I was NOT having a good day. Or week. Ever since Milena left me in the middle of the night, and then basically cut off all contact I was on edge. It didn’t help that I had a million and one things to do at work, which usually helped get my mind off things but fuck was it hard to get her out of my mind. I was worried hooking up would be a mistake, but the joke was on me since she was the only one to seem to think it was. Me? I wanted her more every day I didn’t hear from her. Part of me thought that was the Alere trait of wanting what you can’t have….but Ava had that with Corey and she still loved him now. Hell she loved him more every time she saw him and it was obvious to anyone.
“Ames!” I was walking past Corey’s office when I heard him shout out my name. I backtracked and grinned at my brother in law.
“What’s up?” he took off his glasses and looked up at me, gesturing me in. Corey had always been the most father I’d ever had and for some reason I felt like I was about to get lectured for something.
“Where the hell have you been for the last few months?” he shook his head and I blinked.
“What are you talking about?” Corey shrugged, his face more lined then it was when I was a kid but still had the same effect on all the models much to my sisters chagrin. Not that he even noticed anyone but her.
“I'm saying when’s the last time you’ve said more than a hi to me? Or called your sister?” I swallowed. I realized that I had been so fixated on making sure Milena was okay after her breakup that I had even neglected my own family. God that was just so unlike me.
“Shit. I’ve been a little preoccupied….” I shook my head. “I’ll call Ava. I can come over for the family dinner this Sunday too.” Corey nodded, but his face told me there was something he wasn’t saying. “What?”
“Is it Odette?” he just out and said it. “I know you hate hearing it, and I know you think you’re in love with her but she’s bad for you-“ I held up my hand.
“It’s not Odette.” I said seriously.
“If it was you could tell me…” He trailed off and I shook my head. “I just don’t want her back in your life….in our lives…especially around Chloe…” Corey’s face looked pained and I blinked.
“She told you?” Corey nodded.
“I always knew something was wrong. I had hoped it was just a broken heart, maybe a guy cheated on her, something I could live with.” He sighed.
“It’s no one’s fault but the guy who hurt her.” Corey nodded and for a minute he actually looked his age.
“Still. And look I know that’s selfish of me, to keep you from a girl just because she might be a bad influence on my daughter…” I shook my head.
“They were bad for each other at the time.” I sighed. “I just didn’t realize it…But I swear I haven’t even spoken to Odette.” Corey blinked.
“So….” He was waiting for me to spill, I could see that he knew something….not a whole story but that something was going on. I swallowed, running my hand through my hair. I wanted to talk to someone about it. I had to. I needed a second opinion on what the hell to do.
“I slept with Milena.” I said bluntly. We both took a moment to process that information as the words hung in the air. I think I spent so much time ignoring how I felt about her and then that night was so fucking fantastic I almost felt like I made it up.
“Milena Schon?” Corey asked after a minute or two of silence. I nodded.
“Yup.”
“What is it about my family and the Schon girls?!” I widened my eyes at Corey and then started laughing.
“That’s what you’re taking out of this?!” he shook his head.
“So what now?” he asked, ignoring my question and getting back to business, something that he was good at.
“I don’t know. She left in the middle of the night and left a note saying she just wanted to be friends.” Corey winced.
“Ouch…..though that doesn’t sound like her…” I set my head in my hands and shook my head.
“I told her it first. I told her it could only be one night, that I didn’t have anything else to give her.”
“You what?!” Corey took one of those stress balls sitting on his desk and chucked it at me.
“I know I should have just kept my damn hands to myself but I couldn’t resist her anymore.”
“Couldn’t resist who anymore?” I turned to see my sister standing in the door way before coming over to sit on Corey’s lap, kissing him quickly.
“He slept with Milena.”
“Dude!” I shook my head but Ava lit up. Seriously, her whole face got brighter.
“FINALLY!” she clapped and both Corey and I looked at her with shocked expressions. “Oh come on you’ve had a thing for her for years what took you so long get together?” I shook my head.
“We’re not together. She wants to be friends.” Ava pouted but then narrowed her eyes on me.
“Let me guess, you fed her some bullshit about not being able to be enough for her?” I blinked.
“How do you actually know everything?!” Corey beamed at his wife as I shook my head. “But it wasn’t bullshit Ava.”
“I'm sure it was instead.” She replied, “You think that because of Odette you’re never going to be able to be with someone again when really you’re just scared to fall in love and have it kick you in the ass.”
“I'm not scared to fall in love.” I growled. Ava blinked.
“You are.” She nodded. “And you think you’re not worth it.” I sighed and ran my hand through my hair because yes, I didn’t think I was worth it, but that was because I actually wasn’t. “You didn’t make Odette into an addict Ames.” Ava said quietly, softly, the nicest she’d ever been while saying my exes’ name.
“How do you know?” she gave me a look, not a pitying one but the one I came to recognize as almost mothering. No definitely. Corey and Ava were more parents to me than my parents. And I was lucky for that.
“Because she chose that herself. Tell me something Ames, why did you fall in love with Odette?” I swallowed, blinking back at my sister as I tried to think of a good answer.
“She just….we fit well together.” I said but even when I was saying it I knew it wasn’t true. She rose her brows at me, but didn’t call my bullshit. Yet at least.
“Okay, so why do you like Milena?” That one was easy.
“She’s smart, she’s sexy and she knows it but she doesn’t flaunt it, she always calls me out on my shit.” I smirked. “She likes being rescued but would never admit it.”
“Oh love.” Corey smirked and I blinked at him.
“I'm not in love with Milena.” He rose a brow.
“No? Tell me if this sounds familiar, you think its an accomplishment, when you don’t think about her, you obsess over everything that ever happened between you, you would do anything to make her smile but also push her away because it’s too damn hard to keep your hands off her when she’s around…”
“It sounds familiar to me.” Ava said grinning down at her husband.
“Yeah?” he smirked. “The hard to keep your hands off of me part?” I groaned.
“Please don’t start.” I shook my head. Ava turned to me and set her lips.
“Ames, you’re my baby brother, I love you and you’re old enough to make your own damn decisions, so please choose the right one so I don’t have to kick your ass.” She added with a small grin as I sighed.
“I have to tell her.” I nodded. I still wasn’t convinced I was in love. That was ridiculous. But I did know I had to be with her. I wanted her for more than a night, for more than a few nights. I wanted her to be mine and mine only. Damn why did it take me so long to figure it out?
*****
I got to Mila’s apartment complex just as her neighbor was getting home and I snuck in with her. She smiled at me and I grinned back. Honestly she was just my type but I had only had one woman on my mind. Honestly I’d only had one woman on my mind for a long time. I still wasn’t certain I was even close to good enough for her. But I was pretty sure that I was selfish enough not to care anymore. I just wanted her. I knocked on her door when I got out of the elevator and made my way to her door, knocking eagerly as soon as I got there.
“ Milena!” I shouted. “It’s Ames.” I heard some kind of commotion and then she called out from inside.
“Just a second!” I waited for what felt like forever, trying to think about what I was going to say to her when the door opened. Mila looked so fuc.king gorgeous it knocked the wind out of me. She was wearing a short satin robe and her hair was messy, framing her face in soft curls. Honestly she looked like she did the last time I saw her, right before falling asleep in my arms. “Ames…what are you doing here?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“I need to talk to you…”
"Talk?" she raised an eyebrow like she had no idea what I was talking about as she tied her robe tighter while I just wished she’d let it hang open.
"You left with only a note and you haven't been returning my calls." I pointed out and she looked at the floor.
"I'm sorry..."
"Did I do something wrong Milena?" I asked, stepping closer as she stepped back. She smelled like….alcohol and something spicy that wasn’t her at all.
“Of course not!"
"Then why have you been avoiding me?" I kept looking into her eyes but she was avoiding mine like the plague.
"I didn't want to put you in an awkward position Ames..."
"Awkward?"
"I know that you just wanted one night Ames. I spared you from having to say it to my face…"
"I wanted to talk in the morning."
"Ames, you don't have to be the 'good guy' about this… I understand that one night is all you wanted." She said as she leaned against the door frame. If only. If only I could be that guy.
"I'm not trying to be the 'good guy' any more Mila… I wanted to tell you that I want that night, every night." Mila finally looked up into my eyes.
"What?"
"Being the good guy would have entailed me to resist you no matter what and let you find the good guy you deserve, but I'm selfish… and I want you." I cupped her chin and angled her body to me.
"Ames…" she breathed out as I leaned down to kiss her.
"So you're the lad Milena's heartbroken over." I froze in my place when I heard a male voice coming from inside her place. I pushed past her into the living room as a guy stumbled out of Mila’s fucking bedroom in just a pair of boxers. “You should feel very special man." I narrowed my eyes on him, keeping my temper in check.
"Why?"
"I would be if a beautiful girl like Mila called out my name while sleeping with someone else…" the guy shrugged and I felt my blood run cold. Mila slept with this guy? I looked at Mila, her body in the robe, her hair tousled and smelling like…..like cologne. I snapped back at the guy.
“Who the fuck are you?” I growled looking him up and down and putting together the pieces in my head.
“Apparently just a piece of ass she used to get over you. Didn’t seem to work.” He grinned messily and I was in his face a second later.
“Get your clothes, and get the hell out of Milena’s apartment. Now.” I said through clenched teeth. He just blinked at me but I was about three seconds from pounding him into the wall. “NOW!” I yelled and he jumped grabbing his clothes from around the floor and hobbling into them until he was out the door. I tried. I tried so hard to keep my temper in check as I turned to Mila.
“Ames…” I held my hand up and shook my head, walking towards the door myself but she blocked me. “Ames please let me explain!”
“Explain?! Explain.” I asked my mind racing with images of that idiot touching my Mila. It made me so fucking angry I could barely see straight, much less thing. “Go ahead Milena. Try.”
“I…..I’m so sorry.” She shook her head as tears ran down her face.
“Good explanation.”
“I thought you didn’t want me!!! You told me! You said it would just be that night Ames and I left because if I heard you say it the next morning in person after that night…..it would have broken me….”
“I wasn’t going to tell you that. The second I kissed you it was over for me.” I shook my head.
“It’s been over for me since way before then.” She admitted in a whisper.
“See I might believe that a little more if you weren’t jumping into bed with any loser who walked along right after leaving me. That doesn’t sound like you want to be with me Milena it sounds like you were hard up and I was the closest man to you.”
“That’s not-“
“Do you have ANY idea what it’s doing to me thinking about that idiot with you?!?! You fucking smell like him Mila!!!!”
"I wanted to forget about you…" she said quietly making me hate the situation more because the last thing I wanted was to forget about her.
"Look what good that did." I spat out at her.
"Ames, I'm sorry!"
"No! You don't get to say that to me. I tried to call you. I tried to contact you! You've been ignoring me. What else am I supposed to believe?"
"I have been rejected by guys and I've been fine. Heartbroken at first, but fine. If you did the same to me I don't think I would be able to bounce back!" she cried. "I've loved you since god knows when Ames… hearing that it was just one night would have broken my heart." I told him.
"And you don't think it hurts to see you like this? After having sex with that piece of shit! He's disgusting." I growled.
"I know Ames! I know that! God, Callum was an absolute piece of sh.it when we dated and I knew that when he was kissing me at the bar! I just wanted to forget about you! But I couldn't even do that…" she said, clearly ashamed, "All I could do was think about you."
"Good job." I couldn’t handle this. I tried to walk past her, but he stopped me once more.
"Ames, I'm not perfect." she cried out, "I'm human and I make mistakes and I'm the first person to admit it… I'm flawed. I love too much and run away scared."
"Why couldn't you just have stayed with me?" I asked her desperately, scrubbing my hands over my face, "Why couldn't you just wait til the morning?"
"I made a mistake." she whispered, "I don't know what else to do but say I'm sorry…"
“You could have at least answered the damn phone!!!!” I ran my hands through my hair. I hated this. Of all the damn situations I’d thought of having with Mila? This sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
“I told you….I was so scared…”
“So you thought giving it up to the next guy who walked by would be the next best idea?!!?”
“Ames.”
“I never thought of you as easy.” I spat at her and she blinked back as if I’d just slapped her.
“Well then maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” She snapped, no longer playing innocent little girl, her eyes cold instead of sad.
“Who does?! You never let anyone!”
“Says the man who’s spent the last five years not letting anyone know him!” She yelled back.
“What do you want from me?!” I took a few steps closer.
“Nothing.” She folded her arms over her chest and looked away.
“You’re a liar.”
“I’ve just come to grips with reality that’s all. Some people don’t get what they want.”
“Maybe it’s because those people fu.ck up their own lives!!!” I ran my hands through my hair again, I felt…..I felt like I’d been cheated on. But I knew that wasn’t fair, we weren’t together, one night didn’t make us a couple but while she was in bed with another man not less than a few weeks after? I hadn’t even looked at another woman…..Clearly her feelings weren’t the same.
“Yeah I'm great at that.”
“Was I not enough?” I asked, needing to know, wanting to understand what was happening because I honestly didn’t. That night. I thought we had both felt what I had felt.
"Ames... You were more than enough." She whispered, her eyes softening slightly.
"Then why did you run to that sleaze bag?!" I yelled once more.
"People do stupid things. I have no way of justifying what I did. It was stupid and a shitty move on my part Ames. I was upset and stupidly thought sex with a douche would help. It made me feel worse... But not worse than you calling me easy!" I saw her temper flaring but I wasn’t taking that, it wasn’t me who did anything wrong here! "You can sleep with many different women but when I sleep with a guy I slept years ago I'm pretty much a whore!"
"I didn't call you a whore Mila!" Iinterjected.
"You just called me easy. Would you like me to point out your flaws Ames?!"
"You're so much better than that guy though Mila! You're perfect and you deserve better!"
"I do deserve a lot better than Callum but I'm not perfect Ames! You need to stop putting me on a pedestal. As you see tonight I do some pretty stupid things..."
"You're perfect to me Mila..." I trailed off, knowing it sounded ridiculous, she wasn’t perfect, no one was perfect and yeah I put her on a pedestal as the woman I could never have but it was one thing to sleep with an asshole, it was another thing to do it right after sleeping with me.
"Then how is anybody going to be good enough for me Ames? I have loved you since I was 18 when you barely noticed me... It was wishful thinking to think that you'd ever look at me the way I looked at you."
“You think I barely noticed you?” I asked, shaking my head as she looked at the ground.
“Why would you?”
“When I came back from school I saw you at Ava’s dinner party. You were wearing a short little yellow sundress and shoes that had ties around your ankles. I couldn’t believe the little girl I’d grown up with turned into such a gorgeous woman.”
“Ames…”
“It was all I could do to not think of you the way any 23 year old guy thinks of a girl. It didn’t work either. And it wasn’t just how damn well you grew up. I liked the way you smiled, your sexy little bedroom voice.” I smirked and she bit her lip, blushing.
“I do not have a bedroom voice.” She blushed deeper and I laughed.
“The way you blush….So effortlessly sexy while still remaining totally you. Maybe I never got to know you as well as I could but that’s because I knew even then if I let myself know you I would never get over you.”
“That’s just because you didn’t know me. Didn’t know how I was. How I still am. I'm a mess.”
“You’re preaching to the choir Mila.” I admitted.
“I don’t know where we go from here….” She looked at the floor. I swallowed thickly.
“I don’t think I can get over what happened tonight…I can’t even look at you without seeing someone else touching you….”
"Then you're just as bad as those other guys…" Mila trailed off, making no sense. "You're hypocrite Ames."
"Because I sleep around with jerks?" I raised a brow.
"Because you sleep around in general. Were you in love with any of those girls you've been distracting yourself with? I'm sure they weren't nobel prize winners." She crossed her arms over her chest and I wondered if she was pissed off or just jealous.
"It's not the same-"
"Because of some stupid double standard Ames. I've seen some of the girls who've been with! You think I can't imagine you with those girls?" she asked.
"It's still not the same."
"Because you're being selfish and you think that if I'm going to have been with you, I should have been pure. I have never once questioned your sexual or love history!" she ran her hands through her hair but she wasn’t getting it! I didn’t care who she’d been with before me. JUST AFTER ME!!! "Ames, I loved you purely based on you… I didn't judge you on your past relationships, especially Odette. You proposed to a crazy girl who had a drug habit. I got proposed to by a cheating guy who got someone else pregnant. What's the difference?”
“The difference is you were in my bed last week! In my arms! I was holding you, kissing you, and you turned around and gave that to someone else!”
“Ames….”
“I'm sorry.” I shook my head. “I can’t….” I stood up and walked to the door.
“So what….we’re just nothing anymore?”
“What do you want me to do Mila? Say everything’s okay? Hop into your bed where you were just with another man? I can’t DO that!”
“I don’t expect that I just….Ames I was drunk! I wasn’t thinking clearly! I said your name in bed with him!!” I glared at her. She was still so damn beautiful it killed me….but I also felt severely betrayed.
“You could have been with me instead.” I said seriously. “Next time you want to be with a guy? Maybe you should answer when he calls.” And then I was walking away…..and this time no one stopped me.
