What did he want?
“How’s things?”
I had to take a breath to stop myself from snapping at him to cut the shit and tell me what he wanted. Or to stop myself sayingI don’t hear from you for a year and you’re asking me how things are?
“Oh, y’know, mostly the same as always.”
“That’s good! I saw a rave review for Pleasure the other day, made me think of you.”
If he was about to ask for a second chance, I’d…
Well. I wasn’t sure what I’d do. Did I have a lot of other options?
Who else would even want me now? Aaron had beenThe One.
Or at least, I’d been convinced he was. So convinced I’d let the entire rest of my life pass me by, too wrapped up in him for friends of my own. It’d all been about him. His friends, his tastes,hisrelationship, like I wasn’t really involved as long as I made him feel good.
I could see that now, but at the time I’d loved all the attention from a man I’d thought was older and wiser.
“Guess I didn’t catch it,” I said, pretending the paper it’d been in wasn’t still sitting on my kitchen counter.
“Well, I’ll see if I can dig up my copy for you. Anyway, uh… this is awkward, but…”
You don’t say, I didn’t say.
“How attached are you to that couch in the living room?”
What?
“Not… particularly?” I said. It was a couch. It’d been Aaron’s choice—
Oh.
Right.
“You want the couch,” I said, forcing myself not to sigh.
“Do you mind?” he asked, wheedling like a six-year-old.
Andhewas the oneI’dhad to grow up for.
“It’s just that I just moved into a new place and it’s the perfect scale for the room, and technically I—”
I couldn’t believe this.
After everything he’d taken from me—five years of my life, my sense of self-worth, almost all my friends and acquaintances—he still wanted more. A fuckingcouch.
It was a nice couch. Soft leather and deep cushions you could sink right into, big enough for—well, when we’d bought it, we’d had an idea what we wanted to do on it.
WhenAaronbought it.
Technically, it was his couch. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep it, but knowing he thought solittleof me or my feelings that he could just call me and ask for it stung.
“You know what, Aaron,” I began.
5
Wes
