Page 50 of Perfect Pairing
Three long, seemingly interminable days, during which I picked up my phone, my finger poised over her contact info more times than I could count.
My entire body sagged in relief when it rang that night, her contact picture—a silly little selfie she’d sent me a few months ago—filling my screen.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted the second it connected.
While I was grateful we were speaking again, I wasn’t going to make this easy on her.
“You should be.”
Chastened, she dropped her gaze from mine. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know growing up the way you had couldn’t have been easy, and it wasn’t fair of me to make stupid comments about it.”
“You’re right, but…” I trailed off, and her demeanor perked up. “I’ll admit I could’ve responded better, so I’m sorry for that.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she said, waving me off. “I know how different we grew up, Ez. I know you would’ve given anything to have a normal family unit like I do. I’m sorry you never got that chance, and I’m sorry for making you feel like shit about it.”
I sighed heavily. “I spent a long time letting a lot of peoplemake me feel exactly like you had,” I told her. “I just… It sent me back to a bad place.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I forgive you.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve been dying to call you for days.”
“Well, I’m glad your stubborn streak won out. This was my screw up to fix.”
I wanted to remind her that she was only twenty-two and still young enough to be making mistakes—especially given the fact that she had yet to experience any real hardship in her life—but now that we were back on solid ground, I wasn’t about to rock our proverbial boat. Not to mention, it wasn’t my place to call her out on stuff like that.
After all, who was I to her but a friend?
A friend who desperately wanted to get her naked and writhing under me, screaming my name, but a friend, nonetheless.
“It’s okay, honey,” I said. “Really.”
Brie hummed happily in response. “Did we just survive our first fight?”
A laugh burst free from my throat, the last of my anxieties from the past few days dissipating along with it.
“Yeah, I think we did.”
JUNE
“Fucking hell, Brie,” Igasped as I bent over my bathroom sink.
“You are so sexy when you come,” she said, her voice tinny through the phone speaker.
I choked on a laugh. We were a far cry from that day in the winery kitchen, but I loved how comfortable she continued to feel with me.
I supposed that’s what happened when you watched each other work toward multiple orgasms through the phone a few nights a week.
It was almost like I couldn’t get off anymore without her watching me, like a reverse voyeur situation. Ever since our fight—and especially long makeup phone sex after the fact—my desire for her constantly scratched and clawed at my skin. I took my hand to myself more frequently during the day, the ever-fading memory of her scent in my mind, those sounds she made as she climaxed on a loop as I found my own.
So now, nearly every night after Hansen was fast asleep andDad was holed up in his room with the latest in an impressive stack of crime and thriller novels, I locked myself away and called Brie.
This thing with her…it wasn’t only about the scorching hot phone sex. We talked too, a lot, about everything. I remained shocked I managed to find so much in common with a woman so much younger than me when we were at very different places in our lives.
“You think I’m sexy period,” I quipped at last as my breathing returned to normal and I pulled my sweatpants back up.
