Page 47 of Intoxicated
“I need to get some laundry stuff anyway. You should probably write down what you want so I don’t forget and have to text you. By the way,” he motions to the T-shirt gracing my torso, “your tits look great in that.”
Unbelievable. One moment he’s acting like the best boyfriend in the world, and the next? A chauvinist pig. Am I really surprised?
“I don’t need anything,” I say, turning away. “I’ve got medicine and tampons.” I say that word a little louder, gauging his reaction. Drew doesn’t flinch.
“Cool. I can hold off the trip, then. I still haven’t had breakfast yet. You want anything?”
I gaze at the faded splotch of my blood left behind on the mattress. Fighting back the ingrained shame, guilt, and embarrassment I’ve carried since puberty, I say, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s cool. Really. Not a big deal.”
“I… I should’ve known. It’s three days early, but…”
“Hey.” He holds a hand up to me. “It’s cool. You don’t have to explain. Shit happens. Now, are you hungry?”
My arms cross, as if to keep him away. “I guess. Can’t say I have much of an appetite right now.”
“I hear ya.”
That’s all he says. He turns to head back to the kitchen. I keep my eyes bored into the back of his head, waiting for him to gotcha me.
He doesn’t.
As nice as it is to have a guy who isn’t freaking out about perfectly normal biological issues, I’m not in the mood to stick around and find out about how tender and understanding he is. I’m getting the hell out of here before I’m so weirded out I look at him as if he’s grown a second head and a tail.
While he’s in the other room, I squeeze into my dress, now one size too small thanks to the period bloat wrecking my body. Yet I hold my head up high as I step into the other room and make my intentions to leave clear.
“So soon?” Toast pops out of the toaster. Drew leans against his island counter, checking out my cleavage.
“I need to go take care of some things, if you haven’t noticed. If I leave now, I can catch the next streetcar heading home.”
He sucks in his cheeks. “Hey, I’m not weirded out or anything about…”
“Let me know how much it costs to fix up everything, and I’ll pay you back.” I approach the door, hand extended to dramatically open it like I’m about to leap off a cliff. “See you around, I guess.”
“Cher.”
I stop halfway out the door. The cool blast of the AC in the hallway makes my bare shoulders shudder. Or, perhaps, that’s his soft voice caressing me in ways he never did last night. Do you know how discombobulating it is to have a guy go fromwham-bam-right-in-depths-of-your-cunttoI-would-love-to-play-some-Barry-Manilow-for-you?Because I do. I’m experiencing it right now.
“I’ve gotta go to Seattle later today,” he says, “but I’d like to see you again next time in town. Or maybe you could come see me up in SeaTac.”
I slowly turn my head. “What makes you think I want to see you again?”
Finally, I behold a smirk that is much more like the man I’m used to hanging around in this God-awful-misery of a city. A man who wants to slap my ass and plunder my holes like he’s bought full-access to them.
Great. That’s definitely a shudder from my memories of the night before. Great.Great.
“You can’t get enough of me.” Drew bites his lower lip, as if the mere thought of doing me again has him suppressing his innermost desires – namely, a desire to get hard and ram his cock into any orifice I offer. “Like I’m kinda sure I can’t get enough of you.”
Is this a joke? This man only went after me because he was paid to. His job was to fuck me like he does and make me feelbadabout it. Is it the fact that I refuse to feel any guilt about rough sex? That I don’t care how hard he stuffs my throat with his cock? That he could ram me in the ass and I’ll scream how it was my idea all along? Am I achallenge?
Do I have a problem with that?
You see, I have no guarantee that he’s not still playing me. I keep telling myself that he’s not. That would be silly, since he’s been made and I’m onto him. Surely, he knows how clever I am. I’m a chameleon, for God’s sake. I can easily keep playing him, too!
A part of me wonders what it would be like to keep seeing him. Casually, of course. See how far we can take a simple relationship that revolves around sex and nothing much more.
But the other part of me doesn’t listen to my pussy. It listens to my heart. My gut. The two things that keep me on my path of greatest independence.
They tell me to stay clear of this man. That he’s nothing but trouble. Nothing but heartache I never signed up for.
I’ve never fallen for any of the men I’ve dated and fleeced. That’s not my style. My heart is as hard as the floor beneath my feet. Why should I let someone like him inside of my heart? He should be grateful he’s been inside my body. That’s no great feat, though. Many men have been inside my body. You can call me a whore and I’ll barely shrug. In reality, I haven’t been with half as many guys as some of the other women I know who live this kind of life, but I’ve been in more loveless relationships for the pure profit I receive. I’m basically a whore.
Looking at him definitely makes me feel like one. I can’t say I asked for that.
“Goodbye, Drew.” I don’t thank him for anything, least of all for being cool about what happened this morning. I’m not going to pat a guy on the head for doing the bare minimum. I don’t believe in positive reinforcement. That would imply he’s an animal. Most animals are better than most people.
I close the door behind me. I don’t know if I should admit how hard it is to not look back.
