This is a more detailed and different version of What Do You Say?. So it has some of the same lines.
Enjoy.
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It was His face.
I only saw it for a second, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was His.
I wanted to scream, to see it again, to run, to close my eyes, but I couldn't do a thing except continue to stand there as my breath became shallow, my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn't sure if it was out of fear or excitement.
I saw it again, His eyes meeting mine, filled with shock and anticipation.
A hand closed around my throat, another taking hold of my heart and squeezing it so tight I just wished it would rip it out already so that I didn't have to feel it anymore. If I hadn't already been sitting, I probably wouldn't have been able to stand.
He made His way over to me, a girl on His arm. My heart sank.
He greeted me joyfully, said it was good to see me. Introduced the girl next to Him. I wanted to vomit. I smiled. Asked how He was doing. Well enough. Doing what He always did. Happy.
She whimpered inside me. I couldn't look either of them in the eyes, her at all, and the way He looked at me hadn't changed a bit. I didn't understand.
He finished. I smiled, nodded. Said I was glad to hear it. I begged Him not to ask me about myself.
He did.
I opened my mouth to lie.
"Katie!"
I gasped, startled, and turned to see Rob waving and walking towards me.
"Hey." I said awkwardly. This wasn't anything like his attempt to be discrete, especially around me.
He came up rolling his one suitcase with a backpack hanging off the other shoulder, immediately pulling me into a hug and kissing my cheek. This, he had done before, and was as simple a greeting as a handshake for him, but at this moment it was unbearably humiliating.
"You ready to go?" Rob asked, chipper, slipping his free arm around my waist.
I swallowed hard.
"Yeah." I answered with difficulty.
I turned back to Him, not surprised to see the shock on His face.
Good.
"I've got to go." I smiled again, waved, and with Rob's lead turned and walked away.
The instant my face was out of His view, the smile disappeared. I could feel my expression fall and I fought to steady breathing.
Rob said nothing, keeping his hold on me all the way out to the car in its usual place. I opened the trunk, he put his things in., then I got in the driver's seat.
I went to put the keys in the ignition and dropped them. Closing my eyes a moment, cursing my shaking hands.
Rob had the keys in his hand when I opened my eyes. He looked worried. I avoided his eyes.
"You've been shaking the whole way out." He tried to catch my eyes and I glanced at his again, the concern blaring like a horn. "Is your blood sugar all right?"
"I don't know." I managed to say, most of my words stuttered slightly. "It's probably messed up." I sighed and rubbed my eyes roughly, then fished my PDM out of my bag roughly.
My blood sugar was over three hundred, like I'd expected. Once I had it give me the correction insulin, I took the keys from Rob and turned on the car.
"Can you drive?" He asked still worried.
I didn't look at him. "Yes." I said almost curtly, pulling out of the parking space.
"Should you drive?" he corrected when I reached 25 mph still in the parking lot.
"No." I answered, exiting the airport and accelerating to 75 mph once on the country road.
He didn't say anything after that for most of the drive, I didn't either, the anger, shame, regret, and pain ragged inside me and I poured it out on the gas pedal.
On the last strip of road, I finally started to calm down a little, and Rob must have felt it or maybe his curiosity had gotten the best of him.
"Who was that?" he asked carefully.
My jaw clenched a moment. "Don't ask me that while I'm driving." I pleaded.
"Okay." He nearly whispered, turning his gaze out the window again, though I could feel him glancing at me.
The car was parked in the garage, and I went inside the house to the joyful yipping and jumping of Keila at the back door. I let her in as Rob lugged his baggage in behind me.
"Hey Keila!" he greeted her with the usual cooing and she followed him as he took his things to his room.
I went and laid on the couch in the living room facing the back, the throw pillow clenched to my stomach.
Rob must have decided to unpack and stopped paying attention to Keila, because she was suddenly licking the back of my calf.
I looked at her to see her glazing eyes, pleading, but happy. "Come on." I said, patting my side, inviting her onto the couch with me. I removed the pillow and she cuddled into its place giving me a grateful lick on the neck. I began to pet her meditatively.
Rob came in shortly after and sat on the end of the couch next to my feet. My waist twitched with yearning where his arm had been. Keila turned around climbing on me to face him, her tail wagged against my stomach. He began to scratch her head with a smile and I watched him with tired and wary eyes.
"Why did you act like that?" I asked, unable to stop the words from pouring out of my mouth.
He sat back on the couch. "You looked upset and like you were ready to run, so I stepped in." he glanced at me, apologetic. "Was I wrong?"
"No." I said, my voice thick, I let my head fall to face the couch again. "Thank you." I mumbled.
He nodded. "Of course."
"Did you know them?" he asked after a moment of silence.
I hesitated with my answer. "I used to…know him, anyway."
"Oh." Rob said suddenly. I guess he caught on.
I watched him. He sat forward, his hand rubbing his mouth, the joining his other over his knees, a thoughtful look in his eyes.
"He hurt you…" Rob looked back at me, the expression in his eyes indescribable by any other word other than pain. "didn't he?"
"In layman's terms." I chuckled sarcastically.
I sat up, Keila jumping and going completely to Rob's lap. I rubbed my eyes and before I could think to stop myself I told him the one story I had only ever told to Tristan.
My parents had been a rare kind. They had been born and raised in a small community that was strongly anti-feminist, but that had been dispersed in the time of the Woman's Rights Movement. Still, a small portion of these families held on strongly to those beliefs. A woman was to learn to be an excellent cook, cleaner, mother, and wife. Perfect, pure, and obedient.
I knew nothing else until high school.
I fell for him and with the many doors that suddenly opened to me, I realized how much more I wanted than the life they had planned for me.
I wanted a career, this imperfect guy with an impossible dream, and I wanted to make my own decisions.
I tried to talk to my parents about my plan, but they wouldn't have it. He wasn't good enough, a woman didn't need an education, and I had no say.
Desperate, we made the plan that I was to go with him to school, and we'd take it from there. The night we were supposed to meet, he wasn't there, calling me the next day two states over to tell me that it wasn't our time and that he'd be back. I was broken, but still had hope.
Two years later, I was graduating high school, without their knowledge I had applied to a number of schools, accepted by all, planning to join him wherever he wanted to go. He didn't show up again.
I wasn't going to let that stop me following at least part of my dream, so that was how I moved in with Tristan. They locked the door behind me saying if they ever saw me again, they'd kill me.
I finished my story and Rob sat back a scared look in his eyes.
After a moment he finally spoke. "What a dick."
This wasn't what I was expecting so I laughed strangely. "What?"
"Your family aside," he began staring me in the face completely serious. "anyone that hurt you like that is a dick, there's no way around it."
The tears finally filled my eyes a little. Rob stared into them and his eyebrows furrowed. "No, he's still hurting you, isn't he?"
I looked away.
"You still…have feelings for him."
I bit my lip.
"Katie, stop doing this to yourself."
"Rob." I started.
"No, listen to me." he leaned forward. I couldn't look at him. "He abandoned you and he has clearly moved on. If he hadn't, then that back there in the airport, would have been very different."
He didn't need to tell me that. I knew. He had no idea how much I knew; how many hundred times I had imagined it in a thousand different ways.
"Holding onto him isn't doing you any good."
He was sincere, but I couldn't resist my sarcastic chuckle.
"And what would letting go do?" my voice much less stable than I had intended. "I have tried." I shook my head. "I never get anywhere."
Rob chuckled this time. "You never stop loving someone until you love someone else." He muttered.
I stared at him. There was a small smile on his face and a soft challenge hidden in the light in his eyes.
"But…" Rob locked eyes with me and leaned forward until all he had to do was whisper. "you have to give yourself or someone else a chance."
I wasn't sure if I was breathing.
He was suddenly close enough that I could smell him. Not the shampoo he used or any type of cologne he'd put on, but his scent. We shared the air between us and it was like I had just broken the surface of a deep ocean I had been in. Then just as I was starting to feel the warmth of his mouth next to mine, his hands were on my face, and then he brought my lips to his.
He gently, but powerfully molded his mouth to mine, giving, while still offering to take. I was unresponsive, and when he began to stop and pull away, something cracked inside me.
A noise escaped that was somewhere between a moan and a gasp and I pulled him back to me. I was dehydrated, starving, and deprived as I kissed him, he immediately returning it. I clung to him desperately as his arms wrapped around me and held me closer. As either one of us seemed to begin to stop, the other needed more. It was natural; breath, skin, oxygen. With each kiss and each breath, my will, my fear, crumbled further, the bottle that I had been keeping that part of myself in shattered, the lock around my heart broken.
It was what I needed, and somehow, this man knew it.
Finally, somewhat regretfully, we came to a mutual stop. The fresh air that mixed into my breath seemed strange after so much of his.
Sedated, I settled into his chest, his lips still grazed my head and face. Before I understood what was happening, my chest was heaving and Rob, trying to hush me, was wiping the tears from my face. The only explanation I had was that I was crying in relief.
After a while, I sat up wiping my face.
"I'm sorry." I mumbled.
Rob looked at me, smiling contently. "Nothing to be sorry for."
He seemed to glow, if only a little, creating a joy in me that made me have to kiss him again.
In between kisses Rob managed to say, "You don't have to go home…if you don't want to."
I pulled away, hesitantly again, but carefully. I was just drunk enough on him that I knew staying would potentially be dangerous.
I smiled softly at him, kissed him one last time, sighed, and stood up.
"I better go." I said quietly.
He followed me to the door, Keila suddenly appearing at our heels. I petted her gently.
Rob then wrapped his arms around me. "Can I call you tomorrow?" he asked, sounding tired.
"Only once you've gotten some sleep." I mothered.
He laughed. "Fair enough."
"Bye."
I closed the front door behind me and heard Tristan perk up on the couch.
"Katie?"
"Yeah." I was still blissful.
"Did Rob's plane come in really late?" her voice became suspicious.
I set my things down and plopped on the couch. I knew I had a goofy smile on my face.
"Heh, no." I answered.
I looked at Tristan, her eyes were wide, and she seemed to choose her words carefully. "What…happened?"
"Uh." I laughed. How was I going to say this? "He, um, kissed me?"
"And?" the suspicion hadn't died, but sounded a slightly more anxious.
"And I kissed him." I smiled at her and waited for her eyes to light up.
