Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Trina
“Your place is so cute!” Sara says, sitting down on the inflatable chair.
“Thanks! It looks a lot better than it did a few weeks ago.” I sit across from her on the floor pillow I recently bought. It’s bright yellow and adds a cheerful pop of color to the room.
“So how’s the job search going?” she asks.
“I haven’t really been looking. I don’t think I want to go back to being an assistant, spending my day running errands and getting coffee.”
“What about being a buyer? I know it’s not designing, but you still get to work with clothes.”
“It’s something I’d consider, but I haven’t seen any job openings.”
“So for now, are you going to keep working at the grocery store?”
“Yeah, I actually don’t mind it. And I’m still helping Scott organize his storage room.”
We’ve been working on it for three weeks and should’ve been done by now. But when we’re in that small room together, just the two of us, we end up kissing, which leads to doing other things. When Scott said we weren’t having sex again after we did it in my apartment, I really thought he meant it. But the next day, I went over to his place for breakfast and we ended up in his bed. Ever since then, we can’t get enough of each other.
“You two spend a lot of time together,” Sara says, smiling a little. “Is there something going on there? Something you haven’t told me?”
“No,” I say, but I’m not at all convincing. I can’t help but smile when I talk about Scott.
“Liar,” she says with a laugh. “When did this happen? I thought you hated the guy.”
“I didn’t hate him. I just didn’t like him, but then I got to know him and found that he’s actually a nice guy.”
“Does this mean you’re dating him?”
“Scott doesn’t date. We’re just… hanging out.”
“So it’s just sex. And you’re okay with that?”
“For now, yeah. I was with Asher for years. I’m not looking to get into another relationship.”
“Do you guys go out and do stuff?”
“We do stuff all the time. We go out to dinner. Go to museums. Take walks in the park. Oh, and he took me to that fashion photography exhibit. I still can’t believe he got tickets.”
“He sounds more like a boyfriend than a hookup. If you’re not careful, you’re going to start having feelings for him.”
“Scott’s made it very clear he doesn’t want a girlfriend. I knew that going into this.”
“Yeah, but you can’t always control how you feel. Just hearing you talk, I can tell you feel something for him.”
She’s right, but I don’t want to admit that to her, or anyone else, especially Scott. He’d end our arrangement if he knew how I felt about him. He’d say he told me so, that he knew I couldn’t just have casual sex and not get my feelings involved. But it’s not just the sex making me feel this way. It’s Scott, and all the time we spend together. I feel like we’re dating even though we’re not.
There’s a knock on the door. “Trina, it’s me.”
I jump up and go open the door.
Scott smiles when he sees me and gives me a kiss. “Are you ready to get started? I got more labels for the boxes.”
“I’ll be up there later. Sara’s here.” I look back at her. “She’s the one who found me this place.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Scott smiles at her. “Hey, Sara. How’s it going?”
“Good. Hey, did you hear Jenna got engaged?”
“Yeah, she sent me a text last week. I’m happy for her.”
“She’s really excited. She’s already started working on the wedding plans.”
I feel sad hearing her say that because it reminds me of my own wedding, the one that never happened. If Asher and I hadn’t broken up, I’d be planning our wedding. Finding a dress. Picking out flowers. Now I’m wondering if I’ll ever get married. What if I keep finding guys like Scott? Guys I really like that don’t want to commit?
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Scott says. “Trina, just text me when you’re ready to work on the storage room.”
“Okay.” He leaves and I shut the door.
“He’s really hot,” Sara says. “If I was living next to that, I’d have sex with him too.”
“Yeah, we don’t get a lot of work done in the storage room.” I smile and sit down on the floor cushion.
“The way he kissed you at the door, I would’ve thought you were his girlfriend. He doesn’t treat you like some girl he’s just hooking up with.”
“Because I’m not just that. Scott and I are friends.”
“So what happens when he decides to end this and hook up with someone else?”
“I don’t know,” I say, because I really don’t. Scott and I haven’t talked about it and I’m choosing not to think about it. I want to believe it won’t happen, but I know eventually this will end. If it didn’t, it would turn into a relationship. Scott won’t let that happen. He’s determined to stay single. So what am I doing? How long am I going to continue this, knowing the longer it goes on, the more painful it’ll be when it ends?
“What happened with that other guy?” she asks.
“What other guy?”
“You texted me a few weeks ago saying you had a date.”
“Oh, that was Kurt. We never went out. He used to be friends with Asher so I thought it’d be weird to go out with him.”
Actually, I turned him down because of Scott. By the time Kurt texted me about our date, I was sleeping with Scott and had no desire to go out with someone else.
“Have you heard anything from Asher?” Sara asks.
“No, nothing. I thought he might try to talk to me after I broke up with him, like try to get me back, but he didn’t. I guess he really didn’t want to be with me.”
“I think he just wasn’t ready to get married. A lot of guys his age aren’t.”
“Yeah, but we were living together, acting like we were already married, so why couldn’t he just make it official?” I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I’ll probably never see him again.”
She glances at her watch. “I should go. I have some stuff to do before I go home.”
“It was good seeing you,” I say as I walk her to the door.
“You too.”
She leaves, and I grab my keys and go over to Scott’s place. His door is unlocked so I let myself in. He’s on the couch with his laptop.
“I’m ready,” I say, standing by the couch.
He smiles and sets his laptop aside. “Get over here.”
I go to sit beside him, but he pulls me onto his lap and gives me a kiss. “How was your visit with Sara?”
“Good. She thinks we’re dating.”
“Is that what you told her?”
“No. I just said we’ve been hanging out, but then she saw you kiss me.”
“And that means we’re dating?”
“I guess to her it does. Anyway, are you ready to get to work?”
He kisses me.
“Or we could do something else,” I say, smiling at him.
We go to his bedroom, which is where I woke up this morning. The past week, I’ve been spending the night here. It’s something a girlfriend would do, so I was surprised the first time Scott asked me to stay over. The next day, he offered to let me stay there again, and it turned into every night this week.
“I guess we should get to work,” Scott says, giving me a kiss on the forehead as I lie in his arms.
“I’m not sure I have the energy after that,” I say, not wanting to get up.
“We don’t have much left to do. A few more days and we’ll be done.”
“How do you have time for this? Don’t you need to be meeting with clients?”
“I rearranged my schedule and moved my meetings to the afternoons and evenings.”
I look at him. “Because of me?”
“Mornings are the only time you can work on the storage room.”
“Yeah, but you don’t need to be there. I could do it by myself.”
“Maybe I want to be there.” He kisses me. “Let’s go, or we’ll never leave this bed.”
When he says stuff like that, about how he’s rearranged his schedule to be with me, it makes me think he sees this as more than a casual fling. And letting me sleep over? Why is he doing that if we’re just friends who fool around?
Spending all this time with him, I feel like Scott’s my boyfriend. I have to keep reminding myself he’s not. He could be with some other girl at any time and I’d have to accept it. That’s the deal we made. This isn’t a relationship. We’re not exclusive.
How long will it be before Scott decides to end this? He said he was with Bridget for a few months. Is that his limit? A few months and then he’s done?
“You coming?” Scott asks, putting his jeans on.
“Yeah.” I get out of bed, my relaxed post-sex state replaced with unease and uncertainty.
What am I doing here? Am I going to keep letting myself be with Scott, falling for him even more, knowing it’s going to end? Or do I need to stop this? Tell him I can’t do it anymore?
That’s something I need to think about, but not today. I’m really happy with Scott. I’m not ready for this to end.
“These sketches you did are really good,” I say.
We’re in the storage room, labeling boxes. The one I just labeled has sketches of the inflatable furniture Scott wanted to make when he was still in the idea stage for his company. I took one of them out to look at, a sketch of an inflatable chair.
“I didn’t make those,” Scott says, setting a box on the shelf. “They were my ideas, but I can’t draw. I had someone else do it.”
“Who? Someone you hired?”
“I don’t remember.” He snatches the sketch from me and tosses it in the box. “We need to keep going.” He puts the lid on the box and shoves it on the shelf.
“Those sketches were the designs for your first products. How could you not remember who drew them?”
“What the hell difference does it make?” he says, tossing another box on the shelf. “Just let it go.”
“Why are you getting so upset?”
“I’m not.” He glances at me. “I just don’t want to waste time talking. We need to get this done.”
“We can’t talk? We always talk when we’re in here.”
“Yeah, well, not today.”
I walk over to him. “What’s going on with you?”
He shrugs. “I’m tired of doing this. I want to finish it.”
“I thought you liked doing this.”
“I did, but I’m ready for it to be over. We’ve been doing this for weeks.”
It feels like he’s talking about us, not the storage room. Is that why he’s getting angry? Because he’s ready to end this?
“What is this really about?” I ask, a knot forming in my stomach.
He turns to me. “Why are you turning this into something? I just want to finish the storage room. It doesn’t mean anything.”
It feels like it does, but I decide to let it go. Maybe he’s just in a bad mood or stressed about something.
“So when we’re done here,” I say, “we’ll start on the storage room upstairs?”
“No. We’re not doing that one.”
“Why not? I thought you said—”
“I changed my mind. It’s just some furniture and stuff from my old house. I’ll go through it myself when I have time.”
“I don’t mind helping you.”
He looks at me. “I said I’ll do it myself.”
“Okay,” I mutter, going back to labeling boxes.
Something’s bothering him, but he won’t tell me what. I feel like I should leave and let him finish this himself, but I decide to stay and just not talk to him.
An hour later, he leaves the room to take a phone call, then comes back. “I need to go meet with a client. We’ll finish this later.”
“I can stay and keep working.”
He glances around the room, seeing what’s left to do. “Okay, but just label the boxes. Don’t do anything else.”
“Yeah, got it.”
He doesn’t say goodbye. Doesn’t give me a kiss. He just leaves.
What happened? Everything was great, and now he’s acting like he wants nothing to do with me.
Is this the end? Did he decide this is getting too serious and he needs to move on? If so, he should tell me that.
I sink to the floor, tears threatening to fall.
Why did I do this to myself? I knew this would happen. I knew I couldn’t keep things casual with Scott. And I knew when it ended, I’d feel sad and hurt, like I’m feeling right now.
So why did I do it? Why did I ever get involved with Scott?