Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Sophia
“Are you going to tell me who that guy was tonight?” Ethan asks from his spot in my bed, propped up on his forearms. “That didn’t sit right with me at-fucking-all.”
And yet, you didn’t make a move to do anything about it.
I slip my pajama shorts up my legs, shimmying to let the fabric flow against my skin. “A friend I met on my birthday trip. I don’t really know him all that well, honestly.”
And yet, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since I walked away from his hotel. When I saw him tonight, when I heard his voice, it was like being homesick for something that really doesn’t belong to me and never did; but I wanted to go home to him, all the same.
When he called me Sugar and his tongue touched my ear…
Brushing away the glimmering shiver that wants to course down my spine, I climb onto the bed and over top of Ethan’s legs, straddling him with my own. My hands trail over the bare skin of his chest and I dip my head to press kisses to his neck, letting out little moans as I do.
For a minute, Ethan’s hands slide over my waist, letting my lips touch and distract him. Only for a minute.
“Did you have sex with him?” Not a request for the answer – a demand for it.
With a sigh, I sit back, settling onto his lap. “Yeah, before I met you.”
“For business?”
“No,” I bite. “Because I wanted to.”
“And he just happened to visit you tonight.”
I climb off of him, moving instead to sit at his side, because I really don’t appreciate the judgmental tone I’m picking up on laced into his voice, or the way that his eyes burn into me with harsh accusation.
“I didn’t even know where the guy lived, Ethan. We were total strangers. So whatever you’re suggesting—”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” he says, “I just don’t think it’s appropriate for him to be around you. Especially if he’s going to touch you like that.”
A cackle escapes me – I can’t help it. “You literally came to my work, with your friends who could have ordered a half an hour with me – and I would have had to deliver – and that didn’t bother you, but Eric saying hi does? You know he was probably just trying to get under your skin, right?”
“It’s different when you’re working,” he tries (and fails) to argue.
“Ohhhh, okay, so it’s alright for men to do whatever they want to me when I’m getting paid a little bit for it, but if I initiate hot sex with a stranger because I’m single and it sounds fun, that’s where we draw the line,” I say, nodding my head.
“So should I send you a bill for our first time together, then?”
“Babe,” he says, rubbing a hand over my thigh, “that is not how I meant for that to come out.”
His other hand joins the first, the two of them roving over my legs as if he’s trying to placate me. Like giving a fussy toddler a sweet snack to calm the impending tantrum brewing inside of their tiny little body.
In this moment, I find myself suddenly repulsed by him.
To constantly put on this show of caring about me, being the supportive boyfriend who isn’t bothered by his girlfriend being in sex work – to even stop by the club that she works at with his friends so that she can get more tips; just to turn around and act like I disgust him because I spent time with another man before I even fucking met him?
Be so incredibly for real.
“You can go,” I tell him, pointing toward the door. “You shouldn’t have to pay for parking since you weren’t here long.”
“Babe…”
“Get home safe. Maybe I’ll talk to you in three to five business days, once you apologize for being a gigantic asshole just now. I was at work.”
He doesn’t make a move to stand, so I climb off of the bed and head for the door of my bedroom, holding it open and gesturing with my hand for him to get the hell out of my apartment.
“Goodnight, Ethan,” I hiss.
“Soph, come on,” he pleads. “It’s late, we should just go to bed.”
“I’m going to. You can, in your own bed at your own house.” I shrug. “But you’re not sleeping here.”
My mom taught me four things that will always stick with me:
1. Never wear a red lip with a pink shoe.
2. Blueberries are the key to avoiding a painful wine hangover.
3. The most powerful weapon in the world sits between your legs.
4. If you let a man get away with disrespecting you once, he will take it as an invitation to do it over and over again.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to call her and tell her that I sat here and took it while my boyfriend shamed me for actually enjoying sex.
There’s an almost three-minute-long standoff between Ethan and I while I stare him down until he finally picks his shirt up from the floor next to my bed and climbs out, slipping the shirt back over his head as he walks out of the room with a huff.
I shut the bedroom door hard behind him, locking it, and I flop backward onto the now empty bed.
I let my body sink into the mattress, surrounded by my lavender cotton sheets.
I wonder how that conversation would have gone if it had been Eric here, instead, and Ethan had been the man that I met on vacation.
Would there have even been a conversation about it at all?
He didn’t seem to care about the fact that my job is what it is; he only seemed concerned for me.
His eyes looked the same as they did after that night in the alley when my arm got scratched up.
My hand absently traces over the now unmarred skin of my forearm, remembering the way that it felt when Eric cleaned out the cuts that I didn’t even complain to him about.
I’ll be back for you real soon, Sugar.
A part of me almost hopes you meant that.