CHAPTER 10 #4
"Because we had a fucking deal, Terra!" Miley snapped, her voice rising as she stood up from the mat, her naked, magnificent body towering over me like an indictment.
She pointed her finger directly at my face, her hand shaking slightly.
"I told you from day one—no attachments.
No feelings. This was a strictly physical, one-time thing between two roommates who needed to get their backs cracked.
We pinky-swore on that shit, Terra! We literally made a pact before we ever touched each other! "
I let out a loud, defensive scoff, standing up from the floor to meet her gaze, refusing to let her look down on me in our own living room.
"Oh, so now we playing by the rulebook? We pinky-swore on a one-time thing, right?
That's what you wanna go with?" I stepped closer to her, my voice dropping into a sharp, mocking cadence.
"And yet, here we are, Miley. We literally had seconds this morning.
You didn't seem to care about no pinky-swear when your tongue was buried three inches deep in my asshole ten minutes ago, bitch! "
To prove my point, I reached out and delivered a hard, echoing spank right against her left ass cheek, the sound slapping against the quiet walls of the apartment.
"This ends right here, Terra," Miley said, her voice turning completely flat, emotionless, and terrifyingly cold.
She didn't even flinch from the spank. She just looked at me like I was a stranger, turned around, and began bending down to gather her rumpled clothes off the floor.
She picked up her grey leggings and her sports bra, pulling them against her chest like a shield, her face completely set in stone.
She turned on her heel and began walking down the narrow hallway toward her bedroom, her bare feet making a soft, sticky sound against the wood from the fluids still coating her skin.
I stood there for a split second, my chest heaving, feeling completely discarded—like I was just some cheap-ass toy she was done playing with before her corporate conference calls started.
The vulnerability I felt was sickening, and it instantly mutated into a wild, toxic wave of pure, unfiltered ghetto rage.
"Oh, so you just gonna walk away from a bitch like that?" I shouted, hot on her heels as I stalked down the hallway behind her, my naked body moving with an angry, aggressive stride. "You acting real brand-new right now, Miley! For real!"
***
I followed her straight into her bedroom, stepping over the threshold without asking for permission. Miley went straight for her closet, ignoring me entirely as she reached for a clean, fluffy white towel hanging on the rack.
"C'mon, Miley! Stop acting like I’m a fucking virus or some shit!
" I whined loudly, the anger in my voice cracking to reveal the raw, desperate hurt underneath. I marched over to her bed and slammed myself down onto the edge of the mattress, my naked thighs sticking slightly to the sheets. "I’m no Alicia, okay? But I’m a fucking woman like everybody else!
And by the looks of what just happened out there on that mat, you were enjoying your damn self just as much as I was!
You can't front like you didn't feel that shit! "
The second the name cleared my lips, Miley froze.
The air in the room didn't just get cold—it vanished entirely.
Miley spun around in a slow, terrifyingly deliberate motion, her face completely distorted with a silent, blinding rage I had never seen on her before.
She took two long, heavy steps across the rug until she was standing directly over me, her index finger pointing less than an inch away from my nose, her eyes burning with a dark, unhinged fury that made my breath catch in my throat.
"Never mention Alicia’s name out of your mouth again, Terra," Miley whispered, her voice vibrating with a dangerous, unstable menace that sent a cold sweat down my spine. "Never. Fucking. Again."
A sudden, suffocating silence descended on the bedroom.
Looking up at her face, I instantly knew I had hit the ultimate landmine.
I knew all about Alicia. I knew about the wild, beautiful love affair Miley had carried on with her before I ever became her roommate, and I knew about the brutal, cruel end that relationship had met.
Alicia was the only woman Miley had ever truly given her heart to, the only one she had ever let past her corporate armor, and the destruction of that love had left Miley completely hollowed out—turned her into the cold, attachment-free machine she was today.
I knew better than to bring her up, but my mouth had moved faster than my brain, driven by the desperate need to pierce through her defenses.
"Look... Miley, I’m sorry," I mumbled, my voice dropping the aggressive tone entirely as I looked down at my own lap, my fingers twisting the edge of her comforter.
"I didn't mean to bring her up like that... I'm just saying, for real... stop acting like I’m nothing. Stop treating me like I’m just some quick nut you can just wipe off your face and forget about. "
Miley let out a loud, bitter hiss through her teeth, shaking her head as she stepped back, wrapping the white towel tightly around her torso, tucking the edge cleanly over her breasts.
"You see? That is the exact same shit I’m talking about, Terra!
" Miley shouted, her voice breaking through the quiet room like a gunshot.
"You're catching feelings! You're sitting on my bed whining about being treated like 'nothing' less than twenty-four hours after we started this!
That is exactly what I was afraid of! This is why I didn't want to touch you in the first place! "
"And why are you so fucking afraid, Miley?
Huh? Tell me!" I pressed, standing up from the bed, my voice rising to match hers as I stepped right into her face, my naked body trembling with a mixture of anger and tears.
"Why can't you just let someone love your ass?
Why you gotta keep everybody at arm's length like you some kind of corporate robot? What is it?"
Miley didn't give me an answer. She didn't look at me, didn't argue, didn't say another goddamn word.
She just let out a massive, disgusted hiss through her teeth, turned around, and marched straight into her attached bathroom.
She slammed the wooden door shut with a violent, deafening BANG that shook the frames on the wall, and a second later, her muffled voice screamed through the wood: "FUCK YOU, TERRA! "
"FUCK YOU TOO, MILEY!" I spat back at the top of my lungs, my face hot with embarrassment as I violently thrust my middle finger straight at the closed bathroom door.
I didn't stay in her room another second. I turned around, marched out into the hallway, and stormed straight back into my own bedroom, slamming my own door shut until the deadbolt clicked into place.
The minute I was alone in the quiet of my room, the anger evaporated, leaving nothing but a hollow, crushing weight inside my chest. I didn't look in the mirror.
I walked straight over to my bed, threw myself face-down onto the mattress, and pulled the heavy cotton sheet completely over my head, burying my face deep into the pillows.
And then, I just started crying.
The tears came out fast, hot, and completely uncontrollable, my chest heaving against the mattress as the raw humiliation of the morning fully washed over me. I felt so incredibly stupid—so cheap, so completely unvalued.
I couldn't understand why Miley didn't want to get serious with me.
I laid there under the sheets, the heavy scent of our previous night's sex still lingering on my pillows, torturing my senses as a million toxic questions began to plague my mind.
Did she not find me attractive enough? Was my body not good enough for her?
Was I too loud, too hood, too much of a project for a girl who started spending her days working in thirty-billion-dollar corporate office in Midtown?
I thought about how she looked at me out there on the yoga mat—the raw hunger, the way she literally devoured my body like I was the only thing that mattered in the world.
How could someone be that present, that intense, and that completely worshipful of your flesh, and then turn around and look at you like a piece of garbage the second the fluids dried? It didn't make any goddamn sense to me.
Was Alicia really the only one ever good enough for her?
The thought of that dead girl made my chest ache with a deep, bitter jealousy.
Alicia had gotten the real version of Miley—the soft version, the version that wrote poetry and stayed up until four in the morning just talking about the future.
All I got was the machine. All I got was the elite executioner who could make me squirt until I drowned, but couldn't hold my hand for five minutes without looking for an exit strategy.
Through the thick drywall of the apartment, the muffled, steady roar of the bathroom shower began to echo, signaling that Miley was officially washing my memory off her skin, getting ready to put on her designer suit and head down to her corporate playground.
I pulled the sheet tighter around my head, the hot tears soaking into my pillowcase as the sound of the running water continued to rain down, reminding me that no matter how good the sex was, I was still completely alone on the block.