Chapter 3
LINCOLN
Silas had moved in with Marshall.
I knew it was coming. I’d told him to do it. But moving from our overstuffed two-bedroom apartment to a studio that only held my things was a lot like relocating a twin size mattress into a castle.
Silas insisted I keep most of the furniture we’d bought together because Marshall already had a house full of furniture. The studio didn’t require all of our furniture, though, so I’d unloaded a lot of it at the thrift store and made do with whatever was left.
The studio was spacious and angled in such a way I could tuck my bed into a corner and have some kind of privacy from the rest of the space.
I’d turned the back of the loveseat toward the window so it faced the kitchen, a comfortable seat that doubled as a half-wall in the middle of the room.
The kitchen was basically a counter against the wall, butting up to the door with a fridge and dishwasher, though the cabinet space was lacking so it ended up being the place I stored all my dishes.
I could have afforded something nicer, but the pay from my online work wasn’t always consistent.
There was a steady base that hadn’t wavered, so I made sure the rent would be covered by that amount.
Anything else, I could find a way to supplement.
Worst case, I could get a different job.
I could do both for sure, and a steady paycheck that offered health insurance wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
I didn’t want to think about that, even though the alternative turned out to be thinking about Ethan and the way it had felt so fucking good to be told what to do for once.
Scrubbing a hand down my face, I flopped backward onto my bed and stared holes into the ceiling.
It was a new experience to be so utterly alone, but not just alone…
also lonely. Before, even if Silas and I hadn’t been doing something together, I hadn’t been alone.
Hadn’t been lonely. The silence of my new apartment was deafening, and I reminded myself pushing Silas out had been the right thing.
He deserved to be with Marshall, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one to stop that over something as childish as not wanting to live alone.
Maybe I would get a fish.
It wasn’t a horrible idea, I convinced myself as I cleaned off a space on my dresser for a small fish tank.
I had some extra cash from the month before, and Silas—who’d always made more money than me—had insisted I keep the whole security deposit on our old apartment.
I checked my balance just to be certain, then headed to the big box pet store to peruse its wall of multi-colored betta fish.
I’d always felt bad for the betta fish, stuck in those tiny plastic tubs.
How frustrating it must be for them to always be watched and poked at but never brought home.
Ignoring the parallels, I picked out a fish that looked somewhere between alive and thriving and whatever the opposite of that would be.
Me, probably.
I bought him—or her—a much larger fish bowl, a treasure chest, some plastic coral, and some brightly colored gravel for the bottom. The girl working helped me pick out the right kind of food, assuring me betta fish were extremely low maintenance.
“How do I know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked when she was finished ringing me up.
“Why does it matter?”
“So I can name it,” I said.
She gave me a silly look, scrunching her nose at me. “I don’t think names have anything to do with gender. Do you?”
I mean…
“Fair enough.”
“You might want to wait, though,” she said with a grimace, bagging the decorations and the food.
“Why?”
“Sometimes these betta fish…they don’t make it more than a day or two. They get shocked from the move or from the water temperature. Sometimes there’s something wrong with them, and we don’t know.”
I looked down at the fish I’d picked in its little plastic home. It definitely didn’t look robust, but I could tell there was some fight in it.
“I think we’ll be fine,” I said.
“There’s a seventy-two hour replacement policy.” She handed me my receipt. “If it does die, I mean.”
I hated the idea of my fish dying, but I thanked the girl for her help and explanation just the same.
I spent the whole drive home trying to think of a name for the fish, but I wasn’t any closer to a decision when I got home.
I carried everything up to the second floor, trying my best to not jostle the fish any more than necessary.
Groaning and closing the door to the apartment behind me, I kicked off my shoes and carried the fish and all its supplies to my dresser.
“Just a little bit longer,” I told the fish, taking off the lid to its takeout container of a home so it could get some air.
Did fish need air?
Fuck, I was going to be a horrible fish parent. Silas was out there falling in love, getting an awesome job, and starting his life, and I was in a shitty studio apartment, unsure of how to keep a four-dollar fish alive.
Twenty minutes later, I was confident the water in the bowl was the correct temperature as to not shock the betta, so I carefully scooped it into the tank and rocked backward to watch it acclimate to its new home.
If a fish could look panicked, it did, but after about five minutes, the fans of its fins rippled in the water, and it began to swim in a wider circle around the bowl.
“Me too, buddy,” I said. “Me too.”
After cleaning up all the trash and finding a home for the fish food, I got a snack for myself, then propped myself onto the bed so I could watch it longer. I really hated thinking of the fish as an it, but I still had no idea what to name it.
I took a picture of the fish and sent a text to Smith.
What’s it look like to you?
Smith
A fish?
I mean name-wise.
I could ask Silas, but it was Friday so he’d be over later anyway and I’d just ask him then.
Betty?
Betty the Betta??? BFFRL Smith.
Bruce
No wonder you’re single
Speaking of, have you found someone to pop that other cherry of yours yet?
You’d be the first person to know if I did.
Should I be honored?
I tossed my phone onto the bed and frowned at the fish tank.
“Is your name Betty?” I asked.
The fish ignored me.
“Bruce?”
Still ignored.
“You’re gorgeous either way,” I said, reaching again for my phone and muttering, “Beautiful names.”
Typing the ask into my search bar, hundreds of baby name websites popped up with all the names you’d expect, but there was one that caught my eye.
“Cassandra?” I asked.
The fish stopped and floated to the side, facing me head on.
“Is your name Cassandra?”
The look said yes.
“Okay, Cassandra. Welcome home.”
Cassandra looked at me for a couple more seconds then resumed their exploration of their new home.
I dropped my phone back onto the bed and decided to follow their lead.
There were plenty of boxes I hadn’t unpacked yet, so I busied myself with pulling books out of boxes and stacking them against the wall.
There was definitely no bookshelf to be found in my little studio, but I didn’t hate the look of the haphazard and mismatched stacks beneath the window.
An hour later, I’d had enough of unpacking.
With about two hours until Silas was due to arrive, I decided it was better to focus on money than on misery.
I took a quick shower, styled my hair, then found the place in the studio that had the best light.
It was—by design—my bed, tucked behind that corner with the setting sun coming in hot through the windows.
I set up my tripod and my ring light, then realized that unless I wanted to film a hand job video, I had to find the box with all of my sex toys in it.
Fifteen minutes later, I found it in the bathroom. I lugged the whole thing to my dresser and used the bottom drawer to house all the toys. I grabbed lube and an average length dildo that had a thick knot near the base, set my phone to record, and climbed naked onto the bed.
On my knees, I made a show of fellating the pretend cock, stroking my own dick to hardness when the knot pressed against my teeth.
Gagging, I tipped my head back and pulled the toy out of my mouth, making sure to let spit roll down my chin when I did.
This was all I’d needed, maybe. Back in my element, back in my body.
I slammed the suction base of the toy against the wall, hoping it was strong enough to hold, then I made a show of using lube-slick fingers to prep myself for the larger penetration.
It felt good to be filled. I hadn’t been fucked since Smith, and I groaned happily as I pushed my asshole against the blunt tip of the dildo.
“Oh, fuck,” I whimpered straight into the camera, stare rapt on the mirrored reflection of myself in the screen. Backing up until the flared knot kissed my rim, I sucked in a breath to steady myself, then I started to move.
I fucked myself on the toy, murmuring all kinds of generic things about how good it felt to be filled, about how the cock was so thick and my body so stretched.
This was the type of video that always seemed to sell well.
People didn’t even care if the penetration could be seen.
It was the eye contact and the noises that always earned me the most money, so I made sure to deliver on both.
It wasn’t like I was really acting or anything.
The toy felt really fucking good, and I knew if I could manage to get that knot into my ass, it would feel even better.
The problem was, at the end of the day, it was still a toy and what I wanted the most was a real hot cock attached to a body with real strong hands.
I didn’t even care anymore about being dominant or not.
I just wanted to be touched in a way that would lead to something that wasn’t platonic.