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I automatically tune out as he launches into his usual rant about couch potatoes looking for magical solutions to their laziness, and my thoughts drift to Emma. I wonder what she’s doing this Saturday night. Is she in her PJs cuddling with the cats, or is she out somewhere?
Maybe on a date?
My hand tightens on my beer mug as I picture her sitting in a restaurant with some asshole, smiling at him with her pretty, dimpled smile. He’d be panting over her, all but salivating as she ate her cheap slice of pizza or whatever, and then they’d amicably split the bill before going together to her place and—
Fuck, no. I’m not going there.
I’m already feeling homicidal as it is.
She’s not yours, I tell myself as I drain my beer. She has every right to see whomever she wants and do whatever she pleases. We’re not together anymore—not that we ever were. Two dates don’t make a relationship, and neither do a couple of kisses… at least once you’re out of high school.
So it makes no sense for me to feel like this is a real break-up, like I actually lost something when she said that this is over and told me to leave. At most, my pride should be wounded by her rejection, nothing more.
Yet when the two women by the bar sidle up to us, flirting and batting their long lashes, all I can think about is Emma and her dimpled smile. And when I excuse myself to go home, it’s her lush curves I picture as I stand in the shower, my fist wrapped around my aching cock.
It’s her face I see in my mind as I come.
25
Emma
The next eleven days drag by at a snail’s pace. I go to work, I come home, and I work on my editing website. Financially, things are looking up: I got a couple of new clients through referrals, one of my regulars just sent me a new novel to work on, and an author who’d been having financial difficulties finally ponied up the payment he owed me for editing his thousand-page epic fantasy novel. My cats haven’t had any costly trips to the vet either, so for once, my bank account balance is in the four figures. I’ve even paid down a small portion of my student loans, making the recent interest rate spike hurt a little less.
So there’s no reason to feel like I’m trudging through a swamp with a fifty-pound pack on my back.
“Call him,” Kendall urges me again on Wednesday morning, when I complain that I’m in a funk and have been having trouble sleeping. “Tell him you’ve changed your mind and want to see him again. Or at least text him a quick hello. Maybe he’s still interested and will respond.”
I wave away her suggestion, claiming my bad mood has nothing to do with that, but all of Wednesday, my phone taunts me, the bright pink case as aggravating as a red cape to a bull. I don’t call—heroically, I resist the urge—but that night, I dream that I gave in… and that Marcus immediately came over.
I wake up slick and aching, on fire from my dirtiest dream yet. Sitting up, I turn on the bedside lamp, and the cats glare at me from my pillow, annoyed to be disturbed from sound sleep.
“Yeah, whatever, remember the vase you smashed in the middle of the night last week?” I mutter at Mr. Puffs, and he swishes his tail, acknowledging my point.
The cats promptly go back to sleep, but I get up, too agitated to lie still. The phone is on my nightstand, taunting me, calling to me. I reach for it but yank my hand back at the last moment, telling myself that this is a bad idea.
A very bad idea.
Still, I can’t take my eyes off the device, and my hand reaches for it again, picking it up.
Don’t do it, Emma.
I freeze, trying to heed the voice of reason, but a second later, my fingers are moving of their own accord, swiping across the screen to locate my texts with Marcus. My heart beats furiously in my chest as I type out, “Hey…”
Don’t send it. Erase, erase, erase!
I chew on my lip, staring at the screen, my finger hovering over the delete button. To send or not to send?
A soft meow startles me out of my existential dilemma, and I look up to see Queen Elizabeth gracefully making her way toward me across the blanket.
“Do you think I should send it?” I ask her, and she meows again.
“Really?”
She gives me a look that says I’m being dumb by talking to a cat about this.
“Well, who else am I going to talk to in the middle of the night?”
She sits down and starts licking her paw.
“Okay, fine, be like that.” Annoyed, I look down at my phone—and my stomach drops.
