Authors: Michelle Love
Blake
The parking lot is dark as I parked near the back. I’m afraid if Rachelle sees me out here she won’t come out and I need her to talk to me. A crack of light I see as a door at the back opens and someone peeks out then turns back and Rachelle looks out then comes walking out.
I let her get to her car and then I follow her from a safe distance behind. The plan was to go to her apartment and wait for her, but then I thought she might not go back there, thinking I’d be waiting for her.
And the answer is, yes. I know I’m being a complete stalker!
But my intentions are good. I’m not going to hurt her or make her do anything she doesn’t want to. Except talk to me. I am going to attempt to get her to talk to me.
She pulls into the parking spot in front of her apartment and I know I have to park and move fast to get her to let me inside. I park and lock the doors manually so she doesn’t hear the beep and turn around and spot me.
In silence, I jog up behind her as she unlocks the door and as the door opens I place my hand on the small of her back. She jerks around and punches me in the stomach then kicks me in the shin.
“Ow!” I yell.
“Oh, God! Blake, I’m sorry. I thought you were a killer or a crazy person!”
Her hands run over my head as I bed over and try to catch my breath. She knocked the wind out of me, the little thing.
“I can’t believe how quick and strong you are,” I manage to get out.
She pulls at me to go inside and I stumble in and drop to the sofa. I rub the place on my shin she kicked me and she pushes up my pants leg, revealing a blueish mark.
Turning from me, she goes to the kitchen. “I’m really sorry. I’ll get an ice pack for that. You shouldn’t have snuck up on me though.”
“I didn’t know if you would let me in and we need to talk, you and I. Whoever else you feel you can talk to, whoever he is, may be after more than you realize.”
Rachelle comes back and takes my shoes off then turns me around to lie on the sofa. She runs to her bedroom, coming back out with a pillow and props it behind my head. She sits down and pulls my legs over her lap and places the ice pack on my bruised shin.
“There’s no guy that I’m talking to, Blake. The truth is Peyton has this friend, a woman, she’s a therapist and I’ve talked to her a little. Not a whole lot as I’m not really comfortable with her yet.” She picks up the ice pack and runs her hand over the bruise.
“Your hand feels a lot better than the ice pack, if you really want to make it feel better,” I say with a grin.
With a smile she keeps running her hand over it. “I really am sorry I hurt you.”
“In which way?” I ask. “Because you’ve hurt me both ways now. Physically and mentally.”
“But how?” she asks and her brows furrow so I know she really doesn’t get it. “How could I mentally hurt such a perfect man? You could have anyone you want. So if I feel like I’m not enough for you, what’s stopping you from moving on to the next girl?”
“I don’t want the next girl, I want you.” I look deep into her blue eyes and my heart hurts for how she thinks so little of herself. “You are the perfect girl for me, Rachelle.”
She shakes her head and looks away. “I’m not a perfect anything. See, that’s part of the thing about you I can’t take. It seems to me you’re putting me up on a pedestal. I will fall off that and you will see me for what I am, a flawed person.”
“We’re all flawed, baby. Every last one of us have flaws. I’m not putting you up on a pedestal. I only want you to see the value in yourself. It seems to me you’re always seeing the value in others, but never yourself.” I lean up to run my hand over her shoulder but the look she gives me makes me change my mind and I lean back.
“Blake, you’re perfect. Your face is perfect. Your body is perfect. You’re the perfect height and your voice is perfectly deep and wonderful. You smell great all the time. I mean all the time. Even after making love and sweating, you smell magnificent. I wreak like an old sneaker the dog chewed on then was left out in the rain then drug through some cat poop.”
“Wow!” I just look at her with my eyes wide. “I mean, wow! Rachelle, come on. You know that’s not true. You smell great all the time. It’s me who stinks to high Heavens after I sweat.”
She shakes her head. “And what about how you wake up and your hair looks perfect? Mine’s everywhere, and yours looks fantastic. You could literally climb out of bed, throw on anything and walk out the door. Woman would still throw themselves at your feet.”
“I think it’s adorable how your hair is when you wake up. It’s a little here and there and floats around your sweet, little face like a dark halo.” I run my foot over her thigh and she sighs.
“You’re perfectly sweet too, Blake. I don’t know why you would even want to pursue this with me. I’m distant and moody. I don’t deserve you. And to be honest, you make me feel even more inadequate than I do most of the time.” Her brow furrows as she looks at my leg and runs her soft hand over it. “That’s why I prefer to be alone. That way I don’t have to compare myself to anyone all the time.”
“I don’t know why you would anyway.” I lean up and run my hand over her shoulder. She looks at my hand and looks away. “You are you, I am me. We shouldn’t compare ourselves anyway.”
“Easy for you to say, Mr. Perfect,” she says with a scowl.
“Tell you what,” I lean back and say. “I’ll get fat and cut my hair off and eat a lot of greasy foods so I can get bad skin. Then will you give me a shot?”
She laughs. “You better not do that, but it’s a sweet thing to say.”
“On another note, have you found out what kind of grades you made on your finals?” I ask and see a little smile run over her face.
She nods and looks at me. “I made high scores on every one of them. And in my baking class, my teacher put my recipe for ‘Tara’misu in a contest and it won first place. I received a trophy which she’s displaying in her classroom and a check for five hundred dollars.”
“Wow! Mom would be so proud. I mean to say, I bet Mom’s so proud! She’d absolutely love that if she were still around.” I look up and smile. “Isn’t she fantastic, Mom?”
Rachelle smacks my thigh and giggles. “Does she ever talk back, Blake?”
“Sometimes, in my dreams,” I say with a grin. “Her and Dad both tell me things in my dreams on occasion. For instance, they told me you’re the one for me, Rachelle.”
She shakes her head and smiles. “Don’t even talk like that, Blake. People will think you’re crazy.”
“Let, ‘em!” I say with a laugh. “What the hell do I care what anyone thinks? You’re really the only person in this world whose opinion of me matters. I mean that too.”
Her blue eyes twinkle as she looks at me. “Are you being serious?”
“I am. Rachelle, I see you like a bright star in a dark night sky. You see, I was lonely but didn’t realize it until I laid eyes on you. I thought I was perfectly happy doing what it was I was doing. Playing video games all night, working out most of the day and chilling.”
She laughs. “Damn it, Blake, that sounds awesome. No worries at all.”
“I thought so. I won that money and quit college. I thought what do I need an education for? I have more money than I can spend in a lifetime. I said to myself, ‘take it easy’ and so I did.” As I pull my legs off her lap, I sit up next to her and run my arm around the back of the sofa behind her, careful not to touch her.
“And you liked it, right?” she asks as she fidgets with the hem of her black shirt.
“I did. It was enough until I saw you. Until I touched you. Until I loved you.” I wait and let my words sink in.
She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. “Blake, why do you continue to let me know you love me when I’ve never returned the sentiment?”
I touch the tip of her little nose. “Because I want you to know how I feel. And I can wait for you to tell me the words. I do long to hear them come out of those rosy, red lips, but I can wait until you know you mean them.”
She takes in a deep breath and lets out a long sigh. “See, you’re perfect and here I am looking a gift horse in the mouth. The intense way I want you has me afraid. I can’t really handle it. My body has never overruled my mind before. I kinda hate it.”
“So tell me what your mind is telling you to do,” I say and let my hand touch her opposite shoulder. Heat fills me with just the touch and I see her look at my hand and a shudder runs through her.
“My mind is telling me that you will hurt me. My mind is saying that I could fall so hard in love with you that it would change who I am.” Her face goes pink as she’s embarrassed she let me know that much.
“Change is inevitable. We all change, baby. Why do you think you need to fight it?” I press my hand to her shoulder a little, and the heat that’s running through me starts to make my pulse go faster.
“I’m okay with life the way it is now. Can I be really honest with you?” She turns and looks at me.
“I hope so. It’s all I want from you.”
“Why can’t we just be friends with awesome benefits. Every once in a while you come to me and make me feel special and wonderful then you go on about your life as if I’m not your entire world. And I can do the same.” She smiles and I die a little inside.
My head shakes and I groan with the information she wants me for sex and nothing else. “How can you even lie to yourself and say all we have is great sex? I mean really, Rachelle. Has anything we’ve done felt cheap to you? Has any way I’ve touched you felt like that’s all I want?”
“No. As a matter of fact I feel you want it all. The whole thing. The life, the love, the happiness. The crazy part of that is you think that’s something I’m able to give you. I’m not.” She drops her head.
“So, you can’t give me your heart? That’s what you’re telling me. The thing I want is your heart and you can’t give it to me.” My mind spins in a horrible circle as I try to process what she’s said.
“Blake, I don’t feel I have it to give.” Her voice goes sad and weak, terribly weak. “I don’t think I have a whole heart to give anyone. See, you’re right about me having issues. The way my mother left me, took a piece of my heart, my soul. I’m not a whole person and may never be. I can pretend for a little while I have it in me to be someone’s true love, but the reality is I don’t.”
“She took so much from you,” I say in a whisper. “You're magnificent and she took the ability for you to see that in yourself away when she dumped you like an animal unworthy of her love. I could kill her and never feel bad about it.”
“Don’t say that, please.” She wraps her arms around herself. “She’s a weak person and not capable of love herself. I can’t fault her. I can’t blame her. It’s just what life had in store for me. When I was sixteen she came to Christmas, and I asked her who my father was.”
“So you know who your father is? We should find him,” I say.
“No, she said she didn’t know who he was. She was drunk most of the time and slept with random men. Many she didn’t even know their names. She said she never wanted to pin me on anyone anyway. It was her burden to bear and hers alone. She found me too much of a burden and had to leave me at that children’s home.”
I hold in what I want to say as she obviously thinks she’s forgiven her mother for her awful deed. I rub her shoulder though and try to comfort her though she thinks she needs none.
“So, no father. Okay. Well, what about your mother now? I mean she’s alive and what’s stopping you two from finding a relationship now?” I ask.
“She still drinks too much for me to be able to stand to be around her. The last time I saw her was two years ago. By ten in the morning she was stumbling drunk and still held a bottle of cheap Vodka in her shaking hand. I’m not sure why she has to stay so drunk all the time. But I’m sure it has a lot to do with the men she lets into her life.”
“Tell me about some of the men you let into your life, baby.” I don’t really want to know, but she needs to see she lives a parallel life to her mother’s and maybe if she talks about it, she’ll realize it.
“You really don’t want to know about any of them. Some were a little mean and others a little abusive. And all saw fit to stop seeing me with no explanation what-so-ever.” She shakes her head, slowly. “And you will too.”
“Are you positive that all of them broke it off with you? Because I’d like to know how you think it went with us. I mean how do you look at the way you and I parted ways?”
“I stopped it before it had a real chance to start.” She wraps her arms tighter around herself. “I don’t feel like what you and I had was a relationship. At that point it hadn’t begun yet.”
“I told you I loved you, but you felt it hadn’t begun. Okay, Rachelle, do you see how that’s anything but true?” I tap her shoulder with my finger and she looks at it.
“Well, not exactly. I mean, I hadn’t said it to you and we hadn’t talked about it, not really.”
I let out a huff and have to wonder if she’s got it in her to love anyone. Something in me says I need to help her and I’ll be rewarded in the end, but my self-preservation says to run like hell.
“Okay, so how did you and the last guy you dated break up? Really dig deep, Rachelle.”
After a few minutes of her silently contemplating, she says, “He took me to dinner with his parents. I was quiet, like I always am when I meet new people. Afterwards when he was taking me back home to my apartment he got on to me. He told me his parents thought I was rude. I told him that I couldn’t change a thing about how I am. He just didn’t call or come around after that.”