Page 34 of What are the Risks
I was too embarrassed to say. Leading up to Thanksgiving, I hadn’t seen him for two months. Then the night we finally spent together, his hangover had him crashing early, and the next morning he was still being weird about my parents being in the house. Then over New Year’s Eve, I had my period. So I guess that put the running total at...
“Close to four months,” I quietly mumbled.
Daisy’s jaw hit the floor, like I’d just told her I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin. Easy for her when all she had to do was swipe on an app and have someone within five miles coming over.
Long distance was the pits. I was so fucking over it.
“Well there’s your problem,” she exhaled.
“That doesn’t include phone sex though, does it?” Bri clarified.
My silence said it all. Despite being almost four years into long distance, Noah and I had never tried that. I’d suggested it once in freshman year, when I was drunk and we’d been partway through a particularly long stretch, but he’d shut me down because his roommate was due back at any moment, and I’d been too embarrassed to try again.
“You should send him a picture,” Daisy suggested. “Wind him up while he’s at the party. I guarantee he’ll crack and call you.”
“I vote both options,” Jaz said. “The picture and surprising him.”
I picked up my wine, mulling it over. I’d toyed with the idea of sending a photo to Noah before, so there were already some in my camera roll, but I’d always found myself chickening out last minute.
Sometimes I felt like we were trapped in the innocence of high school, like we were the two teenagers who’d shared their first kiss, and not young adults who could experiment and add spice. The sexwas good in the sense that I’d never needed to fake anything. But it was kind of the same as it had always been... and polite.
Noah constantly asked where I wanted him and what I needed him to do, which I appreciated was his way of being considerate. But sometimes I silently urged for him to take control. To throw me wherehewanted me, to make sounds that proved he was enjoying himself, to act more primal and dominant.
I’d never mentioned that to him. I had a feeling it would go down as well as my admission that I wasn’t ready to return home.
I reached for my phone. “Fuck it.”
Bri yelped in excitement. “Show me some options.”
She and Jaz sandwiched me in, and Daisy jumped up off the rug to sit behind me on the couch.
“Go that one,” Bri said, pointing to a mirror-selfie. “That black lingerie is hot.”
Jaz swiped past a few images, bypassing a collection of Ryker and me from his Senior Night. He was in his football uniform and I was on the field beside him. He’d asked me to come down with Tori and the other girlfriends so that he had someone to wish him luck.
“I prefer this one,” Jaz said.
I’d taken it in Ryker’s bathroom before the game. He’d left earlier with the guys, and it’d just been Tori and me getting ready. I was wearing a matching white set. It wasn’t overly lacy or seductive, but there was something about the simple white silk that had me handing over my credit card when I spotted it while shopping with Bri one day.
“I do like that you’re wearing your glasses in it,” Daisy agreed. “It’s giving naughty-good-girl.”
“What do I say?” I asked.
My friends were much more versed in this type of thing than me, and I loved having this ultimate no-judgement zone. Not living with them next year would suck.
“Keep it simple,” Bri said, taking the phone from me.
Ruby: I miss you. FT me later?
I grimaced. “Do it before I chicken out.”
With a triumphant nod, she fired off the text, though the moment she did, her face paled.
“What?” I asked, my heartrate suddenly through the roof.
It only took me a second longer to notice what she’d done – and once I realised, I almost threw up.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
