Page 3 of My Super Sexy Spy
“You’ve talked to this woman about me?”
My story. My secrets. Fuck being hurt, I was going to kill him.
“She had to understand where my emotional bottleneck was coming from.”
“I’myour emotional bottleneck?” I squeaked.
“Beth, look at your life. You barely ever leave your apartment. You don’t do anything but work and see me occasionally. I’m not really sure why, either. You don’t like the movies I do, you don’t like the books I read. You only pretend to like my parents.”
It was true. They were closed minded about a lot of things, and if they knew about my past, they would have insisted Jared break up with me. But I liked theideaof parents. Theideaof a sweet boyfriend who I dated once a week.
I liked theideaof us.
“You won’t even let me turn the lights on when we have sex,” he accused me in a harsh whisper. “It’s like you’re afraid of me seeing you. Maybe you’re even afraid of sex.”
“I’m not afraid of sex,” I snorted. I didn’t like it very much, but I wasn’t afraid of it. Mostly I thought it was boring, but it was something I was willing to give him once a week when I wasn’t on my period. Because that’s what normal couples did.
That’s all I wanted to be.
“You’re stuck, Beth, and I’m stuck with you.”
“You’re stuck with me,” I repeated, feeling like a failure. Like this attempt I’d made to have something not corrupted in my life had failed.
“I know this will be hard on you. You don’t really have any friends…”
“I have a new friend,” I countered.
He gave me that imperious, smug face he sometimes used, especially when talking about coding languages that I didn’t care about.
“You’re not seriously suggesting someone you chat with online is the same thing as having a friend. Face it, Beth. You can’t handle reality. You make all this money writing a travel blog, but you don’t go anywhere, you don’t see anything outside of your condo. You don’t buy clothes or shoes or anything like that,” he said, waving his hand in my direction.
“I think I’m wearing clothes right now,” I snapped.
“Yep, a T-shirt and yoga pants. Probably the same ones you rolled out of bed in this morning. Wait, let me guess, you added a bra.”
Had I? I fought the urge to feel myself up to check.
I fell back against my chair. “I didn’t think you cared about that stuff. You work in sweatpants every day. You’re saying you’re dumping me because I didn’t buy enough fancy clothes to impress you?”
“It’s not about the clothes,” he said. “You don’t put any effort into us, Beth.”
I pushed my chair away from the table then stood, suddenly exhausted and tired of being on display for the entire restaurant. The need to go home and close the door behind me was palpable.
“That was the point,” I said with a shrug. “I wanted simple and easy.”
“I wanted more,” he said quietly.
I closed my eyes. He was right. I’d been going through the motions of a relationship because it felt like such an accomplishment. Like I’d pulled myself out of the depths of hell only to find contentment, satisfaction and a nice routine.
But looking at him now, I realized I didn’t like the movies he did. I didn’t like the books he read. I didn’t pay attention when he was talking about his work. I didn’t know his friends and I only let his parents see of me what I wanted them to see.
And in two years I’d never once had an orgasm when we were having sex.
None of that was fair to him. He should want more.
Ishould want more. I didn’t because I knew what it was like to have nothing, so I was always just so grateful for the crumbs.
I sighed. “You’re a good guy, Jared. You deserve to be happy. Good luck with the yoga chick.”
