“Well, you can’t still be in your slump.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You haven’t been as cranky,” she answered with a chuckle.
I scoffed through a laugh. “No, I mean…there’s been a little action on that front, but nothing serious or anything like that.”
“I need the deets!”
“Oh…pfft.” I waved her off as casually as I could. “It was just some guy. Nothing really to tell…”
I hated lying to her. Callie and I told each othereverything. She was a bit more reserved than I was with things like intimate encounters, but as for me, I typically gave her every last TMI detail. But I couldn’t tell her that Wesley and I had made a mutually beneficial arrangement, and he was the “some guy” I was referring to.
In the month since I showed up at his apartment that night, Wesley and I had only slept together once. Well, twice if you count the night we made the deal. I didn’t want it to be an all-the-time kind of thing. No part of me wanted to give him the satisfaction of becoming dependent on him for anything,especiallyan orgasm, even if that was the point of the arrangement.
I’d gone on a few dates since, thinking that now that I had this thing with him to fall back on, surely the universe would throw me a bone and send me a normal, decent guy who would get me out of having to rely on Wesley Callahan to keep me out of a slump. Instead, it felt like the universe gave me the middle finger because I managed to land dates worse than any of my previous ones. It was as if I was being taunted for being so desperate.You made this bed. Lay in it.Thanks universe. Fuck you, too.
After a date I had two weeks ago, one I thought was going to be promising but turned out to be horrid, I reached out to Wesley for the first time since we made the deal. We’d actually exchanged phone numbers that night for the first time in our three years of knowing each other so we could reach out when we wanted.
I sent a simple, two-word message.
You busy?
He’d responded almost immediately.
No. Come over.
It was that easy.
And I knew that could become dangerous.
As Callie and I finished our slices of cake, gravel crunching beneath tires pulled our attention. We both looked over to see Lucas’s Maserati pulling into her driveway. When he emerged from his car, I glanced back at her to see her biting her lip through a lovesick smile as she watched him.
I couldn’t help but shake my head with a chuckle. “You, miss ma’am, are so far gone.”
“Hush you,” she whispered through a laugh before looking at him with a grin, practically glowing as he walked up the front porch steps. “Hi.”
“Hi, baby.” He smiled and looked over at me. “Hey, Morgan.”
“Lucas,” I said, dipping my head.
Callie asked him how his day was, and I sat there listening until my phone chimed with an incoming message. I picked it up and glanced at the screen.
WC
What are you up to?
I wasn’t typically shy, but for some reason, getting that message from him and knowing what he wanted had my cheeks heating up. We were keeping this thing between us a secret, and two of our best friends were feet away from me while I was, quite literally, getting a booty call from him.
I didn’t even realize I was laughing at the situation until Callie spoke. “What’s so funny?”
My head snapped up from my phone, and my cheeks heated further. “Huh?”
Lucas and Callie were both looking at me with curious smiles. “You’re staring at your phone and laughing…”
“Oh, it-it’s, uh…it’s nothing.”
Lucas chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so flustered.”
