“I just don’t see how you coming over here is going to change my mind. It was a two-month relationship and I’m sorry, but I can’t keep leading you on. You don’t know me, you have an idea of what you think is me and that is what you’re clinging on to, but it is not the dark soul that I truly am. I’m sorry.”

“Scott, please, just let me come over,” the woman on the other end of the Facetime pleaded. “Just let me see you one more time please. I need this.”

Scott sat in his bed with his hands on his head trying not to look at the woman crying in the screen of his laptop. “You have no idea who I am or where I came from.”

“I don’t Scott, but I want to. I love you. You’re an amazing man, an amazing father. I want to get to know you,” the woman said in a genuine and comforting voice.

“Fine, come over, but I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Ok, I’ll be over soon sweetie. Love you.”

Scott clicked the red button on his laptop, ending the video call. “FUCK! Why do I do this? No!” he yelled as he tossed the laptop on to the floor. Tears began to stream down his unshaven and tired face as he thought about the hurt he will bestow upon a good woman. “Why do I do this? Why do I have to hurt other people because of my own confusion or my own poor self-esteem?” Scott thought as he lied on his knee in a dark room, the multiple crime scene.

…

“I brought you something I think you might like,” the woman said as she entered the condo, handing Scott a Total Wine bag. “Open it now please,” she said in a stern and assertive way.

Scott took a quick peak into the bag and found two bottles of wine, both top notch picks that had to have set her back about $350 in total. “You spare no expense, do you?”

“Not for you, sweetie. Please pour and meet me in the bedroom.”

Scott made his way into the kitchen where he matched the wine to the perfect glass, pulled the cork in his patented way, and poured his #1 vice.

“Well done on the selection, you might have learned something in the past two months. Thank you,” Scott said as he entered his now lit bedroom and avoided eye contact with her. “Should I just bring the bottle in here?” he asked her before taking his side of the bed.

“Yes, and bring the other bottle as well.”

Scott obliged, heading back out into the kitchen where he doubled over on the kitchen counter with the thought of himself about to do something very wrong. This was not his first time, he’d done this at least several times before and each one had become exponentially worse.

“Are you coming back, or what? Bring some water too, please,” the woman shouted.

Scott grabbed a bottle of cold water for her and a bottle of room temperature water for himself and headed back into the bedroom.

“Your bed is so comfortable, you sure know how to pick a bed, Scott.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I can do this. It isn’t right. We’re not going anywhere. I told you, I am not the man for you. You’re a perfect human being and I’m not. You deserve far better. I will only hurt you, disappoint you, or worse. You shouldn’t be here.”

“That really hurts me when you talk like that, but I’m a grown woman and I make my own choices. I choose to be hurt or not. I love you,” the woman said as she moved her way closer to Scott.

“I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, you can’t possibly be in love with me. You’re in love with the idea of me, not the real me, the dark me,” Scott said as he stared at the crack in the door he had left partially open.

The woman began to cry uncontrollably, which pulled Scott out of his own melancholy and to do what he always does when seeing something hurt, he comforted her.

Feeling this, the woman embraced Scott for a few minutes before turning her face to his and kissing him.

“No, I can’t,” said Scott. “Please just one more time, baby,” she said.

Scott grabbed her face, kissed her teary eye and commenced to have the emotional type of sex that he knew would leave her broken chested, but he couldn’t help himself.