I push my hair back, once again at a loss for words. I have no idea what me and Mona are. She threw me out, which was a first, but she didn’t say no to me when I went over there, which is most definitelynota first.
“You just go and fuck her when you feel like it then?” He pauses for a second. “And sheletsyou?”
I want to be angry at him for the way he refers to whatever is going on between me and Mona, but then I remember how protective he’s always been of her. In fact, out of all of our friends, Kyle has always been the most outspoken one in his disapproval of how he thought I was treating her. We almost got into a fist fight over it once. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.
“I took her a piece of chocolate cake,” I start.
“Ah!” He sounds all-knowing like. “To replace the one you ate?”
I chuckle at how confident he sounds about it. “Yeah, I wanted to make it up to her.”
“And was she impressed by your thoughtfulness?”
I let out a long sigh. “Yeah, she was impressed.”
“As am I,” Kyle informs me. “I can’t believe you paid that much money for a piece of cake. Twice!”
“Same here,” I mumble.
I walk over to the couch and drop in my regular seat, resting my head against the back. I stare at the ceiling for the longest time, not even sure why I called Kyle. Sharing my problems with him feels weird, and I changed my mind. Unloading on my friend won’t help with anything.
“I didn’t know the restaurant would be open this late into the night,” Kyle says when it’s obvious that I won’t speak.
“Why would they be open this late?” I ask. “Only bars and clubs are open late.”
“Hmm…” He slurps loudly on his drink. “So how come you’re calling me this late?”
“Because I just got home from Mona’s.”
“So, you went there earlier then? When the restaurant was still open?” All he needs is to shine a bright lightbulb in my face with the way he interrogates me. “And you stayed there until this hour?”
“We had sex, asshole, and you know it.”
He slurps again on his drink. “Did she like the chocolate cake, then?”
My eyes glaze over as I remember the way she spread the frosting all over my cock, then licked me clean. She more than liked it, just not the person who brought it to her.
Kyle sighs in my ear. “So other than sex, nothing more came out of you going to see her tonight,” he concludes.
I lean forward and rest my elbows on the knees, suddenly sick to my stomach. I’ve always had such a clear vision of the path my life would be on. Mona threw a wrench in it, to the point where I feel like nothing matters unless I have her, too.
“I don’t know why everything is so fucked up, man,” I admit to my friend. “I can’t think, I can’t sleep, and my whole routine is a cluster fuck.”
Being the ultimate creature of habit, this last part truly kills me.
“Nah, dude, it’s not everything.” Amusement laces Kyle’s tone. “It’s you that’s fucked up. And I get it,” he rushes to say just as I am about to snap at him. “Now that you shared what your parents put you through, I understand why you are the way that you are. But…”
“It’s not my parents.” I sound cold and like I am talking to a stranger, not to my best friend. “It was my mother who put me and my father through hell.”
“Yeah, well…” Kyle snorts before taking another sip of his drink. The sound of him slurping grates on my nerves. “Your father didn’t do you any favors either.”
I frown in confusion. “My father did everything for me. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for him.”
“You got a great education, and you didn’t want for anything,” Kyle agrees. “But he also programmed you to hate women.”
“Hate women?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you don’t trust the fact that not all women are as bad as your mother was to you and your father. He made sure to instill in you the belief that none of them can be trusted. Look at how you treated Zara when you first met her, man,” he bags. “You thought she was trash, and…”
