Patrice: Well, that’s promising. He didn’t go get a hotel.
This was true but still…
Darla: I have to look at him again. What do I do in the a.m.?
What did a girl do when the guy she was on an adventure with gave her an orgasm with only his hand and a smoldering gaze?
Renata: Ask for another O if he’s still handing them out.
Patrice: Talk to him about it.
Renata: Don’t do that. Horrible idea, dudes don’t like to talk about stuff.
Patrice: Then trust your gut.
That was the crappy part—Darla didn’t know quite what her gut was saying. Not when everything got all muddied from rubbing his back and, well, the other part, too.
Renata: What if you rolled with it? Kept going on this adventure he’s pulling you on and didn’t overthink?
Well, now, Renata just sounded like Mach.
Darla: Have you met me?
Patrice: I think you got under his skin.
Renata: And I think he likes you!
Patrice: But he didn’t want to like you this much.
This was all conjecture and Darla preferred to work in facts. Because facts were predictable—they didn’t change.
Darla: This is a stretch.
Patrice: But is it?
Darla seriously didn’t understand what had happened on the couch, but her gut said that neither did Mach. This thing—whatever it was—between them was burning bright enough to scare anyone. Everything felt new for her, too, and new could be frightening. Clearly, it was this way for Mach, as well. With his declaration on feelings before he left, something told her that he was trying to roll with it, but the spiderweb of emotions tangled him up.
Darla: What if he was only being nice to me and didn’t really want to have sex?
Patrice: No.
Renata: You don’t give yourself credit.
Darla:…
Patrice: Are you gonna try to fix him?
Renata: Noooooo
Patrice: That’s a bad idea.
Darla: He dresses great, smells fantastic, amazing career, super white teeth…what’s there to fix?
Like a lightning bolt, it hit her upside the head that she’d been looking at this whole thing through the wrong lens. He didn’t need fixing on the outside; he needed help figuring out the inside.
That was it. That’s what she could do for him.
Lucky for Mach, she was very much in touch with her emotions and feelings, and she could help him do the same. Feelings came and then they left, and you only had to ride the wave through them. When you were in the middle of the story you couldn’t see the end, but there always was an ending. That was the predictability.
