Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 25

There’s this whiskey called Writers’ Tears. My agent bought me a case upon my second book’s release, the one that made her a millionaire. I opened the case when I arrived home from Winnie’s.

Home. It sounded like om, the mystical syllable, an affirmation to something divine. I knew the origin of om, and I’d decided long ago that some cosmic force had been at play. The auditory similarity between home and om couldn’t be a coincidence or a mistake.

Mistake. . .

Closing and rubbing my eyes, I battled another vicious swell of turbulence, my muscles tensing as I waited for the cresting wave to recede.

In Winnie’s apartment, on the couch above her, the absence had found me first. The absence of sound and feeling after she’d screeched “The phone is still recording!” and broken the spell, my mind blanking when her meaning eclipsed the primitive, essential urgency to claim, to suffocate in sensation, to drown in it. I’d been anticipating the asphyxiation with wonder, hope, and so much foolish pride.

I’d thought she wanted me. Thus, I’d felt like the hero in every epic book and story I’d ever read. How foolish. What had I been thinking? I had been wholly and entirely unprepared.

Testing the memory for sharpness, I replayed the moment directly following her reveal: she’d said my name and I’d pushed myself upright; my skin had suddenly felt too hot; everything had been too loud—just too damn loud. I’d drowned in the truth instead of her touch.

Those fucking, goddamn challenges.

Presently, sitting on the floor with my back against the wall and my legs stretched out in front of me, I bent one of my knees to support my arm. Grimacing at the scraping sound made by the friction of my foot against the wood floor, I realized I still wore my shoes. Good.

If I couldn’t drown the cacophony with Writers’ Tears, I’d go for a walk. Or a run. Anything to escape the image cavalcade: Winnie’s apartment coming sharply into focus, the white walls shaded gray in the fading summer sun, the smell of lemon and fish seasoning the air. And her perfume—gardenias. And sweat.

And Winnie beneath me, eyes wide, shocked, hair disheveled, hands bracing against the sofa, knees drawn up, lips swollen, her shirt—

“Fuck.” The exhaled breath scored my lungs.

I’d never experienced anything like the bliss of kissing her, touching her, believing she craved me, wanted me. That greedy welcoming of the basest instincts, that brutal, seductive embrace. I’d wanted it to consume me. I’d wanted to surrender for the first time in my life, more than I’d wanted to know tomorrow.

But now it was tomorrow, albeit newly just, and here I sat, swallowing a mouthful of whiskey and contemplating these bare walls and this empty room lit only by shadows—as bare and empty as my experience with women—while I worried about her. Had I hurt her? Ferocious, biting anguish at the thought sent my eyes to seek the darkness behind my lids.

I’d had no idea what I was doing. I’d been acting on pure instinct. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I hated not knowing.

I’d thought the kiss had been real. I’d thought she’d been eager, welcoming. I’d asked her if she wanted me to stop. She’d said no. Had her response been for the benefit of the camera? She’d felt so right, luminous, silken perfection, her body’s response the fulfillment and realization of my dreams. But dreams weren’t life experience.

And weren’t those recollections skewed? Biased? Could they be trusted if my memory had been rose-tinted? Colored by her false motivations and an absolute dearth of knowledge on the subject? All those moments of certainty and rightness had occurred before I knew the truth and before I’d reflected on how fumbling and unskilled I must’ve seemed to her.

Winnie’s kiss had been a lie, but not a deception.

Not knowing what to think or believe or where to start—a novel experience, to be sure—I found I could not think at all, not even to assemble enough reason to postpone decisions until I calmed, until I could separate my visceral reaction, so loud in my brain, from my memory of the event.

Perhaps I should leave Seattle for a time. Would she want to see me again? Would she hate the sight of me? Or worse, would she immediately forgive my transgression? I wanted to do whatever made her life easiest. Perhaps I would leave for good. But when I asked if I should stop, she told me no. Did she want me? Were her responses for the camera? Did she—

Forcing my eyes open, I shook my head, the circular nature of my thoughts intensely frustrating. Perhaps she and I would be better served to forget. Perhaps Jeff had been right.

I would keep my distance but be available should she wish to discuss the incident. Leave her alone. Leave.

I winced, squeezing my eyes shut, struggling to inhale past the regret cinching my throat, fighting the urge to call her, to explain and apologize. Both actions would be entirely self-serving, a balm to ease my guilty conscience rather than give her the space she likely required, given what I’d done. And I needed to remain steadfast. Winnie would decide what happened next, and I would do whatever she wished.

Time moved over and around me while I searched for that suspended state of being, the absence of thought and sensation. What I required now was distance, darkness, and silence.

When I opened my eyes this time, the room had gone fuzzy. The liquor had finally, finally dulled the bite. I viewed the inferno of regret from a distance, through darkness, without the offensive presence of sound, rather than mindlessly losing myself to serpentine misery within the flames.

Floating in my lake of whiskey, my eyes on the stars of remoteness above instead of the shore of worry or tempest of doubt around me, I contended that no reason existed for me to submerge myself in the chaos of the unknowable. I should turn my quickly numbing thoughts elsewhere, to banal trivialities, to business and work, to subjects over which I had control.

Forget and move on.

I scanned the cavernous room once more, this time through the filter of self-imposed banishment. No part of this, the third floor, had yet been furnished. I loved my house, my home, my om, my mansion in the middle of Seattle. I loved its secret passages and doorways, allowing me to come and go without being seen or heard, like on the night of Jeff and Lucy’s dinner party or any other night they’d gathered with their friends.

My house might’ve been the only tangible, material thing I loved other than the books on my shelves, though the books and the house were intrinsically linked. Ghosts of fictional people inhabited each dark room in this old mansion. When I’d first toured it with the real estate agent, I’d imagined it filled with literary figures, all characters, all friends. And so it was.

Some were mine. Some had been born from the minds and pages of others, now belonging to me since I treasured them, visited them, and loved them.

I stood, bracing a hand against the wall until I found my balance. Glass in hand, I walked the lonely halls like I imagined Miss Havisham might, lost to the madness of a nonsensical revenge plan. It was, I supposed, probably similar to being lost within an alternate reality of one’s own design. Perhaps when those outside these walls were content to abandon me to whatever structure I eventually haunted, my mercurial existence no longer of interest, I too would wear the same outfit for decades.

“It’ll be a suit.” The words echoed and I nodded, gulping from the half-empty tumbler.

A three-piece suit with no tie. I’d be ready for my funeral when the time came. No change of clothes required, even in death.

I laughed at the thought, frivolous and indulgent, bringing the glass back to my lips for another swallow. It was empty.

Leaving the top floor, I held the banister as I descended the stairs, and I poured myself another helping of Writers’ Tears when I stumbled into the salon. I believed, though I could’ve been mistaken, all writers identify to some degree with the abject horror of having to speak, to shower, to eat, to change anything, to even breathe when words are flowing like a river of magic, and the mind has entered the bliss of a preferred existence.

My previous experiences with being ripped from the perfection of the imaginary were similar to the moment I’d realized Winnie’s kiss had been a lie. But with Winnie, exiting the fiction had felt like removing my head from my neck, or perhaps like removing a wedding dress that had become a second skin after thirty (or so) hateful years.

I lifted a glass to Miss Havisham, a villain I’d long admired, if only for her tenacious spite and the creativity of her self-indulgence. “To Miss Havisham.”

Funny. I’d never experienced profound, bone-deep remorse from reading or writing a book, only from engaging in reality. I blamed myself. I’d already learned this lesson time and time again: nothing perfect exists outside of imagination.

Congratulations, Byron. You’re officially a pretentious, philosophizing blowhard.

“I need to get out more,” I said to no one, rubbing my forehead with aching fingers as I sank into a club chair. I could only shake my head at the reductive, absurd direction of my inebriated thoughts. But at least now, finally, I felt fully numb.

“I’ll take you out. Where do you want to go?”

I stiffened, not even daring to breathe, and apparently not entirely numb as I’d hoped.

A moment later, her warm hand closed over mine, soft fingers curling around my knuckles. She pulled them from my face. My lungs expanded to bursting without me drawing a breath.

“Are you here?” I blinked, bleary-eyed, half expecting I’d conjured her.

But there she was, kneeling in front of me, her lovely features pinched with concern and illuminated by trespassing moonlight. The glass had been removed from my fingers. Only she and my accelerating heart remained.

“How much have you had?” Her voice was music. It serrated and soothed the very center of me, and I didn’t realize how much I’d been anticipating, longing for the sound since I’d left her apartment.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, the words a slur.

“Why not?”

I gazed into her eyes, the color of cinnamon, so vivid. I could almost taste it on my tongue. “You need space.”

“I don’t want space. I want to see you, and you’re just going to have to deal with it. Now, tell me. How much have you had?”

“I don’t want your forgiveness,” I said, my drowsy attention lowering to her lips. “You shouldn’t forgive me.”

I blinked, wishing I were sober. If this were to be the last time I saw her, I wanted to memorize her perfect, pink lips. They’d distracted me and disturbed my peace for years, how they curved to the right when her smiles first bloomed. I’d often traced the shape of them when I closed my eyes.

“Forgiveness for what? Leaving? You don’t need to apologize for leaving.” Her fingers pushed into my hair, the touch light and sweet.

My stomach churned with regret.

I caught her hand at my temple, removing it. “No, Fred. Not for leaving. For—” The thought bit off on its own, my voice breaking. I couldn’t say it.

“For?” she prompted, sounding curious. At least, my liquor-soaked senses thought she sounded curious.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I choked, refusing to close my eyes from the shame of it. “And I am sorry, but I don’t want you to forgive me or make excuses for me. If you don’t want to see me again, I understand.”

“Byron, what are you talking about?” The hand I’d removed turned in mine, lacing our fingers. Her thumb swept against my knuckles. “The kissing? The couch? Don’t you dare be sorry for that.”

“I didn’t know.” Dammit. I hadn’t meant to say that. It sounded like an excuse. There was no excuse.

“You didn’t know we were still recording? Yes, I figured as much when my breast was in your mouth.”

I winced. “Shit.”

“You know what? We’re not discussing this now. We’ll talk about this in the morning, when you’re not drunk.” Her warm, capable hands used their leverage on mine to pull, presumably to make me stand.

I was too heavy for her, but I stood since she wanted me to do so. I would follow where she led. “Should I leave Seattle? I will. Just say the word.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Why?”

“I don’t wish to make you uncomfortable.”

Winnie simply looked at me, her generous, pink lips curved, but her eyes were sad.

“Don’t be sad.” I lifted my hands to reach for her and discovered she still held them in her grip, we were still touching. “Don’t ever be sad.”

“I’m not sad. I just wish you were sober so I could tell you how much I loved—how much I love—what happened between us earlier and how much I hope it means you want something more than friendship with me.”

I blinked and reared back—both were probably done in slow motion—and stared at her. “Why?”

“Because I want something more than just friendship with you.”

I blinked again. “You do?”

Her gaze moved over my face and she laughed, apparently finding something about my features funny. “Come on. You need to hydrate.”

“I—I need you,” I said, my tongue made loose by her words and Writers’ Tears and the new cacophony in my head, loud with anticipation and hope and ideas instead of worry and self-recrimination. “I’m going to improve. I’ve heard of classes, a coach who teaches without touching. And I’ll learn to tolerate people. I’ll learn how to tune out their idiomatic, scatological noises.”

“I don’t know what any of that means.” Winnie breathed out a sweet, laughing sigh, disentangling one of her hands to bend and reach for something. A moment later, she pressed a cold glass into my hands. “Please drink this.”

Was this real? Can I trust it? My brain felt slick, slow, tired. I held myself back from gathering her in my arms and crushing her, kissing her. I didn’t want to misunderstand again. I wanted—needed—sobriety before taking action.

“Is it poison?” I teased, squinting at her, wanting to make her smile.

“Why would it be poison?” She did smile, and the smile both calmed and excited me. It was evidence that she wasn’t angry or sad and that her words—her statements about what had happened—were true.

I can’t believe this is happening. Could I trust it? You’re drunk. Trust nothing.

I drank from the glass, my eyes on her the whole time. It tasted like Gatorade. I drained it.

“Good. I’ve also made toast.” She took the empty glass. Food appeared from seemingly nowhere, but this could’ve been because my eyes were fastened to her face, everything beyond the pale of her glowing face outside the bounds of my vision.

When did she make toast? How long has she been here?

I wanted to kiss her. Right now. I wanted to pick up where we’d left off. Right now. I wanted to divest her of those offensive clothes, guide her to the club chair, and kneel before her spread legs.

Instead, when she lifted food to my lips, I took a bite.

“You need to stop looking at me like that,” she said, sounding breathless to my inebriated ears.

“I can’t.”

“Try.”

I was terrible at trying in the moment. I never tried unless I’d previously arranged things such that success was all but guaranteed. But currently, I did try. For her.

Between chewing and trying and swallowing and hoping she didn’t disappear, I told her, “I had a dream about you.”

“Oh?” She fed me more toast, but I wondered if maybe this bite was more of an effort to shut me up than help me sober up.

“Yes.” I tried to catch her eyes but there were four sets of them. “You kissed me. But it was a lie.”

“It wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t a lie, and we should talk about something else.”

I covered her hand when she tried to feed me more, holding it still. “Why talk about anything else?”

“Because, again, you are drunk, and we shouldn’t talk about what happened until you’re sober.”

I nodded. My head felt like it was on a string and a puppeteer pulled it up, then down, then up and down. Her hand lifted, cupping my jaw. I leaned into the anchoring touch and asked, “What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything except what happened earlier tonight.”

“All right.” I gathered a deep breath and told her what was—and had been—foremost on my mind. “I want to fuck you.”

She went still, the many versions of her merging into a single Winnie with wide eyes and a slack jaw.

Since she said nothing and her expression remained frozen, I clarified, “I’ll take classes, read books, see that coach. I think about it all the time. I thought you should know. But I will never touch you again if it would ruin things between us.”

She breathed out in a whoosh. “Okay, time for bed. I mean, for you to go to bed.” Winnie left, returned, and grabbed my hand, pulling me somewhere while arranging my limbs.

My arm around her shoulders, I stared forward and tried to concentrate on helping her, but since we were on the subject, I wanted to know, “Do you know what a spreader bar is?”

Her steps seemed to falter. “I am familiar with the concept.”

“I want to tie you up and cuff you to a spreader bar. And then I want to bend you over a table, holding your hands behind your back and—”

“Well, that certainly paints a picture,” she spoke over me, her arm around my waist tightening as we reached the stairs. “Please hold on to the banister. I don’t want you to fall.”

I wasn’t finished. “And then I want to make love to you.”

“Oh? While I’m chained to a spreader bar?”

“Once I master the act, I want to love every single fucking perfect inch of you.” I held on to the banister as instructed, my shoes full of lead. “Your neck. Your stomach. Your sides. Behind your knees. I want to count your ribs and your vertebrae using my tongue. I want to kiss your feet and fingertips and between your shoulder blades. I want to worship you, kneel and taste every inch of your pussy.”

We stopped at the landing, and she set me away, pushing my back against the wall. Winnie’s breathing had turned labored.

“If you were mine . . .” My eyes traced the gentle curve of her lips. I loved her lips. “I’d keep you handcuffed to my bed.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not yours. I have that dentist appointment next week.” She also leaned against the wall, but far away. Too far away.

“But more than that.” I righted myself, reaching out to the banister for assistance, finding it, gripping it. “More than how much I want you, need you, I need you to be happy and well, safe and healthy. And that’s why. . .”

“What?” She stood in front of me now, her hands at my arms to lend me balance.

“That’s why I’ll never tell you the truth.”

She seemed to hesitate, or was quiet for a long time, then asked, “Which is?”

“I’ve loved you for years. You are the stars in the sky, the start and the finish. I’ll die loving you, wanting you, and the torture of you is better than the bliss of anyone else. Last night, when you wore those leggings, your ass did look like a peach, and I’ve never wanted to bite something so much.”

Her wide eyes had returned, as had her breathlessness. “You’re very drunk.”

“And you are all my sunrises and sunsets, rain on green leaves, fireworks reflected in a smooth lake, and a wood fire on the coldest winter day. You are sex and sin and a guardian angel. You are every beat of my heart and every moment of peace and every hour of pandemonium. You are the sweetest torture I’ve ever known. And you . . . will never feel one tenth for me what I feel for you. And that, also, is perfect.”

Winnie bowed her head. “Are you trying to make me spontaneously combust, Byron?”

I shrugged. Or tried to. “The inferno inside me honors the spark within you, for however long it burns. Mine will persist, though yours may desist.”

Turning, she placed my arm over her shoulders again and guided me to the next flight of stairs. “Now you’re rhyming.”

“I love you. Thus, I am a fool. For all who love as I do are fools. But if you are ready and willing, I will learn how to be the person you deserve. I’ll learn how to cook all gluten-free meals and not hate the sound other people make when they chew. Or swallow. Or talk. Or breathe.”

Winnie didn’t respond, perhaps too busy focusing on our footing. We made it to the second landing, and then we were in my room, and then I was lying on my back.

“You need to get to sleep,” she said, her voice somewhere nearby.

I heard a sound, a soft thud, and I lifted myself upright by bracing my hands against the mattress. Winnie, on her knees in front of me, had removed one of my shoes and now worked on untying the second.

Frowning at the sight of her laboring over my boot, I bent my knee and tugged it out of her grip. “I’ll remove my own damn shoe.”

She huffed and stood. “Fine. I’ll get you more Gatorade and some pain relievers. Don’t leave the bed.” She issued this last command with a stern look and an index finger pointed at my chest.

I nodded, my lids drooping, and worked on the shoelace.

Ten years later, the shoe came off.

Ten years after that, Winnie returned. I tracked her as she entered the bedroom, placed items on my bedside table, a towel on the floor, and a bucket on top of the towel. “There,” she muttered. “If you get sick and can’t make it to the bathroom, use the bucket.”

The sight of the stage she’d set irritated me. I should be taking care of her, not the other way around.

Clearing my throat of disgruntlement, I asked for what I wanted. “Will you stay with me?”

Her soft smile was immediate. “Of course.”

Winnie stepped forward and threaded her fingers into my hair, her other hand at my shoulder. Guiding me to my side, she abandoned my hair to arrange the pillow.

“Can I . . . will you lay here?” I patted the bed behind me. “I won’t touch you, if you don’t want me to. But I’d fuck you senseless if you asked.” Not that I had any experience fucking someone senseless. I was currently shit-faced, but if she asked, I’d figure it out. Starting tomorrow—Monday at the latest—I’d dedicate every waking hour to learning how to fuck her senseless, eventually becoming a world expert.

Winnie pressed her lips together firmly, but they twitched. “How about if I just hold you?”

“Would you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly and left my field of vision. A moment later, I felt her behind me, her chest at my back, her arm draped over my middle.

Once she settled, I again asked for what I wanted. “When can I kiss you again?”

“When you’re fully sober.” She gave my body a squeeze. “Right now, I’m worried when you sober up, this is going to feel like a bunch of nonsense to you and you’re going to wish you never said any of it.”

“‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.’”

“Lewis Carroll.”

“That’s right.”

“Go to sleep, Byron,” she said, a smile in her voice.

I couldn’t. Not yet. I had to tell her something. “I have to tell you one more thing.” Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNovᴇl.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“What is it?”

I turned to face her, needing to see her while she shifted back to the other side of the bed, putting space between our bodies.

“When we wake up, I don’t want you to make a joke about this, or what happened yesterday. I don’t want you to try to ease my discomfort. And if you want to be with me, if you’re willing to give me a chance, you have to tell me. Tomorrow, when I’m sober and you’re here, if you tell me my touch was—is—welcome, I will believe you.”

“Good.” She reached out as though to touch my hair again.

I caught her hand and placed it flat on the bed between us. “But if it’s not, if I’ve hurt you, if I stepped over a boundary at your apartment, you have to tell me so I can make reparations. So I can do everything in my power to make things right for you. This isn’t about me, except that I take full responsibility for my actions. This is about you and what you need. You will not upset me. I mean—” I shook my head, frustrated with the sleep and whiskey pulling at my eyes. “Rather, that is, I will be upset, but not at you. Your safety and peace of mind is more important than my comfort, or discomfort. Promise me.”

Her eyes seemed to be shining, and I thought I heard her sniffle. Her hand beneath mine slipped from my hold and then returned to cover my fingers, clutching and bringing them to tuck against her chest.

“I promise,” she whispered. “Now go to sleep.”

On her command, my eyes closed. And I did.

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