Confessions of a Bad Boy(64)
If realizing for how long, and how seriously, Nate had been making these videos pushed me to the point of despair, seeing him make a video about f*cking – while the only person he was f*cking was me – makes me boil once again. Suddenly I’m out of my seat, screaming at the screen with more hardcore venom than any football fan in the country. I’m pacing up and down, my hands wringing an invisible Nate’s neck as he talks about the finer points of going down – in a video posted a day after he did it to me. There are other offenses, other examples, other humiliations, and I cringe so hard I almost turn inside-out, get so angry I elbow-drop my couch and throw punches at the pillows, find myself so shocked I have to rewind parts to double-check I’m not imagining this.
Around midnight, going through the last – the most recent – of his videos, I’m finally half-insane and distraught enough to answer back as the sound of his sordid thoughts fills the room. With the last video done, I sit back down in front of the computer, the sudden silence almost unbearable. I almost don’t notice that I’m crying again, given that it’s become almost irrelevant now, and through the blur of tears I stare at the giant play button.
This was the guy I thought I could have something real with. The guy who’s just described in no less than three minutes how to make sure a woman enjoys anal sex. The guy who has three videos about involving food in the bedroom, one giving tips on harmonious threesomes, and countless vlogs devoted solely to doling out sex advice or answering heaps of e-mailed questions. A guy who can talk for four minutes about nipples.
Actually, forget all that. I can deal with nipple-talk. That’s not what’s making me bawl my eyes out. That’s not the part that makes me want to throw this computer out the window, and then follow it. The problem is this: in every single video, Nate makes a point of mentioning how much he hates the idea of settling down, how much he loathes commitment. His devotion to staying single and free from accountability – it’s almost obsessive. The man on the screen hates marriage with a passion, fears it and detests it to the depths of his very soul. I mean, I always knew Nate didn’t believe in getting married, but to see him tear into stable, serious relationships at every opportunity, to see just how deep his dislike – bordering on fear – goes, is more than I can ever forget or forgive.
This is a guy I would have to be stupid to think could be anything more than a one-night stand – let alone a father, a husband. Even just thinking that thought makes it seem impenetrable, hard and cold. A slab of truth that chains me to it. Nate won’t ever be the guy I need him to be – and where does that leave me? Alone. Until this baby arrives, and then…
I drop my head onto the desk, forehead against the keyboard, and let the wave of sobs and hurt come to the fore again, draining me of what little energy and fight I have left.
Lorelei wakes me up in a frenzied panic, cooing when she notices the ice cream stains and the red marks on my face. I emerge from an uncomfortable dream in which I’m falling headfirst into a cave, and she helps me to my room and undresses me like I’m wasted, then sets me to bed.
“What time is it?” I say through the pounding in my forehead as she pulls my sweatshirt off me.
“Three AM.”
“Shit,” I moan, as she adjusts the blankets and I flop backwards. “I’ve got work tomorrow. My call time’s in five hours, I have to be on set by—”
“No you don’t! Jesus, you can’t go to work in this state. I’ll call them in the morning.”
I try to protest, but the heaviness in my eyelids pushes me back toward those gloomy dreams.
I wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Lorelei on the phone. For a few seconds I experience the bliss of nothingness – and then the memories of the night before enter my mind like annoying stabs. They’re quickly followed by the freight-train of fear that comes with being late for work. I throw the covers off and run out of my room toward the bathroom.
“Hold on, I’ll call you back, okay?” I hear Lorelei say in the other room, before she hurries over to stand in the doorway of the bathroom.
“I’m f*cking late for work,” I say scrambling recklessly around in the sink to wash my face.
“No you’re not,” Lorelei says, calmly. I turn to look at her. “I called in sick for you.”
“What? But I can’t call in—” I stop myself. It only takes a deep breath to realize Lorelei did the right thing. I smile a little and hug her. “Thanks.”
When we break apart Lorelei looks at me like I’m a patient.
“I’ll make you a coffee, come on.”
Once I’m dressed and sitting in the living room, Lorelei brings me a big latte and I take it eagerly. She settles herself on the chair perpendicular to me, like a psychiatrist, and I let myself smile at the idea, but it disappears quickly. Smiles don’t stick when you have the kinds of worries I have.
I nod toward her computer. “Shouldn’t you be working now?”
“I can hand it in whenever,” Lorelei says casually. “Do you want to talk?”
I sip slowly from the coffee, but the mental fatigue and numbness seems to extend to my tastebuds.
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Jessie…” she says, making my name sound like a sigh. “You shouldn’t have watched those videos.”