Page 33 of Use Me Up

So, I really should leave.

But I don’t.

I think about going home and how Andrew and my mom will be checking the CCTV footage of my parking space at my apartment. They’ll send little texts about how relieved they are that I’ve come to my senses. I can’t even handle that.

So, I think, I’ll just stay here tonight, and it’ll be different in the morning. I can go home and they won’t necessarily think they’ve won, not if I stay the night. Anyway, I’ll be able to think better in the morning.

I’ll be able to figure out a good exit strategy.

I should be thinking of that now.

Since he’s asleep, probably the best thing to do is just get dressed, go to my car, and get out of here.

He’s very pretty while he’s sleeping, so I stare at him for longer than I should. And then, when I get up, I’m looking at him still, and I bump into the bedside table, and I jostle the lamp sitting there. It doesn’t fall or anything, but it makes a noise, and he startles awake.

“Sorry,” I say. “Um, go back to sleep.”

He sits up, and he’s got another cute little red mark on the side of his face, like yesterday. I find it adorable, even considering everything. “Morning,” he says.

“Morning,” I say. I look down at his shirt, which is all I’m wearing.

He pushes the covers aside and gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom, where he pees with the door open, again, which makes me kind of livid, partly because I have to pee, and partly because he’s so casually intimate with me, because waking up with him and listening to him urinate makes me feel like there’s some closeness growing here, and I know that’s not true. “We should talk,” he calls out, and then he flushes.

“Let me get dressed,” I say, picking up my bag from where I left it and going into the bathroom. I pointedly close and lock it.

He calls through the door. “You don’t have to do that. I’ve seen you naked, you know.”

I ignore him.

I take my time in there. I have a comb in my bag, and I run it under the water, and I tame my hair, and I even brush my teeth. It’s a good fifteen minutes before I leave the bathroom, and when I do, he’s not even in the bedroom.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, put on my shoes, and go downstairs.

He’s in a hoodie and his boxers, leaning against the wall near the stairs, gazing at his phone, muttering something under his breath that sounds like, “fucking bitch,” I think.

I stop on the steps, a little annoyed.

He looks up at me. “Not you. You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s a little too much for me. You were… licking me and talking to her on the phone and then you went to see her, and… did you have sex with her?” Why am I asking him?

“No, but I went down on her,” he says, shoving his phone into the front pocket of his hoodie. “And we got in a thing and called each other names and last night, I was like, ‘I’m done with her. I’m leaving. This is insane. Let her get knocked up and be a rich housewife and why do I care?’ But then, this morning, she sends me this shit.”

I just blink at him. I know he wants me to ask. I’m not going to. I breathe.

He shuts his eyes and leans back against the wall. He very carefully presses the back of his head into the wall, releases, and then presses it again.

Fine. “What shit?”

He opens his eyes. “Just, like, texts.” He pulls his phone out and he scrolls, and I look, and it’s a lot of words. “I shouldn’t let you read them.”

I wait.

He’s just scrolling, looking dejected.

Annoyed, I try to take the phone from him.

He lets me.