‘Err, yeah. I just thought I’d pop in to see if he was still around. But I guess not, so…’ I start to back away, giving her a tight smile.
She holds up a hand, as if to stop me leaving. ‘He went back to his apartment to eat. He was sad you didn’t come and join us earlier,’ she says with heavy meaning in her voice.
‘Yeah, babe, he’s really into you. He told us all about your time at university together. It sounded like you both had a lot of fun there,’ the redhead says, giving me a salacious wink.
I feel my face start to heat.
‘I have to say, you’d make a gorgeous couple,’ the woman with jet-black hair says, giving me a wide, genuine-looking smile.
This is so weird. It’s like a gaggle of beautiful angels has me cornered and is giving me advice about my love life.
‘Err, thanks,’ I mutter, at a loss about how to deal with this onslaught of observations.
‘I’m sure he’d be real happy to see you if you were to swing by his room,’ the blonde woman adds.
As a group, they all nod and smile encouragingly at me.
It strikes me as strange that he’d talk to these women aboutme. I would have thought he’d want to tell them about Katya and the breakdown of his relationship for maximum drama and attention. But it seems not. He chose to regale them with stories of our time together at uni instead.
This, of course, brings back my own memories of how hot and fun our sex life had been. It was brief, but explosive and all-consuming in the short time we were together. Almost like a dream. A fantasy. I guess that’s one of the reasons I didn’t take it very seriously – it didn’t seem sustainable at the time. It was all about the physical, rather than the emotional.
Which had disconcerted me.
Now I’m older and wiser, I’m in a much stronger position to handle something like that though.
But what am I supposed to do now? I can’t very well just turn up at Kit’s apartment. What would he think?
More to the point, what wouldIthink?
I mean, it’s not the worst idea in the world, but if I go there now I’m sending a very clear message to him that I’ve changed my mind about anything more happening between us.
Backing away, I mumble something incoherent like, ‘Maybe, I’ll see, perhaps later, if he’s there, maybe,’ then turn and get out of there as fast as my shaking legs will allow.
Back in the safety of my room I finally let my thoughts spin back to last night.
About how electrified I’d felt in his presence.
How being handled in that confident way of his was such a turn on.
Ugh. My head is so messed up…
Though, dealing with a messy head is exactly what I’m here for, of course.
Perhaps his idea about the two of us hooking up and banishing our demons – which have taken the form of our exes’ rejection of us – isn’tsucha bad idea.
Neither of us are looking for anything serious from a relationship at the moment, not after being burned so badly by our last ones, so it could just be a laugh.
Maybe this is the stars aligning and giving us both a gift by throwing us together at exactly the right time. Resetting the balance.
It could actually help us feel a bit less shitty and humiliated about our fiancés leaving us.
Like we’re taking back control of our own narratives.
A sensible part of my brain decides to stage a quick intervention.
Is this actually a helpful coping strategy? Wanting to shag an ex. Or is it sheer lunacy? Self-flagellation maybe? But a fun kind of punishment. A salve. A distraction from the heavy burden of pain and sorrow I’ve been carrying around in my chest for the last few days.
I’m so confused.
