The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(127)

All I felt was the probing of unskilled fingers and the swirl of tentative tongue.

Some nights, when Ren stayed out super late, I’d feel so rotten, so sick, so twisted, that the next evening—regardless if it was a school night or not—I’d find a party somewhere and crash. I’d dance like a slut and encourage like a whore, and when a boy finally kissed me, I’d want to vomit with tearful disgust.

For almost a year, we co-existed in shame.

Him doing whatever it was he was doing, and me doing my best to move on.

I didn’t want to be this doormat. I didn’t want to be this weak. When I hooked up with a guy, I pinned all my hopes and dreams on him and truly listened to what he had to say. I laughed at his jokes, even if they weren’t funny. I answered his questions, even if they were hard, and I truly did my best to make a connection so I could find some self-worth after so many years of self-hate.

But it never worked.

No matter how much I tried to release myself from Ren, returning to him every night, living with him, loving him…it tied me up into knots I could never be free from.

I often thought about leaving.

Of running away so I could stop being so weak.

But every time I thought about waking up without him, of living in a world without him, I couldn’t do it. I’d unpack the bag I’d hastily stuffed in the darkness and accept that this was my punishment for every sin I’d committed.

The one saving grace was Ren never saw a woman twice.

Believe me, I knew.

I became a master of reading his phone when he was in the shower, skimming over past messages and investigating new ones.

For some reason, even knowing he was running to these women to fuck, I still felt better than them because he returned to me afterward. They might borrow his body, but I ruled his heart, and he was still mine.

Until…one day, that assurance and kingdom that I’d always treasured was threatened to be invaded by infidels.

A second date.

A woman who went by the name Rachel989.

Her message carved out my heart with an ice-cream scooper: I had fun last night. I know we agreed it was a one-time thing, but there’s something about you. I’d love to see you again.

I would’ve deleted it and hoped Ren never saw it.

If it wasn’t for his reply: Okay. Tonight. Same place.

I’d rushed to the sink and thrown up.

Dramatic right?

Yep, I said so to my body. I schooled it for the long minutes that Ren was in the bathroom, and I plastered on a fake smile when he came out dressed in a black button-down and faded jeans that hugged him like a second skin. His sable hair was tussled from rough towel-drying. His lips pouty and almost sad. His eyes dark with unshared things.

He was drop-dead gorgeous, and he didn’t even know it.

Of course, this Rachel989 would want a second date. She would want him for a third and a fourth and marriage, too. And I’d finally been slapped in the face with my reality.

Ren was twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. He was at the age when people settled down and started families of their own. He would eventually replace me with his own sons and daughters…and wife.

And as he kissed my cheek and asked what I had planned for the evening, I marvelled at how steady my voice was. How I could fib so effortlessly when every piece of me was breaking. How I could stand there with my bones shattered and organs splattered on the kitchen floor.

That was my true performance because he never knew how much I sobbed the moment he closed the door, promising to be home soon.

I sobbed so much I couldn’t breathe, and my tears were no longer tears, but great heaving, ugly convulsions where hugging myself didn’t work, where lying to myself didn’t work, where promises that it would get better definitely didn’t work.

I’m sure you can probably guess what I did next?

If you can’t, then you’ve never been in love with someone who was off making a future with someone else.

Wiping away my grief, I crawled to my phone and went on the Facebook group listing campus parties in my area. There was one that a student at the local university that I’d considered applying at for their creative writing course was hosting.

It was late.

The party was probably winding down by now, but I stripped and climbed into the shower. I shaved every part of me. I styled and painted and slipped into the little black dress I’d worn on the night of my seventeenth birthday.

Unlike that night, when I wore new red lingerie that I hoped peeked out beneath the black straps, tormenting Ren at dinner, this time, I wore nothing.

I wasn’t playing games anymore.

I was done, and this was war.

I caught an Uber to the party as my killer heels would break my ribbon embroidered foot before I could arrive, and I sashayed my way into the tipsy crowd, looking for a particular kind of prey.

A boy of pretty origins, slightly drunk, single, and up for fun.

And when I found him, I pulled him to the side and told him the truth. I hid my cracked voice behind a sultry beg and said, “I’m in love with someone else who doesn’t want me. I’m a virgin who doesn’t want to be innocent anymore. I want to forget…about all of it.”

I’d pulled away, expecting him to run but needing him to understand that I wasn’t going to be an easy lay. I would be skittish and jumpy and most likely cry at some point, but I’d chosen him and all I expected him to do was relieve me of the one thing that I’d started to hate.