Page 24 of I Love My Mistake
His knuckles go white from his grip on the frame. He looks like any minute he’ll charge at me with one furious leap, and enraged that he can’t. My fingers tuck inside, moving fast against my ripened clit, every touch, ecstasy. His eyes harden with desire. I touch and fondle myself, never looking away from him, until the feelings grow and build. I let my head fall back. Grab onto the edge of the stool so I can rub against it. Push my fingers inside and moan loud and long, releasing myself to the limitless pleasure of what my body can do, how it can feel, what it was made for. Swinging my head up to lock eyes with him at the last second, smiling when he won’t smile. Feeling when he won’t feel. Loving me, when he won’t love me. When the climax comes ripping through me, I abandon myself to it without regard to him, his wife… or anything.
He didn’t walk to me, and I didn’t want him to.
Panting, I shake my head, my hair moving around freely. I look at him from beneath my eyelashes. “So… you’re married,” I say. He lets go of the easel and his hand falls to his side, but he can’t look away from me. Not this time. He didn’t know I knew. She didn’t tell him she came here. Clever. Or maybe she didn’t want to risk more pain. Easier to live in the dark than open a door to the unknown, for some people. I’m not one of those.
I hold his eyes and let the last pieces of my wall fall down, show him how hurt I am, how much he is the cause of it. But there is no winner here. Both of us are in pain and neither of us is hiding it.
“Michael. You toyed with me. With my heart. This?” I motion to my body, the stool, my actions, “This was me telling you this is my body. I own it and what happens to it. And I only give it to men who respect it. And you can’t have it. Not ever. That includes my kisses. You touching my skin! Nothing. None of this is yours.” I turn and walk quickly to the stairs.
“Nic!” he calls out, his voice cracked, hurting and urgent.
I don’t look at him, because I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to leave, if I look at him again.
“What?” I ask, holding onto the wall to steady myself.
“You just broke through. You smashed the wall,” he whispers.
My heart thumps in my chest. “Yeah?” I ask, hopeful and furious all at once, my stomach twisting.
“Yes,” he whispers. “You did it. It’s done.”
“Michael?” I turn my head, look at him from the corner of my eyes. “Fuck you.”
He closes his eyes in agony.
I walk down the stairs, grab my jacket and leave.
I won’t come back. And I mean that.
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If men like only Michael existed, there would be no happiness. There would be no hope. If I’d have been less driven, maybe I would have cracked right here and right now. Maybe I would never have walked forward into the unknown. Maybe I would have taken my own life and said fuck it. Maybe I would have had no way to cope with the discouragement that so often accompanies loving a man who doesn’t know how to be honest.
But I am driven. I do have hope. I have a voice inside me that whispers, you have to keep going. You are worth everything you think you are worth. You are special, and someone will see that.
But first, the only person who has to see that, is you. Find your heart again, before you give it away.
It’s this voice - this tiny little sound reaching up from the depths of my being - that keeps me showing up for the next day and the next chapter in my life, with the belief that this isn’t all there is.
It whispers to me… There is more to come, and it is wonderful.