Plastic Confidence (Good Bye Trilogy #1) (9 page)

I closed my eyes and tried to compose myself. I needed a bottle of wine, a muscle relaxer, and a bubble bath. I needed
sex
. Yes, I needed casual, yet animalistic sex with a large penised, unmarried man. I needed to rid my brain of any topic regarding Brennan Curtis and fuck the daylights out of someone. Or
someones.
For a week
. Straight.

“Amelia and I are in an open relationship. She is
... she is a loving person. She would love you. In fact, when I told her I was coming to see you, she was happy. I mean, it has been a while since...,” he trailed off.

“You fuck
women
? Without your wife?” I screeched my question with so much ugliness. My father and my step-monster’s faces flashed through my mind. Cheating was cheating, open marriage or not.

“Okay, yeah.
You are so upset, so please, let’s go somewhere. We need to talk privately. I wanted to talk to you over the phone about it. You seemed so open, you know, the way you are with guys and your body. I thought you would be a perfect person to have more with,” he admitted.

“But more isn’t what I want
, Julia. I don’t even think about Amelia when I am with you. I don’t want to leave. I want to be inside of you so bad, but I can’t...,” he said in a defeated tone. His eyes were tearing up and his lower lip started to shake.

“If I
have sex with you, I want to make love to you, Julia, and that
will
be cheating on my wife. It wouldn’t be the same as just having sex with someone, you know? You are not the same to me as the others. Hell, you aren’t even my wife and I fell... I am so confused.” Tears fell down his face and my whole body tensed up. I couldn’t watch a guy cry because it made me uncomfortable. It went against human nature. Men crying meant they had feelings, and most of the ones I knew, besides my brother and Johnny, did not.

“
Well, I am not confused. Everything is pretty fucking clear to me. It would be best for your safety if you walk away from me and to go back to her... now,” I demanded. “Oh and thank you very fucking much for making me feel like a worthless piece of shit! God damn it! Another fucking married man! Jesus Christ. You started to mean something to me, too. That is what is most screwed up.”

He put his palms on his eyes and nodded behind them. I felt
kind of bad for him and I wanted to punch myself for feeling anything towards him. I should be able to just kick him to the curb like every other guy. I couldn’t. He had made me feel compassion in the short time I had known him. I wasn’t even upset with Johnny anymore. I wanted to forgive everyone that ever hurt me. But this admission of marriage proved one thing; I wasn’t worthy enough for love. I was a slut, through and through.

Another
man’s face flashed through my head.

John Sands.

I took his virginity our junior year in college. He asked me to marry him the next da
y. We had been messing around for a few weeks. I liked him because he was pure and different. He was nice. I didn’t hook up with nice. I had no idea I had taken his virginity until he was inside me; asking if he was doing it right. The broken look in his eyes when I told him I couldn’t marry him made me hate myself every time I thought of him. I looked him up about a year ago. He is a Pastor at a small town church outside Philadelphia and happily married.
Thank God
.

I moved Brennan’s hands from his face and placed a solid
, warm kiss on his lips. My insides dropped into the pit of regret and poor circumstance, a place I had been in countless times. As I drew away, he wrapped his arms around me.

“I am afraid,
Julia. Amelia has become the
other
woman to me and I am so scared. We have been married and happy for years. But happy is a meaningless word. I didn’t know what true, deep hunger for another person felt like, until that night when I met
you
. It was instant. I had to see you again. I had to... ” I cut him off by kissing his cheek.

“Goodbye, Brennan.” I pulled out of his arms
, and walked away.

He didn’t follow me. He didn’t call after me.
I didn’t dare turn around to look at him for fear that he would still be there.

That
afternoon, in a bubble bath, with a bottle of wine, and as a muscle relaxer made its way through my blood lines, I cried like a little baby. I cried for Brennan. I cried for Johnny. I cried for Professor Hynes. I cried for John the Pastor. I cried for every time I let feelings get involved in my life. Feelings were stupid and I wasn’t going to have them anymore. I was done.

I climbed into bed, hiccupping
in the aftermath of my breakdown, and fell asleep. In dream after dream after dream–I dreamt about the summer when I turned thirteen. I tried to find the words on the board, as the pointer flew. I called out to Jason and told him that I loved him as he walked off with one of his older girls. I watched Grace get raped and strangled. Despite all of those horrible visions, I still couldn’t get out of bed for days.

If it hadn’t been for
the recording contract and Dex’s bucket of cold water, I may have stayed in bed until I became a leaf of a girl with hollowed out cheeks.

TWELVE

2010

Spring sprang up late in Boston. The cold wouldn’t go away and the rain was driving the nails into my spirit’s coffin. I wrote sad songs and took to my apartment most days. After the recording ended, I decided to stay in Boston. Johnny left for New York City and Dex went to Maryland to be with his on again girlfriend. To this day, I never even bothered to learn her name. He didn’t share much either unless they were off again. Bitch was her name during those days.

I didn’t want to go back to New Hampshire or New York.
Both places made my heart hurt, so I took over the lease from Nick and waited for Love Sick Ponies’ next tour dates. We were doing an East Coast run first thing in the summer. Our second part of the tour would be along the California coast line.

I looked forward to hitting the road. We would have various other bands open for us because Desired Pitch had already started a Spring Tour and we couldn’t line up a date to play together. I was okay with it. I still felt
uncomfortable when I thought about the day when Lizzie overheard that Brennan Curtis was married. She and I never spoke about it again. Ignorance is bliss and all that but I stayed away from the topic anyway.

I didn’t stay away from thinking about Brennan though. I thought about him at least five times a day.
I became obsessed with the term “Open Marriage.” I read books. I read articles. I gaped at the famous people who were in them. I thought about what or who Brennan and Amelia were doing every day. It was pathetic. It was seriously destroying my game when it came to finding casual sex partners. I didn’t want just anyone. I decided I could pretend it was him but I didn’t have the energy to conquer some nights. It was so unlike me.

I made the local pub, Iron and Lime
, my steady hang out because hot guys frequented there. It was close enough to Northeastern and Boston University to attract my type of guys. They distracted me from my rambling thoughts of Brennan. I allowed them attend to me just as much as I pleased them.

When the first guy
after the clusterfuck with Brennan went down on me, it was instinctual to tell him not to bother because I didn’t know if I could concentrate long enough for my body to build up. But when he held my legs down and pushed his mouth onto me, I shut the hell up.
Good God
. I fell in love with the feeling once again. Even so, every time I had sex with a guy, I closed my eyes and pretended it was Brennan. Since I never knew what it actually felt like to be with him, I became passionate and pleased him by proxy through those men. Then they got kicked out of bed, which either pissed them off or relieved them from having to stick around for cuddle time. Fuck cuddle time.

I did meet one
guy regularly at the pub. Simon. He broke off our regular fuck dates after only three weeks because he
thought
I was in love with someone else. I couldn’t help it that I cried out Brennan’s name that one time. Okay, maybe it was a few times, but I told him that I really did mean to call out his name. That was something special, wasn’t it? Guys that acted like chicks pissed me off.

Besides,
Simon wanted more. Every guy did. I was, after all, Jules from LSP and they all knew it. If they didn’t know, someone quickly made sure they knew who was hitting on them. I wasn’t just a pretty face and an easy roll in the bed to these hot guys. I had fame and money. Guys could see the dollar signs just as much as the girls did with Johnny and Dex. Brennan didn’t want me for my money or fame. He paid for my coffee. He bought me a hair clip I liked. I still couldn’t put that black sparkly bow into my hair without wanting to cry. It had been almost six months and my feelings for him were so strong.

I faltered one Sunday afternoon. I picked up my phone and flipped through the contacts. I didn’t delete his name because I knew one day I would do this. I pressed call as I started to sink in defeat.
I held my breath.

“
Julia?” His voice was sun shining through this rained out day. His voice was the first beat of a song that got my blood pumping. I felt alive. I was determined and hesitant at the same time. I couldn’t speak.

“
Julia,” he breathed out my name. “I
never
... I didn’t think you would ever call me. Julia.
Please
. Please let me hear your beautiful voice.”

“What are your ground rules, Brennan?” I asked. It was the one question I had wanted to know the whole time we hadn’t spoken.

His exhale was audible. “Our ground rules?” he asked. “I haven’t seen or spoken to you in what feels like years and that is what you want to know?”

“Yes,” I clipped.

“Well, when we met at a club, Amelia was already part of the lifestyle, but we felt a connection far more than sex. When we had been dating for a few weeks, she admitted that she was trying monogamy but needed to love other people. She goes both ways,” he blabbered.

“Ground rules.” I couldn’t have been clearer. I didn’t want
the history of how they met. I wanted to know who he could or couldn’t fuck.

“We both
have to know of the other person we are going to... be with. We have to agree that the person isn’t a threat to our marriage.”

I
half-snorted which turned into a full belly laugh. “A threat? How could you screw another person and not have it be a threat?”

“
Do you want me to go on or can I just listen to you laugh because it is such a lovely sound?” he growled into the phone. My heart sputtered–I held in my next laugh with a quick intake of breath.

“We still
have sex. That was one of the first rules we wrote out. Shit, I don’t know how to explain it. The ground rules work for us. It helps to separate our desires from our emotional relationship to one another.”

“Separate emotions from sex?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered quickly.

“You couldn’t have picked a better lover than me then. What I don’t understand is why you just didn’t
let it happen? I would have forgotten about you the first night. I am the best candidate for casual sex,” I lied–maybe, I wasn’t lying about my general nature but I was certainly lying about sex with him. I was
all
emotion with Brennan.

“Tell me about other women you have fucked, like the women that are on the so
-called list.” I held my breath–bracing myself. I was already jealous of those women.

Brennan
didn’t speak for a long time. It is obvious that he was uncomfortable by the frequent sighs I heard through the phone.

“Listen, I j
ust want to know how it works–why you and your wife thought it was cool to add me to the list of yours. I want to know what other type of women you have had the pleasure of… ” my words fall away as I realize how absolutely ridiculous I sound. I was a masochist–asking the man I couldn’t stop thinking about, dreaming about, or touching myself for, to describe the explicit details of his sex life. This was low–even for me.

“There is one woman that I saw regularly
... well, up until the night I met you,” Brennan began.

“Wait, what? You stopped having sex after meeting me?”

“No, I have sex, Julia! Damn, this is fucking uncomfortable! I don’t want to talk to you about this. Why can’t we just talk about how you are, or how the record is coming along?”

“No.” I want to know about the woman that he saw “regularly.”

“Her name is Anne. She is a friend of Amelia’s and has been since college. She was also part of her circle that swung. She is happily married with two kids and every week, she and I met.” His long exhale doesn’t go unnoticed. My hands were fisted so tight on the phone and the jealousy I had towards Anne was more acute than what I had felt about Amelia. Why was I jealous over her?

“More.” I can’t stop myself from choking out the word.

“What do you mean more?” Brennan sounded irritated. Good–we were both on the same page.

“I want to know how it works,” I deadpanned.

“Okay.” I hear the inhale through his nostrils. “Anne and I meet at her place every Saturday afternoon while her husband takes their kids out. She does the same for him on Sundays but I don’t know who with–not Amelia. When I get to Anne’s house, we normally talk for a little while–twenty minutes or so–over a glass of wine. Depending on our mood, either Anne or I will initiate foreplay. We never use her bed. We normally fuck on the pull out couch in the basement. Sometimes, we just do it once and other times, I stay for a few hours.”

I knew that he was
n’t going to say anymore because after a few beats, he cleared his throat and then went silent again.

“Why her?”
My hands were trembling and my voice was small.

“She
’s cute. We like the same positions.”

I couldn’t hear anymore. I was starting to feel ill. And it had stopped after he had met me? What for? I wasn’t around anymore.

“Jesus Christ, Julia. I just told you everything and that wasn’t easy for me. Say something,” he half-shouted into the phone.

“I miss you, Brennan.”
My voice was still small. I felt so incredibly small.

“I miss you
so much. God, I miss your eyes, your lips, your hands and the feel of your breath on my neck.” He continued to voice his thoughts without a filter. I held on to every word and was giggling by the end of the outpour.

“I missed that
giggle, too. It is so much more beautiful than all of these worn out Love Sick Ponies CD’s that I constantly listen to.”

“Thank you for answering my questions
... honestly,” I concluded.

“Are you getting off the phone?” he asked, sounding startled.

“I am,” I replied.

“Please let me see you,” he breathed in a plea.

“I don’t think I can, Bren,” I whispered back.

“
Please
,” he begged. A long moment passed as I thought about his smile, his long curls, and his conversation. I miss him as a friend just as much as I am in love with him. I could be friends with a married man,
couldn’t I
?

“I will catch a flight to JFK and stay in Manhattan for a couple days,” I
say. His phone dropped and I heard him curse. I heard a couple of other things fall to the ground. He came back on the phone.

“Text me with the details and I will be there,” he
says sounding both relieved and excited.

The following morning, I step
ped into the bathroom at JFK airport to freshen up my makeup and hair,
not
for the benefit for Brennan. I escaped from the bathroom when a few teenagers recognize me and I slipped on my sunglasses. I had the desire to throw on my Red Sox hat but my hair looked so damn good, I just couldn’t do it.

The girls follow
ed me out to the waiting car area where I became a frozen statue at the sight of Brennan. His pale green Henley was pulled up and a black beanie covered his dark locks. He wasn’t wearing his glasses but his squinting eyes as he beamed at me made up for his deliciousness.

The girls threw papers at me and crowded me as they switched out to take individual photos with me. I scribbled my name and kept my eyes on Brennan as I smiled for the camera. These were rare photos.
Jules Delaney from LSP smiling? Doesn’t happen. Normally I made the rock and roll sign with my fingers. I never ever let my arm fall over the fan’s shoulder but here I was, breaking the rules.
All of the rules.

Brennan came up in between the crowd and made the girls automatically part. He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip before he took my face into his hands. His hard forced kiss made me moan and we immediately opened our mouths to let
each other in. He smelled like cologne and male sex breath. I got lost in his groans and his hands in my hair. His hand moved down to my ass and squeezed as I tore my mouth through every inch of his.

Cameras clicked off as people started clapping. A guy called out for us to get a room while another man with a notepad asked what the name of the guy was.
The paparazzi were here.
Fuck
. I begrudgingly slipped my tongue out of his mouth.

“Bren, we have to get out of here unless you want your photo on the cover of SS Weekly,” I groaned.

“Doesn’t this airport have a bed or even a table somewhere in this place?” he laughed back into my mouth.

I shook my head and took his hand. He grabbed my suitcase and as he did I noticed he had taken his ring off his left hand again. I felt a sudden pang of sadness. How long would he be mine this time?

As he opened the passenger door to his black Jetta, he answered “Brennan Curtis” to the annoying asshole that wouldn’t stop asking his name. My mouth dropped open. He just “outted” himself to the world and he was
married
. Scandal was on our immediate horizon and I couldn’t give a shit less. I made a mental note not to turn my cell phone back on.
Ever
.

I wanted him naked. I want him under me. I wanted him for days. I practically jumped on top of him as he pulled over on the road to kiss me.