28 – Denial With Sideline Support
Casey
“So, what are we doing for your birthday this year?” Rosie questions from her position on the couch. As usual, a blanket over her waist and a wine glass in her hand. Her question pulls me from my text thread, thankfully, distracting me from my idiotic decisions.
You.
I essentially told Jessie that I miss him when I just saw him this morning. The more mortifying detail of that is that he then proceeded to leave me on read.
I am such an idiot. We haven’t defined anything. We’ve slept together twice, and done a variety of other toe curling activities, and I am like a starstruck teen falling in love for the first time.
I am obsessed.
“Case?” Right, Rosie asked a question.
“Hmm?”
“Your birthday. What are we doing this year?” she asks again, twisting on the couch to face me fully.
“Addison’s birthday is on Tuesday. Let’s just focus on that one,” I retort, trying not to think about my birthday.
“And she is going to be in Chicago with Noah until after Thanksgiving. I ask again: what are we doing for your birthday?” I shrug at her question. My birthday still isn’t for another month, but with it being on Christmas Eve, I am used to it being overlooked, at least by my family. Now, with everything going on with Grace, I’m really not expecting anything extravagant. The girls and I usually have some kind of date–drinks, movie night, dinner, sometimes even a night out.
“Why don’t we go out? We could invite the guys and Stella?”
“Do you see her much?” Rosie shrugs at my question.
“We speak when I’m at the bar, which is rare recently. She’s quiet. I’ve been trying to get her out more because she looks… I can’t really put my finger on it, but I think she might need some girls.” I nod, finally getting my mind off of the lumberjack. Rosie’s instincts never usually miss anything. If she’s picked up on something, I’d say there was something to pick up on.
“Well, why don’t we go out, just us girls? You, me, Addy, and Stella?” Because if she needs a girls’ night, I’d help give her one.
“Casey, you wouldn’t be making a plan to dedicate your birthday to save someone else… would you?” Rosie accuses, and I roll my eyes, downing the remaining wine in my glass.
“Give me a break. You’re the one who said she needed people.”
“Yeah, and you have a habit of forsaking everything for everyone else.” I shrug, hating how wine makes me so emotional and tired. I need something harder. Like gin.
“I’m fine, Rosie. I look after myself just fine.” I try to pull a playful smile. She narrows her eyes at me for a split second before she shifts her attention to her wine glass.
“So, how’s the dull dick going?” I question, turning the conversation to something less morbid. She responds by laughing, her head thrown back to the couch, before her attention is back on me, that playful lightness of hers that makes me feel warm.
“Not so dull, thank fuck. But I bought myself a new companion.” She hits me with her wiggly eyebrows, which makes me chuckle.
“Oh?”
“Her name is Vivienne, and she treats me really, really well.” This has me giggling, and as I get up to grab another bottle of wine from the kitchen, she clarifies, “She’s purple and soft, long enough to please, wide enough to satisfy, and has just the right amount of bumps in all the right places.” As I make my way back to the couch, Rosie’s head lies on the back of it, a gentle smile as she speaks wistfully. I lean over the back, looking down at her pretty golden face, refilling her wine glass, and her big chocolate eyes open, her trademark playfulness staring straight back at me.
“You named your new vibrator Vivienne?” I say through a chuckle.
“Well, I didn’t want to give her the name of someone who I knew in real life. That would be weird. How many Vivienne’s do you know?”
“Fair point.” I sit back down and pull my knees to my chest as I settle back into the couch. “So Vivienne has replaced the dull dick?”
“Mmm. Sometimes. It’s just hard to find anyone good, you know?” I nod and she continues. “Like, someone who just… you know?” She looks out to the window and struggles to find her words, but somehow, I just know exactly what she is talking about
“Someone who can choke you but tell you you’re pretty,” I whisper–I thought–to myself. Rosie’s mouth drops open, and she shoots up to a sitting position as her eyes bug out. I try to shrink under the blanket while chuckling at the embarrassing confession, but Rosie is ripping the blanket away from my face.
“Casey. Moira. Baker.” The demand I know that it is. She wants details.
I peek my eyes open to find her agape mouth pulling into a wide opened smile, and she starts slapping my thigh.
“Tell me. Tell me. Tell me!” she shouts excitedly.
“Jessie—” She gasps, covering her mouth before she squeals and giggles, then starts slapping my thigh again.
“We… kinda—”
“Fucked roughly with gentle aftercare?!” she guesses, and a loud laugh bursts from me. When I recover, I nod.
“Literally, exactly that.” I close my eyes and mimic her previous position, my head fallen back to the couch and remembering the feel of Jessie’s rough hands around my throat. The same rough hands that gently massaged my body in the shower after. That magic mouth that said he wanted me.
But can’t tell you what any of it means.
The same Jessie that just left me on read after I said I missed him.
That thought has me sitting up and frowning. Rosie sobers enough from her excited rambling I hadn’t paid attention to, to notice my expression and she scooches closer.
“What’s the look?” She tilts her head questioning, and I sip my wine, shrugging in response.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I mumble.
“What’s there to know?”
“I’m going to fall for him, Rosie. I think I already am.”
“But you love love. What’s the problem?”
“I think he is going to pull back. I just feel like he is going to slip through my fingers and I don’t know how to make him stay.” Rosie assesses my whole face, like she can read every thought, and I nervously sip my wine, trying to shrink from her gaze.
“Addison said, even if he did fall for me, he likely wouldn’t let himself and would let go or push me away. I just… everything is amazing when we’re together, but then as soon as we have some space, it’s like he has regrets, or he doesn’t want to go down the path I think we’re already on, and I don’t know how to tell myself to stop. To make him fall first so I know he’ll catch me.” Rosie’s face shifts to something like sympathy and she rubs my shoulder.
“Okay. What do you want from him?”
“Well… I don’t know.”
“Then what do you like about spending time with him? You guys are literally joined at the hip lately, so what is it?”
Everything.
“I feel at peace. I… feel taken care of. Like I don’t have to anticipate his feelings or what he needs from me. I don’t have to worry about what topics to talk about or whether he is bored of my company. I like that we can be in the same room and not speak for hours. I really like when he quotes classic literature, like it’s his way of telling me what he wants to say without knowing what words to use. I like that he makes me feel not so lonely, even when I am.”
When my eyes make contact with Rosie again, a gentle smile sits on her face and she tilts her head.
“Awh,” she says, then her face slowly morphs into disgust. “That was gross. But I think you might be in love, Case.” She rubs my arm and pats me gently before getting up from the couch. “I knew I’d lose you both to that disease,” she jokes as she heads for the kitchen with her wine glass. But I’m still frozen in my spot on the couch. When she starts making noise in the kitchen, I have to shake myself from my frozen thoughts–because I am most certainly not in love with Jessie Jenkins–and I follow Rosie.
“Excuse me, I am not.”
“Mmhmm, kay,” she muses as her head searches the fridge. I stand behind her, trying to get her attention.
“Hello! I am not.”
“Casey, it’s okay.” She chuckles. “I know you weren’t ready for that… But you are.” Her lips pull into a pitying smile, and she turns back to the fridge searching.
“I am… What on earth are you looking for?”
“Well, you just realized you are feeling an emotion you have no control over, and it only benefits you and not someone else, so you’re about to spiral. I figured you’d need to bake,” she declares then pulls out the block of baking chocolate from the fridge, and I have to blink a number of times so my brain catches up.
“But… but you can’t bake.”
“No, but you can, and I’m an excellent learner.”
“You’re terrible at following instructions, Rosie.” She rolls her eyes as she hands me the chocolate and walks around to the kitchen island, pulling out a bar stool and plopping her ass onto it.
“You’re right, I’m better at side-line support and the cleanup. So you bake, get your control back, then we can get drunk and I can tell you about how Vibey-Viv has changed my life.”
A laugh bursts out of me and I flick my best friend a grateful smile as I pull out everything I need for a cookies and cream slice. Rosie sends me over a wink and connects her phone to the speakers.
The music fills the kitchen, Rosie tells me about her self-care adventures, and the apartment fills with the smell of a baking biscuit base and light laughter.