Same Old Mistakes: A Short Story
A short story on a complicated love affair
Week 6: I wrote the original version of this four years ago on Valentine’s Day, the night before I submitted my PhD thesis. The story wouldn’t leave my mind and just flowed out of me. I hope you enjoy it. Give a like and share if you do :).
Amber waves blazed a path down her throat, warming, burning, and stinging her all at once. His drink. How fitting that its assault on her body was as layered as the emotions and physical feelings he provoked earlier that day. Only a masochist, who just hours earlier had been told she was nothing more than a stimulus package, would be sitting in her office—still without panties—reliving the exquisite tension of seeing him.
It stung to see him for the first time in the six months since he left her at the altar. Ending the promise of their future. In a church. She had worked so hard to say yes to him—to risk it all. How easily he had thrown her away. The worst part was he would not give her an audience to explain her actions or what they meant.
So, to see him again in a church a year later, the memory stung. The loss of his devastating handsomeness stung. Holding their goddaughter in both their palms stung. A promise that would now never materialise. The ring on her finger. The one he gave her because he wanted her to be happy—she used the finger on which it was perched to caress his digits. To remind him, this could have been us. It could be still. But where are you? His eyes had travelled up to look into hers then. Like the question had reached his ears. But looking into those eyes, she could see he was not there. He was far away from the moment.
Maybe she was not cut out for motherhood anyway. Not to his child.
Then came the burning. It lasted the longest. First, the rage she had to temper when, after Ella's baptism, he paid her no attention. Then there was the celebration afterward, where his eyes burned a hole into her from across the room. So much so she had to slip back into their silent communication, reminding him with her eyes—dulled by pain and Merlot—to look away. They were in public.
Baby Ella’s parents prattled on about party details. The boastful sort wrapped in a veneer of inconvenience. Peonies from the south of England never arrived; Lord and Lady so and so never RSVP’d. Above all, they burst with pride for their adopted baby girl, fawning and sparing no expense. She was happy for Ella’s parents. Happy for her goddaughter, who would now be loved and cared for.
But a putrid feeling overshadowed the good tidings of most in that room. His laser-like disdain for her no matter where she turned. It was all too much. If she didn't leave now, she would be engulfed.
How dare she. If a more frustrating woman existed, he did not want to meet her. This one had already eviscerated him months ago with a betrayal that had swallowed him whole. Why did he love her? Hell, if he knew or was even in search of a reason. Or reason at all since he had lost his mind during the twelve months he had not heard her voice. And despite claiming to have let her go, she controlled his every feeling. His every thought. He couldn't' exorcise her from his existence even if the Pontiff himself were involved. There wasn't enough Scotch in the world to deaden the things inside him she awakened with her presence. Everything and nothing was all he wanted to say to her. He had settled on nothing lest he empty himself right in front of her, onto her shoes. Filling the room, drowning them both in a well of his loneliness. One he had caused.
But how dare she try to leave now. He was foolish, and he knew it, but he could not stop himself. His brain was not in charge. His pain and fear had kept his mouth shut earlier. Now, single malts and desperation quickened his steps behind her.
Hers: fast and clipped, on stilts.
His: gallant and wide.
A hunter-like determination made him desperate to reach her. What to do when he catches up to his prey? That far, he had not thought. He was all instinct with her. From the first moment that he laid eyes on her, after first hearing only her voice castigate his staff, his instinct, then, had said trouble—and a whole lot more. He tried to fire her, and now here he was, pulling her by the arm into a closet.
The same old mistakes.
How dare you! She hoped the sting of her palm meeting his face conveyed that. Pulling her into a fucking communications closet to what? Kiss her? When what she needed him to do was to see her again, tell her he was sorry and that he should have let her explain. To tell him she had done it because she loved him. Or so she thought. What's love got to do with it was the thing she increasingly questioned since he had left her all alone. Now, here he was, a respectable step away from her. Grounded in his place, from the force of her hand. His jaw reddened from his humbling.
Her chest heaved with hurt and heat from his scorching kiss. She looked at him, her face distorted from wanting to scream what do you want from me?! Throwing her hands up in the air, she decided it did not matter. Hadn't he gotten what he wanted? Her, miserable and alone. She could at least take a piece of him now. Get what she wanted. Or at least take what was on offer. She had never not wanted him, and she craved knowing the same was true for him. Leaping to close the gap, she went straight for his mouth. If the only consolation she could commandeer was the feel of his dick warming her from the inside out, she would take it. And with gusto.
She was in his arms again. That's all he could think as he grabbed at every part of her. Her jaw, her neck, her arm, those lips. He hadn't planned this nor dare hoped it might happen. But he missed her. The nearness and smell of her. Missed driving into her. The way her pert little ass met his every thrust and the music their bodies made slapping against each other.
In unison, they pulled down and removed her angelic garment. Like Houdini, she made his belt disappear behind her back.
Let the sin begin.
Holding on to the cradles of cables above her, she arched her back, her pussy supple and ready to receive him. And when her hallelujah heroine encircled his dick, he reached for her mouth to bury his tongue there. Afraid he was, that he would scream from how good she felt, how good he felt being this close to her again. Holding on to a breast for dear life, he anchored himself firmly in her desire. His ears burned for her. He burned for her as he filled his strokes with all the things he should have said but never did. Would she but understand that he never meant to cause her pain. That she had hurt him first with her betrayal.
She was no angel and never envied the role. There was no man she couldn’t have. Except the one eluding and filling her now. Only now mattered. The river flowing from her cunt was only for him. She missed how they sounded together. How he tasted with her on him. The warm hay of the whiskey on his breath in her ear, as he ploughed her fields. And when he nibbled her earlobe, her nipples prickled in obeisance. She could cry from how good he felt.
The boom boom bip of their fucking was making her crescendo. Fuck if she did not miss the skill of his nimble fingers, tipping her velvet over the edge. She was in the thunder dome of pleasure, on her way to the finish line.
And then.
And then.
His deliciously large hand embraced the column of her needy neck. She gasped, holding herself back from coming, wanting to enjoy it more. Keep him there. It was clear to her that he wanted to drive her insane, for her to be unable to forget this moment that might be their last. The ecstasy built inside her until it exploded around his shaft, from root to tip. Soon, too, her insides were coated in his satisfaction.
The clean-up was silent. He turned away from her, tucking himself back in. Her panties, now stained with the essence of them both, lay in her purse. She fondled them a time or two in the hours since she had left him. And even re-used them to catch the stubborn remnants of him, cataracts of which slowly descended out of her hours later, like distant memories. She welcomed their trickle because they blighted the repetition of his awful final words to her:
"I may not be able to control my erections around you, but that does not mean that I want you. We are done."
The stinging again. She might as well kick a beehive; it would hurt less. That memory is why she had not bothered with another pair of underwear. Or gone to her flat to shower or change, but instead rushed to the inner sanctum of her office. She sat on her throne, coated in the funk they made together, coveting their recent memory as she swirled brown liquor in a glass. She hoped her aroma wafted off him, too, reminding him of the lies pain makes them tell. She hoped her agony haunted him like a ghost the same way remnants of him attached themselves to her.
The ice cube clinked against the glass as it melted into the Scotch. She took another sip of his drink, making it hers, too.
I need a long form backstory on these two. The complexity and chemistry is too much! Do your Thing Dr. Pow. Give the people what they want!