Backed Redux … Chapter 13

At my condo, I packed some more clothes and personal effects, along with more kitchen and bathroom items. Thankfully, towels and sheets are unbreakable and don’t take up a lot of room.
 
Seth watched as I gathered the few toys from my bedside table that had never made it to the larger toy bag. There was plenty I could do alone, and I had taken frequent advantage of that fact.
 
“Can you explain the point of – what do you call them? Scenes?” he asked. “Or playing?”
 
“The point? I’m a masochist, remember?” I said. “There’s not always a point. It just feels good.”
           
“Huh,” he said and looked legitimately baffled by the concept.
           
“Sometimes it’s a stress release,” I added. “Sometimes I just want to try something new. It kind of depends on the day.”  
           
“But why pain?” he asked. “Why would anyone actually want that?”
           
My mouth fell open as it dawned on me why he was asking. “Have you never hurt anyone for fun?” I asked. “What about during sex?”
           
“That’s not the same thing,” he stated flatly.
           
“But you must enjoy it,” I said. “Sex or not.” Seriously, help me out, I thought. Help me not be afraid of you.
           
“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “I do what has to be done. Pain gets results. But I need a good reason. And I’m not sure it’s worth it anymore.”
           
When had it been and what had changed, I wondered. Something else occurred to me too. “Is that why you’re leaving town?” I asked. “Because you don’t want to do it anymore?
           
“That’s one of the reasons this time, yes,” he said.
           
So, I wasn’t the only one who needed a fresh start. Good to know. And maybe I could learn to live without knowing more details about his life. 
           
When I was finished packing – which wasn’t long given we took less from my place than we had from his – we stopped at my bank for a withdrawal. Seth and I went in together and took out just enough that they wouldn’t close the account altogether.
 
I tried to act confidently but was sure they would be suspicious of why I wanted so much cash. My nerves nearly got the better of me, but Seth’s calm demeanor was contagious, and I followed his lead as he made casual small talk. As a result, the cashier didn’t act like anything was out of the ordinary.  
 
“How do you make that look so easy?” I asked once we were back in the car and heading east again.
 
“What?” he asked.
 
“That!” I said pointing back behind us. “What we just did is not normal.”
 
“Just because something isn’t normal for you doesn’t mean it’s particularly unusual,” he said. His tone was gentler than his words, as if he was trying to sound like some sort of twisted mentor.
 
He had a point, but I couldn’t help being self-conscious.
 
We drove into Pennsylvania without too much more conversation beyond songs on the radio. Finally, I couldn’t hold out any longer. “I’ve been thinking,” I said.
 
“Oh good,” Seth replied. “I was worried we wouldn’t have anything else to talk about.”
 
If he thought he was funny, he was sadly mistaken. Or I wasn’t in the mood. Yeah, it was probably the latter. “About what we were talking about yesterday,” I said, and went back to chewing my nails.
 
“Have you always done that, by the way – bite your nails?” Seth asked.
 
“Ever since I stopped sucking my thumb,” I told him. “I just don’t normally do it in public. Can we – ”
 
“That is quite the oral fixation you have there, doll,” he smirked.
 
“You wish,” I snapped back. “And you’re changing the subject. My point is that – well, you’re going to be guiding what we do anyway, it might as well be official.”
 
“But only if you agree to my terms, right?” he asked. There was a barely concealed contempt to his words, and I immediately began to rethink what I had set out to say. But I had already put myself too far out there. There was no way back now.
 
“That’s what I’m trying to say,” I told him. “That I want you to tell me what to do. I obviously need it as I don’t have the first clue where to start once we get there.”
 
Seth nodded slowly and breathed deeply. Somehow, I had managed to say the wrong thing, and I had no idea what it had been. “You need to know that I have no interest in playtime,” he said. “This would not be a game for me. And I can’t promise you how long I’ll be around.”
 
“I – I get that,” I said and swallowed hard. “But what happened to you? You were all for this yesterday – hell, it was your idea!”
 
Seth slammed his palm into the steering wheel and muttered a curse I couldn’t quite make out. “This was not the plan!” he exclaimed.
 
I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to me or himself, but my eyes filled with tears. “What are you talking about?” I asked as I shrunk closer to the passenger door. “What did I do wrong now?”
 
“You were not the plan, Lucy!” he yelled. “New York City was not on my fucking agenda, alright? I had a vision, a concept of how this was supposed to go and here I am, going in the exact opposite direction of where I intended to go!”
 
“I’m sorry,” I cried. Dabbing at my eyes did little to stem the flow of tears, but I had to do something. “I fucked that up too. Please, just drop me somewhere and go wherever you want.”
 
“That’s not – shit.” His head spun to glance over at me. “Do you know I’ve gone two years without a cigarette, and this is the first time I’ve truly regretted quitting?”
 
“Of course,” I sniffled. “Everything else is my fault. Just add it to my list of sins.”
 
“No, I don’t mean – ” One of the smaller rest stops – the kinds that only included bathrooms and maybe some ancient vending machines – appeared as if by magic then. Seth pulled in and stopped. Throughout the process, I feared that this was where he was going to choose to drop me.
 
Seth shifted the car to park and laid his head back, staring straight ahead. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he explained. “On my own. No one I had to be accountable to, no one whose feelings I needed to consider. That was the plan, Lu. It took me years to build the life I wanted, get it all just right.”
 
“Enter me,” I murmured.
 
“Yeah, enter you,” he sighed. “Along with the thought that maybe the way I was living was selfish after all. Maybe it is time to think about someone else.”
 
“You don’t have to do that,” I whispered, finally meeting his eyes. “If you know what works for you and have everything figured out, who am I to get in the middle of that?”
 
“That’s my point,” he stated firmly. “It’s not working anymore.”
 
In a book or on film, this would have been the end, and we would have run off into the sunset to live happily ever after. There might have been wedding bells or other sappy events, but what do I know? I don’t watch that crap.
 
Instead, I chewed my lip while I debated how far to push his good will. “Are outbursts like that normal for you though?” I asked hesitantly. “Do I need to steer clear in the future?”
 
“That?” he asked, glancing over at me in confusion. “Look, I like this new direction, but – put it this way, did you expect to be here a week ago?”
 
“No, I most definitely did not,” I replied.
           
“That’s all that was,” he said. “It wasn’t all personal against you. But I had a trajectory I was on, one I thought would finally make me happy and now I’m not so sure. Now I’m having to rethink that and make the best of it.”
 
“Okay,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I think that’s why I’m crying so much. I’m frustrated too, only I know I don’t have any right to yell and scream about it.”
           
“I don’t know about that,” he replied thoughtfully. “I’ve said it before – what you’re doing is not easy. It would be strange if you weren’t emotional over it, or need to take out your frustrations on someone. I don’t know that I’m the best person for that though.”
           
I indicated the rest of the car. “Unfortunately, you’re the only one here. Maybe you should have taken me with you when you got the money from Paul. On him, I could have unleashed.”
           
Seth threw his head back in laughter. “I was trying to keep you out of it,” he said. “But now that you say that, I would love to see what you would have done to him.”
           
I probably would have just cursed a bunch at him, I thought. It’s not like I had a lot of upper body strength. “Could have been interesting,” I said. “But I was happy to be kept out of it.”
           
“Tell you what,” Seth said. “How about neither of us takes anything the other says too seriously for the immediate future. Until we both find better outlets. Deal?”
           
It was a far more thoughtful idea than I would have given him credit for, and I smiled. “I like it,” I said. “I’ll try it if you do.”
           
With that settled, he pulled out of the rest area and back onto the highway.
           
“Alternatively, we could wrestle it out later,” he suggested with a wink. God, those winks of his were always accompanied by the wriest yet most adorable of grins, and the combination threatened to utterly distract me.
           
“Excuse me?” I asked.
           
“Take out our frustrations physically,” he continued. “If I had access to a punching bag, I’d use it. In the meantime – ”
           
The conclusion of that thought hung in the air. The natural implication was that I would be his punching bag. But maybe he could be mine too. It was an intriguing thought, one that led to thoughts of a different type of physicality.
           
“What if we – well, wouldn’t we just end up the way we did last night?” I asked.
           
Seth met my eyes for longer than was probably safe given the winding mountain road we were speeding down. “Would that be so bad?” he asked.
           
“No, but – but you’re the one who said it didn’t mean anything!” I exclaimed.
           
“It still doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Two times is nothing.”
           
“How many times is something then?” I asked. “Is there some sort of limit because I wouldn’t want to go over it.”
           
He looked over and winked again. “At least three,” he said.
           
“I’ll think about it,” I said.

…

There are a lot of emotions in play here, a lot of expectations that they both need to let go of or alter. Logic isn't always a part of that, and Seth's outburst here reflects that. Not surprisingly, Lucy has a difficult time understanding that. Until then, all his outbursts had been directed at her. And she has her own issues to work through. 

It was also a side of him we didn't see before. He just sort of went with the flow in the original.  I don't think we even knew where he had been planning to go. I was so eager to get to them getting along before, that I didn't let them work through some of these emotions.