Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(60)
The tears strangled my throat, and I felt my heart twisting like a damp rag. I’d imagined this a hundred different ways—how it would feel when Garrett said those three words to me. The skies would part, doves would cry, it would be biblical. This was a punch in the gut. “I love you,” with a qualifier.
“Well, I guess we have something in common,” I said, my voice quivering.
I gulped back tears as the pain inside my chest morphed into something new. Garrett was no longer just an ache. All at once, he didn’t stand on my chest like a heavy weight: the weight of yearning. This pain was sharp—a thousand needles stitching up a gaping wound. It felt like closure. I didn’t know why people went looking for this kind of sorrow.
Garrett had a way of lighting up my body. He knew the adult me better than any other man—he knew me inside and out. And he knew my heart was breaking right in front of him. As I studied every inch of him, I couldn’t help but wonder what the permanent void would feel like.
I exhaled into hot tears, and I felt myself crumple into his arms. While I let him pull me tight against his chest, I refused to wrap my hands around his body. Instead, my arms lay limply to the sides as tears ran down my lips, onto the curve of his neck, onto his perfectly pressed shirt. I could smell starch and vanilla on his lapel.
I pulled away from him and turned my back to Garrett with deep inhales, trying to get the scent of his skin out of my lungs. I shook my head and turned around, just to see tears find his clenched jaw. He wiped them quickly with the back of his hand, but I saw them just the same, and my lips hung open in the beautiful horribleness of it.
“I’m on this train, Maggie, and I can’t get off it. It’s been that way for a while now. And sometimes, when I look at you, I’m reminded of who I really am. And what I really want. And it hurts,” he said, tears now falling openly—tears the back of his hand couldn’t catch. “You remind me that there’s a best version of myself somewhere out there, and I know”—he pointed hard at his chest—“I know this isn’t him.”
I swallowed, searching past my pain to find the right words. Instead, my mouth hung open, because no words could fix an ending like this.
He studied my broken face for a long moment and looked up at the beams on the barn’s ceiling, as if begging the rest of his tears to stay where they belonged. His eyes came back down toward mine.
My body jolted like lightning as his eyes hardened on my face.
All at once, adrenaline prickled through my body, soaking up the pain and anger and replacing it with wanting. I wanted him so badly that it felt like my pounding chest was pulled toward him by a force out of my control.
“Goddamnit,” he said under his breath.
We seemed to meet in the middle, colliding into each other as he fastened his hand around my waist and led me two steps backward. I felt my back edge onto the stable door’s latch as his hand settled over my hip bone—right above the slit in my dress. His racing chest pressed hard against my breasts as my heart pounded faster and faster. He took deep breaths in and out, hungry eyes on mine as his finger left my hip, tracing a line up my ribs and slowly along the curve of my neck. I swallowed hard as he pressed his thumb against my bottom lip, with the heat of our mouths against each other. I cupped one hand around his reddened cheek, and he curled his fingers around the back of my neck, tugging my open mouth onto his.
This was not closure.
His hand slid under my dress, sending a rush of heat across my skin as his throbbing body pressed hard against mine. My legs tightened around him, and Garrett lifted me up against the stall door, with one hand clenched around my backside, his lips moving from my mouth to my clavicle. I felt him grow under me, and I tugged at his belt loop as the heat of his mouth found my ear, sending my eyes to the ceiling with a moan. His fingers moved under my dress, torturously stopping at the base of my underwear line, softly grazing it as my insides grew hotter and hotter. He pulled one corner of my thong along my leg, sending it to the floor. I shifted my gaze down, purposefully locking my eyes onto his as my hand settled under his leather belt loop.
Our mouths slammed against each other again. He tasted like bourbon and mint. I needed to feel all of him. I unclasped his belt and grabbed him hard as his fingers moved inside me, sending stars to my eyes. Suddenly, our wild-beating chests jolted against each other as a loud boom echoed from outside the barn.
Breathless, I turned, seeing sparkly gold fireworks lighting up the dark night, erupting over the party tent in the distance. The fireworks shined like a spotlight on his face, their reflections blooming in his warring eyes. I ran my hand over the red lines on his pulsing neck, admiring the traces of my fingers on his skin. The explosions roared over our shallow breaths, our lips open inches from each other, our flushed skin pressed against each other. His eyes took in my heaving chest, my dress tugged up over my hips, my hand clutching his open belt loop. The fireworks kept sounding, trying to call him back, as if they were the angel on his shoulder.
“I—I should go,” he said, unmoving, as if he were waiting for me to tell him to stay and take comfort in the messy sparks roaring inside our bodies instead of the picture-perfect fireworks display meant for him and his fiancée.
Garrett slowly set me down, and my feet touched the ground as his hold left my body, bringing me back down to earth. I leaned my shoulder against the stable door, catching my breath as I aimlessly fiddled with the sliding lock. I glanced up slightly, seeing his fingers fumble to refasten his belt, missing the loophole twice. I cleared my throat and extended my foot toward my wet thong on the dusty floor, using my toes to pick it up, like a goddamn lady. While I wasn’t born with enough tact to keep my underwear on inside a barn, I did have enough self-worth not to wear Barn Floor on my vagina. I awkwardly tucked my underwear into my purse and shifted my attention back to Garrett. He tightened the tie around his neck, like an actor getting back into character.