could’ve kept playing at being stern and cruel, but it’s more exhausting to fake emotion sometimes than to simply feel it. I tugged his hands until he leaned close enough to me that I could hug him. I kissed his cheek and then pressed mine to his for a few seconds, feeling his breath on me.
“I thought I would never see you again,” he said into my ear. “And I could not do it.”
I didn’t ask him why he’d felt he had to. He would’ve answered me with honesty, and I simply did not want to hear it. Instead, I squeezed him and sat back.
“No more about it,” I told him.
Esteban’s expression turned a little sly. “You will punish me for disappointing you?”
I blinked for a second before sitting back harder, letting go of his hands. Disappointment was not what I’d felt. Rejection, yes. Surprise. And now, thinking that perhaps he’d done all of this for the sake of getting a spanking or something stupid like that, angry.
I pushed him away and stepped around him. I grabbed my book. By the time I turned around, Esteban was on his feet and blocking my way to the door.
He took me by the upper arms. “Wait. I’m sorry. I said something wrong.”
“Did you do this on purpose? Break it off so I would be angry with you? So I’d punish you?” I tried to yank myself out of his grasp, but I’d forgotten that although Esteban had willingly allowed me all this time to be in charge, he was still physically stronger than I was.
He held me tight enough to hurt, though I knew he didn’t mean to. I didn’t struggle. I gave him a hard look, but he surprised me again. His grip softened, but he didn’t let go.
“Querida,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was doing what I felt I had to do, until I realized I couldn’t do it.”
I’d deliberately kept my gaze from him earlier as a way to punish him, but now I found I could not look at his face. This wasn’t love, but it was all we had. “We agreed. Either of us could end this at any time.”
“But I hurt you in the way I did it, and I’m sorry.” He pulled me closer, step by reluctant step, until we were embracing.
No man that I’d ever been with had apologized to me that way, and there’d been one who’d hurt me a lot worse than Esteban had. Repeatedly, and on purpose. I breathed in the soap-and-water scent of him as I tried to think of how to answer. Finally, there was really only one answer. I pulled away to look at him.
“Don’t do it again.”
I was never afraid to love you. No matter how deep I fell, how hard I loved, there was no question in my mind that when we were together, everything felt right. When I held out my hand, you took it.
I wish you hadn’t let it go.
* * *
Three in the morning, another message I sent knowing I’d get no reply. I chose instead to bang myself against that wall again. To slam my fingers in the door, as Alicia said. And why? I could’ve spent a lifetime and a million dollars in therapy trying to figure out why I held on so tight to what no longer gave me anything but constant heartache. It was stupid; it was pointless; it was worthless.
I did it anyway.
“I can’t believe you’re still doing this.” My mother’s lip curled. “Pictures like that? And I had to find out from Connex of all places. Some stranger inviting me to a show that’s got you hanging up there on the wall with your tuchus out for the entire world to see? What an embarrassment!”
“I didn’t know he tagged me in the pictures. But I’m not embarrassed.” I leaned to drag a pita chip through the bowl of hummus. I didn’t love that Scott’s invitation had sent my mother into a tizzy, but hell, I was an adult.
My mother’s twisted mouth thinned. Her chin went up. “I don’t understand you, Elise. I raised you so much better. I didn’t think you were still doing all that...stuff. With all those men.”
“Ma,” I said with a sigh, pretending she was talking about the pictures and not anything else, “it’s an art show. They’re pictures, that’s all. I could be doing a lot of worse things, couldn’t I?”
She crossed her arms. “Why can’t you just find a nice guy and settle down?”
“Don’t come if you don’t want to see them. Nobody’s going to force you to look.” I ignored her question, which had been asked many times and never had an answer.
“They’re all over your whatdoyoucallit. Your Connex page.”
My brows went up. Those pictures were ancient. “So unfriend me.”
“All my friends can see. Joan Simon told me she was invited, too. What’s he doing, soliciting everyone to come see your naked pictures?”
I gave her a sideways look. I could not, off the top of my head, name any of her friends who’d been granted access to my Connex page, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d accepted everyone who wanted to be my “friend” early on. Now I didn’t friend anyone.
“Not just me. There are lots of naked pictures of lots of people.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Perfect.”
“It’s art.”
“It’s unnatural,” she said finally and waited for me to reply. Probably for me to reassure her that they were only photos. That I didn’t actually do “those things.”
I couldn’t. I’d never told my mother I was kinky, but I’d never denied it, either. I don’t think there are many people who enjoy discussing their sex lives with their parents, and people who get off on things not considered “normal” probably have an even harder time. I’d gone to my mother when I was about fourteen with some questions about sex, positions in particular, that I’d read about in one of the books she tried to keep hidden in the back of the bookcase. The woman on top position had intrigued me, but I’d been unable to figure out how, exactly, that worked. At fourteen I’d seen a penis—my brother’s, which hardly counted, but at least I was a little bit more informed than most of my friends about what one looked like. Alicia had shown me some pictures in her dad’s nudie mags of people fucking, but they’d all been doing it with the guy on top. I wanted to know how it worked the other way around.
My mother had told me then what she’d just told me now. It’s unnatural for a woman to want to be on top. She’d said it when I was fourteen and again at twenty-two, the first time she’d seen my “filthy” pictures, and several other times since. Yet, that was how I liked it, how I’d always liked it since I’d first discovered it was possible. It was how I would always like it.
“I’m just saying,” my mother continued, because of course she had to get in the last word.
“It’s also a little creepy that you keep harping on it,” I said sharply and got up to
