Messy by Choice

Mess 24 (Lenox)

I am a sucker, but I am also proactive. And when I re-downloaded tinder and got a date, it was purely because I needed to distract a broken heart.

And after the first date with no chemistry was a disaster, I tried out a couple more. They all sucked compared to the way I could banter with Ally. I never even really considered a girl's humor when thinking about my attraction to her, but now that's all I've been thinking about. The way these girls didn't laugh at my oddball jokes, or strike a good come back even when I teed up the perfect set up. Ally would have nailed the comeback, probably in a way I could never predict that would have me genuinely hunched over laughing. I am not nailing this whole moving on thing even after two weeks. The girl I'm with now is my what? Fourth date?

I took her out to dinner. A nice dinner at a nice expensive restaurant that Ally would have never let me take her too. I'd have to manipulate and coax her here in disguise of some game, but once here she'd order something and lean into my flirtations and sweet gestures and smile and laugh me through food that had never tasted better then when eaten in her company.

She'd have me dumb in love with her all over a smile. And then she would backtrack so hard I would obsess about where I went wrong for days until I had a new scheme to try out on her. But my schemes ran out with my patience when she showed me, she'd never take me seriously. And still, I want her. But I couldn't stomach lying to myself that I have some part of her under pretentious and delusional games. I want something real with her. I would never get it. I have to accept that and should probably feign some kind of interest in the girl here and now who actually seems like she wants to be here with me.

This girl was pretty, long legged, and seemingly stable. And not at all catching my attention as she goes on about something she does for a living. I can't even pretend to pay attention. I think it's actually what's attracting her more to me. The way I don't really give two shits to try with her. It's what Ally's been wanting from me, and with that thought in mind, I want to try something out.

"Would you come back to my place so I can fuck you," I more tell her than ask.

Her brown eyes open wide and she looks fauxly demure when she smiles and says sure.

I'm almost disappointed she agreed to it. I call for the check.

I try kissing her in the elevator and then in my hallway. To see if that spark I had with Ally when we were in semi risk of exposure was a result of a latent public sex kink and not an infatuation with her. It wasn't. There's no thrill of this if it's not with Ally. I take the girl inside and don't worry at all about being gentle or caring, or thinking of how she feels. That was what Ally wanted anyways. She wanted me to fuck her like how I was about to fuck this girl right now. Emotionless. Mechanically. I could give this girl what Ally wanted, so why not Ally? Why did I have to want to give her so much? Why couldn't I just have been happy with the little of her she was letting me have? I'm so distracted with questioning myself I neglect to notice my date pulling down my pants.

She starts sucking my dick when I'm not hard and can get me there well enough. The only thing that keeps me up though is imaging Ally naked and smiling up at me like I just said something hilarious. I go for a condom, and she lays back as she watches me.

"You don't have much to say, do you?" Long Legs suddenly asks me.

"I-I," I stutter over saying. "What?"

"You're just a pretty quiet guy," she clarifies.

I'm not quiet. People have mistakenly called me quiet all my life. I wasn't. I do talk a lot but only with people who hold my interest and keep up with my humor. Basically, only with Ally. I don't even think I get along that seamlessly with any of my guy friends.

"I'm calling you an Uber," I tell her, shutting myself in my bathroom while she tries to yell after me.

I splash cold water over my face. I don't come out of the bathroom until I get the notification that the Uber is two minutes away. Then, I walk Long Legs down to my building's main entrance and hand her off to Carlos in his red Corolla.

I'm so tired. Emotionally and physically from so much lost sleep over Ally that I think I'm hallucinating because that isn't Ally standing outside my apartment building in a Hermonie Granger costume. It has to be a hallucination because she didn't just see me at the ripe hour of midnight send home this girl. And I'm not watching her start to backtrack away like she's about to bolt.

"Ally?" I call out, testing if she's really even there. Ally fidgets in place and seems real. And she seems really unsure of herself, but Ally's never that way. Not anytime she's with me at least. It makes me concerned, even when I should be mad. "What are you doing here?" I ask her gently.

"I'm," she begins to say before pausing. "Thinking that I actually don't have anything to apologize for anymore." She turns to leave.

"Bullshit," I say, catching her arm.

"Bullshit?" Ally repeats, turning on her heels to spew her angered disbelief into my face. "What was that then?"

"That was me dealing with the fallout of your bullshit," I say, without apology.

"Jesus, Lenox!" Ally throws up her hands, one of which is holding a wand, up in the air. "I thought I'd come here so we could get some even ground! Maybe if you understood my side better you wouldn't be so petty and mad but I didn't need to worry about you after all because if you're already moving on so soon then you didn't have strong feelings in the first place!"

"And why do you worry about my feelings?" I ask, stepping closer. "Why do you care about me at all?"

She stands silent and doesn't respond.

"Truth, Ally," I say. "Our game never finished. Why do you care anything at all about me if all I am is a good fuck to have on hand from time to time?"

Ally is trying to hide her face in her stripped red and gold scarf. "I don't want to play this game anymore."

"Come on, Ally!" I'm beyond exasperated as my hand pulls at my hair and then down my neck. "It was never a game. You just had to make it one so you could call it quits whenever you got scared of losing yourself. But you already lost yourself, haven't you?"

"No!" she says, adamant and angry. In denial. "I didn't."

"You did," I say with the conviction of speaking the truth. "Maybe not to me but you've lost something in you, Ally. You had too with how you've come back here to mess with me like this. To make this, to make me a joke."

"I wasn't doing that!"

"You're in a costume!"

That seems to shut her up.

Her lips close. She has nothing to reply with even when I give her more than enough time to respond. I still have so much more to say.

"Those abysses that you're so afraid of, well while you're trying so hard to stay away from them you're not seeing how you're becoming one yourself. And anyone stupid enough to want to get near you loses everything when trying to give you something that I think you secretly want too."

Ally flinches back like I'm an ember from a fire she happened to close too. Her face is contorting in an emotion she's never shown me before. A lividness like I have no right to say what I did. Her anger might be a sign that some part of her believes I'm right. Her ego won't let her believe that and she leaves.

Why does it take everything I have not to hug her to me and beg her to stay? Why and how can she just leave so easily? I know the answer. It's me. She can leave because it's not hard for her to leave me. I need to know my place better. I do now.