Exes & Ohs

Time Warp

After six months filled with nights like those on the beach, Ethan and Odette were practically inseparable. He spent a majority of his time off set with her, either at the coffee shop or his house. They had started a tradition of singing karaoke once a week. The loyal patrons of Tic Tak Joe's loved it, it was often hilarious. The only day Ethan was not allowed to spend with Et, was when her and Betsy were watching "Fear Nights."

Those days had pretty much become date night for Xana and him. Xana hated Et, but Ethan could not imagine a life without his best friend. He just wanted to matter to Odette the way that she did to him.

He often found himself envying her writing, aching to be the paper that held all her secrets and hidden feelings. Whenever anything was wrong in Ethan's world, he went to Odette but she did not do the same. He understood her reservations, and he knew that he was being selfish yet he couldn't stop himself. He just wanted all of Odette. He felt bonded to Odette and the concept of him being the one who cared least made his cheeks burn with the blush of embarrassment.

Odette was sitting on Ethan's marble kitchen counter, her right bare foot dangled, the flare of her denim blue jeans ended just before her pale toes that were coated in a deep red varnish. Her left leg was curled under her, while her thighs cradled a large bowl. She was stirring vigorously. There was a lit cigarette in her mouth, it drooped a tad flashing Ethan its orange filtered end. She sucked hard before removing the cigarette, or as she called them "Cowboy Killers." Ethan moved from his place, leaning against the table across from her, reached out and grabbed it, tapping its ash into the glass ashtray next to her. She exhaled the smoke in an angry huff, leading her to resemble a dragon. Her small shoulders slumped, she shook her head from left to right, and back again, with an expression that told Ethan, she was trying not to cry.

He took a drag on her cigarette before handing it back. "What's wrong?" he asked, expecting an evasive response.

"I don't know." She answered, with a shrug. Everything about her demeanor screamed "I don't want to talk about it", and Ethan didn't need to be as attuned to body language as an actor has to be, to see it. He was aware that she wanted a subject change, he just choose not to acknowledge it.

"I don't believe you.' He countered. Odette busied herself by dumping the cake batter into the pan before handing it to Ethan to place in the oven. He does and he places the dirtied dishes into the sink. Odette adjusts her body, setting both feet flat on the counter, wrapping her bony arms around her knees and setting her left cheek on top of them. She looks at him with hesitation and he observes Odette in the way that he has been so prone to lately, she is a vision ,a contorted lack of confidence. Ethan found himself fighting the urge to take a picture of the sight before him, he thought that it said more things about her than he could ever explain.

She took another deep breath before squeezing her lips together and pouting them out. "What do you feel when you have sex with Xana? And what do you think she feels?" she asked him quietly.

"Um," Ethan paused to think, "it feels like my dick is in a hot, tight, wet vice. I think that she feels, um, like full of my cock.' he laughed, awkwardly and ran his large hand through his long, loose, light brown curls.

Odette turned red and squealed "Oh my blog! Ethan! That is not what I was asking. At all." She pressed her palms against her face and giggled. "I meant emotionally!"

"Oh! Um, I feel good? I think she feels good too. Why?" He said, while part of him wished that he could find a reason to escape this conversation, and forget about his gaff,

"Because.' She stopped and nibbled her full bottom lip, that was a rose pink and for the first time since he'd met her not shiny with lip gloss. "When Anthony and I used to have sex, I didn't feel anything. I was numb, completely checked out. I would just lay there taking whatever pounding he was giving me, I would say the things I knew I was supposed to say and fake orgasm my way through sex. It was like the feeling cutting gives me, only extended and it didn't hurt, not until afterwards when he would hold me and kiss me or when I thought back on the sex." Odette wasn't sure when the tears began to stream down her face, she wasn't only half aware that her throat was swollen with the burn of crying.

"So you never loved him?" Ethan asked because he didn't know what else to say.

"I don't know. There were moments where he was my sweetheart and not only my lover. In the beginning he was my everything. As time progressed I suppose we just grew up and grew apart but one day he was no longer the man I had fallen for and maybe he never actually was. He got to the point where I knew I meant nothing to him and I tried to get him to love me and sometimes he felt as though I was attempting to punish him for not needing me the way I ended up needing him. It was like a sick game of 'who can make the other feel the least important' and he always won. My feelings towards him, were in fact not about him, as a person but as a drug. I was addicted to my reactions. I was in love with the way he made me feel. The perfection I felt when he was being kind, like some scene from a teenage dream or a pretentiously quirky independent film. I craved the ache and the high that I got, when he made me hate myself more than I could have ever done on my own, when I did something he considered wrong and was disappointed in me. I was his plaything that he banged rough, for fake gunshot screams and moaning gasps, he violated me harder than my lack of self respect. I never got off. Which just made it better because I don't deserve it anyway."

Ethan sat on the counter next to her and wraps her into his muscular arms. He was at a loss for words. He mentally berated himself, he was always dying to get Odette to confide in him and when he finally got what he had so desired he had no idea what to say. So he didn't say anything, he just kissed her forehead and tried to comfort her.