He's Come Undone (6 page)

~ Ellie ~

Before chickening out, I headed for the bar. I wasn’t dressed in my typical “Julian costume,” but I was at least wearing the violet contacts and a fair dose of makeup, plus nice jeans and top, along with a black mod jacket, all but the jacket purchased by the girls. Hopefully the clothes would be enough to keep me in the game for the evening.

It was long dark by the time I chained my bike to the rack and walked through the mob of serious smokers clustered outside the front door to step into the bar.

I did a visual check of the room, but didn’t see Julian. Moments later, the bartender spotted me. “Hey, YouTube.”

I had to laugh. I mean, how could I not?

“Your friend’s here.” He pointed. “And he could use a ride home.”

So that’s how I missed him. Julian was slumped over in a corner booth, his head on the table.

“He’s been like that for an hour. Get him out of here, will ya? Customers want to sit down.” Then he added: “And order stuff.”

“How much has he had to drink?”

He tossed a white bar towel over his shoulder. “Maybe six beers, but he might have been drinking before he came here. Or he might have something else in his system.” He shrugged and turned to a waiting customer.

At the booth, I sat next to Julian and gave his arm a shake.

The only response was a slight moan, but at least he was alive.

“Julian?” I shook him again, harder this time. That did the trick.

He lifted his head from his crossed arms and gave me a slow blink of stupefied recognition. “Have you seen that YouTube video?” he asked in a thick, slow drawl. “It’s amazing.” He fixed me with a drunken gaze. “
You’re
amazing.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. Look, we need to get you home.” I didn’t have his address memorized, so I had to ask him for it, explaining: “I’ll call a cab.” Could he even get himself from a cab to his room?

The address he rattled off was someplace in New Hampshire.

“No, your address here.”

He didn’t reply.

Maybe it didn’t matter. The more I thought about it, the more I questioned leaving him at home unattended if nobody else was there.

After a lot of drunken distractions, I finally got him to focus long enough to give me his car keys. “Come on.” I tugged him from the booth, slinging one of his arms across my shoulders. Then, gripping him around the waist, I steered him toward the door. Outside, since I didn’t know where he’d parked, I hit the lock button on the key fob as we walked up and down the street. A car finally responded, and I launched us into the dark and the direction of the sound.

At the car, I shoved him in the passenger seat and latched his seatbelt, then circled to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. Next to me, Julian’s eyes were closed, his head back against the headrest. In the dome light I saw he was extremely pale.

No, he definitely shouldn’t be left alone, but the bigger question was whether he needed to go to the emergency room. I gave his arm another shake, trying to rouse him while repeatedly saying his name.

Finally, he lifted his head, slowly turning toward me, looking at me, really looking at me. “My heart hurts.”

That settled it. “I’m taking you to the ER.”

“Why?”

“Your heart.”

“No, I mean it
hurts
. Like deep in my soul.”

I inhaled sharply.

“Do you know what I mean? Like every breath seems like a breath you don’t want to take. Like it hurts to be in the world,” he said, struggling to convey his meaning.

Ah, that kind of pain. I understood that kind of pain. “Did you take something?” I asked him. “Drugs?”

He shook his head. “Just the usual pharmaceuticals.”

Digging around in his coat pockets, searching for anything that might give me a clue, I pulled out a brown medicine bottle. It was labeled an anti-depressant. “Is this what you took?”

“Yup.”

“It says no alcohol right here in bold print.”

“I know I know I know. That’s what my shrink says too.”

Good God. This golden boy who seemed to have the world at his feet wasn’t what he appeared. “Did you take more pills than you’re supposed to?” I asked him in a clear, direct voice.

He gave me an owlish look, then shook his head.

I let out my breath in relief. Six beers with anti-depressants could really do a number on you.

“Okay.” As a precaution, I shoved the pills in my jacket pocket, then stuck the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb, heading in the direction of my loft. I could see no other choice but to take him home with me. I’d come back later for my bike.

It wasn’t easy getting him from the car to the warehouse building. Once inside, I leaned him against the wall while I punched the elevator button. Then it was a ride to thefourth floor and down the hall to the thankfully empty apartment and my room where he collapsed on the bed. He was dead weight as I struggled to remove his leather jacket, tossing it aside as he tumbled backward.

In the dull lamplight, I saw he was still pale. I picked up his wrist and felt for a pulse, checking the second hand on the wall clock as I counted, realizing I had no idea what a pulse rate should be. His wasn’t fast and didn’t seem that slow either.

His cell phone buzzed, and I retrieved it from the deep pocket of his coat, thinking to hand it to him, but he was too out of it. I looked at the screen. I couldn’t help it.

A message from a girl named Valerie. And she was asking where he was.

So, he’d had a date. And he’d gone drinking instead.

And I thought I was a mess.

At the same time, I struggled to reconstruct my idea of Julian. There was something going on here. A piece of the puzzle was missing. The pain in his eyes when he’d looked at me in the car? That pain had been very real and very bad. The thousand-yard stare. What had put something like that in his unguarded eyes? And the other day at the café. When I’d mentioned my mother’s death, a look of pure panic had come over him.

I covered him with a quilt then spent the next couple of hours trying to read a book. Really, it could have been upside down for all I absorbed.

As time passed, the rhythmic sound of Julian’s breathing finally convinced me that he’d be okay and that I didn’t need to take him to the nearest hospital. Exhausted, I removed my bra without removing my T-shirt, slipped off my jeans, and crawled under the covers next to him, turned out the light, and went to sleep.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night I felt Julian shift in bed. That dip and shift was followed by fingers on my arm, then fingers on my head. An obvious Helen Keller move.

“Hello?” came his voice out of the darkness.

I switched on my small IKEA lamp with the blue shade, then turned to see him with his head braced by his hand, elbow on the bed.

“Oh, hey,” he said, surprised. “It’s you.”

“Were you expecting someone else?”

“No. I just… I just have no idea how I got here.”

I gave him a brief account of the evening.

“Did we… do anything?”

“Sex? Are you talking about sex?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed. Then he took a deep breath and dropped back on the pillow. “Jesus, I feel awful.”

“You should.”

“What time is it?”

I checked then replied: “Four in the morning.”

He soaked that in for a minute, then let out a small gasp. “Valerie.” With that, he began the phone search. I plucked it off the bedside table and handed it to him. He scrolled through the text, making an
oh, shit
face.

“Too late to call,” he mumbled. He replied to the text, waited, didn’t get a response, so put his phone aside. “Would you care if I took a shower?”

“Door on the right at the end of the hall.”

He left the room, and I tried not to think about what was going on down there as he stripped and got in the shower, but I’d seen his bare chest and I could fill in the blanks.

A lot of people were on anti-depressants, especially college kids, I reasoned. I’d certainly had my fling with them, so it didn’t mean anything—as in didn’t mean he had any serious issues. This is what I told myself, even though my gut was screaming something completely different.

I heard the shower shut off, and then he was back, this time wearing nothing but jeans slung low on his hips, his hair wet and dripping on his shoulders.

“You shouldn’t drink if you’re taking anti-depressants,” I told him.

“Stupid move on my part,” he admitted, raking the wet hair back from his forehead, giving me a glimpse of armpit and muscle. “I can handle a few beers, but…”

I suddenly remembered I was pantsless under the quilt, which I tucked around my waist.

“You saved me again,” he said with a smile.

“You would have been fine. It’s not like you were in danger of choking to death on your own vomit or anything. Although I was worried about that,” I rushed to add, in case he thought I’d brought him to my place just to bring him to my place.

His phone buzzed. He scooped it up, reading the message, then replying. Valerie, I presumed.

“My sister,” he said once he tossed the phone aside. “We were supposed to eat dinner together…” His words trailed off, and I got the idea he’d started to say more before stopping himself.

His sister.

Another misconception.

“Are you close?”

“Yeah. She’s older, and she tends to baby me. It can be a little overwhelming at times.”

Who he was expanded in my head to now include a sibling. “Any other brothers or sisters?”

“No. Just the two of us.”

“Parents?”

He was quiet a moment. “Yeah, the usual. Two of them. They live out east.”

The address he’d given me. That must have been it.

“I should go,” he said. “So you can sleep in peace.”

I remembered my plan, and realized this was the perfect opportunity to end this right here. The sex and the dumping. Over and done. I’d gotten myself into this mess, and it seemed the only way out. And I was the only one who’d get hurt. Just how hurt? I wasn’t sure.

“You can sleep here if you want,” I said, my heart slamming in my chest, my eyes refusing to make contact with his.

“Really?”

“No sense in driving home right now.” As an afterthought, I added, “And you still have alcohol in your system.” The truth.

“Right.”

I lifted the quilt that I’d tucked around me earlier, inviting him under while giving him a brief and maybe interesting glimpse of my panties.

He blinked as if trying to disguise any reaction as I turned out the light.

~ Julian ~

I crawled into bed with Ellie, the sheet cold against my hot skin. Once under the covers, I did the gentlemanly thing and turned my back. That’s when the bed shifted and I felt her hand slide inside my jeans. I wasn’t wearing underwear. She cupped me and massaged me and curled against my back as she kissed my neck, her signals very clear.

I’d never gotten out of my jeans so fast, and seconds after I kicked them aside she was cradling me again, this time as we faced each other. I don’t know what happened. It was like all of the pain and anguish of the day exploded, and I ground myself against her hand, gasping at the pain.

She pulled me on top of her as she bent her knees, a welcome if I’d ever felt one. But women liked foreplay, so I held back while at the same time wanting to plunge myself deep inside the hot softness I felt against me.

“Now,” she whispered.

In the back of my mind, I realized this wasn’t unfolding in a typical way. No light kisses that led to deeper kisses that led to skin and more skin and finally the final act. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she wanted to do it and get it over with.

I found her mouth and I drove my tongue into her, across her teeth. I pushed her T-shirt up under her armpits, and I kneaded one bare breast, and then I spread her legs wider and I continued to suck on her mouth while I slipped myself deep inside her hot tightness.

Oh, my God
.

Once I was in there, I lost it and I drove into her, pulling myself out completely with each lift of my hips, each downward plunge grinding against her clit, hoping to make up for the lack of foreplay. My hips were moving fast as I went in and out like a piston. She was moaning under me, her fingers digging into my thighs, her hips rising up to meet every one of my thrusts.

One minute I was calm, thinking okay, let’s have sex. The next, I was out of control.

We were both sweating like mad, and our skin was beginning to make a slapping sound that would have made me laugh if it hadn’t all been so intense. I kept hammering away, and she kept clinging to me, whispering to do it harder. The bed was moving under us, back and forth, the headboard banging against the wall, and I thought I’d never fucked like this, and I’d never given into such a frenzy.

In the back of my mind I knew it was because of what had taken place in the shrink’s office, and I knew I was trying to erase the conversation the same way I erased it with running. But now I was pounding into Ellie.

I didn’t come. Somehow I held it while I continued to drive into her. Sometimes I would quit kissing her and just bury my face in her neck while I pumped away, and other times I would grasp the headboard with one hand and work her clit with the other while I slowly ground myself into her, constantly changing the tempo.

And finally, finally, I couldn’t hold out any longer and I took one long, deep thrust, driving myself as deep as it would go, lifting her from the bed with both of my hands, filling her.

Then I collapsed and just lay there inside her.

Now I know why sex is sometimes called the little death, because I couldn’t move. Not a finger.

We were stuck together. I was aware of our wet bodies, from her breasts down our stomachs to my dick that was still buried deep.

“Wow,” she finally said.

I extricated myself and rolled over to my back. Wow was right.

In the darkness, I groped for her and found her belly and rubbed my palm against her soft skin. “God, I’m sorry.” I was out of breath. I never got out of breath. “I kind of lost it.”

“No kidding.”

Did she sound upset? I didn’t think so. She’d sounded groggy and stunned, but not upset. “Did I hurt you? Was I too rough?”
God, please don’t say I hurt you.

She was quiet a long time, so long that I thought I’d better get dressed and leave, or so quiet that I began to wonder if I’d killed her. Could you fuck someone to death? No, that was insane. People were made to do what we’d just done.

“I finally understand the appeal of athletes,” she said in a level and sober voice.

I laughed, and the laugh was part relief, and part delight at that blunt honesty of hers.

“And tomorrow I’m going to be really embarrassed about this, but right now I don’t care.”

I felt her leg wrap around me until she was straddling my thighs. She began to stroke me again, just kind of a soft petting that slowly increased until she was waking me back up. And it was like she couldn’t wait another moment. Before I was even fully engorged, she came down on me.

Somewhere along the way she’d removed her T-shirt, and I was able to caress her breasts and play with her nipples. But she quickly grew impatient for a repeat of what had gone before, and I framed her hips with my hands and started the whole ride over again.