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If I go forward with this, if I pursue her the way I have been, after last night…I’m not going to just hurt me, I’ll hurt her. If we go further, it will be the kind of hurt that leaves deep scars.
I’ll fuck up, I know I will. Somehow, someway, I’ll stumble, sleep with someone else because, realistically, how long can this thing with me only wanting her last?
I’ll do something and I’ll lose her.
Better to lose her now.
Elliot chooses that moment to appear and she’s so soft and sleep fuzzed and wearing not much at all except a T-shirt she found in my room that leaves all kinds of interesting things hinted at, right there at the top of her thighs. I don’t think. I just take.
I fuck her on the bench and it’s hot. And after, we spend the morning laughing and talking and touching until finally she moves away when I reach for her.
“You have to go to work, Sinclair.”
We’re not talking about it, which is good. But we’re going to have to, and…shit.
“I don’t mind taking the day off.”
“After all the work I put in? You’re going. Do—do you want to hang out tonight?”
“Sure.”
And we make arrangements for a nice little upscale bar that’s nearby.
Maybe the talk can wait, maybe I can get another few days of Elliot to cram into my memories.
Elliot isn’t there when I arrive at the bar, and the doubts creep in as a beautiful woman comes up and flirts with me and it’s easy to flirt back because it doesn’t mean anything.
I could have her.
I know that.
But I don’t want her.
I want Elliot.
Yet…yet…everything from that morning is there in my head and Elliot deserves better than me.
Elliot enters the bar and I decide to just do it. Rip the band aid off. This isn’t love, right? It’s just lust getting all confused in the intimacy of friendship, of the sweetness and pull of Elliot herself.
One day, I’ll slip up. So I might as well pretend it’s today.
I’m such a fucking bastard, and I feel dirty and low and I turn up the flirt, all while Elliot approaches.
“Ryder.”
I turn to her. “You’re right. About me. I can’t change, so it’s best we forget last night.”
Elliot just stares at me. No shock. No nothing except contempt and dignity and something inside me breaks.
“You’re a fucking coward.”
She turns and walks out.
The woman next to me is, I think, talking, but she’s nothing more than a buzzing fly.
Everything hurts.
I’ve just made the biggest mistake in my life.
