"Insightful, I must say," he said. "Have you considered the fact that I might be into redheads?"
"Is that sarcasm?" I asked. "Because from your face I really can"t tell."
He looked angry now. The employer that frightened everyone was back. I didn"t mean to do anything of the sort, I was just trying to be...d.a.m.n I don"t know what the h.e.l.l I was trying to be. All I know is I didn"t want him to feel like I was making him stay, I didn"t want to be the one to ruin his evening, in case he was doing this from mere politeness. So did I say something I shouldn"t have? I was so drunk, I couldn"t even remember what I said. I could barely remember what I was saying now, let alone drudge up words I had spoken a few seconds ago. So I just sat there, wondering what I should or shouldn"t say next.
"Are you angry?" I asked. "I didn"t mean to be disrespectful..."
Thorne glared at me. "You don"t think that I could actually want to be with you?"
"Why? Why would you want to ruin your night like that?"
I said and at the same time spilled some of the alcohol on my clothes, and then I uselessly tried to rub the liquid off as though it was going to just go away. Thorne took the drink gla.s.s from my hand. "I think you should call it a night and head home, don"t you?" he said, getting up to stand. "I"ll give you a ride."
"What? No. I"m having fun! I want to stay!"
Another song that I like came on, but Thorne"s gaze wouldn"t let me enjoy it. He placed a hand over mine, leaned in close and spoke in that hushed, yet strangely domineering tone of his. "Whatever it is you"re running away from," he said. "You think it won"t hurt you here?"
I was just looking up at him, dumbstruck. The words actually managed to break through my drunken delirium and I realized the futility of all this. I felt the hurt with full force that I was trying to force deep down somewhere. And then, I felt a choking from the tears that had been buried forever, and that were threatening to come out so I got up and started walking with the fastest steps I could manage, until I was outside. Breathing in the fresh air did make things better but not by much, and I realized Thorne followed me outside but he was not saying anything. I think he was just trying to be there.
"There must be some place," I said.
"Elena?"
"There"s got to be one place in this world, right? Where there"s no hurt? Where you don"t feel the things you feel? Where no one can really get to you? Where you"re safe?"
Thorne walked up to me, forced a lock of red hair from my eyes. The gesture was intimate, but there was nothing s.e.xual about it. It just made me realize what a good person he truly was, and I believed it, despite what other people said about him. I knew at that moment that those stories couldn"t possibly be true. "It"s like you said Elena," he began. "The only way to get through this is find someone who creates a place inside your heart that is much deeper and stronger than that hole."
I looked at him. "I"m smart when I"m not drunk, aren"t I?"
That smile was back on his face again. "Yes you are," he said. "Now, please. Let"s be smart about this and-" But I could no longer concentrate on his words. His mouth was moving and I saw those lips-I know I"d seen them before but it was the first time I was really noticing them. And I have this strange desire to kiss him...
THORNE.
She almost kissed me.
I almost kissed her back.
And then I smelled the alcohol and saw how out of it she was, and realized she might not even remember this when she woke up the next morning. Is that how I wanted our first kiss to be? Of course not! I had been dreaming about this forever and now, she was so within reach and I could touch her and yet she was as far from actually being mine as ever before. Call it irony or the cruel hand of fate, but she was actually drunker than she was a minute ago.
I felt my protective instincts kick in. "You know what," I said, grabbing hold of her arm. "I think we"ve had enough fun for tonight. How about I drive you home?"
"Why would you do that?" she said.
"Because I don"t want you pa.s.sing out here," I replied.
She smiled. "You know what," she said. "Maybe you"re right. Maybe I should go home now. Stupid Penny can kiss my a.s.s!"
I wanted to laugh but didn"t. We made our way back to the Lexus, and I made sure she was safely in her seat before going to the driving side. "So where do you live?" I asked, but never got a reply.
"Elena?"
I tried to bring her back to consciousness but she was out like a light.
Great.
I had no idea where she lived!
I found her phone in her purse but it was locked so it was just a dead end.
If I took her back to the loft, Lane would have questions and he would have something to hold over to tease me about for all eternity.
But I was clearly out of options.
ELENA.
If I had to tell you about last night, I wouldn"t say I was drunk exactly.
No.
Because out of my freaking mind! would be a much better description.
I woke up in a bed that I"d never been in before. I couldn"t remember much until I remembered Thorne.
What the h.e.l.l did I do, did I sleep with him? Oh G.o.d! I remembered then what happened at the club, looking at him and feeling like I was seeing him for the first time. I remembered being somehow mesmerized by his lips and wanting to kiss them...And then, I looked at myself and I was wearing my own clothes, the same ones I was wearing last night. Does having clothes on mean we didn"t f.u.c.k? But I was about to kiss him, wasn"t I? Of course that would have been a huge drunken mistake because you couldn"t have a one night stand with your boss and get away with it! While I was trying to move my head in a way that it didn"t hurt, my suddenly-intelligent brain started to think. There were no discarded trousers in the room, no sign that either of us had shed our clothing at any point, which I decided had to be a good sign. Before I could think further, Thorne came into the room with what looked like a breakfast tray.
"You pa.s.sed out before I could ask you your address," he said. "So I brought you here. This is my loft."
"So we didn"t-?"
"Are you disappointed?" he said, coming to sit on the bed. "Because if you are, I"m sure we can remedy that."
"I"m sorry," I said. "I didn"t mean to imply that-" I didn"t have a clue what I was going to say next so I stopped myself from making it worse, "never mind."
He handed me coffee. "This should help," he said. "So will some greasy food."
The breakfast looked so good, sitting there in front of me but I just wasn"t sure I could put food into the drunken morning hangover equation.
"I hope it"s okay that I brought you here," Thorne spoke again. "I couldn"t find Penny or any of your friends."
"Yes," I said. "Penny does that sometimes. Hooks up with guys and then forgets I even exist until the walk of shame next morning."
As if on cue, my phone started to ring and I saw that it was on the nightstand, almost out of juice. "Speak of the devil," I said, when I answered.
"Where the f.u.c.k are you?" Penny yelled right into my eardrum.
"Where the f.u.c.k am I, Penny? Where the f.u.c.k were you?"
She quieted down when she remembered. "Oh s.h.i.t," she said. "I forgot you last night, didn"t I?"
"You think?"
"Oh Elena I"m so sorry," she said. "I hooked up with this really awesome guy..." she said and then paused, "wait a second. I"m in our apartment and you"re not here. Where did you spend the night?"
I had to make something up spur of the moment. This is one thing I don"t think I should be telling her just yet. I didn"t want her to worry especially when there was nothing to worry about. It wasn"t as though Thorne and I had actually slept together. Now that would have been an actual problem. "You think you"re the only one who can have one night stands?" I said with a confidence that I didn"t feel inside.
Even Thorne looked surprised.
"Holy s.h.i.t," Penny sn.i.g.g.e.red. "You s.k.a.n.k! Who"d you finally give your post-breakup virginity to?"
"No one you need to remember," I said.
"That bad?"
"You have no idea!"
Great. So not only did I have to make up a guy, I also had to make up s.h.i.tty s.e.x details about him. And then I made some silly excuse to make her go away so I could deal with the hangover and Thorne.
"I was fine with the one-night-stand bit," Thorne said when I placed the phone down. "But no one you need to remember? Ouch."
"Look I"m sorry," I said. "I just didn"t want to give her any ideas. We work together and I live with her. I don"t want things to get awkward when they don"t have to be."
"It"s fine, Elena. I get it."
He picked up his own coffee cup and drank from it. "So," he said. "What has Nick done to bother you this badly?"
"He"s been sending me those weird texts," I told him. "Telling me that this isn"t over. That he"s going to make me reconsider. Last night he texted me that I shouldn"t trust anyone. What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?"
"Shouldn"t you be asking him that?"
"Yeah but for that I would have to confront him, which is not something I want to do just yet."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Do you think you might have made a mistake in leaving Nick?"
Why does he want to know?
"That"s an odd question to ask."
"Is it?" he became apologetic. "You don"t have to answer."
"It"s alright I don"t mind," I said. "Look, Thorne I was with him for seven years. I know what he is and I know exactly what he"s capable of. He was never the right person for me and that"s not something that I just found out. I always knew that."
"Four years is a long time to be with someone that you know isn"t the right person for you."
"I thought he was the right person," I told him. "I thought that deep down he loved me. I took his words for granted. It was much later that I found out he had been cheating on me for quite some time. You have to understand we were pretty young when we got together. Back then, it just felt like we were meant to be, because everyone said so!"
"I know the feeling," he said.
"Do I detect a note of personal experience?"
"We"ll need an entire year to go over mine. Let"s just stick to you for today. So when was the first time you found out about him?"
"Well, he told me he had to leave town for a while you know? The typical excuse. I was fine with it. So he goes and he barely calls me the entire week. Then, he comes back, looking all depressed and as though something went wrong. It concerned me but he shrugged it off, saying it was some work thing he didn"t want to bother me with. A day later, there"s a woman at our door. A really hot looking thing, asking to talk to Nick. So I call Nick and he goes all pale, and then he tries to salvage it by going over to the girl and reasoning with her but she isn"t about to listen. Turns out she was p.i.s.sed that he didn"t call her back or try to see her again. It was obvious she knew he was engaged, but that didn"t seem to bother her much. She was threatening a lawsuit...s.e.xual hara.s.sment, she kept saying."
"Someone he knew from work?"
"Yes! Some new hire he thought he had handled, but obviously he had been wrong about her. She wasn"t about to let him do this to her. Anyway, I stood there listening to them arguing, until Nick asked me to wait and went outside to talk to her and closed the door. I was so...stunned. I didn"t know what to do. I kept wondering if leaving would be the right thing but I was so stuck. I kept hoping for him to apologize and make this better somehow. And then before I knew it, Nick was in front of me, apologizing, and making it sound like he would die without me."
"You caved?"
"I was angry of course. I yelled and screamed and everything. But then he promised he would never do it again. He told me he would never ever hurt me this way. That this had just been one moment of pa.s.sion and he had just been swept away or whatever. In any case, he convinced me not to leave him. He convinced me to stay.
"You see, I loved him Thorne. Ever since I remember having feelings I"ve had them for Nick. I"ve never even had the chance to look at someone else, because I"ve always been truthful and loyal to him. There was never any need for me to do all that, you know? It"s not like I was doing him a favor or anything."
"Elena," he said. "That"s where you"re wrong. Being faithful to someone, when temptation is all around you, is a favor. One that he obviously couldn"t do for you."
"I get that now, but you know, back then I just felt so lost and alone. I barely had any friends because I had alienated myself from everyone. The whole living together thing had changed me. It changed him too. He wasn"t the same guy anymore but I kept thinking maybe once things get better, he might be. But things never got better. They just got worse."
I couldn"t help that I started crying. Thorne"s face was a mixture of concerned and confused. And then he came over to my side and put an arm around me. "I"m sorry you had to go through this," he said. "I know how hard it can be."
And again, there was that note, of experience, something in his words that made me feel like there was a story beneath the surface, but he didn"t say anything.
"I"m so embarra.s.sed," I said, unable to pull away from him. "I didn"t mean to cry like some crazy hormonal woman."
"Hey," he said gently. "You pa.s.sed out drunk in the middle of the street. We"re way past embarra.s.sing."
That made me laugh. Just the image of that happening outside the club. Did you carry me to the car? To the bed? In your arms? And with my head buried in his chest I felt like I really was a crazy hormonal woman, because even though his embrace was little more than casual friendship, it was beginning to feel like a lot more. When he finally pulled away I was left a bit breathless.
"Elena?" he said, getting up and facing me.