Situationship

One

Teagan

Holy shit, we have to break up.

“Oh, god. Teagan!” Lenny moans as he finishes. His body shudders the way it always does after a hard four minutes of work. His expression is one of pure bliss while he leaves me frustrated yet again.

No, we don’t need to break up. This is fixable. Something that can be improved upon with proper time and training , I tell myself, not registering my solution is appropriate for dogs, not men. Lackluster performance aside, it’s not worth overlooking all the positive traits he has. He’s intelligent, ambitious, and that body . . .

Sweat glistens against the defined muscles of his chest, taunting me. I stroke my hands over them as he catches his breath. It wouldn’t be fair if he was perfect in every way. He just can’t seem to figure this out, even after five long months of trying. Five aggravating, vexatious, frustrating months.

He looks down at me, wetting his lips while he pants. “That was so good,” he says. Was it, Lenny? Was it?

He collapses onto me and wraps me in a hug. When I’m not looking at him, I don’t like him nearly as much. I stare up at the ceiling in annoyance, replacing my expression with a smile when he turns his head to look at me. “Did you . . . ?”

If you have to ask, the answer is no. “I . . . no, I didn’t,” I admit. “I was close, though.” I wasn’t close at all. The sun is closer to that orgasm than I was.

He looks rueful, as if realizing he’s let me down. He has. “I’m sorry, I thought you had.”

Bitch, where?

“No,” I repeat in as gentle a tone as I can manage.

Lenny is a sensitive little lamb, but he has yet to figure out I’m a wolf, hungry for more than he gives me. Unfortunately for me, I need this relationship to work. I’ve been playing coy to keep from scaring him away, focusing on school and work while hoping this part would work itself out, and it gets harder every day that passes.

“It takes me a while to get there,” I explain. He nods in understanding and presses an apologetic kiss on my cheek. “There are . . . other things we could do to help me along, you know.”

“Like what?” he asks. He brushes his hand over my cheek. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“Well . . .” I tread lightly. “You could go down on me.”

His gaze drops from mine and his mouth presses into a straight line.

“You love when I do it for you, so maybe you could try—?”

“I told you that makes me uncomfortable.”

“I know you’ve had a bad experience with a partner before, but I’m very rigorous about my hygiene, it would never—”

“No, Teagan. I don’t want to.”

“Okay, okay,” I coddle him. “Then would you let me do things to help me along?”

“You shouldn’t need those things when you have me. I should be enough for you.”

He pulls out and rolls over to sit on the edge of the bed. I stare at his back, watching his muscles flex as he fumbles with the condom. Big arms that can curl me like a pillow, wide shoulders that would be a great resting spot for my thighs if given the chance, and a nice, tight ass. Ugh, why does he have to look so good? Every part of my body wants him, only to get nothing when I have him.

He’s the human equivalent of a bag of chips. The image on the front promises so much, but you open it up and find out it’s mostly air and won’t go down on you.

“This relationship isn’t working,” I blurt.

He turns to me with wide-eyed surprise. “What? Why?”

I sit up, holding the covers to my chest. “Because I’m not happy.”

“Not happy?” He looks as if he wants to cry. It would break my heart if I had one. “How can you not be happy? I thought you loved me.”

The L-word is far too strong to describe how I feel about him, but that’s beside the point right now. “I care about you—obviously I do, Lenny. It’s just . . . you . . .” Frustration sets in again. He can’t see how selfish he is being. I don’t need his money or his connections, things most women would use him for. I just want him to get me off. Why is that so much to ask? “You haven’t given me a single orgasm the entire time we’ve been together, and it is driving me insane.”

“I want to satisfy you. I’ve been trying.”

“Have you, though?” I laugh out of frustration rather than humor, which I realize comes off as crazed as I’m about to seem. “It’s been months of the same shit. You don’t like it when I touch myself. You hate when I suggest toys. And what kind of straight dude doesn’t want to eat pussy? Seriously!”

“Excuse me?” His eyebrows rise.

“If I didn’t suck your dick or get you off, you would have dumped me months ago and you damn well know it. But here you are acting like it personally offends you to return the favor!” There goes my plan to play coy, but I feel so much better getting it off my chest.

He stares at me in disbelief. “Who are you right now?”

“Someone who is sexually frustrated,” I say. “You are the most irritating person I have ever met. You have an amazing mind and an absolutely ridiculous body, but you have no idea how to use either. How can someone graduate law school with honors and not be able to figure out where the fucking clitoris is?”

“You’d throw away a future with me because you think I’m not good in bed?” He shakes his head. “I’m very disappointed.”

“Well, now you know how I’ve felt every time you’ve been inside me.”

There’s an awkward silence as Lenny dresses. He grabs his wallet and keys from the top of my nightstand. He doesn’t turn back to me when he walks out of the room. I listen for the sound of the front door closing before I flop back onto my pillow.

As I stare at the ceiling, I realize what I just did. A giggle bubbles up and breaks the silence. I cover my smiling mouth with a hand.

~

So, maybe breaking up at the start of summer wasn’t the best idea.

For most people, the summer is a time to relax, enjoy the sun, and have a fling, but in my world, it’s cuffing season. Just like the winter stretch of holidays that are much easier to navigate with an already established beau, my summertime is filled with event after event, none you want to show up to alone. Weddings, parties, banquets—one million places to see and be seen by the same circle of socialites and Forbes 500s, all ready to be neck-deep in your business for the sake of entertainment. It’s worse when you’re the one who already seems out of place.

Adoption has its ups and downs. of the ups is getting wealthy parents who wanted me and my brothers more than anything. of the downs is always having to explain yourself and your presence in a room you wouldn’t be in if not for the parents who look nothing like you. Growing up, my parents always felt the need to prove we were a family—and a happy one—before anyone had the chance to ask. They brought us to all the summer social gatherings, always dressing us to the nines, making sure we were coordinated, on theme, and appropriate for the occasion so we wouldn’t stick out for the wrong reasons. Now I have an irrational fear of showing up without meeting every ostentatious expectation.

I try to remind myself the operative word is irrational . I don’t need a date for this party or the next. No one will even notice I’m alone. It’ll be fine. Totally fine.

I pull my fingernail away from the absent-minded gnawing of my teeth.

My dress tickles the tops of my feet as I walk into the banquet hall. I feel confident that the floor length, high slit, and cowl neckline are up to par for this event, but I’m not feeling confident that my orgasmless sex hair is doing the same. I was too overwhelmed to tame my curls back into compliance. Swooping them up into a makeshift updo was the best I could achieve.

“Teags!”

I turn to find my best friend, Ryan, approaching, his fiancé, Mary, in one hand, a flute of champagne in the other. Mary’s graduation is the reason he threw this soirée, but their short, six-month engagement has turned all of their big events into prewedding celebrations.

“Congratulations, Mary,” I say before we kiss cheeks, careful not to touch my lacquered lips to her skin. She thanks me, her smile gleaming like the crystals on her dress and the massive diamond on her finger. The mermaid gown hugs every curve, its gold color flattering her tan skin and brown eyes. “You look beautiful, as always.”

“Thank you! I’m just trying to get on your level.” She flatters me.

Mary, unlike her common name, is a rare gem. Grounded and painfully kind, she makes it a point to ensure everyone around her is comfortable and included. In the four years they have been together, she has grown my bestie from a little prick into a semitolerable man. The only way I could be happier for them is if I wasn’t the one responsible for planning their wedding and all the upcoming parties to celebrate it.

“The whole gang is here.” Ryan gestures behind me. Sure enough, the rest of our friends stand in a circle along the edge of the crowd.

“Right,” I say. “I better say hi, and you need to mingle. I’ll catch you two later.” I give them more kisses and wave goodbye.

The gang smiles when they see me approaching. There is a mandatory relationship that forms when you are stuck in the same places with the same people for fifteen years. Since elementary school we have been entwined in each other’s lives. Our graduating class from high school was an intimate group of twenty, and out of that, only the six of us went to Columbia.

While I spend my school months with future groundbreakers, Divine Nines, and powerful women who inspire and challenge me, my summers are dictated by my family’s curated network, leaving me with these fucking guys. Even with me being the glaring black sheep of the group—the only girl, only Black friend, only adoptee—we’re all a bunch of nepo babies and trust fund kids. People most of the public would find intolerable. Whether we like it or not, we are inescapably enmeshed, a family, together for every milestone and every celebration.

“Teags!” the guys say in unison.

“Hey, guys.” They’re all here, and everyone has a date except me. Great . Brett and his wife, Jeremy and Ritchie with their long-term beaus, and . . . Heath. His gray eyes meet mine, and I ignore the ache in my chest.

He always cleans up well considering how he practically lives in athletic wear. His dark hair is freshly cut and styled, his tux impeccably tailored to his athletic build, his navy bow tie making his eyes pop. It’s hard to appreciate his Calvin Klein–model perfection when it’s hidden behind his glaring, douchebag persona, but for most women, it’s the opposite. The Pilates-body blond he has wrapped around his arm proves my point. She’s at a black-tie event in a cheap cocktail dress. He didn’t even bother to tell her the dress code, and she doesn’t care, because the man taking her home tonight is rich and fine as hell. I hate him. So much.

He lifts his chin to greet me, and we go back to ignoring each other.

“Didn’t think you were going to make it,” Jeremy, my other bestie and roomie jeers. We have lived together since sophomore year, but since he met his boyfriend, his little jabs have grown less playful and our time together less frequent.

“You try walking in these shoes,” I say, swishing the end of my gown to the side to reveal them.

“Okay, Angelina Jolie. I see you working that high slit,” Jeremy’s boyfriend, Chet, compliments me. He is always the soothing balm after Jeremy’s cutting remarks. The two of them have opposite personalities but look so much alike—burly, kind brown eyes, the same groomed beards—it’s weird.

“Where’s your guy?” Brett asks me. Of course he does. By far the wealthiest in the group, he was and is the biggest fuckboy, yet somehow, he was the first of us to get married. He and his wife, Felicity, look like the generic brown-haired, blue-eyed wedding topper, perfect and preppy, but we have all been trying to figure out how and why he got married at all. “I thought you were dating that buff lawyer dude?”

“Oh, we broke up,” I say with a casual wave of my hand, even though the situation is anything but casual.

“Really? No way!” Ritchie jumps in, even though I know he doesn’t care. While I will always despise Heath, Ritchie is a close second. The two finance bros, Ritchie is the Donnie Azoff to Brett’s Jordan Belfort. From school to career to their new jobs, he copies whatever Brett does, but with half the money, half the charisma, and none of the common sense. He’s five feet six inches of pure chaos.

“I thought you two were getting serious,” Brett continues. “With your parents and everything, we had a bet going that you’d be the next to get engaged.”

His reminder makes my stomach turn. “Yeah, well . . . apparently not.”

A waiter walks by with a tray of champagne flutes. I grab one with a bit too much enthusiasm then down all of it in one go.

Thank god for open bars.