They’d picked up the rhythm they’d managed to find in the last couple of months, where they’d found a friendship. They’d just figured out how to add sex to it.
“You can’t be having a friends-with-benefits relationship with Charlotte Thompson again. Not again,” Regan lamented.
If Sutton was being honest, she didn’tdisagree. Except… “It’s just—it’sgood. And I can’t stop it. I’ve tried.”
She had tried. For the weeks after they had slept together the first time, she’d tried. Being friends and only friends with Charlotte, working together, it never made the attraction, the want, the desire dim in the slightest. And it wasn’t attraction, want, and desire merely physically; interacting with Charlotte could be so much simpler if it was only physical.
It was a want for more.
And if more was playing out in whatever they had going on, Sutton felt powerless to stop it. She didn’twantto stop it. Regan was right: This was the first time in years that Sutton had had anything remotely romantic happening in her personal life. Dating, sex, romantic intimacy of any kind, none of it had been a regular part of her life in so long.
That was what she was going forward with, and right now, she was finding it was all she needed. Maybe she just needed what they had to beeasy, and talking about logistics and “what this was” would make things complicated.
She just wanted to live in the easy part, for now.
“So… you two are just magnetically unstoppable when it comes to keeping your hands to yourselves. And you’re just rolling with it,” Regan summed up.
Sutton nodded as she leaned back against a shelf in a quiet corner of the store. “Honestly? Yes. For once in my life, that is what I’m doing.”
Regan was quiet for a few beats before she groaned. “I cannot even believe this. Out of all of the people who have wanted a piece of you over the last few years?—”
“Excuse you?! Like who?” she demanded.
“That woman Emma works with, who wanted your number. That other woman you went on a couple of dates with and told you that she wastotally okaywith doing whatever you wanted, at whatever speed you were comfortable with. The guy who?—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” she cut Regan off, reaching up to massage her temples. “But…” It was difficult to put it exactly into words. “I wasn’t comfortable with those people, like this. I…”
Yeah, she truly didn’t know how to put her thoughts into words. There had beenoptionsover the years with a few people, but she’d been so scared to put her trust into someone again. So scared to put Lucy into a situation. And even if she’d been attracted to them, it was never this soul-searing, unignorable kind of need.
“This is different,” she qualified. “Things with Charlotte have always been different.”
For better or worse, that was the truth.
“I know! That’s why I can’t believe that you aren’t Sutton-Spencer-ing this!”
Sutton’s mouth fell open. “Did you just use my name as a verb?! What does that even mean?”
“Oh, you knowexactlywhat that means! Questioning what every small thing could possibly mean; what it couldbe; what the other person is thinking or feeling; whatyouare thinking or feeling, quantifying and qualifying?—”
“All right, I get it,” Sutton cut in again, feeling tremendouslytooseen. “But why am I getting the feeling that you areencouragingme toSutton-Spencerthis?”
She knew all of Regan’s tones, supportive and skeptical and everything in between, and this entire conversation did not lean toward the skeptical end.
Regan sniffed. “Because! Iam!”
“How are you encouraging this now?” Sutton almost felt like she was going crazy. “The first time Charlotte and I did this, you were the captain of thedo not do thistrain!”
“It’s been thirteen years! Things are different now,” Regan argued.
Sutton looked around. She was standing in a mall, in a packed toy store, less than two weeks before Christmas, in D.C., where she lived. “Thingsaredifferent now.”
She was divorced. She had a daughter. She had a full-time job. It had beenthirteen years.
“It’s complicated,” was all she edged out, and before Regan could say anything, Sutton’s phone beeped in her ear.
She pulled it away to check and saw Charlotte’s name flash over the screen.
She was divorced. She had a daughter. She had a full-time job. It had beenthirteen years. And she still had that ridiculousswoopin her stomach at the call.
