Page 24 of Wicked Destiny

The reset puts us back to where things were before the orgasms. Casual, friendly, fun age-appropriate texts. From a distance, we face-timed for our weekly meetings. Things seem fine so I’m crossing my fingers we’ve successfully put the genie back in the bottle.

Bottom line: I don’t want to hurt Elodie, she’s amazing. Special. One of a kind. My desire for her is the strongest I’ve felt since I pursued Yolanda.

If I were thirty years younger, I’d do anything to be her man.

But, I’m not. In less than an hour, I’m gonna say goodbye to her forever and mean it.

Today, we’re back in the classroom on our last day. Elodie and I are the final team to present our biographies to the group.

I go first and do well. I’m a frontman, after all. Elodie even tears up a bit. Hopefully, she’s happy with my performance, it’s all I really want at this point.

When she stands and begins her own presentation, I realize I’ve got this situation so completely backward, it’s not even funny.

Her biography of me is nowhere near any version I’ve heard about myself. No wild hair. Leather pants. Overdose count. Tidy redemption. Martyr widower.

She skips all of it.

“The story you’ve all heard about Beau Bixby is a modern-day fairy tale.” Elodie is steady, authoritative. “Bad boy meets good woman who saves him, rides off into the sunset, loses his savior to cancer. It’s a good tale, but it’s also a lie, or at least the easy half of one. The truth is Beau is a survivor. He continuously puts himself last, one unglamorous morning at a time. This isn’t a criticism. Doing right by everyone around him fills his cup. Whether it’s his family, his bandmates, and even working with me. Selflessness is his M.O. and nobody ever asks what it costs him.”

My heart thunders. I go still in my chair.

“He’ll hand you the reformed part of his history like it’s finished. Past tense. Something that happened to him in the nineties. He’ll never admit, even to himself, the old urges aren’t finished. But, Beau gets up every single day and chooses what he believes is ‘doing the right thing’ again and again. It’s not a redemption. It’s discipline. What I believe is… he’s tired of being good.”

Elodie’s recounting the conversation from the study room I told her to leave out.

Fuck me, she made it her thesis.

She talks about the wall of photographs I can’t bear to take down, because it would mean deciding who I am without the one woman who knew every worst thing about me and stayed. How I’ve been famous my whole adult life and miss being wanted by someone who’s read the whole catalog, top to bottom, and picks him anyway.

“Beau thinks he received a one-time gift.” Elodie’s voice wavers with a small crack she covers fast. “He thinks he used up his luck and he’s wrong. He can’t it see from where he’s standing, but I’m convinced he’s not meant to walk through life alone. He has too much to give.”

She fixes her eyes on her tablet when she reads it.

Not at me. She’s too smart to look at me.

It all hits at once. I can’t let this sweet girl go.

No one but Yolanda has ever known the real me except, of course, Elodie. She sees past the tragedy and my checkbook into my soul. I dig my thumbnail into my palm to keep my composure in a room full of undergrads.

Elodie reads the last line, something about the best song I’ll ever write is in front of me and she sits. For a second the room is dead silent.

Then the whole class is on its feet. Even Halvorsen is clapping wildly. Elodie goes red to her ears and stares at her shoes and does not, will not, look at me.

Eventually our classmates file out in a knot of noise, half of them stopping to tell her it was incredible. The other half asking me to sign this or that. Halverson congratulates her on a job well done. Elodie nods and thanks them until the two of us remain in a sea of empty chairs and a buzzing overhead light.

When she glances at me at last, Elodie braces. Like she’s unsure of anything when it comes to me.

Her reaction lands like a fist.

I did this.

All my careful distance and altruistic “I know what’s best” bullshit is noble fucking garbage. The woman in front of me, who has proven she knows me better than I know myself, doesn’t even know if I’m glad to see her.

Fuck.

I vowed to keep my hands to myself so I’d stop hurting her.

Now I realize, I’ve only hurt her worse.