Page 34 of Against The Boards

“Shit!” she exclaimed and ran into the other room.

Not gonna lie, I watched her ass as she left. I couldn’t help myself with her. I shook the dirty thoughts from my horny brain and texted her brother back.

ME: Sorry, I was asleep. She’s fine.

I put my phone down and walked into the kitchen. Rox was leaning against the island with her phone to her ear. It wouldn’t have given me pause had she bothered to put clothes on. My mind was still trying to wrap around the fact that I had been inside her last night, and now she was standing in my kitchen in her underwear. If I wasn’t already sporting morning wood, that image would have gotten me hard in an instant.

I turned around to make coffee but mostly just to distract myself.

“I’m fine!” she insisted into her phone. “The date was a bust.”

She paused, and I couldn’t hear the person on the other line, but I could tell they sounded annoyed. “You said you wanted to know if I went home with him, and I didn’t. Ugh, girl, bye!”

I handed her a mug of coffee. “Everything okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “Sorry you had to get involved in that. My friend Natalie wanted me to text her if I went home with that douche and his address.”

“That’s actually smart.”

“Yeah, she’s all about staying sexy and not getting murdered. I guess she wanted to know that I got home safe regardless, which wasn’t what she said yesterday. I left my phone out here last night, so she panicked.”

I sipped on my coffee. “It’s good you have a friend who wants to make sure you’re okay.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I think she might be my only friend back home.”

I reached out a hand and touched her arm; it surprised me when she didn’t try to bite it off. Maybe something had shifted between us now that we had worked out our tension in the bedroom. I hadn’t lied to her the first time we kissed; I was tired of fighting with her. We didn’t have to be best friends, but it would be nice if we could be civil with each other.

“You want to talk about it?” I asked.

She looked so broken, and that didn’t track with the stone-cold woman I’d known for the past few years. Maybe I had misjudged her; maybe I was the jerk she always claimed I was.

She looked contemplative for a second. “She cheated on me.”

“Rox, I’m so sorry.”

“And since it was her apartment, she kicked me out. I stayed with Nat for a while, but I wore out my welcome. I overheard her husband ask when I would leave one morning, so I had to find somewhere else soon anyway. I was couch surfing a lot before I moved here.”

“You couldn’t have gone to your parents?”

“No!” she snapped. That was the type of reaction I was used to whenever we interacted, but it made little sense to me.

I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry I asked.”

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, pulling it up into a bun on top of her head. “Sorry. We’re estranged. I don’t like to talk about it. I forgot you don’t know.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“My mom’s biphobic.”

I furrowed my brow. Bisexuality wasn’t something I truly understood, but that also might be because Rox was the only bisexual person I knew.

“What’s that mean?”

She sighed. “I’m attracted to more than one gender, right?”

“Okay…”

“My mom thinks that doesn’t exist. When I came out, she said I needed to choose if I was gay or straight. She thought me coming out as bi was a warm-up.”