“I can’t do that. I probably woke you up to come get me.”
“Darling. I get up before the birds every morning. I was just sitting at the kitchen table working on my book of crosswords. You’ve gotta keep a mind active to keep it young.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Betty tapped her nose. “You get on up there and get you some good sleep. See if it fixes your problems.”
“Thanks Betty.” I grabbed the fifty out of my purse as I was getting out of the car. I tapped on her window and when she rolled it down, I tossed it in before hurrying away.
I heard her yelling at me as I was walking in the door, but I didn’t turn around.
I climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, threw my stuff on the floor and fell into my bed. It still smelled like Jax.
Fuck!
I ripped my sheets off, throwing them into a pile on the floor, grabbed the blanket off the couch in the living room, then fell onto my mattress, wrapping myself in the velvety softness of my reading blanket.
This was for the better, I repeated to myself as I drifted off into the dark abyss.
NDA for an NDA
Ilookedattheclock on the wall.
Ten minutes.
Lizzy was on her way over. It had been a week since I’d seen her after I holed myself up in the apartment and she was getting antsy, and an antsy Lizzy was not a good Lizzy.
I had spent most of yesterday scouring the internet for a non-descriptive NDA. I was going to make her sign it, then tell her everything. I needed to talk to someone that was local to me, and my best friend. Sophie and I had grown pretty close over the last several days as she was there to tell me the reasons this was good for me, while also playing go between with the boys.
They had all showed up on my doorstep the afternoon I’d left, wondering what was going on. We talked about it and I repeated a lot of the things Sophie said. They’d heard it before, but also knew it to be true.
They didn’t try to persuade me to come back or try to convince me this would work because they knew. It’s why they had the contract. They told me not to be a stranger and said they’d expected to see me at Vixen and offered a standing reservation at Bo’s on Mondays at eight. I told them I’d see them, but we both knew that was a lie. At least for now.
They didn’t call me out, but they weren’t blind. They could see I was hurting and if I let myself look at them, like really look at them, I’d see them hurting too.
They’d given me so much more than they would ever know. After Dick, I didn’t feel like the same person. I felt like a fraction of myself. I felt less than worthy. Dick was a… well, dick, an asshole, and if someone like that didn’t think I was good enough, then it made me second guess myself. At one point near the end, when I asked him why he never complimented me, he said it was because he didn’t want me getting a big head and leaving him. I should have known then, but I didn’t. I think by that point he had already pushed all my friends away so that he was my life, my breath. I’d broken up with him several times, but he would always apologize and I always went back because I was an optimist. I wanted to believe he had changed, or at the very worst, could and would change for me. I always got my answer a month or so later though.
He hadn’t changed, and I was left feeling worthless and unlovable again.
The last time Lizzy stepped in. She didn’t let me go back, and I have thanked her a thousand times since then, but there was still a hole. No matter how hard she tried to fill it, she couldn’t. My confidence was less than non-existent.
That was until Callum stared at me in a bar. The look in his eyes, the way he watched me… the way Emmett flirted with me. It was like it reignited a fire within me. A fire that they continued to add fuel to minute by minute, hour by hour.
I felt like my old self. I felt attractive. I felt worthy of love. I felt confident.
That is what they gave me. That and the most orgasms I think I’ve ever had.
My doorbell rang.
I raced over to the door and saw Lizzy standing there with a box of discounted Valentine’s chocolate, a bottle of moscato, a new vibrator, a movie and a large clothing box. I laughed out loud, pulling her in.
“You don’t have to always buy me a vibrator.”
“Is that weird? I was in the store getting me a little something something and this caught my eye.”
“You could have bought it for yourself.”
She batted the air. “I did, and then I bought you one. Twinsies.”
