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“Almost eleven. Why? Are you not at work?”
“I took a half day. Wasn’t feeling great last night,” I lie, which feels bitter on my tongue because lying to Aspen isn’t something I’m accustomed to.
“Wasn’t feeling great or stayed up way too late with a certain someone I think we both know?”
“I gotta go, Pen. I need to get my ass to work.”
“Remi!” I can quite literally see her face furrowed into a pout.
“Talk later. Love you.” I hang up before she can say anything else.
Trust me, I want to tell Pen everything. She’s my best friend. If I can’t tell her, who can I tell? But something about sharing this with her feels wrong. Like a betrayal to Kaia somehow.
I mean, it’s not like Aspen tells me about her and Sutton’s relationship. Not that I’ve ever really asked. She loves him, he loves her, they have kids, so I can imagine what happens behind closed doors, but we don’t actually talk about it.
Maybe there are some things that even best friends can’t share, especially ones with a past like ours.
I hoist myself out of bed, muscles I didn’t even know I had screaming in protest the instant my feet hit the floor. I smile, despite the discomfort, because I know how those muscles got sore and fuck me if I can’t wait to work them again, and again, and again.
My mind flashes back to Kaia as I quickly dress and brush my teeth. The way she looked at me when I walked her to her door, almost like she was trying to decide if I was real. Weirdly enough, I felt the same way. Like I expected to close my eyes and then open them and she’d be gone.
I don’t have to have a lot of experience with relationships to know that this feeling I have with Kaia, it doesn’t come around often.
I thought after Aspen, maybe I’d be lucky enough to find someone who makes me feel even a fraction of what I felt for her. But Kaia, she doesn’t make me feel anything like I did with Aspen. What I feel for her is something all of its own. Uniquely hers in every way, as it should be.
So yeah, maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I can’t help it. When you feel this good, it’s hard not to lose yourself in it.
I don’t bother fixing my hair, settling for running a quick hand through the strands on my way out the door. I stop at a coffee shop on the corner of my block, grabbing a quick cup of coffee before heading to the office.
Somehow, I manage to walk in five minutes ahead of when I said I’d be here, though when I enter my office, I still feel rushed, like my body hasn’t quite caught up with the fact that I made it.
My ass no more than hits the chair when Travis appears in the doorway.
“Morning, princess.” He smirks over his cup of coffee. “Was starting to think we weren’t going to see your pretty face today.”
“Unless you actually need something, I’m gonna need you to go ahead and fuck off,” I tell him jokingly.
Travis is one of my onlyrealguy friends. I mean, I have a lot of friends, but none that I talk to on a daily basis. Then again, we are around the same age and we work together, so that’s kind of a given.
“A little birdie may have chirped in my ear this morning about you and a certain blonde in the luxury suite at the Commanders game. I hear you two left just a couple of minutes into the game and in quite a hurry and never returned. Wonder what was so important.” He chuckles, fully entering the office before he proceeds to plop down in one of the two chairs opposite me.
“Who told you that?” I move my mouse, powering up my computer like I couldn’t be less interested. There were a few of my coworkers there yesterday. In hindsight, maybe I should have made a more stealthy departure, but in my defense, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.
“She said she spoke to you.”
“Fucking Margie,” I groan.
She’s Jack’s receptionist and has been known to be quite the gossip, something I hadn’t really considered yesterday. But again, wasn’t actually thinking with the right head at the time, if you know what I mean.
“So who’s the lucky lady?” he asks condescendingly.
“Fuck off, T.”
“Oh, come on, Rem. You know I live vicariously through you. Tell me everything.”
“What are we, fourteen-year-old girls?” I bark out a laugh.
“I can’t help it if my life is boring as shit. I wish someone had told me marriage is so fucking boring.”
