Wild Nights by Shayne Ford

Author:Shayne Ford [Ford, Shayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

JAGGER

“Where the hell are you going, Braxton?”

He turns frosted eyes to me.

“Swimming. You?”

“It’s fucking three o’clock in the morning. What the fuck is wrong with you, man?”

“Where is she?”

“Sleeping.”

“What do you want from me, Jagger?”

He pulls on his swim trunks and walks away.

I leap after him and grab his arm. He yanks it out of my lock, his eyes blazing.

“Talk to me, Braxton. Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“Yes, you fucking are.”

“Come with me. We’ll talk at the beach,” he says.

He walks into his closet and comes back with a pair of swim trunks.

I peel the sweatpants off and pull the shorts on.

Almost two hours later, we sit on the towels, next to a small fire, the waves rolling softly in front of us.

We stare at the dark horizon.

He’s been quiet for the past hour or so, making it so much harder for me. Wet strands of hair fall over his eyes.

He looks down at the sand, and before I can crush the impulse, I grasp his shoulder.

He shoots his eyes to me.

“I didn’t want to hurt you...” I say quietly. “That was not my intention.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his voice hollow.

My heart hurts.

“Yes, it does matter. I already told you that.” He stays quiet. “For some reason, your letter had resonated with me, and I thought about it many times. It’s something I go back to every time I want to learn something about you or understand...”

“It was not... about us,” he says firmly, yet he sounds defeated.

“Yes, it was,” I say softly. “Please don’t deny it.”

He crosses his arms over his knees and hides his face.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” I say, regretful. “What I did yesterday was stupid. I shouldn’t have dared you like that. It wasn’t meant as a joke or a mockery, but I know it may have come across like that. When we shared Violet for the first time, she said she’d never seen me so happy. The reason I was so happy was because I couldn’t have asked for more. I told her she was the only woman I ever loved and you were the only friend I could trust with my life. She said she didn’t want any of us to get hurt, and she knew you loved me, and I admitted to her that I knew too.”

He raises his head and looks at me, surprise washing over his face.

“That’s why when I read it, I wasn’t surprised you felt that way. What truly affected me was the sadness and the desperation captured in your words. I couldn’t believe the depth at which you felt everything and the contrast to what you said and did as you were trying to make everything look so easy and pain-free. I always thought you were a free spirit, and your heart was as wild as mine. I still think you are, but I never had a good grasp of what lay beneath that surface. I felt you on edge so many times, so close to me, and yet you’ve always managed to hold yourself back.

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