Page 31 of Cognac Secrets

I was excited, but also a little afraid. I was so used to guys saying literally anything and then as soon as they got their dick wet, dropping to less than the bare minimum, and then as soon as one of my bigger dirty little secrets made itself known when I got all hormonal and basically went stark-raving mad once a month in the lead up to my period? Well, that was pretty much it. I hated it about myself, that I couldn’t help it. That my emotions just swung so wildly and my anxiety got to be so much and I just drowned in my insecurities… PMDD was a bitch and was one of the big reasons that growing up had sucked so hard for me under my dad and brothers’ roof.

They just loved to hammer home how it somehow made me the weaker sex in need of some man to handle me.

Worse yet was how unrelentingly fuckinghornyI got in the lead up to the march of the red menace, which definitely led me to some poor decision-making in the past. No, I had never had so much as a pregnancy scare because I was always careful, but yikes on bikes when it came to some of the guys I’d allowed myself to hook up with.

I looked over the table at Bennie and itched to check my app on my phone to see if this was a genuine sort of I liked him thing, or if my hormones were off to the races. If it was the latter, then I needed to figure out how I was going to manage to not scare him right the fuck off once Hell week was upon me.

It was a nightmare trying to white knuckle it through my symptoms, but it was all I was really able to do.

I had a family history of aggressive breast cancer that was hormone based, so it wasn’t a good idea for me to be on hormonal birth control. Like, at all. The only other option, really, was mood stabilizers in a low dose, but I couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket to see a doctor to get a prescription.

Working at a small business didn’t exactly afford me health insurance, and I made too little to afford it on my own through the marketplace. Likewise, I made just a little too much to qualify for any help.

I was lost through the cracks and nobody cared. It sucked, but it was what it was.

Dating and trying to maintain any sort of relationship under these circumstances was an impossibility.

I was heartbreakingly lonely, just wanted to be loved, but this whole thing made me impossibletolove. A fact my dad and brothers had pointed out ad nauseam when I’d lived under my father’s roof. A fact my mother had told me time and time again was just a lot in a woman’s life, and that I should just try my best to get used to it and accept it for what it was – but fuck that.

I didn’t want that, and I couldn’t help but hold out hope that someday, somehow, someway, someone wouldsee meand I wouldn’t be too much or not enough for them. But the older I got and the more I went along, the harder and harder it was to trust, to let anyone in, or to take the risk.

I didn’t think this time would be any different, but he was clear – he was looking for a good time, not a long time, and I thought I might be able to handle that. I mean, all I could really do was try… and sometimes it was just better to pretend for a little while that I could be something to someone.

A glimpse was better than nothing at all… at least that’s what I tried to tell myself.

True was going to be so disappointed I was doing thisagain…

Fuck.

I unconsciously heaved a sigh and was startled out of my machinations when Bennie asked, “You alright?”

I looked up from my stuffed crabs, which were delicious, and smiled.

“Yeah, why?” I asked with a false brightness.

“That was a pretty heavy sigh,” he said.

“Oh, I just do that sometimes,” I said with a laugh. He looked like he didn’t believe me, but he let it go.

We finished our meal in relative silence, just making small talk, things suddenly and palpably awkward now that all the proverbial cards were on the table and we both knew we wanted to respectively, and respectfully,hit that.

When it came time to pay, the waiter handed Bennie the bill, but I went for my purse and the hundred that Rowan had given me.

“Put that away,” Bennie said, and his voice was steel but not unkind. He set down a card on top of the bill and set it at the edge of the table out of my reach.

“But Rowan said?—”

“Save it for a rainy day,” Bennie told me. “I said I owed you breakfast and coffee and bennies weren’t exactly it. I’m making up for that now with dinner.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting back in my seat. I would just try to give it back to Rowan the next day. I half hoped she wouldn’t take it, because having some money for a rainy day always seemed like a good idea and I rarely got any extra with which to save or play with.

The waiter swept up the bill and Bennie’s card. Bennie asked, “What would you like to do next?”

“You,” I said with a snort and a little laugh, and he laughed too, grinning.

“I think that can be arranged,” he said.

“Oh, I was just being funny,” I said. “You’ve already spent so much today…”

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