If Never Again…
Erin lay naked in the middle of her floor, soaking up the semi-darkness of her room. The only light came from a single red candle placed on the altar. Erin looked at it and glared. There should have been three. Erin likes to do everything in threes these days.
Erin wanted something to happen so badly - anything to suggest that the spirits she had called were currently occupying the same space as she and not leaving her alone with her errant thoughts and emotions. She could see them if she closed her eyes, the two men and the woman, her dark warriors, ready to take up the sword and fight for her whether it be on this plane or the next, but tonight she really needed something she could feel. She needed someone, but she didn’t even know who that would be yet.
Erin had only fallen in love once, and though it was not that ill-fated romance which presently engaged her attention, Erin’s focus was definitely on that subject tonight. Erin felt like she needed someone, anyone, just to remind her that she could feel. But there wasn’t really anyone to be thinking of, and she had no aspiring hopes for the near future –no one she could name, no one she could hope to have any sort of a connection with. Erin went over the depressingly short list of her recent infatuations and couldn’t find anything about them that would have made her feel better if they were with her that night.
Erin was rather fond of flinging herself up against brick walls, metaphorically speaking, whether the obstacle standing in her way was presented in the form of latent homosexuality or even a desire for someone else, Erin was bound to try, if only for the sake of saying that she had attempted something, but tonight Erin didn’t want to make the attempts. She wanted love to come to her.
Nothing is ever so easy. Nothing ever goes as planned. Yet, the spirits that she had called were watching, and they were biding their time, calculating when and in what fashion they should grant her request. In all honesty, the thing that Erin needed wasn’t another man, it was herself, functioning properly in a manner that did not require that she fling her body against the nearest stranger’s in an attempt to find something that functioned as a distraction from the depression of her daily life. Her spirits could make her happy, but only she could discover what would be best for her, which is always the way of things.
Erin arrived at her most concise conclusion regarding the matter of her emotional happiness under somewhat amusing circumstances, which is to say that she was tweaking at the time and talking to Micala, a person not known for her outstanding behavior concerning relationships. She told Micala that she had enjoyed sex with only three men in her life, maybe. Micala said that she was gay - just admit it. Erin didn’t think this, but after returning home and pondering on the statement for some time, she began to wonder.
Her last enjoyable heterosexual encounter had occurred over two years ago, and since then Erin had taken quite the number of lovers. She had also endured having a man force himself upon her and she had engaged in a rather unpleasant pornographic venture involving a character who sported the title “Dangler,” perhaps inappropriately named, considering to his inability to maintain the dangling for any noticeable amount of time.
Thinking back on these unhappy experiences, Erin wishes to never have them again, and after contemplating her sexual interactions with men in general, Erin wishes that many, if not almost all of them, had not occurred at all. She could feel bad if she allowed herself. She could feel guilt over these things, and she could be sorry that she had ever forced herself through the never-ending struggles to find something meaningful that often only ended in brief sensational encounters that rarely proved to be worth it in the long run.
All the unhappiness, all the disruption. When taken as a whole, Erin felt the desire to run from the entire thing, yet lacking that ability, she decided instead to ensure her past never be repeated by refusing to have sexual relations with a man again. Nothing would change her mind, short of someone who should prove himself worth the bother long before sex ever made an appearance in the relationship.
She could think of no one who might fit this description, save Garret, who she lusted after and always had, ever since their sole sexual encounter several years before. She didn’t think of him as the one who got away, (a special place would always be reserved in her heart for Nikki) for she had let him go, deeming him too impossible at the time. Yet when she did think of him, there was no malice, only wonder that any god should be so benevolent as to bestow the gift of one night with him on her, an unbeliever. Unlike most of the men she’d slept with, she did not wish to kill him, or erase him from memory, merely to bring him back and to relive that one night when she was completely happy, without thought of the next day or anything else, but lying in a bed with him, covered in sweat, feeling his skin against hers, hearing the bedposts crash against the wall.
These things were gone, like much of his memory, but Erin still thought of him, now and then. She pictured them together sometimes when their eyes met across a room. Did he think of her in that way? Erin could only doubt it. Yet he lay on her bed and gave her a glance that brought it all back and made her want to straddle his body then and there. Restraint being easier to harness than unleashing her desire, Erin had let the thought go, yet she continued to touch him, and he continued not to mind, and someday she knew that once again she would melt into his arms and forget the world again.
This happened last week. He let her touch him, let her lay with him, let her see most of his body again, as if she had not already committed it to memory, ready for recall at any moment. He let her lay her hand in his. He let her play with his nipple ring. What more do you need? What could he possibly say to take away the happiness of being with him?
He could say that he didn’t want to be in a relationship any time soon. Then he could turn around and ask her with concern if there was anything that he could do to help her, as she tries to hold back her tears from his sight. Not thinking of you, not anymore, but my life. How I hate it, how it will never end. You could help me right now. Don’t have sex with me. Don’t make me leave. Don’t turn away when I need you next to me.
And this she did not say, and he didn’t, just like he didn’t judge her for her drug habit, for the things she confessed to him. He may not have asked her many questions, but she knew he was listening to what she had to say. She knew that when she left his house she wouldn’t be happy again for quite some time. She was right and now he’s gone – off in Kansas somewhere, set to return no sooner than next week.
It wasn’t enough, the things she got from him. She was happy, yes, but she still didn’t know, still couldn’t make the decision between waiting for him to change his mind and solitude, perhaps forever. Such a solemn thing should never be determined in haste, and so she remained quiet and let herself wait. Another week before his decision would not make a difference. No one was going to come breaking down her door, challenging her right to remain alone. All she could do was miss him. She knew that he liked her, but would it be enough?
Erin felt heartened by the thought that her spirits had brought her to him. They accomplished everything else she asked consistently, leaving no precedent for failure now. And she felt right with Garret, she really did. She didn’t have to wonder if he liked her, she knew. She could even tell when he wanted her, practically hear the thoughts behind all the gazes that he shot her way. They had something - but what if she only hoped they did? Impossible, yet she’d gotten her hopes up so many times before, allowed herself to be consoled with the thought of probably, the phrase most likely, the concept of in the future, which she hated most of all.
In the future, she and Garret would have sex, again. Erin wasn’t going to start it, but if he should want it, at any time, there she was. Having already given herself to him once, there remained no need to withhold anything from him now. But if he wanted her to take him, then they would both have to wait. Erin wasn’t going to blow her last shot at love with a man just because she was worried that they hadn’t solidified their sexual status. They’d done it already, years ago. She would never forget him, even if she never saw him again.
Erin placed her hand against Garret’s chest and imagined white light. She wanted him safe. She wanted him happy. She wanted him to return to her. She would give him something she had only ever given one person in the past – the promise of her personal protection and loyalty. Perhaps he would use it better. Perhaps if she told him she loved him she would not constantly need to repeat it. This she would likely never do. Erin didn’t know if she could even feel love anymore, but if she could, then she would save it for him, if he wanted it, if she was ever given the chance.
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