Tarnished Love by Bianca Borell

 

 

CHLOE

 

Three months. I need a break. This is what I tell my agent on the phone, because that woman would not let it slide until I’d gave in. In the airport with the buzz of people rushing from one end to the other, luggage rolling by, I exit and breathe a windy, rainy London in. I missed my home.

“When are you coming back?”

“Two weeks.” I haven’t seen my best friend in so long, I miss her, and Damien, but at least I met up with him the two times he flew in to see me. We’re the couple of the moment according to the tabloids. I cringe at that, even though for just a few moments, I wished we’d be for real. I wonder what the prick is doing. Stop, don’t go there, Chloe. A voice developed post Filip, the one that reminds me not to give in, but I can’t help it.

I snap out of it and smile when I spot Damien’s car. He steps out, and I jump in his arms. It’s good to be home. His hands come around me, everything is going to be okay. I have him. The click of cameras drags me out of it, and we rush to his car. Once we’re inside, his tired eyes find mine, and he drags a hand through his sleek hair.

“Damien.”

“I am with Monica.” My hearts cracks, and I blink. This can’t be.

“You’re what?”

“Not for real.”

“It’s her cousin. You can’t return from that.”

“I don’t want to. We have to come to an end.”

“Damien, don’t, let’s keep this sham going just the two of us, everyone already believes it.” Does Filip know? He can’t accept this, this is madness.

“Please, stop this, let her be. I’ll do anything, I just want you happy, this doesn’t make you happy. She doesn’t react, Damien . . .”

“I am tired,” This is all he says, and it’s for me to fill in the blanks, I miss her, why doesn’t she love me, why did she choose him?

“Why Monica, Damien? That woman . . .” There is something about her, but what?

“She’s loyal.”

“I am loyal too.”

“She loves me.”

“I love you too.”

“She’s in love with me.” I get his reasoning and my head drops.

“This is your last attempt.”

He winces, everything revolving around Bria.

“I wonder if she ever deserved the way you love her.” His fingers tighten around the wheel as we speed away.

“It doesn’t matter, it is what it is.”

 

***

 

I reach home, Anabelle jumps up, and we squeal as we hug.

“You must have missed me,” she counters through a smile when I don’t let her go, but this dreadful feeling of finality, of something shifting in the air, paralyzes me.

“Can’t I miss my best friend?”

She offers me a goofy smile, grabs my hand, and we sit on the couch, while she peruses my phone. This is my life in pictures, a fake life. I throw my head back and groan. I want just one thing to be mine that isn’t fake, that isn’t half-truths or half lies.

“How long are you home?”

I shrug, until my manager comes bursting through the doors. I am on top, she says, and I should take advantage of it.

“How’s the career ladder climbing going?”

“I am up for a promotion.”

“You’ll get it. You deserve it.” She turns fully to me, her face transforming to serious.

“I saw the magazines.”

“Don’t believe them.”

“What I want to say is, you should stop. I hoped with you getting along so well, you’d end up together. But with every picture I notice how unhappy you are and how on edge he is.”

“I . . .”

“Chloe, you deserve someone that looks at you like there never was and never will be someone to top you. He doesn’t.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“What happened with the guy you mentioned, the one I never got the chance to meet, but whose stuff is still here?”

I shut my eyes, sighing.

“I guess I am not good enough.”

“Chloe, stop letting them have the upper hand. They are shitty people, but you have to know your worth for yourself.”

“What about you, still the old rabbit vibrator?” Her mouth opens, and I crack a smile as she throws a pillow at my head while I catch it and run to her room.

“Where do you keep it?”

“Get out and buy one of your own.”

“I might.”

“More orgasms, less headache.”

We both end up nodding.

 

***

 

“It’s Friday. Let’s get out.”

“A club?” Damien counters, still focused on his laptop.

“I am bored.”

“And since when am I your get-you-out-of-it guy?” I pout and slump on the couch in his office.

“You should be, you’re my best friend.”

“Fine.”

I smile and dig into my salad. Monica slips inside Damien’s office, pure hatred flickering in her eyes when she finds me. Her animosity didn’t diminish, on the contrary, and I roll my eyes every time Damien makes excuses for her saying that she’s just protective. She places some reports on his desk, eyeing him like she would worship him. It’s so disturbing that I rush up, kiss him on the cheek and say, “See you later.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

I stop at the ladies’ room when I leave Damien’s office, and when I exit the bathroom, I crash into Monica. “Sorry.”

She stomps on her foot, her black bob cutting into her shoulders.

“Chloe, step back.” I dart to move past her when she blocks my attempt.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Damien is mine.” She gives me a once-over and looks at me with derision in her dark eyes.

“He’ll see through you.”

“We’ll see.”

I storm past her, realizing if he goes along with the plan, he’ll never get rid of her. In the bar on the corner, I order a drink because I can. Perusing the internet, I scroll through various shapes of vibrators, pink and looking like an elephant. I zoom and scowl at the image. I want something to make me come, not get into zoophilia. My thumb halts when I sense someone watching me. I close my eyes and inhale his unmistakable scent. No, this must be a joke. One, two.

“Hmm, with vibration. In need of a few orgasms?” He smirks, and I jerk my head up. Our eyes lock, months, months of trying to forget him, of telling myself it’s just a phase, it will go away. And then he’s here wearing the same expression he wore after sharing intimate moments, full of vulnerability, of something deep and warm.

“Wanna help me pick one?” He unbuttons his jacket, sits on the stool next to me, and I forget everything else.

“My pleasure.” What? I didn’t expect him to take this seriously.

“No way, come on, no one has this dick, and you’re tight.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He’s so funny, staring at the vibrators, making grimaces.

“I think you’re better off with me.” He deadpans, placing my phone on the counter.

“You come with heartache,” I say, and he huffs. “So, what about you?”

I could slap myself, why did I ask?

“My palm has some splits from all the hand jobs.” I lose the battle of suppressing my laughter, and it rolls out of me.

“Yes, right.” He shows me his palms as if I can notice the difference, there isn’t one, but he loves to get his point across.

“See.”

“Oh, what can we do about that?” It’s a rhetorical question, but there is nothing rhetorical about the way we dart to his car, stumble into his house, and crash on his bed.

“I want you. Fuck how I want you.” The desperation mingles in his words as he rips his boxers off and undresses me in two swift movements. My back hits the mattress while he rushes on top of me. His lips slam on me while his tongue seeks entrance and wipes my smile from my face. How can it be that he has this power over me?

He thrusts inside me, and I moan in his mouth, the complete fullness has me rolling my eyes to the back of my head.

“This is so fucking good. I love this pussy.”

I love . . . but I shut my brain off, just to feel him, us, a little more in this dream. My orgasm hits me, a steady wave, crashing on me after it reached the highest peak. He spills inside of me, and our eyes fix on the other. It would have been so bloody easy if we were casual.

His hands come around me while I trace a pattern on his chest. I missed him and the intimacy, the perfect silence to drown out the loudness of my insides. My insides turn weak with the need for him. Everything in me craves everything of him.

“I was with no one else,” he offers, and relief and something resembling a sparkle of joy mix.

“We never use condoms.”

“Have you?”

I shake my head. Every time I forced myself to look at someone, his face appeared.

“We shouldn’t have done this,” I whisper.

“Still thinking we have a say, Chloe?” His voice rings with a mix of irritation and defeat, as if he can’t believe it either, that it’s beyond him. I try to wiggle out of his arms, this intimacy is just a lie, neither of us wants this. We only want the high the other induces, but for the low, we want to be alone. His hands burrow into my back, caging me in.

“Don’t go,” he pleads, warm, seductive, lulling me into a false sense of security.

“This was a mistake.”

“No, Chloe, the only mistake is that it didn’t happen sooner.”

“I didn’t make up my mind.”

“You haven’t slept with anyone else either.”

“It’s hard when everyone believes I am with Damien.”

“How’s that going for you?” His eyes burn me with anger.

“I don’t get you, Filip.”

“Yes, I don’t get me either.”

Should I tell him what Damien plans? How did I end up between them, between two men, one trying to save her, the other to punish her? Not my mess, not my family.

“You’re here.”

“Yes.”

“It hasn’t been six months.”

He smirks at me, and I don’t pretend not to have remembered what he told me. I remember everything, but mostly that he said I am not a priority.

“I have to present the new campaign. Damien has to approve it.”

“But if Bria already approved it?”

“He loves to make her squirm, don’t you get it by now, he loves this control?”

“He has none with her.”

“Yes, and he’s the only one not to see it.”

“Love is blind.”

“And make us do stupid things too.”

Silence, because we can’t pretend this is casual, it’s not.

“I should go.”

“You should.” He doesn’t stop me this time, and I still ponder if I am relieved or sad about it.

At home, Anabelle tries to get me to talk, but I can’t. I slept with him again. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Memories of our last conversation come into my mind.

“You let me go.”

“You don’t want to stay,” he shoots right back.

“Give me one reason, one.”

“Me, but it’s not enough, is it?”

“One scrap, you mean?”

“One scrap at a time.”

“Chloe, what’s wrong?” Anabelle rushes to me and I offer her the only truth I can.

“Why are men so heartbreaking?” Her eyes fill with empathy.

“We should ask them,” she offers, and smiles tug at our lips.

“I bet they would turn it around on us somehow.” We burst into a broken laughter, and I relax a bit. I pull the drapes, casting the room into darkness. I drag my knees to my chin.

“She will be just like you, a vain, money hungry bitch,” my father yells at my mother.

“I was so stupid for letting you fool me. Of all the men who could have knocked me up, I ended up with the useless spawn of you.”

I dab at my tears, shoving the memory and those words back into a corner of my mind. The accusation recurred every time they fought. I don’t think it will ever heal, that part of me so hungry for love. My phone vibrates, Filip’s name flashing on my screen.

“I am outside.” It’s in his voice, that need, the same as mine, hungry for something. Why me, why him, why us? Are the broken ones meant to come together? How in the world does this work out, there is no balance, brokenness to brokenness? How illogical and still I hop off the bed, pull my hair into a bun, and tiptoe out of the apartment. I open the car, the deja vu hitting me in the face, has it become a thing for us? It feels like it as I slip inside. He’s breathtaking in the dim light of the night’s moon. The speckles of green and brown shine in his eyes, his sculpted jaw, arched, perfectly drawn eyebrows. He half smiles with those kissable, full lips. I am here, he’s here, why pretend? It is what it is, a weakness we have to get out of our systems.

“You do things to me, Chloe,” he caresses my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine.

“How come?”

“I never wanted anyone like this.” Should his confession make it better?

“Did you even try?” He chuckles, the sounds echoing in my heart. What he does to me.

“That’s the thing, there was never the need to try before.”

“We don’t try, we fuck because we . . .” He arches his eyebrows, urging me to lie and continue with this nonsense. I do, surprising us both.

“It’s sex, and we hadn’t had any in a while.”

“I tried,” he said, and my hands ball into fists on my lap. “Jealous?”

I shut my eyes, the anger sizzling inside of me burning holes. My hand flies to yank the door open, but he grabs me instead and I end up straddling him.

“Filip.”

“I want you. I am weak, I don’t know how long I can do this, hold this together. You dangle happiness in front of me. It drives me mad.” His head falls back, his entire body strained. He has fought with himself over this, us, for a long time.

“You can have both, Filip.” What I don’t add are the words let me in, I need you, your brokenness compliments mine. “Let us try.” He presses his head to my forehead.

“I can’t and won’t stop this anymore.”

“But I thought . . .”

“It’s time to accept that my sister is never coming back.”

When he leaves, it’s his words that ring of someone grieving. How can this be? I am still trying to find a plausible explanation when I bump into Anabelle.

“Sneaking out?” Her question yanks me out of my thoughts.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” I offer.

“Is he someone new or the mystery man?” She nudges her shoulder against mine.

“Just a man, a man that snuck into my heart.” Her hand rushes to her mouth, incredulity written all over her face.

“Oh, Chloe.” I fidget with my fingers, what I feel for him surpasses anything I experienced until now.

The entitled prick, aka Filip du Mont, got to me.