Desperate to Touch

“You’ll stay with me,” I say absently, telling her without thinking and my mind plays tricks on me. It goes back years ago. If only she’d stay with me.

“No,” she answers weakly, a raw vulnerability lacing the single word.

“You will and you’ll pay off the debt with your cunt.” I grasp for any reason at all for her to agree. To remember her guilt.

“Don’t be crass,” she bites out even as her voice trembles. She seems to come out of it, out of the haze of longing. Wiping the corners of her mouth, she stares back at me, not giving in to my demand. “I won’t do it, Seth.”

“Crass? Are you too good for that kind of language now?”

Even at my mercy, Laura’s strength shines through. I wonder what she looked like when she left me. I wonder if she cried. Derrick swore to me there’s no way she left without falling apart. I want to see her fall apart. I want to know what this version of her looks like when she does.

“I’m not yours anymore,” Laura tells me calmly, still lying spread on my desk. The taste of her is still present on my tongue.

“You owe me,” is all I tell her, firm and deliberate.

“You owe me too,” she whispers after a moment and the crack in her guard splinters. Suddenly, she looks all too familiar. I have to let her go. In an instant, the room feels colder. The ghost of her in my living room stares back at me. Cross-legged on the floor with the scent of smoke filtering through my lungs.

“I owe you?” I question with feigned disgust. She’s quick to sit up, to cover herself from me. The moment is lost. “What is it I owe you?” I dare her to answer me. To bring up her home, to bring up Cami. Fuck.

If she’d listened to me, if only she’d stayed close—I could have kept her safe. It could have been different. It didn’t have to end the way it did.

I’m so close to screaming the words. It didn’t have to end like it did. You should have listened to me. So close, I can feel them scratching up the back of my throat.

“I wish I’d never fallen in love with you,” she admits and scrambles to get off my desk. Stay still, I warn myself. Stay still. If I move, I’ll grab her. She reaches for her clothes, heedlessly throwing them on.

“You will stay with me. You will do everything I tell you to.” I give the commands as if all of her objecting will vanish. I still don’t trust myself to move. I swear I’ll lift her beautiful ass over my shoulder and lock her in a room.

“You wanted to humiliate me? To prove to me you could still have me if you wanted?” she questions with disdain and the thought of what she’s implying had not once occurred to me. Not once. I didn’t even know until a moment ago that I could have her.

“You have no idea what I want from you!” I don’t know why I scream. I don’t know why I shake as she zips up her dress and slowly faces me.

“Yes, I do, and I’ll tell you right now, Seth, it won’t happen. I won’t let it.”

“I left you alone for years. I won’t any longer,” I tell her and my words are rushed.

“I’m not a plaything. I’m not yours anymore,” she tells me as she grabs her heels from the floor.

“Yes. You are. That is exactly what you are.”

She turns from my heated gaze, frantically looking for her purse until she can snatch it, ready to leave me.

“You’ll come back tomorrow night. Five o’clock,” I say calmly even as a panic stirs in my blood watching her race out of the door.

I don’t follow her. I stay perfectly still, not trusting myself to move. It’s not until I hear her car start from outside that I brace myself against my desk. It’s still warm from where she laid herself bare for me.

The rev of her engine and the peeling out of her tires comes and goes until I’m alone.

She left me again. My eyes catch sight of the note on my desk. She left me again.

With a roar ripped from my throat, I grab the floor lamp and slam it against the bookshelf. Heaving in the darkened room, I can’t let go of it.

She left me again, but she’ll be back.

I’ll have her again.

She’ll be back.

Laura

The bags under my eyes still feel heavy. I put on enough concealer to hide them though. I’m an expert at that now. I doubt anyone in this coffee shop can tell how much I cried last night.

With the small chatter and the subtle pop music, no one in Baked and Brewed is paying me any mind. I picked a table in the back corner and from here I can see everything in this place. It’s cute and quaint, smelling of freshly brewed coffee and cinnamon from something they just baked. The new shop is on the corner of Fourth and Washington. With walnut furniture, all simple and clean, but pops of mint green from the steel signs and chairs, it’s certainly eye catching. Every table has a short clear vase with a few sprigs of baby’s breath too. It’s all sorts of happy and relaxed in this coffee shop. Completely at odds with how I’m feeling.