I was whiplashed. I felt like I’d been in an emotional car wreck and I’d been ejected. What the hell had just happened between us?
I stood outside the bathroom door not knowing what to do.
Briana said she loved me. She’d said it over and over. And then we were kissing and pulling at each other’s clothes and then I was inside her and it was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt—and then it was over, she was embarrassed, and it was a mistake? What happened?
I didn’t want to go in the damn limo. I wanted her to come out and talk to me. I couldn’t process this without more information. I couldn’t settle on how to feel until I knew what was going on with her.
How could it be a mistake? How could anything that felt like that be something she regretted? And it wasn’t just the sex. She had feelings for me. It was there. I felt it, I didn’t imagine it, I know I didn’t. She said she loved me. She did say it.
A long horn blared from the front yard.
I put a hand on the door. “Briana, please let me in.” “Jacob, just go.”
She was crying.
What had I done? Had I done something wrong? I rested my forehead on the frame and squeezed my eyes shut.
My brain was misfiring. It was chaotic and foggy. I was somewhere between the tail end of a panic attack and an earth-shattering development
with the woman I loved, and I couldn’t think straight. I was overstimulated and upset, and I needed to level myself.
I stayed with a hand pressed to the door for another long moment. Then I pulled out my truck keys and reluctantly set them in the middle of the coffee table so she could go if she wanted to. And I took my dog and left.
I didn’t get in the limo. I told Jeremiah the truth—I was having problems with Briana and I’d had a panic attack. I couldn’t care less at this point if he believed it. Maybe Jeremiah thought my issue was about the baby. I didn’t care about that either. I was beyond giving a shit what anyone thought anymore.
I called an Uber.
I calmed down a bit on the ride home. By the time I got there, I’d stopped shaking.
I texted Briana when I got into the house.
Me: I went home. I left the keys to the truck for you.
She didn’t reply.
Her air mattress was popped. It sat flat and limp in the living room. I stood there and stared at it. It felt ominous. A sign that things were ending. That her time here was done.
My anxiety pitched and rolled.
I kept going over everything in my head. Trying to pinpoint the moment things went wrong or the reason why she’d have sex with me if she didn’t want to.
Her perfume still clung to my shirt.
She’d been so wet. I could still feel the rocking of her body on top of mine, hear the moan when she came. She’d wanted it as much as I did. She’d practically climbed me. She did climb me.
She’d said she loved me.
Or had she?
Maybe she hadn’t meant it like that. Maybe she said it the way my sisters said it. To make me feel better. To let me know they cared. Maybe she didn’t mean it the way I meant it.
Maybe I’d heard what I’d wanted to hear.
I was on a loop of the limited information I had. There was nothing I could do to sort it out. I couldn’t know what was going on until she talked to me. All I could do was try to center myself and be ready when she came home. So I did the only thing I could do. I sat down and journaled.
