He was my friend—my best friend.
But the days passed, and he never called.
He didn’t text either.
He’d told me once the deed had been done, he would be gone. The second he popped my cherry, his obsession would disappear. I believed him in the beginning, but then I started to doubt his sincerity when he said he’d been celibate for this last month. He spent most of his free time with me, cooking me dinner and taking me out to fancy places. We began to have a real connection, and I believed he would want me more once he had me—but that didn’t seem to be the case.
There had been lots of times when we hadn’t spoken to each other for days on end. He got busy and I got busy. It was nothing to panic about. But when I didn’t hear from him, the self-doubt started to rip me apart.
Had he forgotten me already?
Was I just another notch in his belt?
He’d told me this was nothing but a transaction, but I struggled to believe that. It felt like something more, from my end as well as his.
Or had I been wrong?
When a week passed, I stopped caring about the higher balance in my bank account. My life had become significantly easier, even with the burden of my mother’s medical bill, but I was too sad to appreciate it.
Now I thought about the man who had disappeared.
The one who made me laugh, smile, and happy.
Had he forgotten about me already?
His prolonged silence should have been an affirmation that he wasn’t interested in seeing me anymore, but I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to believe there was more here, that we really had something. My attachment wasn’t just because he was my first. It was much deeper than that.
I decided to call him from my couch in the living room.
It rang and rang…and rang.
Then went to voice mail.
I’d never heard his voice mail before.
I hung up without leaving a message and set the phone beside me, my stomach tied in knots like someone had just kicked me. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my fingertips over my lips, reeling from the cold rejection. I sat in my apartment alone as I stared at the phone, offended he didn’t even have the courtesy to take my call. He got what he wanted, and now he wanted nothing to do with me.
I knew I shouldn’t be angry, not when he warned me this would happen.
But I was.
I was angry because I refused to believe this was what he really wanted. He’d never chased a woman as hard as he chased me. A single night was all he needed to be satisfied? I wasn’t satisfied at all.
I wanted to call him again, but I refused to appear so clingy.
And if he didn’t call me back…then my first impression of him was right.
He really was an asshole.
He never called me back.
It’d been almost two weeks since we last spoke.
I couldn’t believe he felt so little for me that he wouldn’t even return my phone call. We spent an entire month together, and I thought I’d earned more respect than that. I might have provided a service, but I also provided my friendship.
Even that meant nothing to him?
By the time I got off work, smoke was blowing out of my ears. I was hurt that I meant so little to him, that we had something real, but he didn’t value it. After the way he’d been burned in the past, he was afraid to get close to anyone…but I wasn’t just anyone. I expected him to put aside that fear and actually step up and be a man.
So I went to his penthouse.
Maybe it was wrong to show up on his doorstep unannounced, but this wouldn’t have happened if he’d returned my phone call. I stepped into the elevator, and even though I knew the code, I pressed the intercom button to speak to him. “Slate, it’s Monroe. I’m coming up.”
He didn’t speak back to me through the intercom, but he hit the button so the elevator would rise to the front of his penthouse.
The doors opened and revealed his living room, the glass of scotch on the coffee table while the TV showed a football game. He sat on the couch in just his sweatpants, his beard much thicker than the last time I saw him. He watched me with his brown eyes, slightly hostile but not overly unwelcome.
Now that we were face-to-face, my courage fizzled out like a can of soda that had been open too long. I stepped into his living room, dressed in the yellow sundress and jean jacket I wore to work that afternoon. Last time I was there, I had a great night with a great man. But now, he was just some stranger. I slowly approached the couch and noticed the way he didn’t rise to greet me.