A Summer to Remember(23)
“Don’t call me that. You have a great ‘sweetheart’ downstairs and I can’t even lick my wounds in peace.” I turned toward him and held his face with my hands. “You don’t want to risk her…not for me.”
“Fuck this because I will not be manipulated and played for a fool.” He snatched my hands away, stood, walked over to my door, shut it completely and locked it for good measure.
My heart thundered in my chest so hard, I could feel the vibration in my ears. Although I knew he wasn’t truly capable of any real violence, I’d finally pissed him off with my tip-toeing around a subject that I was too ashamed to talk about. I could honestly and freely admit Talia wouldn’t know if she hadn’t been the one who had accompanied me to the hospital.
I patted the space next to me and he walked over in long strides with a panther’s grace. He knew he hadn’t scared me but perhaps his temper had scared himself. Paul was the type who always wanted people to perceive him as a gentle soul with a killer instinct. Therefore he kept his bad language to a minimum and there was really nothing all that bad boyish about him unless you counted a few tattoos in strategic places no one who wasn’t intimate with him would ever be able to see.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. That was completely uncalled for but I really think you need to stop playing games with my heart. I want to know what happened to you. What turned you into this cold, callous woman who feels like she isn’t worth anything to anyone? I need to know. You owe me that much if you’ve worked out a plan to make me dump Ashley and start a relationship with you.”
I stood just as he sat down and walked to my floor-to-ceiling picture window. Below was the traffic common in New York City along with thousands of people mulling about. This city was so beautiful and extraordinary but it was also very tragic and sad. There were more than eight million stories in the Big Apple and mine was just one of them. How sad was that?
“Listen, even if I tell you what happened to me, I don’t expect you to dump Ashley. She’s perfect for you and you’re like a big brother to me. I want to see you happy and perhaps there is someone out there for me too but I have a hard time believing it is you. What kind of cruel God would dangle a man as wonderful as you in Ashley’s face and pull him away at the last minute? He sounds like a piece of shit if you ask me,” I explained in a soft and even voice.
“What kind of God dangles a man like Kevin in front of you only he turns out to be the * of the century and ruins your life and the person I once knew? I don’t like what he did to you.” Paul sighed before he continued in a whisper, “Truth be told, I never liked him. I always thought there was something a bit…shifty about him.”
I turned toward him as the light from the setting sun graced through my windows and threw off hues of orange, red and gold. “You’re a great judge of character—too bad you didn’t let me in on how you felt when I started dating him. If he’s capable of what he did to me then he’s capable of insider trading and every other underhanded deed a person can do.”
“So, why don’t you come over here and tell me this story. I don’t think I want you standing up for this and I need you to be seated…next to me.”
I walked over slowly, my mind so focused on the past, I felt like I was in a dream sequence of my own making. When I sat beside him again, I looked toward him yet I had yet to face those gorgeous crystal blue eyes of his.
“Where do I start?” I wondered out loud like a lost child not sure of her bearings.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened…from the beginning?”
I inhaled a deep breath and exhaled as slowly as possible. This was definitely a time I would have to remind myself the trick about life was to keep breathing.
Chapter Eight
I began at the beginning and felt a little bit like Dolores Claiborne from the famous novel by Stephen King. There was a lot of talk of romance and how we started out as a dream come true. How he would drive down from Yale in New Haven to see me every weekend. We were in love—at least I thought we were—and he was such a gentleman.
My parents loved him and thought he was the best invention since sliced bread. He came from a solid family and we were both mad about one another. It didn’t matter if we attended schools that were almost eighty miles apart. We could make it work because it was only for four years.
“It was near the end of the final semester and we were all graduating in about seven weeks. I hadn’t been feeling very well and with Talia’s urging, we finally decided to visit the clinic on campus.” I stopped there and breathed deeply. “It didn’t take long for the nurse to run some tests and find out I was almost nine weeks pregnant. I should have known since I hadn’t had a period in ages but I just thought it was more about graduation nerves and finals coming up. I was on the pill so I didn’t understand how this could be happening…to me.”