The best sex I ever had was simultaneously the worst day of my life…

Back story. My Achilles heel, we’ll call her “B” for this, a girl I’ve given up everything for on more than one occasion. We dated off and on for three years, and for a few short runs more recently. Absolutely toxic relationship, we both know it, but neither of us can help it. This all started about ten years ago, and up until two years ago was a cancer in both our lives. She’s moved away now.

Anyhow, during our first few years it was pretty brutal, off and on, terrible and wonderful. A week after she’d broken things off again, she started coming into my work, an all night restaurant/coffee shop, with her friends. I was working a double, 6pm to 5am. I hated the dinner shift, loved the overnight. All the regulars came in, and the place had a life of its own. Anyhow, she rolls in about ten, and of course sits in my section (smoking). So picture this, I’m at work, in two hours I’ll be the only server in the place. I can’t leave. The woman I’m madly in love with is no longer mine, but she won’t stop sitting here with her friends. By 11 I’ve gotten an early start into the vodka bottle I keep behind the computer. I’m going from miserable to furious. Everybody knows everybody else’s business, and all the regulars know exactly what’s going on. My best friend Shane finally gets her friends to take her out of there. Apparently, even though she broke things off, she feels the need to keep tabs on me, she was always convinced that the females in the place were all vying to get in my pants.

Fast forward to 2:30am. Partly due to my mental state, and partly to the vodka, my anger hasn’t eased at all. I’m seething, and then who do I see stumbling in, shit-faced? B and one of her friends. I’ve been angry before, at various times in my life, but I always thought “seeing red” was just a figure of speech. It’s not. After 45min of her being there sloppy drunk, talking shit to me and anyone else who walked past her, I am blind with anger. I scream at her friend to get her out before I physically drag them both out to the parking lot.

So they leave. The rest of my shift was a blur, except that one of my regulars, we’ll call her “M”, was still sitting in smoking. By this time, most people were long gone. But there she was, quietly sipping her coffee as I did my sidework. My blood is still boiling as I finish up, haven’t said a word to anyone. I walk over to the computer to clock out, and M has cleared off her table & is sitting there with her purse in her hands. I look at her. “Let’s go”

She doesn’t say a word, on my heels as I storm out. My Mustang roaring down loop 1604, her headlights in my mirror close behind, I’m somehow getting angrier as I drive, hands and legs are shaking as I pull into the complex. We walk into my loft and I throw her against the wall. I don’t think I locked the door, not entirely sure if I even closed it. I literally tore her clothes off, on the floor, I’m going down on her, clean shaved, I’m loving it. “Upstairs”

On the bed in a flash, it’s rough, ugly, growling and phenomenal. I’ve had “angry sex” before, but not like this. And she’s perfect for it, compliant & beyond willing, saying no to nothing, delighting in the brutality of it all. The room is a mess, her wet is everywhere, a thick, hot perfume in my nostrils. I finally hit my brink, and it’s like nothing I’ve felt before. Clenching her hair in one hand, her throat in the other, every muscle in my body spasms and climbs for the ceiling. I growl, grunt & heave, not even feeling remotely human.

My body is jello, hands trembling as I light us a pair of cigarettes. I look over at her, she’s beautiful in a way I’d never imagined before. Hot, sure. But this was a sight to see. The sun was coming through the windows, glistening off her sweat, highlighting the sharp cut of her hip bones. Her thighs, her perky little b-cups, everything quivered. She was kind of sobbing, but with a soft smile that sang happiness. As I lit a second smoke, I asked her if she wanted to go get some breakfast. Her eyes glowed. “Definitely!”

We could have. I really wish we would have. I was almost dressed, just had to put my shoes on. She was wrapped in a sheet, headed for the door to get her clothes from the floor downstairs. Then I reached out. And pulled the sheet from her body. In seconds we’re back on the bed, just as energetic, though less brutal. I distinctly remember actual kissing the second time. So we’re full on into it, when I suddenly feel my eyes rattle. When you truly don’t see it coming, it takes a second to process that you were just hit in the back of the head. I turn…

And B is standing over us, with a look I’ve never seen on somebody’s face before. And in the course of maybe a second, I saw her shift from shock, to horror, to pure rage. And she snaps, a screaming whirlwind. M vanished down the stairs. I’m ducking and bobbing as B hurls anything she can at me. I can smell the ashtray as it soars past my face and shatters one of the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me. I get to the bedroom door and see M at the bottom of the stairs, naked and clutching her clothes to her chest, with this look of ‘what should I do’ on her face. “Run!”

Down the stairs and hurricane B is in full force. My only reply? “You broke up with me! Remember?” Yeah, brilliant, I know. We end up in the kitchen, and for a split second, the screaming stops, and she yanks a kitchen knife from the block. In a heartbeat I’m in the living room, leaping over the coffee table en-route to the door. Fuck this, I’m not getting stabbed over this shit. When my hand reaches the doorknob, I realize she’s not following me. I turn around.

“You did this”

She doesn’t cut her wrist like you see in movies, putting the knife against her wrist then dragging it through the flesh. No, she swings the blade like she’s going to behead her arm, laying her wrist open with such brutality I can actually hear the edge strike bone. This is a moment I see in my dreams, even now, 7+ years later. I relive it at the most random times, I just have to close my eyes and I’m there again. I’ve never moved so fast in my life, crossing the room as she pulls her arm back for a second swing. Lacking for any better plan I hit her, hard. The knife falls from her hand, blood arcs on the wall as she spins and hits the ground. I pin her down, wrap a shirt around her wrist, and secure it with a belt. Blood is everywhere, I can taste it in my mouth.

I get her to calm down, and we get in the car, hauling ass for the hospital, my hands sticky on the wheel from blood. Her blood, the love of my life. And I know what I have to do next. As she stares blankly out the window, I call her parents. Can’t barely put the words together, just tell them what hospital, and to get there fast. Scream into the parking lot, and it becomes a blur. The nurses get the story of what happened, they won’t let me anywhere near her. So I sit outside till her folks get there. They know now, walk right past me without a word. I slept on the bench, waking up hours later I call her mom. “She’s ok, go home”

The story I got weeks later, is that she went from my work to her friends house to sleep it off for a bit, and woke up realizing how bad she had fucked things up. Her friend, maybe having an idea of what what I would likely do, tried to stop her. But she left there, and drove to my loft to apologize, try to make things right. Walking through the front door she saw M’s clothes on the floor, heard us as she climbed the stairs… but wasn’t able to turn and walk away. If I’d just gone to breakfast, my car wouldn’t have been there, she would’ve gone back home. I still hold firm that I didn’t actually “cheat”, we were broken up. But that does nothing to help the crushing weight in my chest when I close my eyes, and hear “you did this”

Over the following years we tried on several occasions to be together, to work it out. She was there for me when Shane died in his sleep at 32. I was there for her when her old flame was killed by a drunk driver, to the destruction of a great relationship i had going. But the past was always there, drifting just below the surface, gnawing at our heels, and at our quietly peaceful moments.

She’s in a different state now, our time is past & we don’t talk at all. I hope she’s found happiness. I met her for coffee the day before she left, and she seemed pretty good. One last cup, before we went our separate ways forever. It reminded me of the first time we had coffee together…