Free Lush by Chris Adonn Page B

you it doesn’t
matter.”
    He eyed her with a
level of exasperation that seemed to match her own. “I’m fixated
because it doesn’t tie in with who I think you are. It doesn’t fit
with everything I’ve known about you since we were kids and all the
new facets I’m discovering now.”
    Oh hell no! She
would not let him talk her into exposing her deepest and darkest
source of pain. If he couldn’t figure it out on his own he did not
deserve to know. In fact the fact that he couldn’t figure it out
was just further proof that everything she had ever felt for him
was totally one-sided. “Seriously, Mike, drop it. It really and
truly does not matter.”
    He put down his drink,
spun out of his stool, and was in her face faster than a hiccup.
“Bullshit. It matters. I can see it in your eyes every time I bring
it up. It’s like the proverbial fucking elephant in the room. Just
tell me already. You said you were open to having a completely
honest conversation. So man up and let’s have it.”
    “Fine. You really want
to know?” She put down her own drink and shoved him out of her
space then got to her feet and started pacing. Best to just rip the
Band-Aid off so he could satisfy his curiosity and she could slam
the door on his face, and their sham of a friendship, when he
ridiculed her. “It was what you said to me as you left me there in
your parents’ garden that night when you kissed me and gave me an
almighty lecture about staying away from guys till I was ready to
face the consequences. Now have a good go at me about how stupid I
am for holding on to past hurts and get the hell out of my
apartment!”
    He pulled her up short
and steered her back to her stool then took the one next to it.
Trapping her knees with his own he forced her to face him. “What
the fuck are you talking about?”
    Fighting back tears she
stared him down. The second he blinked she let rip. “You said you
didn’t want to see me end up like your mother when she fell
pregnant with you! You told me that I wouldn’t be able to find a
guy who’d marry me like she did, because even though I was pretty I
was not that pretty !”
    “Oh Christ, Jules.” He
slumped heavily against the bar top then reached for her beer and
downed it before looking at her with a pained expression. “You
were, and remain, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I was
just trying to scare you off having sex, especially unprotected
sex, till you were ready. I can’t even remember half the things I
said that night because I was so fucking hot for you. I wanted to
kiss you senseless and so much more from the second I saw you, and
I knew that just about every other straight guy who could see you
then would want the same thing. But you were too young and I was
leaving for university. It drove me crazy to know that I couldn’t
be with you. And worse, that I couldn’t trust myself to be with
you.”
    “Well you sure had me
fooled.”
    “Then I guess you were
real easy to fool. I was so hard I thought I was going to explode.
I’d been madly in love with you since you were fourteen and you
climbed on my bike and said you’d love me forever if I taught you
to ride. Teaching you was absolute torture because I’d never felt
like that before, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was
seventeen and it was inappropriate.”
    “I developed early,
Mike. I looked at least sixteen when I was fourteen. That’s part of
the reason my folks wouldn’t let me experiment with make-up and the
clothes that all the other girls my age were starting to wear.
Hell, with the right dress, a little mascara and lipstick, I could
have gotten into an over 21 club. But here’s the thing; on the
night you broke my heart I wasn’t fourteen anymore, I was fifteen
and a half and I wanted you so bad.”
    “But I was eighteen,
Jules. It was a huge age difference back then and no matter how
physically developed you were, you were still officially a kid. I
mean fuck, you’d never