep down, that he was a slimy piece of shit and that he’d only end up hurting you. You settled for a douche-canoe, and you paid the price. Or, rather, you got what you paid for. You can’t play the victim, here. You suspected he was cheating on you and you stayed with him. Even after you had proof, you took another year to divorce him. You were willfully blind and stupid. Yeah, it hurts, but it’s over. He doesn’t deserve another second of your time or thought, and certainly not you feeling some ridiculous sense of being heartbroken.”
“I got what I deserved, you’re saying.”
“You didn’t deserve it, no. He was a piece of shit. He stamped out your fire. You used to be a firecracker. You used to be down for anything. You used to be wild and fun and take no shit. I realize it was a response to how you grew up, but it was fun. He dulled you. And now you’re just starting to get that back. This guy, Jesse, he’s made you more alive than you’ve been in twelve years, Imogen! You feel that, you see it, and you’re scared of it. He makes you feel things you’re realizing Nicholas should have made you feel but never ever fucking did, and you’re angry at yourself for wasting twelve years of your life on that bastard.”
I can’t see. Can’t breathe.
She’s not done. “Guess what, Imogen? You don’t get that time back. Just like I don’t get back this time I’m spending on guys half my age who are never anything but toys and distractions. I recognize that. But you know what you can do? You can change what happens. You don’t have to react based on how Nicholas made you feel. You don’t have to be the victim.”
“I’m not playing the fucking victim!” I shout.
“Yes, honey. You are.” She squeezes my hand. “You made a shitty choice, Imogen. Now you have to move on.”
“What does any of this have to do with Jesse?”
“You fucked up, that’s what.”
“How?”
“He’s bent over backward to do things for you. Tens of thousands of dollars of work, for free or dirt cheap. He’s charmed you, wooed you, and made you feel sexy again when Nicholas made you feel like shit. You’ve had fun with him. You like him. He challenges you. You’ve been on a dry spell for a year and a half—we both know that. Which means you were, on top of everything else, horny as hell. Desperate for sex. Desperate for actual P-in-V sex, with a man. And he made it easy. He presented a no-strings scenario without making you feel cheap, and you went for it.
“I encouraged it because, if nothing else, you’d get sex and hopefully stop being such a whiny, reclusive stick-in-the-mud. But the problem is, not only have you not had sex in a year and a half, you also haven’t had any kind of validation or intimacy or male attention in a year and a half. And, unlike me, you can’t fool yourself into thinking good sex is a decent stand-in for any of that. So you were desperate for just basic attention, period. And Jesse gave it to you. Sounds like he gave it to you good, too, girlfriend, because even crazy nympho Lee never left you saying the sex was mind-blowing, best of your life. And it’s not like Lee was your first by any stretch of the imagination.”
