Chapter 7: The Truth Can Be Painful

Tyler’s calm never cracked. He set the tumbler aside and kept his eyes locked on mine, the same steady blue that had unsettled me from the moment he opened the door.

“I don’t feel I’m solely to blame,” he said, voice even but edged with something harder. “I was one hundred percent honest in everything I said that night. You looked incredible. I found you attractive the first time I saw you three years ago. I was jealous of what Mike had with you. I did wish I had the same thing. You are perfect!”

Each word landed like a spark against dry tinder. Embarrassment flared hot under my skin, followed by a treacherous rush of heat that had nothing to do with shame. My face burned. A thin film of sweat rose along my hairline. Between my legs a slow, unwanted dampness gathered as fragments of that night ... passion, lust, the way my body had answered him ... flickered through my mind against my will. I hated that my body still responded. I hated that the praise, coming from him, still worked.

He continued, a fraction louder now. “Did I make a move? Of course I did. I’m not blind. When a woman like you gives me all the signs, I’m not going to ignore them.”

“The signs?” My voice came out small. The tears had stopped, but my cheeks were still wet and the mascara I had put on before work now tracked in thin black lines down my face.

“Yes, Beth. The signs. Your flirtation. Your invitation. You sat there for two hours and did everything but yell ‘take me.’” His voice rose for the first time that evening. “You looked at me and tossed your hair, twirled your fingers in it. You kept licking your lips, tilting your head down and glancing up at me coyly. You leaned forward to ‘hear what I was saying’ while showing me the tops of your breasts and your nipples because you weren’t wearing a bra under that dress. Why did you need to hear me better when there was no one else out there but us and the only noise was the occasional car?”

I stayed silent, staring into his eyes as if I could force my way past them and into the truth of what he was saying. The picture he was painting felt dangerously close to the one I had been trying not to see.

“How many times did you spread your knees and push against mine? How many times did you touch my elbow when you laughed at a joke, or brush my arm like you were removing a piece of lint? How many times did you grab my thigh when you were emphasizing a point? How many times did your fingers touch or stroke the top of my hand, my wrist, my fingers when you asked a question or wanted a more detailed reply? Ten? Twenty? Thirty?”

“I ... I don’t remember all that,” I stammered, softly.

But the denial rang hollow even to me. I forced myself to look back. Some of it ... most of it ... I did remember. The hair-twirling. The way my knee had drifted toward his. My hand returning again and again to his arm, his hand, once to his thigh. At the time I had told myself it was nerves, the alcohol, nothing more than the easy physicality of two people talking late on a cold patio. Innocent. Friendly. Now the memories rearranged themselves under the weight of his words and I could no longer be certain. Had my gestures been that clear? Had I been inviting him without admitting it even to myself? I had found him attractive that night. Standing a foot away from him now, hair still damp from the shower, the clean scent of his skin filling the narrow space between us, I found him attractive still. The realization made my stomach twist. This conversation was nothing like the one I had planned. I had come here hoping he would take the blame so I could finally set some of the weight down. Instead, he was holding up a mirror, and the reflection was far more complicated than the story I had been telling myself.

Tyler lifted his hand and drew his fingers slowly down my cheek, wiping away one of the long tracks of earlier tears and smearing the mascara further. The touch flooded me with memory ... how those same fingers had felt on my skin, inside me, deliberate and knowing. A soft, involuntary moan slipped from my throat.

“How many times did you glance at my crotch when you thought my eyes were elsewhere?” His voice had softened, yet grown more husky.