“For doubting me, I’ll make you come harder.”
“Can you though? Can you make me come harder?”
He slid a hand between her legs, spread wide open for him. “You are the perfect kind of wet for the way I’m going to f**k you right now.”
Who talks like this in real life? Does anyone say this stuff? But it works on the heroine because she’s spiraling off into another stratosphere right now, and it starts to work on me, because soon I’m hot and bothered and breathing harder. Little moans are coming out of my lips, and it’s nice to have the place to myself from time to time because I don’t have to stay silent. I know how to bring myself there without noise. I can achieve soundless orgasms without even moving my h*ps either. I know, such a talent. Enter me in the Guinness Book of World Records for most quiet orgasms, which will tell you something about my completely pretend sex life for the last several years. I’m quiet because I have to be, and I’m quiet because I do this a lot. I do this because I haven’t been touched in so long that I’m a pinball machine, full of restless desire.
I focus on my main attraction. I picture Patrick taking his clothes off, Patrick climbing over me, Patrick telling me I’m the one. And now I’m moaning and I’m nearing the edge, but then it’s no longer Patrick on me. Because Patrick would never talk like that, or move like that. He’s disappeared and I’m with someone else, someone nameless. I don’t even know who he is, but he’s doing all sorts of things to me, and saying all kinds of dirty words.
Spread my legs for him.
Touch myself for him.
Show him how I make myself come.
And maybe it’s the rocker hero making me feel this way, but Nameless has a way with his hands and his body and his voice, and I’m almost there, I’m almost over the edge.
But then I stop.
Sit up straight in bed.
Turn on the light.
Look around.
As if I’ve been caught.
But no one’s here, the apartment is quiet, and the only noise is in my head. It sounds like a radio tuned slightly wrong, static mixing with the song I used to know well.
Because something is wrong. Something is wrong with me.
I’ve only ever pictured Patrick. I don’t understand why he’s not coming out to play tonight, and yet I still feel this itch inside my bones to be touched, to be held, to be savored.
I throw off the covers, pace down the hall and check my phone that I left on the coffee table.
But there are no new messages and, honestly, I don’t even know who I’m waiting to hear from.
When I finally fall asleep, everything is still wrong, because I dream of the letters in the locked box by my bed. Letters living, breathing, creepily alive. Letters making demands. Letters being opened on the streets, and I try to grab them, and stuff them back inside, but they’re rippling away in the wind, and I can’t reach them anymore to hide them.
* * *
The next morning, I skip my run. I shower quickly, get dressed and take one of the letters from the wooden box. Then I catch a train to Brooklyn and head for Prospect Park.
I clutch the piece of notebook paper in my right hand, my fingers digging into the faded words, now smudged from all the times I’ve read this one, the first of the handful of letters Aaron sent me after we split. I walk deeper into the park, following the path by memory from having explored every inch of this place while growing up nearby. I spent so many days here with my brothers, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing hide and seek. When I was a teenager, I relearned all the corners of this oasis in Brooklyn that were perfect for stolen kisses, for first tastes of beers, for moonlit make out sessions far away from parental eyes. But I haven’t set foot in Prospect Park since Aaron. Not since the last time I saw him under Terrace Bridge.
Now I have to because I can’t keep holding onto the pieces of the past. I can’t keep carrying all this blame with me. My life is changing, it’s unfurling before me, and if I don’t free myself from the past it’ll keep haunting me. I weave down the path that leads under the bridge, remembering how green and lush the trees were the last time I was here.
Thick emerald bushes and branches hang low and burst with life as the sun casts warm golden rays. My heart pounds loudly against my chest, drowning out the lone squawk of a hardy crow circling overhead, scanning for crumbs on the barren ground.
The cobblestones curve under the rusted green bridge, and my feet nearly stop when I see the bench with its wooden slats. He waited for me at the bench, looking so sad, but so determined, too. Memories flood me, like a dam breaking.
“Please don’t do this to me.”
“It’s the only way.”
“No, we can try again. We can start over. I promise to be everything you want me to be.”
“I have to go. Please let me go.”
But he didn’t. He didn’t really let me go, and so I went from being a happy carefree seventeen-year-old to being completely f**ked in the head. I realized I could break someone, and someone could break me. But then, I also clawed my way out. I threw myself into my acting, letting go of myself and all the emotions I hated being crushed with, and that’s when I fell for Patrick, for the opposite of all those cruel memories.
Now, I need to let them go so I can be free. I start with this one note.
My fingers are gripped so tightly around the paper that it feels as if they have to be pried off. But instead, I open my fist, one finger at a time, and it’s as if a piece of me is moving on. Then I stand in front of the garbage can and I tear up his words.