So we've done everything like a normal couple now. Something I've barely experienced with the feeling we share. Everything's kind of tense for some reason. Well, maybe 'tense' isn't the correct word. In fact, it couldn't be the right word at all. We have too much fun together. Life is almost literally a breeze when I'm with him.
But sitting here on the couch, listening to the gentle pour of the shower where he stands at this moment, I realize something I've already known. But, of course, I've chosen to think about it now, when I should be adoring the man again.
Well, I shouldn't be adoring him. I should adoring Luka, until we break up.
With me and Carter though - it is a different kind of relationship. In two ways. But, leave it to me to think of the negative side this minute. Every time we're together, doing the easiest of things, it feels like we're not going to be doing that one thing the next day. It could be the last day of us, the last day of our lives, the last day ever. Whatever it is, it's different.
It's like, deep down, we're both saying goodbye.
Believe me: you have no idea how much it upsets me when three ideas, three goals are shooting through my mind, each opposing the other. In one corner, all I'm trying to do is be a good girlfriend to Luka. (That's pretty much destroyed.) In another, I'm trying to have fun with Carter. And I am. But there's the other corner. Where a tense cloud hangs around, and I can't break through.
Once again: tense? Not the right term. Whatever kind of cloud it was, it was a bad one. It just sat there. We barely saw through it. Don't get me wrong - Carter and I have fun. We have so much fun. We laugh, smile, kiss, hug, hold hands. We talk until we're fighting to keep our eyes in the middle of the night. And then we nestle into the other and fall asleep.
But I can't help but feel that it would be easier... well of course it'd be easier.
That's when I want to just slap my wrist and say, "bad Abby" for all the things I've done lately. I'm a terrible person. I know I am. It becomes strikingly more apparent, more evident, and more of an enemy each time the thought enters my mind. Not just terrible because of my abandoning loyalty to Luka, but for everything else.
I feel this way when I'm alone.
I shouldn't depend like this on Carter. In a way that I'm only happy when I'm next to him. It isn't healthy. But why am I like this? That's how it's worked for the last few days. I actually can look forward to only holding his hand, just to know that it won't let me go for those instants I've fallen in love with. Very much.
The water stops in the bathroom and I know he'll be out in ten minutes. We, unfortunately, have almost done the entire affair ritual. Taken showers, slept together, walked about the city. The only things we haven't committed would be carrying on at the workplace and eating dessert off of the other. Chocolate syrup, strawberries, etc.
That doesn't make anything just though.
But because we've taken showers together, I know what he's doing at this very moment. He's patting his body dry with that towel. The white one he likes to have hanging near the shower. I know this because, well, he told me. And I've walked in on him doing before.
Next, he'll throw on the cotton robe. The one I snuggled into my first night here. I can't put it back on, for fear even greater guilt than I house now might eat me alive. But, everyday the scent draws me closer to it. I resist. Barely.
With the robe on, he'll shave. Embarrassed am I to admit that I enjoy watching a man perform this procedure. Don't ask me why. It's just the way he does it. Especially the way he does it. Carter. He does everything to my liking.
He's rummaging through the medicine cabinet now. Going for the shaving cream, I know. I smile at my pathetic little knowledge and sink lower into the couch cushion. My eyes are hardly focused on the television screen in front of me. Instead, they drifted closely to the floor.
If he was here now, I'd lazily fall into his arms. And why not? He hugs me every time. Without question. Somehow, he knows every ounce of turmoil swirled inside this mess of my mind. Somehow. And each time, he comforts me with every effort he has. Sometimes with words, with many or just one, and sometimes with just a smile. Or nothing.
One of my favorite things about him (of the many, many things) is the way he rests his face, mostly his lips, into my hair. Once again, don't even question it. I just love the way we connect. Physically, emotionally. With one wrap of his arms, and one sigh from my lips, we're together. That's the way it's been.
In a way, I need to laugh at myself. For doing this all. I'm that weak, that I can't wait a week for one man to come home. This man who hugs me, too. Kisses me, too. Makes love to me, too.
It's not a matter of competition in the sense of who is better at it. That's definitely not what I'm looking at. But Carter is better at it because it feels like he cares. He kisses me like I'm the woman he needs as much as he is the man that I need.
Luka kisses me with passion, but I can't kiss him back the same way.
Carter. He hugs me like there's no tomorrow. He hugs me like he's protecting me from every trouble, every worry that's danced in my mind since age four. He hugs me like God gave him a heart for it alone.
Luka isn't a hugger. He hugs me when I pout, as if I'm upset or might cry. Something I'd never do in front of Luka. Barely any man for that matter.
And when Carter and I are in the middle of making love, I can see him. And he can see me. And every feeling, pulse is so evident. Those feelings I thought existed only in tales, the ones that I'd long given up hope on. Stored in the back in my mind until I met Carter. Or, been with him rather. Maybe when we had become friends, possibly.
To me, Luka and I have sex because we both believe we should. Because it's part of the relationship. I don't know if he feels this way. He probably doesn't. It's a shallow way to think. But it's the way I've felt. I know it's just awful, but its true.
See. I've compared the two. I've done it too much in the last few days.
I'm starting to seriously wonder when God's going to make his appearance and tell me how I've messed up. And maybe when Satan himself makes his own delivery and invites me to Hell. Personally.
I'm in both places right now. Wow, am in Heaven when I'm with Carter.
But, boy, am I in Hell when I'm without him. Or right here, right now.
Or, when I'm with Luka.
Click. Another revelation just now.
Turning point? Maybe. I realize just how unhappy I really am with Luka. Up until now, I've said that only because I know how happy I am with Carter.
But, how could I forget the nights that I silently crept into the bathroom to cry, slipping from his grip in a bed? How many times I've let my eyes wonder to Carter's position rather than my own boyfriend's? Or how many times I've wondered what it would be like to finally be here in Carter's arms, and not Luka's?
I'm horrible, truly horrible.
But when the door swings open nicely just now, I realize how truly happy I am right now. In the midst of all this self-loathing, I love myself for an unmoral decision that I've made.
And I love him.
Oh, God.
I want to take it back. Right now.
I lied to myself. I've been with this man for, what, four days, and I tell myself I have fallen in love with him? Get a grip, Abby. Love takes time. You grow to love someone, not choose to love. I think I'd know that from experience, anyway.
I wrap my arms around my own body this time. I don't want to think about what I'm confessing to my own mind. My heart.
Wait. It's my heart that's making this confession. Intelligence doesn't produce love in any way. It doesn't work that way. My heart alone is telling me this.
When I tell myself that I love him, I want to look at the clock and document the exact time I've figured it out. But I can't let Abby Lockhart go that far. She has boundaries, I say to my mind. Or rather, my heart again.
"What are you thinking about?" I was right. The soft robe is sitting on his shoulders. He's shaven, and his feet are bare. He's raw, but clean before me. I get a feeling that this is the quintessential opposite of all of my feelings.
But, it is probably the synonymous pair to my feelings.
Please, tell me this is not happening to me.
You! "Nothing." My eyes drift, more dart, away from him and fall to the ground. The floor makes soft noises as he comes near me and sits down aside my smaller body on the couch.
Don't act like you don't want him near you, I say to myself. Don't act like you want to reject him.
I'd be stupid to say that I don't. In one swift movement, I want to pick him up and tell him how everything he's done has mad the biggest difference in my life. How he's so perfect in every view. In every law. I want to explain to him that he makes me complete.
And that I love him.
Stop it, Abby!
I tell myself that I can't love him, my only excuse being that it's too fast. As I've said, it takes time. Things grow. They don't erupt like this.
He runs gentle fingers through my hair. My eyes close without noticing, and I want to just let my head fall against his hand. My life could end here, and I know it would be painless.
Though, pain would be just a minor punishment for everything I've done.
I hate myself right now. I love this man, and I hate myself.
He's so good to me. I deserve nothing of the sort. He treats me like I've always wanted to be treated and I do this to another person that I should be in love with. Not Carter. Not him.
I want to be, though.
A flash of light, if you will, slaps me in the face. It's not always about you, Abby, I tell myself. Because it isn't. Everyone has to make sacrifices. I tell myself over and over again that the world does not revolve around me.
The problem is that I've said to myself that the only reason I'm doing this is to be happy.
Well, I don't have the right to be happy. People don't do things like this. When I had the chance, I could have broken up with Luka. It would have been cruel, but it would have been more moral than doing it this way.
The night of our first kiss, I could have gone outside and told him that it was over. Than I could have ran back inside and kissed him. Cruel. Very cruel. But it doesn't get any crueler than the situation I've managed to drag myself into this time.
One that I've never been tangled in before.
He puts arms around me. Tighter than ever.
Call me crazy. Please do. Go ahead and pull a thermometer on me if you must, but I think he feels the same way. Maybe. Maybe, I said. I doubt it. But, I feel something.
Maybe he's just hugging me that tight.
And maybe that's the reason he's hugging me that tight.
