Page 134 of His Good Girl

“I missed you too.”

“No, you didn’t. You miss your man.”

“He’s not my man.”

Jules walked in, kicked the door shut behind her, and gave me a look so flat it could have supported municipal infrastructure. “Avery.”

“He’s not,” I insisted, following her into the kitchen. “I don’t know what he is.”

“That is both more honest and more disappointing.”

I leaned back against the counter while she unpacked containers of soup with the confidence of a woman staging an intervention all by herself.

“I go back tomorrow,” I said softly.

“I assumed.”

“I don’t know how to act.”

“You walk in. You do your job. You do not mount him in a glass conference room.”

“Thank you for that practical framework.”

“I am but a humble servant.” She pulled two bowls from my cabinet. “What exactly is the question?”

The problem was that there were too many questions, and they kept multiplying by the second. Was I his girlfriend? Was that ridiculous? Was I a secret? Obviously, yes, but was I ashameful secret or a necessary secret? Was he going to call me into his office Monday morning and kiss me until I forgot my own name, or sit behind his desk and treat me like Miss Hale with all the warmth of a tax auditor? Was I supposed to wait for him to decide? Was that hot? It was, unfortunately. Was it also horrifying? Yes. My brain was turning into a hostile work environment.

I took the bowl Jules handed me and did not eat from it.

“I don’t want to be his…” I stopped, because even saying it felt ugly.

Jules’s face softened in that quick, insightful way of hers. “His what?”

I stared down at the soup. It was tomato basil. She had brought the good kind from the deli around the corner, which cost too much and tasted like absolute heaven.

“His toy,” I admitted finally. “His midlife crisis. His secret little office thing. I mean, obviously, the sex part is…” I looked up at the ceiling as if the word I needed might be hiding behind the light fixture. “It is what it is.”

“What it is,” Jules repeated.

“Don’t.”

“I’m not. I’m simply admiring restraint from a woman who called me Friday night and said, and I quote, ‘I have discovered why men own desks.’”

My face went hot. “I was vulnerable.”

“You were graphic.”

“I was processing.”

“You were composing Yelp reviews for furniture.”

“Jules.”

She laughed, but only for a second. Then she set her bowl down and came to lean beside me against the counter, shoulder brushing mine. “You’re allowed to want the sex and also want the meaning.”

I closed my eyes.

That was the thing she did. She let me dress my fears in ten layers of jokes and then reached calmly through all of them and touched the bruise.