Page 54 of Redeeming 6

Loudly.

“Oh my god. You’re such a turncoat!” she screamed, spinning on her heel and stalking back to the weighing scales in the middle of her bedroom floor.

“Oh, come on, Molloy.” Groaning, I dropped my gear bag on the floor and walked over to her bed. “You’re not turning into one of those self-conscious girls, are ya?”

“I gained weight, asshole,” she shot back. “I never said I wasn’t beautiful.”

“There’s my vain baby.”

“Seven pounds, Joe,” she declared, arms flailing wildly as her gaze flicked from my face to the mechanical scales she was standing on. “I’ve gained seven pounds since Christmas! Can’t you see it?”

Yeah, I could see it.

I’d been with the girl long enough to know every inch of her body, every freckle, scar, and curve, so the fact that she was recently sporting a few extra pounds wasn’t something that skipped my attention.

Her clothes, when she decided to wear them, clung to her hips and thighs in a way that they hadn’t a few months ago, but I sure as hell wasn’t complaining—especially since those pounds seemed to have shifted directly to her tits and ass.

To be honest, I thought she looked sexier than ever, but I wasn’t nearly suicidal enough to bring her weight up in conversation. Especially when I was already skating on thin ice.

Whether it was to compliment her or not, I knew my role in this relationship and had my lines rehearsed off by heart…

Hey, Joe, have I put on weight?

Where? Your imagination?

Hey, Joe, does my belly jiggle?

You’d have to have a belly for it to jiggle, and you clearly don’t.

Hey, Joe, you think she has a better figure than me?

Nobody has a better body than you.

Girls were dangerous creatures with hidden meanings behind every word they spurted, and Molloy was no exception to the rule. She might be my best friend, and there was very little I held back from her these days, but I had enough of my balls still attached to know that there were two crucial no-go topics that should be avoided at all times.

The first was weight—her weight, to be exact, because apparently she could comment on my appearance to her heart’s content and suffer no such consequences.

The second and more crucial topic of conversation to never enter into was the one about previous relationships, or in my case the girls I had fucked in the past. Yeah, that was a huge no-no.

Again, it didn’t matter that I had to sit in a classroom with her old boyfriend, knowing that at one point in time, he’d had his fingers and tongue inside her. No, being pissed about the four-year relationship she had shared with another guy was totally unreasonable, but so much as acknowledging a girl I’d been with, regardless of it being a one-off, was a mortal sin.

Because you put your penis inside her was the excuse I was given any time I pointed out the double standards.

You put his penis in your mouth, I felt like shouting back, but I had the wherewithal to keep my mouth shut and not open that particular can of worms.

“There’s nothing there, Molloy.” I leaned back on my elbows, thoroughly enjoying the floor show as my girlfriend pranced around in her underwear. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

“Yeah, I know that,” she huffed, catching ahold of my hand and dragging me over to the weighing scales. “But now I’m carting an extra seven pounds of gorgeous around.”

“The scales are wrong.”

“Three times?”

“You do realize this floor is uneven,” I pointed out. “You’re never going to get an accurate reading up here, Molloy.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not,” I coaxed, continuing to fill her up with the bullshit she needed from me. “I should know. It was fucking awful trying to measure these rooms for wardrobes. This whole house is out of alignment.”

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