“How would you know?” Autumn grumbles, yawning beside me on the couch. “You haven’t hooked up with anyone since the Stone Age.”
I roll my eyes, but she’s right. I haven’t. I used to miss it, but once you go long enough without it, the itch goes away. After the fog of lust evaporated, I realized how much more Ienjoyed my life without men around to rain on my parade. That’s what they do. Relationships, situationships, friends with benefits—whatever it is. Men always find a way to add more stress to my life than they do orgasms.
What I do miss, and which never really went away, is a longing to matter.Tosomeone. To be someone’s first choice. To escape the ache of loneliness that seems to rear its ugly head every so often. But it’s manageable. Nothing makes you feel lonelier than sex with someone who can go days without talking to you. I don’t want to deal with that garbage again.
Whitney snorts.
“The closest you’ve been to coming in three years was with your current boyfriend’s best friend,” Autumn mutters, eyes closed and nuzzling into the pillow. She starts to laugh at her own words, her shoulders shaking.
I smack her leg roughly, which only makes her laugh harder.
“I have a vibrator, thank you very much.”
That night at Declan’s was a rarity. Autumn and Whitney had come back to his house with me. That was near the earlier stage of my dry spell, too. They were very supportive of me getting laid for the first time in a bit. Imagine their disappointment when I rolled up to work the next evening, hungover, miserable, and thoroughly unfucked.
Whitney shakes her head, shoving some food in her mouth. “Still can’t believe you didn’t sleep with him.”
Well, it was probably for the best now. I love Penny. This weird, working relationship with Carter also involves her and Declan in some messed-up way, and if I had slept with him all of those years ago, it might have made this whole situation harder to endure.
“Worked out, didn’t it?” I am still lying to them and I hate it.
“True.” Whit nods.
“You need to bring us to a game,” Autumn says, eyes still closed. “I want to see what it’s like to be one of those Instagram girls, sitting close to the ice and taking pictures with suggestive captions for their stories.”
Whit nearly chokes. “Oh my god, I’ddieto go to another game. I haven’t been in ages.”
I don’t know if Carter can just swing extra tickets. The section we sit in is a specific couple of rows reserved for wives and girlfriends, and those tickets belong in specific hands. I make a mental note to ask to use one of my favours as a fake girlfriend while I can.
“I’ll check with Carter.”
“Sitting on that dick is proving to besobeneficial,” Whitney says with a happy sigh.
She doesn’t know the half of it.
“I have yet to sit on it,” I remind her. Let her think we just fooled around a bit.
Waking up and not feeling the instant panic over money, over what bills are due and what new ones are coming in, it is only now just starting to simmer. I have my automatic payments set for a couple hundred dollars a month toward my outstanding bills, and in time, they’ll actually lower. I don’t spend every waking moment bogged down by stress anymore. It comes in waves, but for the most part, my brain has quieted.
I don’t think Carter understands how much that means to me. How important that is.
I can enjoy my free time. That’s a luxury I wasn’t certain I would have until I was much older. This might not be anactualrelationship, but Carter has infused my life with colour again, and I’m not even sure he knows it.
The lack of stress, the freedom, the financial relief, all of those are important. But even the small moments with Carterare vibrant. I look forward to the nights when I’ll get to watch the way his mere existence makes a room come to life, or the way his eyes sparkle and every single person in the vicinity becomes mesmerized by them. He’s breathing life back into me with every date that is on his schedule. I find myself yearning for more than three times a week.
As if he can hear my every thought, even when he’s miles and miles away, my phone buzzes.
Carter
Hi, girlfriend. Tomorrow is my day. Anything you want to do?
He’s in Minnesota right now, but he’ll be back tonight. I smile at my phone.
Me
Isn’t deciding those things a part of your job?
Carter
