Imperfectly Bad (21 page)

Her piercing blue eyes met mine. “But I just got you back. I just don’t think I’m ready to say goodbye again.” The sadness in her voice rang out clear as day, and it surprised the hell out of me. Whatever I had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t this.

The physical distance was too much and I scooted closer to her and took her free hand in mine. “What the fuck, Jenny?”

“I dunno, Rob. Before seeing you again I was ready to move on. But now… now that I’ve seen you. God—” She paused, her words stuck in her throat. “I just can’t handle the thought of losing you again.”

“I don’t understand. You left me, Jenny. I never heard from you again.”

“I know. But I didn’t leave by choice, my parents sent me away. And the longer I went without seeing you, the easier it became to hate you. There came a point where I never so much as thought of you. I never looked for you—it would have been easy to find you—but I just didn’t give a fuck. With each passing day, my hatred grew. In my head you’d become this monster. The one person to blame for everything that had gone wrong in my life. But when I saw you again, all that hate melted away. I loved you. Rob.” Her voice dropped to less than a whisper as she said, “And I still do.”

I didn’t think, and I didn’t speak—which was good because I probably couldn’t have if I wanted to. Throwing caution to the wind I grabbed her by the neck and pulled her lips to mine. Everything clicked into place. It was just so… familiar. Even after all this time. Her lower jaw dropped slightly, and my tongue made quick work of invading her mouth. Given how much of my wife—sorry, ex-wife—had evaporated since our time together, I was pleased to find that she had left her tongue stud in. Using the tip of my tongue I flicked at it, which was a good move because she moaned into my mouth, keening against me before leaning over to sit her glass on the coffee table. She threw her leg over my lap so that she was straddling me. Her hands pressed on the sides of my face, her forehead pressed to mine. “You and I, we’re not so different you know.” The words were raspy, as if it physically pained her to speak them.

“I know,” I replied, my voice breathy and emotion-filled. “We’re so bad for each other that we’re good.”

She smiled before kissing me again. There was so much passion, so much hate, harnessed in our kisses that I swore we must have looked like we were mauling each other. There was just so much lost time to make up for. The fact that, once again, my dick had taken over my brain was evidenced when I picked her up and carried her toward my bedroom, ready to show her how I felt in the only way we could.

Because everyone knows actions speak louder than words.

Once Jenny left I made my way to the toilet, and I wretched up everything I had eaten in the past week. I’d gone and fucked things up, again. Layla deserved better than that. I was a selfish bastard and deserved to rot in hell.

I coughed into the toilet bowl again when I heard the front door open. Great. Tyler was home. The last think I needed was for him to start questioning me. The web around me was so tangled at that point that I doubted there was a way out.

“Rob!” he called out from the living room.

There was no point in pretending not to be there so I flopped onto my ass away from the toilet, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and called out, “Be right out.”

With a shaking hand, I reached up and flushed away the guilt, along with the vomit. I stopped at the sink to splash a bit of cold water on my face and made my way out to the living room, shuffling my feet, feeling completely and utterly worn out. In a way I was, both emotionally and physically. The rolling sensation in my stomach continued as the thought of my deception crept back in. I was disgusted with myself, and that was a challenge in itself.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“Thanks, Ty.” I flopped down onto the couch, totally defeated. “Love you too.”

“What the fuck is your damage now, shithead?” he asked, his attention diverted back to the game he had been watching on TV.

“Same shit, different day I guess.”

I kicked my feet up and attempted to relax, but it just wasn’t happening. There was a loud thump as my feet hit the floor and threw my head in my hands.

The noise from the TV ceased, and I heard Tyler sigh. “Wanna talk about?”

I considered my options. Either I could sit and stew—which would ultimately lead to sure fire self-destruction—or I could talk it through, and maybe even figure some shit out. I’d watched all my friends fumble through their lives lately and as much as I wanted to be left alone, I knew that nothing good would come of it. As much as I hated to admit it, I had to talk to someone. Anyone.

“I really don’t, but unlike you I know better than to self-destruct.”

He shook his head. “So what the hell is going on?”

“I’m so fuckin’ confused…”

“Join the club,” Tyler scoffed as he threw his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Women suck. Period. There’s no question about it.”

Poor Tyler was still hanging on, waiting for Elizabeth to give him the green light. The dude was so whipped but I doubted he even knew it.

“Well, it’s not even so much as that. I just can’t seem to figure out which way is up. Just when I think I have a handle on things, and where everything is the way I want to be, I go and do something stupid again.”

“Like?”

I shot a knowing look at him, cocking my eyebrows up. “Oh I don’t know. Like sleeping with Jenny again?”

“
No!
”

Just the tone of his voice told me all I needed to know and I hung my head. For the first time in a long while I was actually ashamed of myself.

“Yes.”

“Rob, what about Lay—” Tyler started scolding.

“I know. I’m fucking stupid as shit. Here I am, moving along with this great thing with Layla, thinking I’m picking up the pieces left behind by Jenny, but for some reason I can’t just be done with her.”

Unbelievable frustrated with myself, I got up and strode to the kitchen, grabbing the tequila and a couple of shot glasses from the cabinet. Setting them down on the coffee table, I poured a shot for both of us. Considering the weakened state my stomach was in it probably wasn’t my best idea, but I needed something to numb myself. Something to help me forget, if only for a short while, what I had done. Tyler raised an eyebrow, looking between me and the glasses. For a second I wondered what his issue was, but then I remembered I’d supposedly given up drinking.

Yeah, that lasted long.

“Shut up. It was a dumb idea anyway,” I snapped.

“I didn’t say a thing.”

“Whatever.”

Tequila poured, I picked up both glasses and held one out to him.

“She’s like a goddamn scab that I can’t seem to leave alone. Just as it starts to heal up, it itches, and I don’t have the willpower to keep from scratching it.”

Tyler grabbed his shot, and immediately sucked it back. Using the edge of his sleeve to wipe his mouth he shook his head and said, “She’s the itch you can’t scratch.”

“But I try anyway.”

The glass balanced precariously between my fingers and so without further delay I opened up my throat and poured the shot of tequila down. It burned a path down my throat and set fire onto my already tender stomach. For a brief second the pain in my heart was overridden by the torture my stomach was inflicting on me. It was a good pain though. It made me forget… just not for long enough.

“Yeah, and then it bleeds, festers, and gets infected. All because you’re an idiot.”

I grabbed a throw pillow and threw it in his direction. “Fuck you.”

He deflected it without any trouble and it fell to the floor. Stupid athletic abilities. “No but seriously, Rob,
why
? Why do you keep letting her fuck with your head?”

“Because despite all the bad shit we’ve been through, I still love her. I always will.”

“But does she love you?”

Ah, the million dollar question. He had a point. Jenny hadn’t done, or said, anything that should lead me to believe that she felt the same way. Sure, she’d admitted to not being ready to let go, but that wasn’t the same thing. It was then that I wondered if I had just always been a game to her. Someone that she could play with in order to validate herself. Part of me refused to believe that everything we had done and gone through was fake, but the other part of me, the smarter part, thought otherwise.

My shoulders slumped in defeat and I looked up at Tyler, tears stinging my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“If you can’t say one way or another, chances are she doesn’t.”

He stood and walked towards me, resting his hand on my shoulder he looked down at me with a knowing look. “The truth hurts, Rob. But you’ve got to move on. Layla is a good girl. We all love her, and she’s good for you—too good in fact. You should be holding onto her like your life depends on it.”

I looked up at him and smiled. “I think it already does.”

“Then I think you have your answer.”

“I’ve got to let Jenny go.”

Tyler nodded and dropped his hand from my shoulder. “That’s your choice, buddy. But you know that we’re all here for you, no matter what you decide.”

I nodded and Tyler forced a smile before walking down the hallway, leaving me alone to make the hardest decision of my life. Wasting hours making a list of pros and cons for each girl would have been one of my usual solutions, but Jenny had already made my choice so much easier. I knew where she stood, but the question was: Where did that leave me?

In a perfect world I’d like to say that I didn’t know, but I did. It hurt, but I already knew. I knew who I
wanted,
but for once in my life I was going to use my head. I was going to make the smart move. I was going to be with the girl I
should
be with.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and punched in the numbers that had burned themselves into my brain the very first time I’d seen them. It rang once before she answered.

“Hey,” she purred.

“I probably shouldn’t do this, and I’m about to go against everything that we agreed to, but I want you to know where I stand.”

“Rob—”

“No, let me finish before I lose my nerve. You’ve gotta know that it’s unusual for me to feel something besides lust for a chick. But with you, well… with you things are different. You made me feel again. You make me feel… well, like less of a dickhead.”

Silence.

“Layla?”

There was a paused that lasted just long enough for my heart to sink a little before she said, “Yeah, I’m still here.”

“I’ve left you speechless?” I asked with a laugh.

“Not really, I just hope that you know what you’re doing, Rob.”

I pondered this for a moment. Leave it to Layla to know me better than I knew myself. She was making me question my certainty. “Jesus, Layla, I’m trying here.”

“But you’re trying for all the wrong reasons. I’m not stupid, Rob. Don’t rush things with us. We need to take it one day at a time. You can’t force love just because you’re trying to move on.”

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?” she asked.

“See right through me.”

“It’s not that I see through you, I just know how matters of the heart work. And I know that you’re trying to fill a void with me—”

“Lay—”

“No, it’s my turn now. Let me finish.”

I heard a deep sigh over the line. An awkward sense of foreboding overwhelmed me and every nerve ending told me to stop her, but at the same time I was curious about what she had to say. It was amazing to me that a woman of this caliber had managed to fly under the radar for so long. She was one of the good ones. One of life’s true beauties, both inside and out.

“You’ve got a lot of stuff going on, Rob. You’re not quite ready to close that chapter of your life, and I understand that. So just know, that when you’re ready I’ll be here, waiting.”

Just when I didn’t think that things could get any more complicated, Layla went ahead and muddied the waters further. The fact that she understood me completely made me think that she might be the one.

But she was right. I had unfinished business with Jenny, and I needed to completely end things with her before I could start fresh with Layla.

“Well, I won’t keep you waiting long,” I promised. I could sense her smile on the other end, and I hoped like hell that this was one promise I wouldn’t break.