Page 85 of Use Me Up

“It’s not like I haven’t had my heart broken before,” I say. It’s like everyone forgets when Michael came out, and how sad I was. Everyone was all, Well, he did like musical theater. And, Well, he did go on and on about Andrew Garfield.

So, I guess the implication was that I should have noticed he was gay and not believed him when he said he was definitely attracted to women. It was my fault for not noticing he was gay, I guess?

“That tends to happen a lot of times, Hannah,” he says to me. “Your heart gets broken more times than you find a connection, you know? And sometimes it’s both. You connect for a while, and then you can’t keep connecting. We’re betas, we choose to be with someone. We don’t have some mystical force giving us a life bond.”

“Well, call me crazy,” I say, “but these life bonds don’t seem particularly mystical, if you ask me.”

He chuckles softly. “That may be true. Witness your mother, for instance. She could have been in a relationship with an omega, but she chose me instead, and she claims she’d never want anything different, and I believe her. If it was all set, she would have had to have an omega.”

“I like choice better than destiny, anyway,” I say.

“Me, too,” says my dad.

After my dad takes Calliope’s car, I go and get the Plan B pill.

I go home to my apartment.

It’s late, getting dark.

I put the bag with the Plan B pill on my counter and resolve to take it immediately, because I know the sooner you take it the better.

But somewhere in the middle of collapsing on my couch and feeling too tired to cry, I forget about the pill.

I know I’m disgusting and that I should probably take a shower, but I feel wistful at the idea of losing the scents of Ellis and Gatlin. I feel confused about everything that happened today, and I try to sort through my emotions.

I feel angry and hurt at Ellis for having sex with Calliope.

But I also feel stupid, because obviously Ellis was going to have sex with Calliope, and what kind of idiot was I for thinking anything otherwise?

I feel sort of warm and mushy about the entire heat experience, because I’ve never felt anything like that. I still remember being in that cozy room with all those delectable scents wrapped around us, Ellis’s thick cock snugly inside me, dragging in and out of me, coming in me again and again, while I could look up and watch his mouth and ass also filled full of alpha cock. It was a good place to be. I liked it there.

But then I remember realizing I’d been so eager to fuck Gatlin because I wanted to get back at Ellis. I wanted him to know what it felt like to think that I had been someone else. I wanted him to feel betrayed, like I’d felt betrayed.

I remember knowing that he did feel that way, and the flash of satisfaction I got.

But it was only a flash.

After that, I felt sort of guilty.

I don’t actually like hurting Ellis, it turns out. So, now, I’m just a big pile of confusion and regret.

I should take a shower.

Maybe if I rinsed away the smell of everything, maybe then I’d feel better. Maybe I’d be less confused.

16

hannah

I wake up on the couch, and it’s still dark outside. Someone is knocking on my door.

Ellis? I think, getting up. I smell like all of them, plus my own ick. I never did pull the trigger on getting in the shower last night. Well, I guess it’s still night. I have no idea what time it is.

I open the door, still half-asleep, I think, because that’s not actually like me to open the door in the middle of the night to whoever could be out there.

I’m realizing, on the way over to open the door, that it cannot be Ellis, because Ellis is still in heat.

When I pull the door open, it’s Gatlin.