Narcissistic Asshole

Stepping out onto the porch, my small hand slipped into his larger one immediately. He was there on the steps, just like he’d been every night since the first time we’d met – the night he’d told me the legend of Andromeda.

My eyes sought his, and when they met I was comforted for the first time all day. He was the only thing that made the group home bearable; when he told me stories or simply held my hand and talked to me, I could forget about the older girls and their teasing comments. I could forget about the bad man, the police officers, the hospital, and even about Mommy.

It’s not that I wanted to forget her. I just missed her so much – too much. When he told me stories, though, I could pretend it had never happened. When I left my room, scared after a nightmare, he was always there to make me feel better. On those nights, he’d tell me silly stories, tales to make me giggle or smile, and I wasn’t an orphan anymore; I was back in my princess room, surrounded by brave knights and magical fairies. I was in a world of magic and happy endings, where things like murder and death were impossibilities. Where mommies didn’t get taken away to heaven when their little girls needed them.

“Hi, Brooklyn,” he said, a small smile in his sad eyes.

I didn’t reply, I simply looked up at him. I still wasn’t speaking – not to my foster mother, not to the other kids, not even to the lady who called herself a ‘therapist’ and came twice a week to see me.

I knew they wanted me to. Sometimes, the adults got angry at me – even though there were smiles on their faces, I could see the frustration in their eyes and hear it in their voices when they talked to me. The other kids didn’t get angry – they just got mean.

Except for him.

He never yelled, or teased, or tried to get me to talk. He just let me listen to his stories, hold his hand, and forget. Sometimes we’d just sit in the darkness, staring into the backyard or up at the night sky together.

“Brooklyn, look,” he whispered, pointing into the dark, toward the tall grass at the bottom of the steps.

I looked at him questioningly; I didn’t see anything unusual in the yard.

“Fireflies.”

I turned back and peered into the night, trying to catch a glimpse of them. I’d only seen them once before, at the beginning of the summer. Mommy and I had gone on a picnic at our favorite park one night, and when the sun had started to go down we’d seen hundreds of the glowing bugs flying all around us. Mommy had laughed and said maybe they were really fairies, like Tinkerbell, and if some of their fairy dust fell on us we could fly away too.

Mommy had flown away, after all – but she hadn’t taken me with her.

The boy started to tell me a story about the time the hero Perseus killed a monster named Medusa – a woman so ugly her hair was made from snakes and her gaze turned people into stone. I liked to listen to the sound of his voice. He was still a boy, but his voice was deeper than the other foster kids voices – slightly raspy and so different from Mommy’s. Her voice had sounded like music all the time, whether she was singing or talking or shouting.

I waited until he’d finished his story, watching the fireflies as they weaved between the tall grasses. When he fell silent, I looked up at him expectantly.

“What?” he asked me, as if he didn’t know exactly what I wanted.

He knew, he just wanted me to ask for it. I stared at him, waiting – just like I had every other time he forgot to say the ending.

“Oh, all right,” he sighed. “‘And so, after Perseus beheaded Medusa, there was celebration throughout the land and everyone lived happily ever after.’ Happy now?” The boy rolled his eyes at me.

I was happy. Stories weren’t finished without the happily ever after, everyone knew that. Mommy had always said it was the most important part of any fairytale.

I smiled.

“Real life isn’t like the stories, Brooklyn,” the boy said, the sad look back in his eyes. Sometimes when he was telling me a story, his eyes would lose that look – but it always came back eventually. “There aren’t any white knights or glass slippers or second chances,” he whispered into the night, not looking at me. “People don’t wake up after eating poisoned apples. They don’t live again after an evil a witch curses them. They just die.”

I looked at the boy with the sad blue eyes, and I saw it – he wasn’t a kid anymore. Whatever had happened to him, whatever brought him here to live in the foster home, had made him stop believing in happily ever afters.

I wanted to tell him that I understood. I recognized the sad look in his eyes – I’d seen it in my own every time I looked in the mirror. I knew why he thought this way; he was protecting himself.

Sometimes, it was easy to feel sad or angry about what had happened to Mommy, but then I’d think about all the fairytales she’d told me. In all of those stories, the princesses had moments when they’d thought they would never get their happy endings, or that the bad guys would win. But eventually the dragons got slayed, the princes came to the rescue, and the princesses did get their happily ever afters.

I wanted to tell him that Cinderella hadn’t believed either, until her fairy godmother showed up the night of the ball. And of course Snow White would’ve stayed dead, if Prince Charming hadn’t believed in the power of true love’s kiss.

I wanted to make him believe we could have happy endings again, even in a world without mommies or daddies to take care of us.

Mommy used to tell me, “Bee, a very smart man named John Lennon once said, ‘Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.’ Remember that, sweetheart. Tuck it away and keep it with you when you’re having a bad day.” Then she’d kiss my forehead and hug me, her long fingers lightly tickling my sides and coaxing a laugh.

I slipped one hand back into his and squeezed.

“You can call me Bee,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I used it for the first time in months.

It wasn’t what I’d wanted to say, but it was a start.

His head whipped around at the sound of my voice and when he looked down at me there was surprise, not sadness, in his eyes.

“Bee,” he whispered back, smiling.

***

“Bee,” Finn whispered, shaking me awake. “Come on, love, wake up. You’re trembling. I think you’re having a nightmare.”

I peeled open my eyes and looked up at him. He was leaning over me, beautiful in the faint moonlight trickling through the window at the end of my bed. His hair was tousled, his voice was rough with sleep, and his tired eyes were slowly clearing and coming alert. Our limbs were still entwined; in sleep I’d turned over to rest my head on his chest, with one arm thrown across his abdomen and my right leg hooked up over his thigh. He had one hand looped around my back, holding me tightly against his side, and the other resting on my hip.

I was typically an active sleeper. My nightmares were always vivid and I’d toss and turn while caught in their throes, waking up with my sheets a tangled mess around my legs. It seemed that tonight with Finn, though, I’d been happily immobile, pressed against his warmth until he’d woken me.

When my gaze met his, a soft look replaced the anxiety that filled his eyes and the lines of tension started to ease from his face.

“Hey,” he whispered, bringing a hand up to touch my cheek. “You okay?”

I thought back to my dream – it hadn’t been frightening, just confusing. I wasn’t sure where these memories were coming from, or why they had started to reemerge now, so many years later. Maybe between my therapy sessions with Dr. Angelini and playing music again, I’d stirred things that I’d been repressing for over a decade. While I was happy to be regaining some memories from that fuzzy time of my life, it was still an unsettling experience; it felt like my mind was unraveling like a spool of yarn, revealing long-buried people and events I hadn’t even known existed. Finn had been right – I was trembling.

“Hi,” I whispered back.

Finn brushed a curl back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Was it a nightmare?” he asked.

I nodded, not wanting to explain or knowing how to begin to.

“Do you want to talk about it?” The gentle look in his eyes told me that I could’ve shared anything with him at that moment, even the story of my mother’s death and the twisted path my life had followed ever since. But I knew, once I told him, the soft look would leave his eyes – replaced by sympathy or, worse, pity.

I shook my head no. I wasn’t ready to see that look in his eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for that.

“Okay,” he said, leaning down to kiss my forehead gently. I snuggled into his side and felt his arms tighten around me. When his hands started to wander down my body and his mouth found mine, I allowed my mind to go blank and forgot all about my strangely vivid dreams. And as Finn made slow, achingly sweet love to me, the boy with sad eyes, who’d given me the happy endings he was far past believing in, disappeared from my mind altogether.

***

When I woke, the first thing to enter my consciousness was the pungent, unmistakable scent of paint fumes. Cracking open an eye, I saw that it was already midmorning and bright rays of autumn light were streaking across my bedspread. The second thing my bleary mind registered was the fact that I was still naked, and Finn was no longer in bed next to me.

So he left. That’s good – great, even. It’s what I wanted all along.

Isn’t it?

My inner voice sounded unconvincing even to myself, and I couldn’t quell the disappointment that was beginning to bloom in my chest like a cancer – a sharp pain radiating quickly from my heart out through my limbs.

I was an idiot.

Sex with Finn had been so different for me – more intimate and so far removed from what I’d experienced in the past – that I’d simply assumed he’d felt it too. Apparently he hadn’t. Maybe last night had been nothing to him; maybe I’d been nothing to him. No different from any other girl he’d – how had Lexi termed it so eloquently? – hit-and-quit.

This is fine. This is better, in fact. Now, things can go back to normal and I’ll forget all about the emotional, tear-ridden months I’ve had with Finn in my life. I’ll go back to having fun – who wants to cry all the time, anyway? He’s just a boy, nothing special. It isn’t like he took my virginity, for god’s sake. This will be no different from any of my other hookups. Snap out of it, Brooklyn.

They were paltry consolations, but they were all I had left. I clung to them desperately, my lifeline in a storm – unwilling to be dragged out into the endless ocean of my disappointed hopes. Breathing deeply into the pillow I clutched tightly to my chest, tears immediately prickled my eyes as Finn’s scent washed over me. I wondered how many other stupid girls’ empty pillows had smelled like the warm breeze of an early fall day, and how long they’d waited to wash them after he’d left. A day? A week?

I groaned at the ridiculous thought. I was being such a girl – what the hell was happening to me?

Don’t get me wrong, I was fully aware how hypocritical it was for me to feel this way. After all, hadn’t I pulled this exact maneuver on countless one-night-stands of my own? I was the expert at it; so good, I could probably teach classes at the university– How to Escape Your Awkward Morning-After: Avoiding the Coyote-Ugly and Sneaking Out the Window 101. I had no right to expect anything different from Finn; in fact, I was naïve for thinking it could have ever meant something more to him than just sex. He was Finn Chambers, after all.

Two months ago, I would’ve balked at the idea of sex meaning anything other than the mind-cleansing fulfillment only an orgasm can deliver. Now, here I was, brought down by the idea that sex hadn’t been meaningful – that I’d been nailed-and-bailed on.

Damn, karma really is a snaggletoothed, hairy bitch.

I took another deep breath, through my mouth this time, and decided to stop being a whiney, pathetic, doe-eyed little girl. I had things to do, like finish painting my room.

When memories of painting with he-who-must-not-be-named began to play through my mind in vivid high-definition color, I did my best to shove them way down into my triply-reinforced mental box labeled Narcissistic Assholes. He finally fit in the box, I realized with a despondent, detached sort of acceptance – a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

Flipping over onto my back, I startled when I caught sight of the deep blue ceiling above me. When I’d finally fallen asleep, utterly wiped out after Finn and I had finished getting acquainted for the third time, the ceiling was an unadulterated shade of midnight. Now, it was littered with a galaxy of white stars, so detailed and painstakingly crafted that they must have taken several hours to hand paint.

Finn.

As if thinking his name had conjured him, my bedroom door swung open and Finn strolled in, looking annoyingly bright-eyed and cheerful, clothed once-again in his paint-spattered coveralls. He clearly hadn’t just undergone a slightly embarrassing, utterly dismaying spiral into the land of self-doubt and rejection.

Crap.

Propped up on my elbows, a sheet covering my chest, I warily watched him enter, unsure what to expect.

“Sleeping Beauty awakens,” he said, smiling crookedly at me and coming to a stop at the end of my bed.

He was still here. He hadn’t left at all.

My heart stuttered in my chest, then started to race at what felt like twice its normal rate. The walls of the Narcissistic Asshole box started to rattle, then buckle violently, the wood straining under the pressure until the top exploded off altogether and Finn freaking Chambers escaped back into the forefront of my mind. I mentally acknowledged that he’d never fit in that damn box again – not that he’d ever really belonged there in the first place.

I should’ve been angry that he’d caused my minor – okay, major – freak out, but I was overwhelmed by equal parts giddiness that he was still here and paralyzing terror at the undeniable attachment I felt for him. Anger had to take the back burner, for the moment – I could only handle one mental breakdown at a time, pre-caffeine fix.

Covering up my extreme internal distress, I aimed for nonchalant indifference – rolling my eyes at him and flopping backwards onto my pillow, my gaze alternated between the painted universe of stars and the mind-fuck of a man before me. He looked completely at ease and self-assured, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to be waking up in my apartment and doing god knows what while I was still asleep.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked somewhat grumpily. I was unprepared for this conversation, for this day, without first having my coffee. My brain didn’t even begin to function normally until after cup number two. In fact, that debilitating pain that had lanced through my chest when I’d thought Finn had left me? Maybe it had just been caffeine deprivation.

One could only hope.

“A few hours,” he said, shrugging and walking closer to me. Leaning over the bed, careful not to get any paint on my comforter, he kissed me. Though our mouths were our only point of contact, it wasn’t the gentle good morning peck I’d anticipated. Finn’s kiss was consuming, near-painful in its irrefutable desire – a reminder of what last night had been, and a promise of more nights to come.

“How did you sleep?” he asked, pulling away.

I tried to slow my breathing so I didn’t sound like an asthmatic who’d just run a half-marathon when I answered him. I cleared my throat and pulled a deep breath into my lungs, praying I wasn’t as transparent as I felt. For fuck’s sake, I was nearly panting.

“Like the dead, apparently,” I said, glancing up at the ceiling. “I didn’t even hear you do all this.”

“I was quiet. Stealthy. Some might even say ninja-like,” he grinned down at me, his cobalt eyes warm on mine.

“Who? Who might say that?” I asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Me.”

“It doesn’t count if you’re the only one saying it,” I grinned back at him and rolled my eyes at his ridiculousness. “And I was so tired I could’ve slept through an earthquake.”

“Is that you admitting I wore you out last night?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Cocky.”

“Confident,” he countered, dropping a light kiss on the end of my nose. I wrinkled it at him in response, watching as he made his way back to the ladder in the corner of my bedroom. “So, do you like it?” he asked, voice deceptively casual as he gestured up at the stars on my deep blue ceiling. Despite his blasé tone, I thought I detected a nervous undercurrent in his question, as if he were genuinely worried about my reaction.

“I love it,” I whispered honestly, looking anywhere but at him. It was enough that he could hear the emotion making my voice crack roughly; I didn’t need him to see the moisture clouding over my eyes as well. This gesture was more than anyone had done for me in all the years since my mom died, and I was utterly overwhelmed by it.

It was as if he’d somehow dipped into my memories and known exactly how my childhood walls had been painted; like he’d sensed that this would be the perfect addition to my new bedroom. It was uncanny how well he seemed to know my tastes, to recognize and anticipate my likes and dislikes – almost as if he were innately attuned to my every thought and feeling.

When I was confident that my tears were under control, I turned back to look at him. He was standing at the base of the ladder, staring straight at me. I knew he could read my face like an open book, watching as I struggled to weather the storm of emotions brewing within me. Thankfully, he didn’t push me to talk about it.

“I’m glad you like it, princess,” he replied, a small smile twisting up one side of his mouth.

“Princess?” I asked. The only time I’d ever heard the nickname ‘princess’ used, it was said sarcastically or condescendingly. Finn said it affectionately, though – a sincere, reverent endearment I wasn’t sure how to process. He grinned at me, failing to elaborate any further. Apparently, I was going to have to drag it out of him.

“Why princess?” I didn’t think he was making fun of me, but considering how off base some of my assumptions about Finn had been in the past, I decided it was safest to simply ask him.

“You look so small in that big white bed of yours, swallowed up in all those pillows and fluffy blankets. And when you were sleeping, with all that dark hair spilling across your pillow, and your face so peaceful…You were beautiful. You are beautiful.” He swallowed roughly, eyes intense as he stared at my face like he was committing every feature to memory. “Angelic. Like some unattainable fucking fantasy I dreamed up.”

He left the ladder and approached the bed, leaning down so his mouth brushed the shell of my ear. I shivered, and felt his lips curve into a knowing smile as they brushed against the lobe. “You are, without question, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, Bee,” he whispered. “Sometimes, I look at you and wonder if you’re even real. Girls like you aren’t supposed to exist in real life – you’re the stuff of legends and bedtime stories. So, no, I don’t give a shit if you think it’s lame as hell – you’re my princess.”

Okay. He could call me princess. He could call me whatever he wanted if he kept talking to me like that.

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I threw back the covers, hurdled out of bed, and slammed my frame against his. When my bare legs wrapped around his waist, my mouth found his and my hands slipped into his hair as I let my body do the talking.

Much later, we emerged from the shower and Finn took his time drying me off, using a towel to gently wipe every droplet of water from my body. We’d once again had to scrub ourselves clean of blue paint, as our earlier activities on my bedroom floor had gotten unintentionally creative and we’d ended up looking like aspiring Blue Man Group members. Again.

Finn finally allowed me to leave my bedroom and I greedily consumed half a pot of coffee as soon as I entered the kitchen. He laughed at me, taking only a single cup for himself and downing it black.

Yuck. What was coffee without cream and sugar!?

Lexi was still at Tyler’s apartment, so it was just Finn and I. I shouldn’t have been surprised that there was no morning-after awkwardness, but I was. I guess, despite everything Finn had said and done in the past twenty-four hours, I was still insecure about where this whole thing was heading. I could finally admit to myself that yes, I had definite feelings for him. And yes, the sex had been off-the-charts amazing – better than I’d ever imagined sex could be. But I still was nowhere near ready or eager for a relationship. The idea of Brooklyn Turner, irrefutable ‘Ice Bitch,’ as someone’s girlfriend was laughable. The idea of being the girlfriend of someone like Finn Chambers, however, was downright scary.

“Stop,” Finn ordered, shaking me out of my reverie.

“Stop what?” I looked at him, confused.

“Overthinking us.”

Us?

He set down his empty cup on the kitchen island and made his way around to the stool I was perched on. Bringing one hand up, he lightly smudged a finger across the tension lines that were pulling my eyebrows together.

“Princess, can I ask you something?”

I nodded reluctantly, automatically anticipating the worst.

“Did you have fun with me last night? This morning?”

I nodded again, waiting to see where he was going with this.

“Well so did I. In fact, I had more damn fun last night than I’ve had in a long, long time. So please don’t get all wiggy and female on me. Don’t twist this around into something bad, because what we’ve had these past few days is beautiful. You know that deep down, princess. And if I know you the way I think I do, then I bet it scares the ever-living hell out of you.”

I took a deep breath, met his eyes, and nodded again. His crinkled up in amusement.

“I don’t mind the silent treatment,” he grinned. “If I’d known sex was all it would take to stop you from being so sassy all the time, I’d have made my move a lot sooner. Give the girl an orgasm and she’s finally complaisant.”

“Complaisant? Did you get that off your word-of-the-day calendar, caveman?” I smiled, jabbing a sharp elbow into his stomach. He let out a small oof as I connected, though my arm probably took most of the brunt from colliding with his steely abs. I fought the urge to rub feeling back into it, not wanting to look like the weakling I totally was.

“You’ll have to come over to my apartment and see,” he said with a wink. I’d never been to Finn’s apartment – I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about the fact that this god-like specimen of man actually had a bed and a toothbrush and maybe even a damn word-of-the-day calendar somewhere out there. The thought was staggering.

“Maybe sometime,” I murmured noncommittally.

“After my show tonight,” Finn countered decidedly. He hadn’t invited me or asked if I would be going – he simply informed me that I’d be there, as if my plans for the night were predetermined without any necessary consent on my part.

Overbearing caveman.

Casting a look at the microwave clock, he winced. “Speaking of, I have to get going. It’s already past three and we have a rehearsal before the set. We go on at nine.”

“At Styx, right?” I confirmed unnecessarily. Apiphobic Treason rarely played at any other venues on campus because Styx was one of the few places that could accommodate such a big crowd. On a good night, their shows drew in over two hundred people.

Finn nodded, then leaned down so our faces were aligned and brought up both hands to cup my face. Staring into my eyes, he shook his head back and forth so our noses grazed lightly before tilting his head and giving me a light kiss goodbye.

“I’ll see you tonight, princess,” he whispered against my lips.

“If you’re lucky, caveman.”

“Oh, I’m lucky, all right,” he returned cockily, eyes twinkling as he no doubt remembered how very lucky he’d gotten both last night and this morning. I rolled my eyes as I watched him walk out of the kitchen, but even my exasperation with him was starting to feel forced. If I were being honest with myself – which, let’s face it, was a rare occurrence – I’d have to admit how happy I was feeling at that exact moment. I was the lucky one – and ‘lucky’ was definitely not something I’d ever considered myself before now.

My heart literally fluttered in my chest as I heard the distant click of the front door closing, marking Finn’s departure. He’d only just left, but I already found myself checking the time and counting down the hours until his show tonight, when I’d see him again.

I barely recognized this girl I was becoming, and I knew it was all because of Finn.

What in the hell have I gotten myself into?

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 640