Page 47 of Confessions of a Virgin on a Dating App
And I could never have him.
I sighed, closing my eyes and praying that sleep wouldn’t keep eluding me. I noted that I still needed to schedule a gynecologist appointment. I was going to confront my worst fear so that I could keep seeing the pelvic physical therapist. I didn’t care how much pain and suffering it involved. I didn’t care if it took weeks, months, or even years. I would overcome this.
But by then, Devin would likely have moved on.
I squeezed my eyelids tighter as a tear slid down the side of my face.
That meant I needed to move on too.
Friday came quicker than I had anticipated.
And it also filled me with dread. Because as the workday waned and the evening grew closer, it remindedme of Critical Games. It was Friday, which was the night I usually played theCreatures & Crypts TCGat the shop. But it wasn’t just any Friday. It was the pre-release event for the newest set.
Normally, Cassidy and I would’ve been itching to go. We loved pre-releases, and this set was one I’d been anticipating for a long time. But the thought of walking through those glass double doors and seeing Devin behind the counter made me want to vomit. Maybe we could get past this. Maybe we could still be friends. But it was still far too early to make amends, and I couldn’t fathom seeing him just yet.
Cassidy had other plans. Fifteen minutes before my workday ended, she knocked on my bedroom door.
“Hello?” I swung it open, my greeting barely concealing my surprise. Cassidy and I hadn’t talked all week. Just like me, she’d been holed away in her room, likely wrestling with memories and emotions that she wasn’t ready to tell others about.
She’d just arrived home from work, still in her vet tech scrubs. Her face was no longer blotchy and tear-stained, but the same sorrowful cloud still hung over her. I could see it in her eyes.
“Look,” she sighed. “I’m still not ready to talk about last weekend. I know neither of us want to go to the shop and confront the boys right now, but we’ll have to face them eventually. And I really don’t want to miss this pre-release. So, can we go tonight? Please?”
My heart softened at the pleading look in her eyes. She was right. We should go and enjoy prerelease; relationship problems be damned. Besides, the alternative was sitting around my bedroom on a Friday night, which would only dredge up more painful memories of Devin.
“Of course.” I stepped toward her and extended my hands, offering a hug. She took it, wrapping her thin arms around me as we squeezed out our pain and frustration.
We both broke the hug before the tears returned, and shared a knowing glance of two women with broken hearts. We didn’t have the full details of each other’s relationship woes, but we still acknowledged each other’s pain. I was eager to know what happened to my best friend, but I understood her silence. I wasn’t ready to talk about Devin yet either.
“I’ll drive,” Cassidy offered. “Want to stop at Raceway and get frozen yogurt?”
I giggled. That was Cassidy’s go-to when in a bad mood.
“Of course. Let’s go.”
Not even a heaping cup full of frozen yogurt, topped with every form of sugary candy imaginable, could stop me from feeling sick the moment I stepped into Critical Games.
Cassidy had already finished hers and tossed the empty cup in the trash can next to the entrance, but mine was still half-full. And as soon as I caught a glimpse of him, standing behind the counter happily engaged in conversation with a few patrons, I suddenly couldn’t handle another bite.
The bell above the doorframe chimed as we walked in. Devin glimpsed at the door like he did any time a customer entered the shop. But as soon as he saw me, his head snapped away like he was staring straight at the sun. Like I was painful to look at.
I stood there, dumbfounded, my spoon still frozen in my mouth as Cassidy stepped past me.
“Damn, something really did happen between the two of you,” she remarked as she approached the front counter. Devin was still chatting with customers, and I could tell he was pretending I wasn’t there.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I muttered in reply as I stepped in line behind her. I took another bite of my frozen yogurt, the sweet dessert suddenly tasting sour in my mouth. I debated tossing it before offering the rest to Cassidy.
She happily obliged, gulping the remaining third down in a few bites.
“Avery,” she noted as she tossed the empty cup. “Calm down. You look like a deer caught in headlights.”
I huffed, my nostrils flaring. Devin’s current customer finished paying and stepped away, and the line moved forward. I was now one person closer to having to confront him. Relationship woes aside, he was still the shop owner, and I needed to interact with him to register for the event. And it filled me with nauseating dread.
Devin was oblivious to my presence, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I studied his every feature like I was seeing him for the first time. He had little silver skulls in his earlobes, and his snakebites held studs that were long and pointed like arrows. As usual, he wore a black sweatshirt, although this one had artwork of a large red dragon curled around a d20 die. And just below his collar, against his bare chest, I saw both a thick silver chain necklace and the very top of his Critical Games tattoo. The one he’d shown me just a few weeks earlier.
As I studied him, it all came flooding back, just like it had all week.His hands against my back, his lips against my neck, his hips against—
“Uh, Avery?”
