Page 34 of Make Me Forget
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Murphy
Mara trying to be sexy was an entirely different experience from Mara just being that way naturally. She stood on my doorstep in the same jeans she’d been wearing, but instead of a T-shirt, she wore a black tank top which hugged her curves with her leather jacket. She’d done something to her face, make up, but her eyes looked bigger, her lips fuller, and I stared for a full minute before I caught myself and let herin.
She stepped inside almost gingerly and lookedaround.
“Can I take your coat?” It sounded dumb even tome.
I helped her slip out of it and hung it in the coat closet and led her to thekitchen.
“Who’s at the bar?” she asked, hugging her arms around herbody.
I couldn’t stop looking at her.Snap the hell out of it, Murphy.“Penny is there. She owed me a couple closes. You haven’t met her yet. A local girl working her way through her degree at the community college in the nexttown.”
She glanced around my living room. Scarcely finished with a gray microfiber couch, a beat up rug, a tv, coffee table. I didn’t spend much time at home, so I’d never really put effort into decorating. The same could be said about the bartoo.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she joked before sitting in the edge of thecouch.
My fingers shook, and I tucked them behind my back. Dating wasn’t a new thing for me, and yet, I felt myself acting like an idiot kid with a school boy crush. “Do you want a drink?” Something safe, something I could handle without falling overmyself.
She ran her fingers through her hair, curled in a mess of loose waves, before nodding. “A drink will make thiseasier.”
“Um…I’m not sure about that answer, but I’ll get you abeer?”
Another nod and I grabbed a couple beers out of the refrigerator before sitting next to her on the couch. “Did you want to come over for a particularreason?”
She situated on the couch and shifted one knee up so she could face me. I noted she wore the same scuffed up leather boots, and something in me relaxed. “I want to havesex.”
I spit beer in a spray across my lap. “Not what I was expecting you tosay.”
While I mopped up what I could with my T-shirt, she continued. “I know why you’ve been hesitant to sleep with me. I get it, and I want to tell you why I’ve been pushing you so hard to doit.”
I sat the beer on the wood table and gave her my fullattention.
“Being with you is the only time I feel normal. I can’t even articulate this right. I’m sorry, but when you and I are together, I feel valued and validated, and l like that what I want actually matters. And by pushing you, I was chasing after thatfeeling.”
Slightly confused, but also slowly merging onto her train of thought. “So you wanted to sleep with me because I care about how youfeel?”
“Yes and no. It’s not just the care you take with me. It’s how I feel when I’m withyou.”
She ran her knuckles down her sternum. “I can’t explain it right.” Her eyes crinkled, and I could see the distress of messing something up she’d probably planned out in her mind the entire ride over. I took the beer out of her hand, sat it by mine, and pulled herin.
“You don’t have to try and explain it to me. I told you once before, you don’t have to explain yourself toanyone.”
A tremor started in her hands, and she pulled them back into her lap. “I do have to explain it, so you can understand that wanting to be with you wasn’t just about finishing what started all those years ago, or me getting some sort of peace, although that part doesn’thurt.”
“Can I ask what prompted you telling me all this rightnow?”
None of this came easily for her. And certainly not sharing things with me in such a frank discussion on my couch like normal people. She and I were not normal and never would be, but if having a talk on the couch like civilized people made her feel better, I’d play the part until I could show her what’s better, what’smore.
She twisted her hands together, seeking out the beer I moved away with her gaze, but she didn’t grab it. “I just want to be honest with you. Also, therapy opened my eyes a little today. Talking about feelings doesn’t have to involve screaming or tears. I can tell you how I feel, and your opinion and mine hold the sameweight.”
“Did you think itdidn’t?”
Whatever she’d gone through in these hospitals had changed something intrinsic in Mara. Where she’d been bold and unyielding before, now she remained hard as stone, because she feared letting any of what she locked inside out. Years of people telling her she didn’t know what she was talking about, or that her opinions didn’t matter, had led her to believe it to betrue.
I gripped her still wringing hands between my palms. “Your opinion and your feelings will always matter tome.”
