Read Online The Opposite of Love by T.A. Pace - Free Book Online Page A

these years later, he was beginning to think it might never happen again.
    “What part of town did you live in?” he asked.
    “The southeast side. Over by Sunset and Eastern.”
    “That was pretty close to the edge of town at the time, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah, it was a new neighborhood. Green Valley area. Not much around at the time, but that didn’t last long. Within ten years the whole community was developed.”
    They traded stories about Las Vegas, and James imagined the city was a friend they had in common—the guy who could be the cheerful, tipsy pal draping his arm over your shoulders and slurring into your ear how much he loved you. Or the kind of guy who could just as easily get himself into a meaningless fistfight with the bouncer, but whom you were fond of just the same.
    At the end of the date, James walked her to her SUV. He asked her if he could see her again without being specific as to where and when, and she agreed. When he leaned in, she allowed him a peck on the lips. This was a good sign. She wasn't going to be one of those women who had all kinds of rules about what they would allow and when. She wasn't going to make him wait until the third date to kiss her or three months to get in her pants. Melanie was likely the kind of woman who did what she wanted when she wanted, and her kind were easier to get into bed. You just had to make them want it.
     
     
    Melanie thought a lot about what her mother had said, what Derek had said.
    There was a book she’d read in her twenties called Any Woman’s Blues . It was a lesser known book by Erica Jong, not as revered as Fear of Flying and written almost two decades later. A college roommate gave it to her saying the relationship in the novel was just like her own relationship with her boyfriend. The book’s main theme was obsession, which was interesting only in that it was foreign and complicated and dark, like, say, Afghanistan, and similarly not a place she’d care to visit. But there was something that resonated with her in the novel that was surfacing again now: the concept of control.
    In the book, the heroine is struggling between the desire for control and the desire for love, as if the two are mutually exclusive, at opposite ends of one spectrum. As if to have one, you must give up the other. And so to have control over one’s self, one’s feelings and desires, is to reject love, to close it off and preclude a place for it. This was problematic for the heroine, and if true, would prove equally so for Melanie. To her, control was a skill to be respected, to be cultivated until it was as strong and protective as a shield. Self-control was a virtue. To give this up for love seemed like complete recklessness, especially when one considered that the result, as in the novel, might be nothing more than obsession. That just seemed counterintuitive to her.
    But there was clearly a payoff, which was the only reason people took the risk. And perhaps she was underestimating its importance, its magnitude.
    Originally, she’d taken James up on his offer of a date feeling confident that it would not work out in any long-term way. He was a cop after all, a career notorious for its danger, not to mention one that was blue-collar. And even if the class of his occupation mattered only to Melanie, she felt confident that her mother would not approve of the danger. He was older than her by five years, but she couldn’t be sure what kind of spin her mother would put on that. He did own his home, but Melanie suspected he’d bought it during the bubble, and might be upside-down.
    In the weeks since they'd met, and in spite of her mental tally of his shortcomings, there hadn’t been any actual deal-breakers. She discovered she liked James, quite a lot in fact. He was brutally handsome with his Italian skin and light eyes, his close-shaved hair that felt like velvet under her fingers. He could shave his face or go without, as his stubble grew in evenly and framed