Chapter 16
Chris
“Do you have plans tomorrow? Should I take off and get out of your hair?”
Julia and I had been dating… excuse me, friends with benefits…
for six weeks now. Even though things had been going well, we were both still being careful.
Not assuming that we’d see each other. Negotiating sleepovers on a case by case basis.
Texting daily but not sharing any endearments.
Not being too personal – other than sex that is.
Somewhere over the past six weeks, I’d fallen head over heels in love with this woman. The problem was, I had no idea how she felt about me. I was pretty sure she had at least a little affection for me, but whether it rose to the level of girlfriends and forever I had no idea.
Julia was surprisingly guarded, but in a way that made her look like an open book.
It was hard to describe, but it felt like she shared parts of herself openly to hide the parts she didn’t want them to see.
I knew all about how she felt about her mother’s matchmaking and I’d heard story after story about her job.
But she was surprisingly taciturn about her ADHD, although I had the sense she was a little embarrassed about it.
She never mentioned her previous relationships or talked about her friends, even though I knew she had some.
And while she seemed to appreciate physical affection, I was always the one who initiated it.
I needed to talk to her. I’d read enough romance books to understand how annoying it was when one or both of the protagonists had a dark moment solely because they couldn’t bring themselves to have a grown-up conversation about what was going on. Then again, that was harder than it looked.
“I don’t have anything going until tomorrow afternoon,” Julia said sleepily. “You’re welcome to sleep over if you’d like.”
I was welcome to sleep over wasn’t exactly an invitation.
“Do you want me to?” My voice sounded small, uncertain.
She rolled over to squint at me. Her dark hair was a wild mess around her, spilling over her bare shoulders and both of our pillows, making her look like some ancient goddess.
“I just said I did.”
“No, you said I was welcome to stay over, as if it didn’t matter to you either way.”
“It doesn’t,” she shrugged. “Whatever you want to do is fine.”
I felt a rush of annoyance that propelled me right off the bed. After all we’d shared, didn’t I matter to her at all?
“Okay I’m going to head out.”
“Wait, are you pissed?” she asked, her face becoming more alert. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I can’t read you,” I said, pulling on my pants with way more force than was strictly necessary. “I can’t tell if you like spending time with me, or if you just like having sex, and if so, is it the sex in general or is it sex with me? I mean, do you even like me?”
Julia sat up in bed, her face creased in a frown. “I’m confused. What’s happening right now?”
“We need to talk.”
She groaned. “Fuck. That doesn’t sound good. Okay, let me get dressed for this.”
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
She came out a few minutes later, her mass of curls twisted up in a messy bun. She was dressed in loose shorts, and an ancient sweatshirt that slid off one shoulder, leaving it bare. I tried not to think about how good that exact patch of skin tasted when I licked it.
Without a word, Julia filled the electric kettle with water and turned it on.
She grabbed two cups out of the cabinet as well as a little box she kept that was filled with various tea bags.
We were both quiet during the few minutes it took to heat the water, but once we both had steaming cups of tea, she spoke.
“What did you want to talk about?”
I considered my words carefully.
“The last six weeks have been great. I’ve had a lot of fun with you, and I feel like we’ve become friends. Good friends.”
“I agree,” Julia said, her expression cautious.
“And the sex has been great.”
“The best,” she agreed.
“The thing is, I don’t want to be friends with benefits anymore.”
She leaned back, looking surprised. “Oh. I thought things were going pretty well, but okay, if that’s what you want. We’ve been dating long enough to stage a credible break-up for our parents anyway.”
I stared at her, feeling hurt by her nonchalant attitude about us potentially breaking up. Didn’t she care?
“So that’s it then?” I hoped she didn’t hear the little quiver in my voice.
“Well I’m not going to beg you to hang out with me if you don’t want the same thing as me.”
“The thing is, I don’t want to stage a break-up.”
She huffed out something that was a cross between a laugh and a sigh. “Chris, for God’s sake, it’s after midnight and I’m not a mind reader. What are you trying to tell me?”
“I want us to date for real.”
“I thought we were. Now I’m really confused.”
“We agreed to friends with benefits,” I reminded her. “Not a girlfriend situation.”
“Oh yeah, I know. But the thing is, I only agreed to friends with benefits because I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I thought friends with benefits was what you wanted,” I replied. “I guess we should have both been clearer about our feelings.”
“I’m not good with sex with no feelings, to be honest. I’ve been thinking of you as my girlfriend ever since that second weekend we were together. I just didn’t want to freak you out by being that clingy girl.”
I felt the tension leach out of my body.
“I’ve been thinking of you as my girlfriend too,” I admitted.
“So we’re on the same page?” she asked.
“Sounds like we are. But as long as we’re talking about this, I need to warn you that I’m falling for you.”
“Warn me? Is it dangerous or something?”
“Well no, it’s just that if you don’t have feelings for me yet, I understand, but if you don’t think you ever will, we probably shouldn’t be together.”
“I don’t know where this is going,” she told me. “But I know it’s going somewhere. I want it to go somewhere. But let’s just be us, okay? We don’t need labels and declarations and rules, do we?”
It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love, but for now I’d take it.
“I guess not, as long as I can call you my girlfriend.”
She made some kind of grumbling noise in her throat that clearly indicated impatience.
“You can call me whatever you want if I can go back to sleep. I’m exhausted.”
I wasn’t done yet though. “Just to be clear, if you’re my girlfriend, that means that we’re exclusive. You’re not going to date any other women. Or men. Well, any other people.”
This time she didn’t try to hide her sigh. “I’m not sure when you think I’ve got time to date these other fictional people, but I assure you that between work, keeping up with my friends, and spending time with you, I can’t possibly squeeze in someone else to date.”
“I need you to say it,” I said stubbornly.
“Christina Robbins, you and I are exclusively dating. This relationship is going somewhere, to be determined at a later date. I like you, you like me, and the sex is incredible.”
“Great,” I said happily.
“But I just want to be clear that if you ever drag me out of bed for a heart to heart conversation in the middle of the night again, I will stab you in the neck with my knitting needles.”
My lips twitched. “Understood.”
“Now will you come back to bed so I can wake up next to you and eat you out?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great.”
We finished our tea in silence, then rinsed out our cups and headed back to bed. I pulled Julia into my arms, her back to my front, and pressed a kiss on her cheek.
“I’m glad you’re my girlfriend now.”
“I had no idea you were going to be such a girl,” she mumbled.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Talking about your feelings, wanting reassurances and labels, I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
“Talking about your feelings is healthy. You should try it sometime.”
The funny thing was, I was generally bad at that myself. For some reason I felt okay speaking freely with Julia, even though I could tell it made her uncomfortable. Obviously, she wasn’t in as deep as I was with her. Not yet.
“I’d rather try to get some sleep,” she grumbled.
As I held her close, listening to her breathing, I wondered what would happen next with us.
I was glad that I’d insisted on us talking, and even though Julia seemed the tiniest bit annoyed about it, I had the impression that she was also relieved.
Like most people in new relationships, we were going to have to navigate the best way to communicate with each other.
Tonight had felt like a test, and I was glad that we seemed to have passed the test.