Loving Hart (20 page)

The following weekend, Eric was out with me and my friends again. 
I was so damn tired of waiting
, of being a good girl.  Spencer wasn’t out there being good, and
now that I damn well kne
w it
for sure, I felt
like
I need
ed
to experience other men
myself
. 
Eric and I
had the same group of friends, and I liked him.  Not in the way that I liked Spencer, not even close, but I was attracted to him.  I missed kissing, I missed being held. 
Now that
I knew
first hand that
Spencer was f
ucking anything that walked,
I was fed up with it. 
Why was I the one that was expected to wait, while he was out there nailing anyone he felt like? How was that fair?
  I started to think that maybe I should get some of my own back.  If he was out having sex, why wasn’t I? 

I was ripe for the picking, and when Eric asked me out
the next time
, I said yes.  We went to the movies, out with our friends, to dinner
,
and to the beach.  I enjoyed spending time with him.  One night after a movie, I went with him back to his house.  Things got hot and heavy, and I wound up giving him a
blowjob
.  It wasn't a stellar experien
ce, but it wasn't horrible. 
I felt stupid
that afterwards I felt
guilty about Spence.  God knows he wasn’t feeling guilty about me.
  After a few more weeks of dating, I opened my mind up to the possibility of having sex with
Eric
.

The very night that I’d made the decision, Spencer showed up at
my apartment to ask about Eric
,
after Dante
had
told him he'd seen us out together.
When
Spencer
asked me if I’
d had sex with
Eric
I couldn't lie so I said no…
no
t yet.
 
I felt his pain to the tips of my toes
,
and I couldn’t help but cry.  He told me that it was okay, said that he understood.  I knew damn well that he didn’t, and that it wasn’t okay.  It was written all over his face.
  That was the moment that I realized that any feelings I had fo
r Eric were ba
rely lukewarm. 

I love Spencer, and the only future I’ve ever dreamed of involves him.  Spencer’s reaction to my relationship with Eric let me know that he still cared about me, that he still wanted me.  I’d started to
really believe that he didn’t, that what happened between us was an anomaly to him.
  We’ve spent the last
two
y
ears not discussing it at all, and
after that night in the bar with Carrie,
I thought he’d gotten over it
, over me
.
I'd decided that
I needed to focus on something else
, and now I'd
hurt Spencer
.

I br
oke up with Eric the next day
.  It didn’t escape my attention that it didn’t affect me at all.
I tried to talk to Spencer about it, but he was busy avoiding me like the plague.  I refused to tell him over the phone, through text or via email,
and since he refused to talk to me, I couldn’t do anything
. 
Anytime we
did
talk, he managed
to make sure that there we
re ot
her people present so that we could
n’t really
talk
. 
There we
re things that need
ed
to be said
,
though
.  I'm still furious at him that he fucked skanks like Carrie, that he let himself get into a situation where he's
being
talked about like a piece of meat.

I’ve tried, but I haven’t been able to work it out so that Spencer and I can be alone together at any time.  It’s just shitty timing I think.
There’s so much shit going on with my family at this point
;
I’ve got Dominique acting
weird and
hiding something, Brooke pining for Damien, Damien pining for Brooke, and on top of that, I’m
about to start working at Hart.
Now just isn’t the time to force the issue with Spencer.

At some point, he will have to listen to me.  Until then,
I have to wait.
  No matter how angry I am, I love him
,
and I'm going to fight for him.
  What are a few more weeks in the grand scheme of things?

***

Spencer got it into his head that it would be a good idea for Damien to pretend to have a girlfriend.  He told Damien he thought it would help make Brooke stop wanting him, but Spencer told me later that he didn’t think Damien would go through with it.  He thought it would force Damien to realize his true feelings for Brooke.
Damien did go through with
it, and things did not go well.  The girl he'd brought home pretending to be his girlfriend was actually someone that my sister was seeing.  That forced everything out into the open, and Dominique fessed up to the fact that she's a lesbian. I love that she finally came out, that she's finally happy and content.  Her girlfriend
,
Tally
,
is a doll, and I'm attaching to her already.  Unfortunately, Damien
and
Brooke aren’t speaking, and I've been
desperately worried about both of them. 

Meanwhile, Spencer still won’t really speak to me about anything
non-family
related.  I’ve still been unable to tell him that I didn’t have sex with Eric, and it’s killing me.  I’ve waited long enough, and tomorrow I’m going to his house to force him to speak to me.
  Enough is enough.  I’ve graduated, and we need to be together.  Our time has come.

Things might finally be looking up with Brooke
,
too.  After weeks of hermit
-
like behavior, she called me earlier to let me know that she wants to go out tonight.  Things might not be so good with her and Damien, but the fact that she’s finally willing to get out of the house is a good sign.

I've started working at Hart with the rest of my family.  I've only been there for two weeks, but somehow Spencer has managed to almost entirely avoid me.  I'm not even sure how the hell he's doing it, but I'm beyond frustrated.  At what point is he going to get his head out of his ass? 

I hate that I still haven’t gotten my shit back together.  If anything, I’m worse off now than I was the day I found out that Delilah was dating someone else.  Pain has a way of taking everything in your world and tossing it around like a tornado.  Most days I really can’t connect with who I was before that.

The visit with my mother revealed that she was far from ill.  She’d gotten me there under false pretenses
,
in an attempt to get me to loan her money.  I’m not quite sure why she thought hitting me up for cash right after I walked into a room to find her servicing three men was a good idea.  I said no and then basically hauled ass out of there.  Seeing her, being in the house my father built… it was a rough night, and was absolutely the last thing I needed on top of where I already was emotionally.

There were two positive things that happened that night.  The first was that I finally confronted Damien about his feelings for Brooke.  The second was that we met a new friend, Tally Simon.  I like her a lot
,
and so does Damien, both of us in a friendly way, of course.

While we were at the bar
,
I had an idea that I thought was a real winner, and I told Damien that he should pretend that Tally was his girlfriend so that Brooke would know he wasn’t available.  I figured he would realize how ridiculous that was, but then he agreed to do it.  I thought he wasn’t going to be able to follow it through, that the idea of pushing Brooke away would scare him straight.  I was right about it setting him straight, but I was wrong about the fact that he
would
n’t
actually go through with it. 

The night that Damien took Tally home for family dinner to have her pretend to be his girlfriend, we found out that the girl Tally had told us all about, Nikki, the one who broke her heart because she wouldn’t come out of the closet, was actually Dominique.  That clued Brooke in on the fact that Damien had brought her there as one big lie, and now she won’t even look at Damien, much less speak to him.  Losing her has broken Damien, taken him to the lowest place he’s ever been.  I’ve never seen Damien like he is now, not even close.  He looks awful, he’s miserably unhappy
,
and we’re all very concerned about his frame of mind.  I’ve really come to love Brooke over this last year, and
it scares me that
she looks terrible too. 

Dominique and Tally stopped by my house about an hour ago with one goal in mind; going to Damien’s and telling him to snap out of it. 

We arrived to find the outside lights off, and the only inside lights that were on w
ere in the living room, and those
were
on
dim.  Dominique had already decided just to bust in using her key. “He’s not going to jump up to answer the door,” was the way she put up.  I agreed with her, so I kept my mouth shut as she unlocked it and let us in.  We found him sitting on the couch in absolute silence.  No TV, no music. It was pretty grim.

He all but yelled as he asked, “What the fuck?”

I told him that was our question.  What was he doing sitting with his thumb up his ass?  Why wasn't he fighting?

We had a good talk with him, and it was like a sign from above when he got a text from Delilah saying that she was out for the night at a bar with Brooke.  Damien asked the three of us if he should go, and we all gave a resounding yes.

I followed him to the door, away from Dominique and Tally, so that I could ask him what bar the girls were at.  He reeled off the name, and I took note.  His mind was so focused on Brooke that I don’t think he even noticed that I’d asked the question.

I decided to follow my own advice to Damien about talking to Brooke.  After dropping Dominique and Tally back at Tally’s house, I drove straight to the bar.   As I was pulling in, I saw Damien and Brooke pulling out in his Escalade, and I smiled.  At least he got her that far.  Hopefully the res
t will work itself out.  Now I was hoping that I could
mak
e an appeal to Delilah that would
get us back on track.

After allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the bar, I quickly found Delilah.  As usual, there was a crowd of people around her.  I breathed a sigh of relief after ascertaining that there was no guy right on top of her.  Maybe
,
if I’m lucky, the little prick she’s dating isn’t here.  I quickly push further thoughts of him away when I realize that it’s making me grind my teeth.  It wouldn’t be good to approach her looking like a raged out serial killer.

Walking up behind her calmly, I got close enough to her to smell her
,
and then all that calm went right o
ut the window.  She still smelled
as good to me as she ever has, the subtle tones of the perfume she’s worn forever evoking a sensory memory that makes me hard.  We should be in the home stretch right now, just about ready to return to each other.  Instead
,
I’m chasing after her in some lame bar, about to beg her to leave her boyfriend. 

Tapping her on the shoulder, I smiled when she turned to face me.  She looked genuinely surprised to see me, and I hoped it was a good kind of surprised.  After gesturing to her friends to give her a minute, she grabbed my arm and gently pulled me across the room to an empty table.  After we'd each taken a chair, she raised an eyebrow at me.  "A lot of action in this bar tonight.  Is your being here a coincidence, or?"

I swiftly shook my head.  "No.  I came to find you, to talk to you.  I don't want to do this anymore.  I don't think I can."

Pausing, I tried to get my thoughts together.  What could I say to make her understand that I wasn't trying to be an asshole when I asked her to break up with her boyfriend?  I want to be with her, and that's never going to happen as long as she's with someone else.

Taking a deep breath, I chose my words carefully before looking up.  I figured
out that I was fighting a
losing
battle
the moment that
I saw her face.  She'd lost almost all of her color, her eyes were filled with te
ars, and her lip was quivering.

Oh my god. 

She’s in love with the new guy
,
and she’s upset because she doesn’t want to hurt me.
  It was
like a kick in the nuts, and my stomach starts to churn.  It's time for me to be
at
a hasty retreat.
  I never should have put her in this position.