“Oh fuck. You feel so fucking good,” he says. His face must be so close to the wall, my wall, for me to hear it all so clearly.
I can hear his breathing, the heavy pants and grunts. I cover my mouth so I don’t scream.
I wonder if Julia told him I live right next door. I wonder if he knows he’s fucking Julia up against my wall too. I’ve never heard Julia hooking up with anyone in there before.
The banging gets faster. Nate’s grunts get deeper.
Not wanting to listen to this anymore, I slap my hands over my ears. I even put the television on. Then the radio. But nothing helps, they seem to scream louder than any sound I could make in here.
I can’t be in here for the duration of this nightmare.
Sick with grief, I stuff an overnight bag with a bunch of clothes. I almost get sick in the bathroom when they moan out their love for one another.
It’s repeated a few times. So I dry heave, a few times. I can’t stay here and listen to them. One of them has to know I can hear everything. And what’s worse than that is Julia not calling or knocking on my door to see if I was okay. She knows how much I hate Dex.
I take the eleven o’clock train to my parents’ house in Riverhead. An hour ride full of misery and ugly, raw emotion. I try to stop thinking about Nate, I really do, but I can’t help wanting him for myself. I don’t want to date Tinder idiots who are into horse heads or hook up with strange men from work. I want what Julia has. I want the man who took my face in his hands in front of a stadium full of people and kissed me like I was someone who could matter to him.
Even though he’s Julia’s, I always look forward to seeing him at work. Fireworks of anticipation explode in me when I hear his voice in the hallway walking toward our cubicles, and I pretend it’s me he’s going to see, not Julia. I make up excuses to go to his department and talk with the design team just to wave at him and smile. He started bringing me an extra cup of coffee every morning, exactly how I like it, because he’s getting used to watching me spill mine all over myself whenever he’s near.
I’m in love with my best friend’s boyfriend, the one that kissed me first, the one that should be dating me. And I hate myself for feeling like this. For having this emotional affair—even though it’s one-sided—how horrible of a friend am I to Julia? I’m the worst.
I’m disgusting. I’m the kind of horrible, disgusting person who has to talk herself out of putting her vibrator away andnot cometo the sounds of Nate banging Julia up against our shared wall. I’m that kind of horrible.
And then there’s Dex. Ew.But wow. I’m going to develop PTSD from my love life.
My dad picks me up at the train station in his pajama pants at midnight.
“You okay, Mouse?” I hate my dad’s nickname for me, but I was a quiet kid, always off reading and writing stories, and it stuck. I guess I’m still the same girl. Plain Jane, the Mouse. I should write a children’s book.Plain Jane Mouse Eats her Cheese Alone. Or, Plain Jane Mouse and all the Wrong Cocks.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m okay. I just needed a little break from the city.” I’m becoming a pathological liar.
He takes a deep inhale and watches me, nodding like fathers do. Then he shifts the car out of park and drives us home, where I crawl into my childhood bed and cry myself to sleep, just like I did back in high school.
Chapter 12
Rock bottom looks a lot like my childhood bedroom.
Oh right,it ismy childhood bedroom.
My parents call it the guest room, but there are never any guests and the same exact stack of fashion magazines piled on my desk is the one that was there the day I moved out. There are even clothes still hanging in the closet. My young skinny clothes from that one week I was a size six for a few days.
I rip them off the hangers and fling them into the dark corners of the closet. I feel like they are taunting me.
Being here feels like I’ve hit the rewind button.
I hate the fact that if I really wanted to, I could move back into this house and continue living right where I left off at age twenty-four. Nothing has changed for me in the last eight years,nothing.
I work for the same magazine now as I did then. I’ve worked under three different editor-in-chiefs, but my job, my writing has stayed constant. Every once in a while, it gets wild, like the one-night-stand article, but beyond that one and maybe a handful of others, I’m just the book and make-up reviewer, and sometimes serious-article-knowledge geek.
I’m still single. As a matter of fact, the only serious long-term boyfriend I had was when I lived here. Adam Meyers. His family lives across the street and back then he lived with his parents as well. We bonded over late-night drunken promises to get as far away from the suburbs as possible and his love of oral sex. It’s what we spent most of our time doing. A time long past, where the fair maiden Jane, once believed in true love and orgasms received and not only given.
Dex’s voice echoes in the back of my head.“I want you to come on my cock again. That felt incredible.”
Nope, no way. I refuse to think of that mistake ever again. I can still picture his face when he found out it was me instead of Julia. No girl wants to be on that side of a disgusted look. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
My phone beeps with a text message. I swipe it quickly off the top of the comforter and hoping it’s Julia, or maybe Nate, or both of them worrying over me.
Birth Giver:Get your lazy bottom up. I’m making pancakes.
