I wouldn’t even know where to start to explain to Rex about why I looked stressed. It would mean having to explain the situation between Giselle and I, including her choice to abstain from sex, and I don’t think it’s my place to tell him something so personal.
So instead, I fall back onto my default – staying quiet.
“When you’re ready to talk,” Rex pats me on the back in an older brother manner. “I’ll be here. Us men have got to talk it outtoo, you know, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that, mate. Nothing wrong at all.”
And with that, he stalks off, leaving me alone with my thoughts again.
Chapter 19
Giselle
I’m extremely drunk for a Wednesday evening and it’s all Rosie’s fault.
I blame her entirely.
“I’ve watched you spend two weeks being sad and confused over Millen,” she’d said a couple of hours earlier, presenting me with a large berry blast smoothie to butter me up. “And that’s fine, your feelings are valid, Gee. But I’m just saying I think a girl’s night is in order, don’t you? We can get a takeaway, watch a bunch of chick flick films, and drink a shit load of wine. Are you in?”
I’d agreed, which is why I find myself entirely shitfaced, slumped against the cushions of my sofa, a bottle of cheap wine clutched in my grasp like a baby’s bottle.
“I came harder than, like, ever!” Ro giggles beside me, just as drunk, her own bottle of wine balanced precariously between her thighs, while she regals me with the recent sexcapades of her and her new beau. “I swear to god I think I passed out.”
“But wouldn’t it hurt?” I ask, sitting up and feeling the world spin for a second. “Like the whole getting his cock pierced?”
“I guess.” Rosie pops her shoulders. “But it felt good to me.”
I hum nonchalantly, placing my less than half full glass bottle on the coffee table beside our foil containers of half-eaten egg fried rice and sweet and sour coated chicken, staggering to my feet and making a beeline to the loo to empty my full bladder.
When I totter back into my living room, wiping my damp hands on my leggings, it’s to find Rosie typing away on her phone at the speed of light.
“Who are you—hic—texting?”
“Tom,” she answers without missing a beat.
I’m yet to meet this Tom, Ro’s new beau, but I do know he has the tip of his cock pierced and he has a birthmark on his bum.
Folding myself back into the cushions, I pull my knitted throw blanket up to my chin to ward out the cold and lay my head on Rosie’s stomach.
Eyelids heavy, I follow the swirls and twirls of my apartment’s old popcorn textured ceiling until I feel dizzy. I swallow once, twice, tongue thick and dry, tasting the sour taste of cheap wine on my tastebuds.
Maybe drinking was a mistake.
I’m an emotional drunk at the best of times, tactical too, which is only serving to remind me…
“I’m lonely,” I utter, the words tasting bitter and uncomfortable in my mouth.
I feel, rather than see, Ro twisting to place her phone on the arm of the sofa, her palm, calloused from days of weightlifting, pushing my hair back from my forehead.
“Oh, Gee,” she coos, tone dripping with sympathy.
It makes my toes curl.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?”
I shake my head, pressing my lips together in an attempt to stop the tears from burning my lower lash line.
It doesn’t work.
I feel them fall thick and fast, coating my cheeks, ruining my mascara and settling into the dark bags under my eyes from my lack of sleep.
