Tabby felt herself flush and re-trained her eyes onto Toby’s bicep, wiping away more blood with a sterile bandage. “Sounds like a nice girl.”
“I don’t know about nice, but she was fucking amazing. Sexy too. Hottest lips in the world. I could spend all day looking at them.”
It felt like her skin was about to melt off. Why had she ever wanted Toby to compliment her? It was excruciating. “And then…?”
“And then I went away,” he said a little uncomfortably. “I, uh, met a few people, got some more experience and realised plenty of girls are willing to go there with me.”
He said it plainly, with no hint of a brag, but Tabby shrivelled in salty jealousy all the same.Who was willing to go there with you? Those bitches from Village Belle? I’ll kill them, I’ll poke their eyes out with my tattoo gun, I’ll?—
“Tabby?”
“Huh?” she said with all the feigned boredom she could muster. “Oh yeah, you’re big with the ladies now. Well, I’m glad you don’t think you have internet dick poisoning any more, but before you go giving sad dudes any advice on your podcast, I’d like to remind you that looking like an underwear model might have something to do with your hit rate.”
He laughed. “Thanks, I guess. But I mean it. It fucked my head, wanting to be as rough as I did with girls. Realising I wasn’t a twisted asshole was good.”
Unsure how to respond, Tabby turned the tattoo gun back on and resumed work.
Other questions jostled inside her head.Were you fantasising about this stuff back when we were friends? Did you pull off imagining me in your cage?
She’d always thought maybe he’d had a crush on her, but she also knew she was that kind of girl. The kind shy, awkward nerds could project stuff onto. It sounded like egotistical bullshit, but it had happened plenty of times and was never, ever fun.
Throughout high school and her early twenties, she’d hung around with dudes she considered friends, only to have them go all mean and possessive and ultimately call her a whore because she wouldn’t be the Harley Quinn to their entirely fictional understanding of themselves as The Joker.
Maybe that was why she’d kept Toby at arm’s length when they were friends. She’d liked him so much, and while there had always been… something, she’d been so fucking terrified that things would get awkward and all the good times would end. Scott would be mad at her for ruining his relationship with his favourite staffer, Sam and Nix would call her a homewrecker and a fuckwit as per usual, and Noah would hear the news and give her his patented ‘Really, Tabs?’ eyebrow lift.
Only in the end, shehadfucked everything up. She’d been drunk and needy the day after Sam and Nix’s birthday party, desperate for something to shock her out of the lethargy already licking at her heels. She recalled Toby, beet-red in her bedsheets, confessing he was still a virgin. She’d taken in his pretty face and big, untouched body and felt ten feet tall offering to ‘do him a solid.’ Now, she shuddered at the obnoxiousness of her past self. In hindsight, she’d been so… reckless. Taking it for granted that she had the power to be such a big part of his sexual history. To throw herself at him like it didn’treallymatter.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I’m really fucking sorry, too.”
Toby frowned. “For what?”
“When we were friends, maybe I didn’t… maybe I shouldn’t have… fucked you. No, I definitely shouldn’t have fucked you. It was super rude and presumptuous, and we didn’t talk before, and we didn’t try to figure out how it would be after, and I’m just really fucking sorry.”
There was a long, torturous silence. Tabby was so grateful for the work keeping her fingers and brain busy as she waited for Toby to tell her that she sucked. She could be such a moron sometimes. Careless and downright irresponsible. Wasn’t that what her sisters were always saying? What every school report had echoed? What everyone really thought about her?
“Tabby,” Toby said. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah, but it’s not though. We were mates, and I shouldn’t have… you should have done it with someone better.”
“Thereisno one better.” He said it so fiercely. As though it was the most obvious truth, and Tabby wanted to cry. Instead, she squashed her outsized reaction into that deep black hole inside herself.
“Thanks. I don’t deserve it, but thanks.”
They didn’t talk for a while. She worked until the tell-tale twinges in the backs of her hands told her she needed to stop. She felt shy and stupidly self-conscious as she packed away the tattoo gun and rubbed Toby’s arm with healing balm, securing it with fresh Second Skin.
“So, I might leave after this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Big night, and what have you…?”
“And if I don’t want you to go?”
She almost dropped the roll of Second Skin, so relieved it was shocking. “Then, I guess… do your thing?”
“What about the plastic stuff?
“Oh yeah.”
He towered over her, a wall of anger and beauty, one hand rising to cup her chin. “You drive me fuckin’ batshit, Tabitha.”
“Good.” Tabby tossed the roll of Second Skin onto her duffle. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
