Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
ROSCOE
Iwatch Emelia from the window as she sits on the curb, staring out at nothing. I left no room for contradiction when I told her it was time to go, but she didn’t need to wait outside. She could have waited in here. That would be safer.
Instead, I stand there and watch to make sure nothing happens to her until a green SUV appears outside. She checks with the driver, then climbs into the back before the car pulls away.
I’m never going to see her again.
It’s a goddamned knife through my gut, just thinking this thought. The wolf goes apeshit, banging at the walls of his cage deep down inside. We can’t have just let her go like that, he argues, but it falls on deaf ears.
This was the right thing to do. Give her no reason to doubt, no reason to even think about calling me again. She needs to delete me from her phone forever and move on with her life.
There is no happy ending with me.
When she’s gone, I make myself some eggs and sausage, because I need the fat and the protein after drinking so much last night. It really gets harder with age, recovering from a night like that. I’ll feel like shit until Monday at least.
But I make myself go to the gym anyway, and take a long, hot shower in the locker rooms. In my mind, though, I can’t stop replaying it—the sight of her on her knees in front of me, my cock sliding in and out of her sopping wet pussy as it squeezed and clenched around me.
It was so fucking good, being inside her, making her mine, that I’d been desperate to push myself all the way in, knot and all.
Bad idea, Roscoe.
But already, the swell at the base of my cock is inflating, thinking about what it was like to fuck Emelia last night.
I might have been drunk, but I remember every single second of it.
How she cried out my name. I don’t know where calling her my good girl came from, but she had loved that, her pussy pulsing and gripping me tight.
Absolutely fucking magical. And I will never, ever have it again.
All I can do is sigh and turn off the water, unwilling to justify my dick’s urges in a public locker room.
I have a full-blown headache by the time I get home, and I guzzle down plenty of water to go with my over-the-counter painkillers. Then I lay on the couch, feeling rather miserable for myself, and turn on the TV.
But I don’t absorb any of it. All I can think about is Emelia’s hurt face as she left my house, the way her shoulders hunched as she sat lonely on the curb, waiting for her ride.
I wish I could be what she needs, but I’m not.
EMELIA
Arin is the only one who knows what really happened because, obviously, I didn’t come home last night. But when they see my haggard face, they just hug me.
“Not a good idea,” I say, sniffling.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
I shake my head. What happened last night… it’s precious to me, as much as it is tarred. It’s something I want to hoard all to myself, because then I can love it and enjoy it without being ashamed of it.
“It’s all right,” Arin says, helping me over to the couch. “I’m here if you just want to cry.”
I knew it was a one-night stand, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve lost something immense, something that could be the pivot point of my life.
Maybe it’s just the post-sex hormones.
I’m starving, so Arin and I go out to brunch and try to make the best of the day, running errands and doing our grocery shopping. I don’t hear from Jason, which is more of a relief than anything. Part of me hopes I never see him again.
Though I do really need to go over there and pick up my stuff. He has my favorite pair of hoop earrings and at least a few of my sweaters, not to mention my movies, and also my video games, and…
Shit. It might be harder to extricate myself from Jason than I thought.
But that’s stuff that I can walk in, dig through his laundry for, and take home with me. We have one shared streaming account, but I pay for that, so I can lock him out with a password change. At least we don’t have a dog or furniture.
Maybe I’m glad after all that we never moved in together.
I’ll wait until Monday to deal with Jason. Maybe we can arrange for me to come over when he’s at work. It’s not like I’m going to steal his spoons or anything—he has nothing I want except my stupid earrings.
Jason isn’t the one I’m really thinking about. It’s what it means. Without that link between us, I’ll never see Roscoe again. Frankly, I should probably just delete him from my phone after what was said this morning, but I certainly don’t have the mental fortitude to do that.
Not today. I will. I promise, I will. Just… tomorrow.
I don’t delete it.
No, every time I remember to do it, I hover over the button. What if I really needed him again someday? I think that if I had no one else in the world to call for help, Roscoe would come.
That is a strange feeling to have about a stranger. I know that, should all else fail, I could rely on someone I slept with for a single night. But then he would vanish from my life again.
So, no, I don’t delete it. I keep him in the back of my mind, especially as I organize getting the rest of my things from Jason.
He’s flippant in his text messages, giving me vague answers about when I can come over.
Finally, I get in my car and drive to his apartment, and bang on the door until someone lets me inside.
“Jason’s not here,” his roommate, Troy, tells me.
“I don’t care.” I push past him into the apartment, and he doesn’t stop me.
I plow down the hallway toward Jason’s room as his other roommate pops his head out of his door.
Neither of them gets in my way as I go through his room, finding my earrings, my sweaters, even some coasters that he must have taken from my apartment.
I grab a book I lent him that he never read, since he doesn’t really read, and start fishing my movies out of the cabinet.
“Hey, we like that one,” Troy says, but I shoot him a death glare and he steps away.
They’ve never seen me like this before—a jilted woman, but not by Jason.
Finally, I get the fuck out of that apartment, hopefully never to see it again.
At least I get to start my new job in a few weeks, after I’ve gotten up to speed on my greater responsibilities. It’s scary, of course, but exciting, too. And the raise definitely makes the commitment worthwhile—as does the new window in my office.
Soon it’s September, and already some of the leaves are starting to change. I’m always a little sad when summer ends because I love outdoor adventures and hiking, but autumn is beautiful, too, in its own way.
Then my new job starts, and I try even harder to stop thinking about him. Roscoe. I hate that I can’t get him out of my head. I hate that I go back to that night over and over, knowing I can’t do anything to relive it. It’s gone forever, and that finality is crushing.
The month creaks along slowly. I thought that over time, the drunken memory would fade, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. No, those few bright spots I have remain that way, and I spend a lot of dark, lonely nights riding my vibe while I remember them.
I wonder if Roscoe thinks about me at all. Do I occupy his mind the way he occupies mine? I doubt it. Not with how easily and stiffly he told me off. In the light of day, I must have looked very different to him—like a stupid, sad young girl clinging to someone on the worst day of her life.
Then it’s October, and the weather is cooling off fast and the days are getting shorter.
I’ve come down with some kind of cold this week, because even though I’m not coughing, I feel like trash.
I’m sluggish and my brain feels fuzzy, and I can hardly focus on the email I’ve been trying to read for the last thirty minutes.
I tell my boss I’m not well, and she shoos me out immediately, the germophobe that she is. My work has become my everything since that night with Roscoe, because it gives me something to focus on, something to steal that real estate in my mind. I’m not sure what I’ll do all day without it.
Back at home, I curl up on the couch with a blanket and turn on the television, hoping that curing my cold requires some tea with lemon and honey and a few hours of true rest. But I’m too hot as I lie there, and so I toss off the blanket, which makes me freeze again.
What the fuck is going on? Maybe it’s more of a flu than a cold, I think, as my stomach starts churning. Maybe the honey-lemon tea was a bad idea.
Instantly I’m off the couch, sprinting for the bathroom to crouch over the toilet just before bile explodes out of me. I retch into the porcelain bowl, gasping because there’s very little in my belly and all that’s coming out is water.
Eventually, the need to puke subsides. I fall to the cool tile floor, pressing my face against it as if to remind myself that I’m alive.
As soon as I can get back to my phone, I shoot a text to Arin to tell them that I am, unfortunately, very sick. Maybe they shouldn’t even come home and risk infection.
Sit your ass down and wait for me.
Their text makes me smile. Arin has a deeply nurturing personality, and I should have known I couldn’t scare them off.
When their shift ends at the pizza shop, they come home on their bike as fast as possible, carrying a plastic bag full of different medicines. It’s so sweet, even though most of them will do nothing for me.
I do take the cold/flu syrup and the Pepto-Bismol, hoping it will settle my upset stomach and prevent what happened from happening again.
I’m not so lucky, though. I find myself on the floor of the bathroom again a few hours later, Arin stroking my back.
“Never seen you like this before,” they say, concerned. “Are we sure it’s the flu?”
“I don’t know what else it could be.”
Arin hums thoughtfully as they help me back to my own bed.
“When was the last time you had your period?” they ask as I dress into my pajamas. “Usually we have ours around the same time, but I didn’t notice last time.”
I guess that is one thing about living together—we’re very apprised of each other’s business. I always know when Arin’s on their period because there are fresh tampons in the trash. Tacky, I know, but that’s just life.
Fuck. Now that I think about it… I’ve been so preoccupied with my new job and with trying to divorce myself from my memories of Roscoe that I didn’t notice. I have gone almost two entire months without a period.
“Fuckety fuck fuck fuck.” I sink down onto my bed. “There’s no possible way. No. I’m on the pill.”
But I remember the way Roscoe unleashed everything when we fucked. The worst part is that Jason and I rarely had sex leading up to the night of our breakup. It had probably been a few weeks at best. There’s only one way this happened.
All I can do is break out into sobs. This can’t be my life. This can’t be real. Not with the man who showed me out of his house that morning in so few words.
Arin rubs my back. “I’ll run to the store and get a test,” they say quickly, drying my tears before they leave on their bike again.
But I already know the answer. I am so fucked.