Page 64 of Use Me Up

I sputter, because… because…

“I didn’t think so. You stay home and hide and tell yourself you’re boring and unwantable and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then you wear it like armor, and you hide inside your little fortress, and then, here I am, expressing interest, and you refuse to see that. You go way inside, and you don’t even try to fight for me.”

I gasp. “Fight for you? How would I do that? You want me to go pull Callie’s hair or something?”

He doesn’t respond to that.

I turn the music up.

He doesn’t stop me.

We don’t say anything for the rest of the drive back to his place, but I think about what he’s said, and it burrows into me and bothers me. Maybe because I’ve had this thought before, not about romantic relationships or anything, but about how I’ve chosen to pursue this stupid, impossible job of being a literary agent, and how I think I’ve done it so that I can say it was too hard, that I tried really hard, but it was just too hard to be successful, and it’s not my fault that I failed.

I think about my dad talking about me and swimming, and it’s true, I did wait a long time to try to swim. I did spend a lot of time trying to figure it out before I ever tried. I wonder if it was because I didn’t want to commit to it unless I was sure I could do it, if I can’t bear the idea of failing at anything.

Do I not have a boyfriend because I’m afraid to fail at it?

And if so, that’s stupid, because everyone fails at relationships. People usually date around and have a few heartbreaks before they meet the one. Am I too afraid of heartbreak to risk it, so I’m never going to meet anyone?

When I park in his driveway, he doesn’t get out right away. He toys with the door handle and won’t make eye contact.

I stare at him, and I think about telling him I want him to invite me in, and I wonder what he’d say if I did. I think that the worst thing he could say would be to refuse me, and I think that I have been so rejected for so long that I’d actually probably handle it fine. “Invite me in.” It’s a challenge.

He looks up at me, a smile playing on his lips. “Okay.” And then he does not. He just gets out of the car and shuts the door.

My heart slams painfully into my rib cage for several minutes before I open the door and get out after him.

He waits for me, and we walk up to the door together.

Inside, we look each other over for several minutes, not saying anything.

He rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. “I can’t be what you need.”

“You are so fucking confusing,” I say to him, and I’m a little breathless.

“I was thinking about it,” he says, and he starts up the stairs. “I was thinking about what it takes to be with someone, how you have to make the person the center, and I was thinking about how I tried it already with the alphas, and she was still the center, and I obviously got involved with you because of her, so… it’s tainted.”

I follow him up the stairs. “I can’t fight for you, Ellis, not if it means competing with her. I can’t compete with her.”

He glances at me over his shoulder. “I think that’s why I like it with you.”

I stop moving, so confused. That should hurt. Maybe it does hurt. Maybe it just flabbergasts me.

He’s still climbing the steps, and now he’s not looking at me. “It’s the same with me, what I said to you in the car. I make little safe fortresses, too. Maybe everyone does? But you’re safe because you’re not… because it’s tainted.”

I catch up to him. “What?” I don’t get it.

“You won’t expect me to be what you deserve, or what you need. You’ll accept me even though I’m screwing everything up. So, I trust you. I know that’s fucked up. But I have real trouble trusting people. Especially, uh, good people.”

“Like your alphas,” I say, getting it.

“Not that you’re bad,” he says. “You’re pure, like I said before, but you’re also…”

“No, I know what you mean,” I say. I suck in a breath as I realize that Ellis, perfect Ellis, with his beautiful body and his flawless smile and his effortless sexiness, is flawed, and he knows he’s flawed. And that this, somehow, puts us on equal footing. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I think I have real trouble trusting people, too,” I say. “But this, the fact that you’re… unstable or whatever? It makes me trust you in a way, too.” He might settle for me, at least for a while, anyway. Maybe it’s just going to be while he works her out of his system or figures his shit out or something, but it could be something prolonged.