I Love My Hope (Nicole's Erotic Romance) Page 2

  My couch was taken away yesterday by the Salvation Army, as was my coffee table, plus a couple small rugs I’ve never liked. The colors were all wonky. I’ve disliked them since I bought them, but choosing rugs has never been my strong suit. Nor is keeping house of any kind, if I’m clearing away the cobwebs of denial; literally and figuratively. Watching those rugs get out of my life felt good. But the couch? I second-guessed my decision to lose the couch, the second it was gone.

  The small blue toolbox gets grabbed from the closet. My father got me this toolbox for my twenty-second birthday. I thought was a very odd gift, but it’s turned out to be the most useful thing he’s ever given me. I guess somewhere inside him he knew I’d be single, huh? That I’d need to take care of my own handiwork around the house? Nice, Dad. Truth though? It’s surprising how often I’ve needed a screwdriver, a hammer, or measuring tape in the years I’ve lived on my own. Everything he’d put in it has come in handy.

  Four thick nails and a hammer will do the trick, today. And fabric scissors, nice and sharp. I place them on the table and start unrolling the canvas to cut off about two yards, which I then nail onto the largest wall I’ve got. When I center and hang it, I take great pleasure in pounding the nails hard into the wall. It’s cathartic; a place to put my anger.

  Stepping back – the blood rushing in my veins, my heart pumping – adrenaline springs into action and I feel like I’m flying again, my excitement back on track.

  What do I need next? Candles. Digging them out from wherever I can find them, I bring every candle I own into the living room, lighting them all. Squeezing tubes of paint onto a shiny, virgin palette, I follow my heart towards the colors of purple and red with hints of black. My feelings splash onto the canvas, a release that has waited a lifetime for a home that won’t hurt other people. The fury, hurt and betrayal, the loss and the love – spring out of me without reservation or control. Time rushes to keep up until it finally quits trying, ignored and dejected. Food is not eaten. Water is not drunk. Cigarettes not needed. My soul has opened and I am free.

  5:05 A.M.

  The Next Morning

  Where am I? I feel the ache of cold cramped sleeping on a hard wood floor. I squint around me. It’s dark, all the candles long since burnt down. I fell asleep here, on the floor. I don’t remember lying down. Did I pass out? Was I drinking? No, memory tells me I wasn’t. From the dryness in my throat, I don’t think I’ve had any water, either, for way too long.

  I lift myself up with both hands. One of my legs comes painfully alive, poked with invisible needles. “Ouch!” I give it a good shake, but really, you can’t rush waking it.

  I’m scared to look up on the wall to see what I did. I’m really terrified.

  “Come on Nicole, put on your big-girl pants and look up.”

  I draw my head up slowly; my eyes are used to the darkness now, enough to where I can see my painting. As I take it in, I start to sob the type of wracking sobs that don’t want an audience, because they aren’t pretty. The tears are of disbelief, joy and a sublime fulfillment I have never before known. My heart feels like it’s expanding, like it’s bursting through my ribcage and will fill up the whole room. I finally did it. I finally painted something worth looking at. I finally painted from my soul and not my mind.

  I’m kneeling, staring at it. My tear-streamed vision is foggy and blurred, but still I can see that it’s the most beautiful piece of art I have ever hoped to produce. It’s exactly what I’ve been blocked against. Exactly what I was afraid to do. Exactly what I fought to break through to. Because it is a painting that has come from the very deepest part of myself that is only mine – my soul.

  But I cannot take credit for this painting, just as I cannot take credit for my soul. This painting came from someplace else, through me. It came to express the human condition that is unrequited love and unmitigated heartbreak.

  I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to slice it into two jagged pieces and frame them, held up and spread open by pins, inside shadow-boxes, to be hung next to each other… always separate… always apart.

  I will call them: Two Halves That Can Never Be One.

  Months Later, On a Tuesday Early in Summer

  The Night David Smashed Jess’s Heart

  “Zach! Be careful!!”

  “Sorry! I got a little too excited.” He adjusts the position. “That better?”

  I wiggle around and think on it. But I can still feel him pushing against my cervix. Some men are too big.

  “Hold on. I’ll take off my heels. Then you won’t have such a level playing field.” I kick them off, holding onto the couch I’m bent over, in his apartment. He bends his knees, pants fallen around his ankles like floppy, cotton boots.

  “That’s better,” I say. “Now you have to reach for it.”

  He chuckles, holding onto my hips. “Mmmm, Nicole – your ass is incredible.” He gives it a light swat.

  I throw a wicked smile over my shoulder at him. “Like you haven’t seen it fifty times before?”

  He grins and growls, grabbing on and squeezing tight. “I’ll never get used to it.” Then he presses that glorious cock of his into me at a much better angle this time, the height adjustment definitely helping.

  I purr, “Sooooo much better. Keep going.”

  “Nice and slow, like you like it, right?” He asks.

  I face forward, bending against his thrusts, and the feelings are all pleasure now. I nod my head, but I don’t add, this is how I like it from you. From my others, I like other things.

  They all have their purpose, my casual fuck buddies Zach, Jason, and a new guy named Tom. That purpose is to entertain me with no complications. No one is getting close to my heart. Not if I can help it. Just slow, sweet penetration from Zach and his enormous cock and not-too-complex mind, and the world is a beautiful place. Easy peasy, pumpkin squeezy.

  He pushes in and holds it there a suspenseful second, then pulls out almost past the tip, then back in, luxuriously slow, sending shivers of fun all over me. I purr like a satisfied cat and he takes it up a notch in speed, bends so he can reach around and fondle me at the same time.

  “Oh, that feels so good when you do that, Zach.”

  He says huskily in my ear, “Yeah, you like how I fuck you from behind? Do you like that?” as his hand presses and holds my pussy in measured beats of awesome.

  “Like it? I love it. Little flicks again! Just like you were doing a second ago. That’s it. There you go. Yesssss.”

  “You want me to wait? Want me to hold it?”

  The way Zach’s body moves when he cums is extraordinary and it always pushes me over the edge if I let my mind go.

  “No! Give it to me with total abandon!”

  “Whatever you want,” he says with a grunt, his chest on my back, his arm around me with all of its muscles flexing as he flicks my humming clit until my ass is in the air and I’m yelling out from the electrifying sensations. When he feels me pulse and contract around his cock with the first waves of delirium, he rises and grabs onto my hips with both strong hands, thrusts harder and harder and faster and faster until we are both impassioned out of our minds. He jerks and grabs me and yells out with his entire voice and the sound is beautiful to my ears. Our orgasms attach and fuel each other, try to top one another, until we both collapse under them; wilted, sweating and exhausted. Euphoric.

  “I’m gonna go throw the condom in the bathroom,” he mumbles, kissing my shoulder blade as I sigh.

  “Mmhmm.” My face is mashed on the cushion, collapsed over the side of the couch. When he pulls out of me and walks off to do his business, I push myself farther over until I’m lying down comfortably on it, my eyes closed, hugging a pillow onto my naked chest.

  This is perfection. No problems. No stress. No attachment.

  Zach returns and pulls out a pack of smokes “You want one?” he asks.

  I look up. “No, thank you. I quit.”

  “Yeah? Good for you
.” He leaves me to head to the balcony, wearing only a shirt and his socks. He must have kicked off his pants.

  I smile and close my eyes again to doze off, thinking, it is good for me. All of this is.

  I don’t know what time it is when Zach pokes my arm and shoves my phone in my face. “Nicole. Wake up. I saw this on your phone.”

  Groggy and disoriented, I look at him, then at it. The preview text says from Amber that Jess is in trouble and come now. I jolt up to a sitting position on the couch. “Get my clothes!”

  As Zach rushes around, I text back: What’s wrong?!

  Amber: David cheated on her. She’s at my house.

  Me: Oh fuck. On my way.

  He throws my clothes at me and I scramble into them. “Zach, I have to go.”

  “Yeah. I get it. Go.”

  He’s holding my bag and keys by the door. And my boots, which he tosses to me now.

  “You’re an angel and I don’t deserve you,” I tell him, as I wiggle into them.

  “Damn straight,” he says, half-kidding. I give him a peck goodbye, grab my things out of his hands, run out the door, down the stairs and out onto the street, hailing the first cab I see.

  When I get to Amber’s, I run out of the car and yell, “Hold the door!” to a redheaded teenager coming out of her building. He holds it, but barely.

  “Are you a model?” he asks as he heads down the front stoop.

  “Not now, kid,” I say as I pass him and grab the door before it closes. I turn around and yell back, “Hey, wait!”

  From the sidewalk, he looks up at me. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve seen you before. Don’t you live next door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’re you doing in here?”

  He shrugs “I’m bored.”

  “Fair enough.” He walks away and I head to the elevator. Then it hits me that the last time I rode this, was the night I was torn to pieces. Jess has come on her darkest day, as well, so it turns out that Amber is the rock we both lean on.

  Amber lets me in and we rush into the living room. Seeing Jess sitting on the couch, staring at the purple fairy, with mascara-streaked cheeks and swollen, dead eyes – is a shock to my system that I could not have prepared myself for. Me hitting a low like this, I am used to… but Jess? No… Jess is the happy one. She’s the goofy one who makes you laugh and takes away the edges. She doesn’t get cut by them.

  From another world, she says, as I sit next to her, “Her name is Melanie. She was in my bed.” She turns to me. “My bed, Nicole! How could he do that to me? How could she do that to me… to another woman?” She looks forward and falls silent, pained and distracted by images in her imagination of her man in bed with another woman, images none of us should ever see.

  I share a look with Amber and reach over and pull Jess into my arms, hold her tightly to me. When I let her go, she reaches for the wine. She puts it back down without drinking, and deflates to a half-lying position. I pull her legs up and hold them on my lap to help her know she’s supported. Amber sits on the chair, silently watching guard. I hear the door open to the bedroom, suddenly aware that Josh is here. I’ve not been here since they moved in, so it never occurred to me there was a man present. He comes in and leans against the wall. He and Amber share a silent conversation through their glances and I can’t help but wonder at them. How can anyone trust anyone with their heart, like they do?

  We all stay like this for a very long time. There is nothing that will ever rip this memory away from me. These women are my family. And Josh? The verdict is still out.

  ______________________

  After That Bomb Explodes

  As the summer passes, we do the usual New York things. We watch movies outdoors in Bryant Park. We eat only at places that have outdoor seating, to enjoy the sun. We wear loose or light clothing that doesn’t wilt in the humidity and we carry tissues to blot our faces from the ‘glow.’ We go to Central Park only once because, when we walk by the lake, Jess sees a turtle. She melts into tears and tells the story of the last time she and David were here. Amber hugs her. We each take a hand and lead her out.

  “It won’t always be this bad, Jess. It’ll get better,” I say.

  Amber agrees. “Yeah, you’ll heal over time.”

  But Jess just says quietly, “I don’t know how.” Then she looks at us. “I’m sorry I’m such a downer, guys.”

  “Don’t apologize!”

  “You take as long as you need!”

  We don’t push anything. She’s taking the breakup hard and her personality is a shell of its normal self. We do everything we can to keep subjects light, the activities fun and easy. Amber helps her find an apartment in the East Village, and we both hang her pictures and unpack her clothes when she moves in. She even laughs when we goof around, pretending to want the silverware in her bedroom and the couch in the bathroom, yelling as we push on it, “It won’t fit!!!” and making ridiculous noises like we’re fighting a massive attack of constipation or something. It’s so good to hear her laugh, that we’ll do anything.

  Poor thing. It doesn’t help that her boss is already hyper-sadistic and freaking out about the impending craziness of Fashion Week that’s coming first week in September. From the stories Jess tells, The Bitch has been acting extra-bitchy. She is that special kind of person who needs a cage instead of an office. If I ever get the opportunity – when it wouldn’t hurt my girl Jess or come back to bite her in the ass, of course – I plan on telling The Bitch off in no uncertain terms, in such a manner as she will never forget.

  Things aren’t good with Amber, either. She and Josh are drifting apart, a fact that has cemented in my mind what I’ve always suspected: relationships don’t last and you should keep your heart safe, for only you to enjoy.

  And me? I’m beginning to forget what Michael looks like. His face has become a fuzzy blur… over a very clear image of his sinewy, sweating chest, adorned with a single sexy leather necklace. But at least his face has faded; it’s a beginning. Neither of us has reached out to each other in any way, for months. I’ve done things to tear him from my mind and build up my Immune-To-Michael system. I wear my hair straight now, not wild like he liked it. I don’t get Chinese take-out anymore. Other kinds are fine, just not Chinese. I don’t go to the Meatpacking District, even when there is a great sale or an amazing party. Under no circumstances do I drink Syrah. I’ve even told myself he no longer lives in America. This is an untruth of immense proportions, but I have told myself he’s moved back to Spain, so often and so vehemently, that I now believe it.

  Almost.

  The candles, I’ve kept. I’ve reclaimed them to light the way when I work. I use them without thought of him, because everyone owns The Light.

  I protect my heart now. I have no intention of falling in love again. I will keep my light, sexual liaisons and have fun. I will paint and go out with my friends, and that is it. Who needs love? I sleep better without it.

  Life is simply… easier.

  But you know how it is. Just when you get comfortable, things go tits up.

  The Day I Witness Jess’s Groove Is Back

  When That Spanish Bastard told me I’d smashed through the wall, he was right. I’ve got twenty-five pieces of evidence. These canvases, covered to completion, are stacked unframed in a corner of my ‘studio.’ I woke up at dawn with an urge to look at them. Something about the creation of these has been making me wake up early and go to bed late. Thumbing through them, it dawns on me that I might want to show these soon… to the public. My heart rate increases at the idea, and a smile spreads over my whole body. It is at this moment – I shit you not – that my phone rings.

  I’m expecting a telemarketer to start their spiel, so I am neither patient nor friendly when I answer. “Hello?”

  “Nicole Henry?” a male voice asks.

  I sigh. Loudly. “Oh God. If you’re trying to sell me something, you have two choices: save your breath, or get a verbal beating. You pick.”
>
  He laughs. “I’m not a telemarketer.”

  I’m not amused, nor convinced. “Prove it, because who the hell calls at 7:30 in the freaking morning?”

  “I appreciate you curbing your impulse to use the more vulgar term. I’m up early because I wake at 4:30 a.m. every morning for my jog. It helps me think. I’m calling because I’m Jack Fleming of JF Gallery in Greenwich and I’ve been told I need to meet you… that you’re quite the painter. You certainly have quite the temper, so that bodes well.” He chuckles.

  I drop the phone. It hits the hardwood floor and bounces, with me in hot pursuit. Why didn’t I keep at least ONE rug???

  “Sorry! Sorry. Mr. Fleming? Are you there?”

  “Did you throw the phone?”

  “No… my cat scared me and I dropped it. Like in those horror films… where the cat jumps out during a silent moment?”

  He says earnestly, “I hate it when they do that.”

  “Me too!” And I yell to my imaginary cat, “Bad kitty! Don’t scare mommy like that.” I hit my palm to my forehead and mutter, “He ran into the bedroom. We’re safe now.”

  “What kind of cat do you have?”

  “Let’s not talk about my cat. What can I do for you, Mr. Fleming?”

  “I got a call from a friend about you. Are you free to come by this morning?”

  “Who called?” My first guess is Jessica. She knows a lot of people because of the magazine.

  “Ms. Henry? Ms. Henry, can you hear me?”

  “I’m here!”

  “Shit. I lost the signal. I’ve got full bars, too. I hate these things.”

  I hear rustling.

  “Mr. Fleming?”

  The phone goes dead.

  I set it down on the table and because my legs feel like they’re going to give out, I use a wall to prop myself. Vibrating rattles yank my attention back to the phone. I stare at it like it’s not real, because it can’t be. This can’t be happening. A reputable art dealer is calling? For me?