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my ex isn’t hanging over us, still calling my phone while we lie in bed together?
My mind pushes a memory forward: the look on Cliff’s face when Hardin had him in a headlock. The way his bones crunched when Hardin’s boot pressed them into the floor. Cliff was sent here to check on me. I know it, though I haven’t had the courage to ask. I would rather not confirm my worst suspicions.
Dakota begged me right outside this very apartment to stay away from Landon. She wants another chance to make things right between them. I wish I knew what it was that tied them together so tightly. What is it that’s hanging between them, left untouched and unhealed, open and bleeding out?
Am I going to be strong enough to put pressure on that wound and find the stomach to stitch it up?
That depends on what it is that they share. I know there’s a reason he isn’t ready to let her stand on her own; I just don’t have a clue what it could be. It’s not just her taking his virginity; it’s something more.
Still, it’s not fair for me to demand to hear it when I’m not ready to share my past with him.
Why would the universe allow this to happen? Why would it allow two people who are clearly still stuck in the limbo of our last relationships to become so attached to each other?
I don’t know why I let this mess continue, anyway. I should have left it as a flirty friend-of-a-friend relationship, but I didn’t. Mostly because he became an itch I couldn’t scratch, and partly because I just couldn’t keep my distance. My thoughts of him quickly became unmanageable and uncontrollable, much like his mouth on my breasts right now.
I hold the back of his neck, guiding his mouth to be greedy.
This probably isn’t the best time to think about all this, but this is the only time I have. I made a promise to Dakota that I had every intention of breaking, but the pinch of guilt is still there. She isn’t that bad when she’s not threatening to run her mouth about my life or kicking me out of an apartment that was just as much mine as hers. She can be funny, and even fun to be around. The first time I met her, she asked me to go dancing with her. I had just unpacked my boxes and wanted to get to know my new roommates, her and Maggy.
Dakota got dolled up, in a tight red dress and sparkly black shoes. She had her curly hair straightened out down her shoulders. She looked smoking hot and ready to take on the world, told me she had just gone through a breakup and needed to clear her head. I suggested she dance with Aiden, the tall blonde from her dance academy. If I had known what kind of breakup she had “suffered” through, I would’ve never suggested that.
I was used to the typical breakups: my friends’ boyfriends cheating on them, or one person or the other deciding to focus on a career. Those are the kind of breakups I’m used to being soothed by a night out with the girls.
If I had known that half of her breakup was made up of Landon, I wouldn’t have pushed her toward that guy. Back then, Landon was nothing more than a tiny picture cut out from a high school prom picture. He was this college freshman living across the country. Not until I hung out with Tessa the first time in New York did I put it all together.
I had already started paying attention to Landon; we had already had our little moment in his bathroom. Dakota acts as if I purposely sought him out to prey on him just to hurt her. I’m not that evil. I could have pulled back from him when I realized that Tessa’s perfect roommate—the epitome of everything I’ve wanted in a man wrapped into one—was also my roommate’s ex-boyfriend.
Landon was the nerdy, devoted boy from Michigan, the one who was afraid of hurting a fly when fucking. Dakota told us so many stories about Landon and his fear of trying new things. She told us that she once tried to get him to take her doggy-style, and he finished before they even started. Which, well, isn’t good.
I look up at Landon, the Landon who’s mine and mine to keep, at least while his body is under mine. His hands are digging into my hips. His mouth is so possessive. He’s saying the things his lips are normally too timid to reveal. I love how full I feel with him. It’s hard to explain. He just makes me feel taken care of, satisfied, important, and just full—of life, of happiness, I don’t know. But I feel a sense of peace with him.
I drag my nails down his stomach, just hard enough to leave thin red marks. They’re lines drawn on a battlefield. He’s mine!, I want to scream to Dakota—but maybe he isn’t? Maybe he’s too
