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“I never said where we had sex.”
“You looked at the door during the video call.”
“I could’ve been looking at anything.”
“You looked at it again just now.”
Bliss laid the dress carefully across the chair. “Did you make it to the bed?”
I pulled the sleeves of his shirt over my hands. “The bed wasn’t involved.”
Aura lifted both hands. “Vindication.”
“You two are disturbingly invested in the location.”
“We’ve spent fifteen months watching the most sexually aggressive man we know behave like his dick joined a monastery,” Aura said. “This is important information.”
My amusement disappeared beneath the significance of what she had said.
Bliss noticed. She caught Aura’s arm before the conversation could move any further. “Let her breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Poorly.”
I walked toward the minibar and removed all the mini bottles. Aura and Bliss followed me to the bed, climbing onto either side while I settled between them.
Bliss handed me a pillow to hold against my stomach. “Start wherever you need to.”
I looked at the two women who had spent years loving pieces of me while I hid everything I believed would make that love more difficult. They knew about treatment now. They knew what happened with my parents and how completely I failed Ryan. They had sat beside me through meals, therapy appointments, panic attacks, and every moment when recovery felt less like progress than punishment.
I wasn’t giving them another edited version of my life.
“Ryan came inside knowing exactly what he wanted,” I said. “He was clear that sex didn’t mean he forgave me or trusted me. He’s still going back to Milwaukee alone.”
Aura’s expression hardened. “Then why did he come inside?”
“Because he wants closure.”
Neither of them answered immediately.
Bliss finally blinked. “Sex with you is supposed to give him closure?”
“It’s more than sex.”
“You just said he made it clear that it wasn’t.”
“That’s what he needs to call it.” I twisted the cap from my mini Tito’s bottle. “Ryan wants one weekend where we get to be the version of us that we never got to be. No hiding, no shame, no pretending he’s only my tutor or friend. Everyone here already knows we were together, so there’s nobody left for me to lie to and nowhere for me to make him disappear.”
Aura stared at me. “He wants to play pretend with you for three days and then fly home?”
“No. That’s the problem. It isn’t pretend.”
“What would you call it?”
“The truth without a future attached.”
Bliss lowered her bottle. “Charm.”
