Sunday, May 9, 2010

Chapter 16- "Run baby, run"

Why hello! So it's been a long time...but I got up early this morning and decided that today was the day. I was going to get my shit together already and update as an escape from my finals. Hope you guys like this one, I literally thought of it before I was going to bed last night and had to write the idea down on a post-it.

Enjoy!

P.S. I'm taking my last final tomorrow so hopefully I can update again tomorrow night since I actually have ideas flowing through my brain again.




I only woke up the next morning when I heard a bear-like noise rumbling in my ear. In part exhaustion and annoyance, I willed the noise to stop without me actually having to move and put an end to it myself. It was only when I noticed my head rising and falling steadily that I realized my pillow was not only moving, but also human.

Gently I picked my head up from its resting place and peered down at the individual currently snoring loudly in my bed. Memories of last night came flooding back to me including small aches all over my body as I remembered the three sex sessions we had fit in until the early hours of the morning.

I tried to move off of him because I had to go pee and needed a few minutes to myself before he woke up and had to talk about what happened. How he was sleeping with all of my body weight on him was beyond me but he hadn't complained or pushed me off of him in the middle of the night so that was automatically some brownie points for him.

In the bathroom I thought about how different he was from anyone else that I had ever slept with- especially Peter. For one, Geno was just about the lankiest man I had ever seen in my life. Tall and thin with sinewy muscles was a change from Peter who lived for the gym and had perfected what he liked to think was his GQ worthy body. Still, I couldn't complain. One thing was for sure, hockey players were so used to using their bodies all day long that the ability for control and strength carried over to other areas of their lives as well.

Now I watched him sprawled out and taking up the entirety of my bed and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do now. As if he knew that I was watching him, one of his eyes cracked open and he grinned at me sleepily.

"I like my shirt on you" he said, his voice thick with sleep. His eyes were warm and inviting as he pushed the covers back and indicated for me to get back into bed with him.

That was another thing I thought about as I moved slowly back to my full bed. He was a cuddler. I hadn't really pegged him as the type but everytime we had had sex the night before, he was always there before and after holding me tightly. Even now as he pulled me against his side and I laid my head back down on his shoulder, I wondered if he even thought about the way that he was holding me. Was this the obligatory "we slept together and I should cuddle with her" cuddle or was he holding me because he cared?

As his hand slowly rubbed my back beneath the t-shirt was wearing my body said sleep while my mind felt like it was zinging around at 100 miles per hour. Soon he was back to sleep, his snores providing the background noise for all of the thinking that I was doing.

Finally, relying on primal instinct, I pulled away from his arms and slowly climbed out of bed. He didn't even flinch as I quietly rifled through drawers and selected some running clothes. Grabbing my purse, I quietly shut the front door to my apartment behind me and quickly moved towards the elevator. I didn't leave a note because I didn't know what to say.

I just knew that I needed to drive around for a little bit and clear my head. We both needed to clear our heads out a bit.

After an hour of wandering through some no-name suburb, I broke down and called the only person in Pittsburgh that I knew would be willing (and god help me) excited to hear me spill about what had transpired between Geno and I.

"Hello?" The bubbly, slightly accented voice on the other line answered.

"Hey, Vero?" I paused collecting my nerve. "It's Ava."

"Ava! Nice to hear from you! What's up?" I heard a crashing noise in the background but I didn't bother to ask what was going on.

"Well I kind of have a problem" I started.

"What? Are you okay?" she said interrupting me instantly.

"No, no everything's fine" I said feeling slightly comforted. I may not know her super well but it was nice that she apparently cared for my well-being. "I just have a problem. Needed someone to talk to."

"Oh, okay, well what is it?"

"Actually, I'd rather explain everything in person. Are you free?"

"Now?"

I nodded even though she couldn't see me. "Yeah, I'm really sorry to impose like this."

"No, it's not a problem. Marc's driving me crazy anyway. He and some of the guys are over playing ping pong."

Something crashed and shattered in the background and I heard her groan under her breath on the phone.

"I need to get out. Where do you want to meet?"

We agreed to meet at a Panera's near her neighborhood and I grabbed a latte while I waited for her to arrive. It was after 10am now and Geno had probably woken up by now. I dreaded for my phone to start ringing and dreaded that it wouldn't at the same time.

Even though I had bolted out of fear that a relationship was happening to me too quickly, he might actually be happy that I had given him the appearance that I wanted no-strings attached. I still partly wanted no-strings attached. But at the same time I wasn't a fuck-buddy kind of girl either.

"So" Vero said surprising me and sliding into the booth seat across from me. "What's the problem?"

Now that she was here, I suddenly had no idea where to start. I felt my mouth open and close twice while she watched me in amusement.

"Can't get it out?" she joked with one perfectly shaped brow raised high on her forehead. "Can I guess?" she asked still smiling.

"Uh, sure?"  Where was this going?

"Well, I've never seen you looking so sad before" she started to tick reasons off of her fingers. "Plus, you haven't even noticed the love bites on your neck or else you would have covered them up. Which means that you were in a hurry at some point this morning."

My jaw dropped as she began to get closer and closer to the root of my problems.

"It must have something to do with Geno" she said finishing and waiting for me to answer.

"Um, yeah" I said still stupefied. Could she read minds?

"Okay, so what happened? That's about as far as I can guess."

"Well," I said taking a deep breath and staring down at my coffee cup. "Geno came over last night and we talked about Oksana" I started. Vero squealed again and I looked around not wanting anyone to overhear this coversation. Especially because of where it was going.

"I knew it!" she exclaimed loudly. "You two finally got it on" she whispered, her eyes twinkling at me brightly in excitement. She wouldn't be so excited by the end of the story.

"So how was it? Is he any good? You know what they say about thos Russ-"

"V," I stopped her caught between amusement and embarrassment. "I don't want to know what they say about the Russians, okay?"

She shrugged as if to say 'your loss' and let me continue.

"Well since you jumped ahead a bit, yeah- we slept together" I confirmed refusing to phrase it as "getting it on." It was bad enough that I had bolted this morning and I didn't need to remember last night like it was a swanky Marvin Gaye song or scene in a teen movie.

"Wait, so what's the problem then? If it was good- which I'm assuming it was- why are you here? Why aren't you at home for the encore?"

"Well that's kind of the problem" I said sheepishly. "I just kind of left this morning."

"Left?" she asked. "Left, left? As in you ran away?"

"Well, I wouldn't call it running away" I started to say but stopped when I saw the look that passed over her face. "Okay," I said blowing out a long breath. "I guess I did run away." Why deny it when it was obviously true? Hell, I was literally wearing running clothes. Instead of getting mad, Vero leaned back and prepared to listen.

"I just...I woke up and I panicked. He was so sweet and I didn't know what to do. I don't know if I'm ready for this yet."

"Wait, you ran away because you were in the arms of a man that obviously cares for you?"

When she put it like that, of course it sounded stupid. "Well not entirely-" I started to explain but realized that I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say. Was that a good or bad sign? The funny thing was, I knew that there was a reason, I just wasn't sure how to vocalize the emotions that were there.

"I'm sorry, I'm just confused here" Vero said. She wasn't mad, that much I understood, but she still made me feel ashamed. "You have an awesome guy who's been following you around for months and he's unattached. Wait, he did explain Oksana, right?"

I nodded, "Yeah, we discussed that last night, you know before."

"Okay well can I be honest?"

Wasn't she already being brutally honest with me? "Yeah, that's what I'm here for I guess."

"Okay, well why are you doing this to yourself? To him? I mean, I know your ex was terrible. And you have a right to still be hung up on that- no wait, let me finish" she said holding up a hand when I wanted to speak.
"No one doubts that you're still hurting. But honey you have another, better man lined up and waiting. Why are you questioning it so much?"

I didn't have anything to say to that. Mostly because a small part of me thought that she was right. I was a fool- an ungrateful fool who was supposed to be an adult and still ran away when things got hairy.

"If you decide that you don't want someone that appears to actually care about you and wants a relationship with you, then your instinct was right. And honey, you better run baby, run because Geno's that guy."

And with that, the conversation was over. She let me vent a little bit more but didn't lecture me again or try to convince me to go home right away. After some girl talk for another hour, she left to go home and I opted to stay.

My latte was cold by now but I couldn't get Vero's words out of my head "run, baby, run." Yeah, I did a lot of running apparently. I could own that. I was aware that I had run from New York to Pittsburgh but I wasn't going to be ashamed of that. That circumstance was different- this was just...new. My relationship with Geno could only be described as "new."

What I was currently ashamed of was the fact that I had run out on Geno this morning. To make matters worse, I had run out on him in my own apartment. In a way, I had done the walk of shame from my own bedroom and now it was time for me to suck it up and walk back into that apartment and figure out a way to explain myself to him. Since it was after 2, I knew that realistically there was no way that he would still be at my place.

As I waited in traffic, I checked my phone and saw that I had no new messages- not from Geno at least. Well, I guess that I deserved that. If that had happened to me, I probably wouldn't call someone like me either.

My hands were sweating as I pulled out my keys and slid them into the lock. He wouldn't be inside. There was no way that he was still just hanging out in my apartment. Sure enough when the door swung open, the apartment was silent with no traces of what had happened last night left behind. The only reminder I had was an unmade bed and the door to the dishwasher was still hanging open from the night before.

Nerves fluttered in my stomach as I realized what I had to do. As much as I didn't want to, I knew that I would have to go over and apologize to him.

5 comments:

  1. Yay update! This is great - Geno's so darned cute in this story. More please!

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  2. '"V," I stopped her caught between amusement and embarrassment. "I don't want to know what they say about the Russians, okay?"
    She shrugged as if to say 'your loss' and let me continue.'
    ^^This cracked me up, in the middle of a conversation that wasn't so funny. It was sad :(
    I kept thinking about how Geno must have been feeling when he woke up to Ava's empty apartment, and then maybe he hung around a bit before he left disappointingly... :(
    I'm glad that V talked to Ava and gave it to her straight. I know that Peter was horrible, but Ava has got to "unlearn" all the bad relationship things that she picked up from him. Geno is so nice, sweet, thoughtful, and ohmygoodnesswhatacuddler. If she doesn't want him... I'll talk him. Just sayin'.

    Another great chapter, Tillie! I love this story so much!!

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  3. I'm so happy that you updated, after reading The Dumbing Down of Love I was hoping you would update here too!

    She definitely needs to sort things out with Geno I can only imagine what he's thinking right now and how confused he must be.

    Good luck on your final final! ;p

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  4. thanks for the update! i loved it!
    good luck on finals! i have them all this week, too =[

    ReplyDelete