Men Don’t Leave, Especially the Ones Who Fuck Up the Most

He strikes out at me when I am within reach, and then he reaches for me when I draw the line.
— Ani DiFranco “Served Faithfully”

A part of me wanted to knee him in the balls and then have his name blacklisted throughout all of Hollywood for being such an unbelievable bastard. The other part of me wanted to kiss his forehead, wish him well, and say goodbye. But because we were in a controlled environment, because he was my boss, and because I hadn’t had sex in two and a half months, I stayed.

“Give me another chance, Adora?” Lucas pleaded with those weepy puppy dog eyes he pulls out whenever he knows he’s in the doghouse.

“I gave you a chance when we first met. Remember? You shit all over it.”

“Come away with me. We can go anywhere. Spain… Greece… the Cayman Islands…”

Of course, he listed those three destinations. On our first date (before he threw another woman in my face), I told him I desperately wanted to travel to all of those places sometime in the year 2010.

As we stood in the corner of the penthouse suite at The Standard downtown with 50 of our friends and colleagues doing shots and dancing on tables, he pulled me into his lap and started running his fingers through my hair. I’d like to say it was the champagne and wine that compelled me to let him. But the truth is, I stayed in his arms because it felt good.

He’s quite a handful — Lucas. As the head executive at our film studio, he’s more than accustomed to people taking orders from him.

Rising from his lap, I exploded, “I don’t take orders from people, especially you, Lucas.”

His eyes and his voice softened even more. “I’m not giving you orders. I miss you. I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think you had feelings for me, and I screwed up.”

I had been thinking about him a lot the past month. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s the last person I’d been with, or if it’s because things weren’t really over yet, or if it’s because I’m just that hard up. But he’d been on my mind so much that for a second I thought I’d manifested the entire scenario. I feared that perhaps, I was to blame for him beckoning me back into his life.

When I was younger, I lusted after brilliant, powerful, tragic men like him. Some women find him repulsive. Others find him irresistible. Underneath it all, he’s just a puppy desperately wanting to let someone love him. But as the old adage goes: we get in our own way.

“I mean it, I miss you,” he repeated. “Stay with me, and then come away with me tomorrow. We can leave in the morning.”

“Trust me. By this time next week, you’ll forget that you miss me, and you’ll start missing someone else.”

And then he pulled me closer and kissed me, at first soft and then long and deep. Lucas and I are nowhere near being in love, yet this keeps happening.

There’s nothing worse than when unavailable men throw themselves at you, except — of course — indulging in the act when it happens. The next morning, I tiptoed out of the hotel room as silently as I could.

“Where are you going?” Lucas asked out of nowhere.

“Oh, I didn’t want to wake you,” I said. “I’m heading to the office. I have to get some work done.”

“It’s Sunday.”

“I have a lot of catching up to do. You should know, you gave me the workload.”

“So are you going to come with me?”

“Let me think about it. I’ll call you later.”

He ended up calling me later instead. I didn’t pick up the phone and I didn’t return his call.

I have to see this man nearly everyday online and in real life. When will we get the time to be just friends? When I quit my job? When one of us gets married? When pigs fly?

I’ll keep you posted.