AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She flares at me suspiciously. “He sent you here to apologise?”
“I suspect I was sent here as a diffuser.” I give her a sweet smile. “I have a very calming presence.”
“You definitely don’t,” she tells me and I frown a lot.
“Well, lots of people think I do.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Literally no one thinks that.”
“Lots of people—”
“—Name one,” she tells me.
“BJ.” I give her a smug look.
“That’s called dopamine. He’s high off of loving you.” She gives me an annoyed look. “There’s not one calming thing about you, you’re obsessive and infuriating and weird.”
I blow some air out of my mouth. “Well, let’s agree to disagree on that.”
I pick a stray piece of cotton from my dress and then lay my hands delicately in my lap. “Perhaps I was sent in because I’m somewhat familiar with the feeling of losing the person you love to somebody else — sexually — even if you haven’t actually lost them?”
“What?” She rolls her eyes at me. “BJ has a sex tape somewhere out there?”
“Well, no—” I purse my lips. Could do though, I suppose.
“Then you don’t get it, do you?”
“I’ve walked in on him having sex with someone else at least once. He had sex with my best friend. He slept with a very slutty celebrity who gave a very vivid account of it. I’ve seen him hook up with girls in clubs, in cars, on boats, on planes…” Daisy’s mouth falls open a bit. “When I asked him and he did the math, we suspect that the amount of women he’s had sex with is in the high hundreds.”
Her jaw drops.
“That’s people.” I nod. “Not times. Which puts the times tally well into the thousands.” I shake my head. Shake it like it doesn’t slice me wide open and feel like poison shooting through my veins.
I look over at Daisy and her eyes are welled up all teary. Mine are a bit too because that’s exactly what it is: a wordless kind of pain. Some sort of betrayal that goes deeper than words, the kind of ache that gives your heart’s knee a limp that it can’t ever quite shake.
I purse my lips. “So, now, I do understand that that’s not exactly the same as a sex tape being released of your boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend, but I think I’m in the neighbourhood.” I give her a gentle look. “Daisy, I can’t even imagine how horrible that must have been for you.”
I reach over and brush the tears from her cheeks and then tuck some hair behind my ears.
“Here’s the thing,” I tell her. “All of those boys are undeniably stupid and far too cavalier about sex. Except for when they’re in love—” I give her a look. “Somehow they’ve managed to distinguish sex with other people from sex with us.”
She looks up at me, her bottom lip a bit wobbly. “It looked the same. Him with her. It looked like us.”
I sigh, sad for her.
“Maybe it did.” I shrug. “But it isn’t the same because he’s never loved her, he just loves you. And to them that’s the only part that counts.”
She chews on the inside of her cheek mindlessly.
“Come on—” I nod towards the door. “I’ll take you to see him.”
She nods and gets up from the bed. I watch after her — scrunching my nose a bit.
“Sorry. Are you going to wear that?”
