Chapter 3
KIRA
The Burrow Bitches
Britney: remind me, how long did you guys date?
Kira: Technically, four years. But we’d been best friends since we were kids.
Macey: Hello?
Kira: Second to Macey, of course.
Ariadne: What does Xavier think about Landon being back?
Kira: I haven’t told him yet.
Britney: …yikes
“Wait, you’ve been dating Xavier for four months, and you’ve only slept with him twice?” Britney asked, drink halfway to her lips.
She sounded horrified, like me keeping my legs closed was a dirty sin.
“Yes,” I said a little defensively. “We both have busy schedules.”
“And?” Britney challenged. “When I was sleeping with Michael from criminal law, we’d find a corner in the library before and after our study sessions.”
I wished I could bury myself in a library corner right now. It was girls’ night—or, technically, girls’ evening. Macey hadn’t been back long, and this was the earliest time the four of us could get together.
Britney, the red-headed beauty who made heads turn everywhere she went, was just as smart as she was promiscuous. She worked as a barista at The Burrow Café—the café on the bottom floor of the same building where Ariadne and I worked—to help fund her way through law school.
Macey used to work in the building too, until she finally decided to follow her dreams of being an independent travel blogger. Now she owned and ran the blog Macey’s Miles, which was making her almost as famous as her semi-retired influencer boyfriend, Noah Hansley.
That left me and Ariadne working upstairs in the building.
Even then, Ariadne worked part time as an IT assistant, solving a variety of problems created each day.
In her free time, she was a freelance graphic designer.
That came with its own set of challenges, namely that she worked from home—a small house overrun with her giant Greek family.
How one fixed cosmetic flaws on Photoshop while listening to screaming two-year-olds, I’d never know.
“I don’t see a problem with it.” Macey rose to my defense. She tapped her iPhone, lighting up the lock screen photo of Noah trying to use her long blonde braid as a mustache. “There’s no minimum amount of intercourse a couple has to have.”
Britney wrinkled her button nose. “There’s no maximum either. And please don’t use the word intercourse in my presence again.”
Ariadne took a sip of her cosmopolitan. “Is it that bad?”
I buried my head in my hands, pretty sure my face was flushing red by this point. My Korean American parents didn’t drink alcohol very often, but when they did, their faces also flushed. Thank you, genetics.
“It has nothing to do with that,” I said. “I don’t like to rush into things. I rushed with Jae and Theo, and look where it got me.”
A water bottle slammed against the tiny table. I raised my head and caught Macey’s angry look. “That had nothing to do with you. They were both dicks.”
Tugging at the ends of my hair, I mentally gave her that point. My ex-boyfriends Jae and Theo were both dicks, but I put up with them for as long as I could. Even now, I hated thinking about them. Those breakups were messy and honestly, made me feel pretty terrible about myself.
I’m sorry. Those were the only words Landon wrote in his letter to me.
That’s what men always said during a breakup. At least that’s what I thought until Theo cheated on me and never apologized. Jae never said it either. During those two breakups, I was told without a doubt that the breakup was my fault. Never mind the fact I was the one who dumped them.
Theo acknowledged that he should’ve ended things with me before he slept around, but “I was a nice girl and he didn’t want to ruin things.
” Which confused me until he clarified that he liked me, but he needed to get his satisfaction somewhere else since we didn’t sleep together often.
Jae had just laughed and said he would be better off without me.
Xavier at least was patient. Nice. Understanding.
Okay, my bar for men was pretty low.
“If I ever see them again, I will cut off their dicks and feed them to the rats in the subway.” Britney seethed.
Ariadne gathered her curly hair into a ponytail. “There are rats in the subway?”
“Don’t look too hard,” Britney answered. “Back on topic. Xavier is cute, maybe a little too preppy for my tastes, but I’m sure he’s way better in bed than your exes.”
I tried to hide my wince by finishing off my cocktail that was now 90 percent melted ice. It was possible that I fibbed to my friends about sex with Theo and Jae. When they asked me how it was, I responded “bad.” I never explained why, though, so technically, it was a lie of omission.
My fierce friends had immediately jumped to my side, filling in the gaps I couldn’t stand to discuss. The sex must be bad because Theo and Jae were bad at sex, they assumed. I appreciated their faith in me, no matter how misplaced it was.
The truth was neither Theo nor Jae was bad in bed. Before Theo decided to sleep with every other woman in the neighborhood, he was very dedicated to his tasks. He always tried to make it good for me, to make me come first, but he rarely succeeded.
As for Jae…well, Jae was hot and experienced. He had a lot of fancy tricks, ones that I knew I should’ve been impressed by, but coaxing me out of my head wasn’t a skill you could pluck like a rabbit out of a hat.
Because that was where I was all the time, especially during sex.
I was hyper aware of everything that happened, constantly noticing every look and touch.
It wasn’t that the touches felt wrong, but they never felt right.
I felt distanced from my body, like it wasn’t solely mine, and I was looking down at it, confused, just like a partner in bed.
The worst part was the constant thinking. Does he like this? Am I moving enough? Where do I put my hands? How do I tell him he’s not where he thinks he is? Did I miss a spot shaving?
I’d known for a long time that there was something wrong with me.
It felt like most women of twenty-five were excited by their lovers or enchanted at the thought of going out with the newest person they matched with on a dating app, and I was the odd one out.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like sex, but I could only like it with the right people.
Dating was a similar concept. For a few years, I’d avoided it completely. I learned from an early age that men who had to compete with my solitude always lost. I was my own best company.
But I couldn’t live that way forever.
That was the real truth behind those two breakups.
It was a wound that would always be raw or a bruise that wouldn’t heal.
Sex stressed me out, so I avoided it. I would make up any excuse to steer clear of the lackluster between-the-sheets experiences.
My avoidance drove Theo to cheat and it made Jae hate me.
I never had to eschew Landon, though.
Maybe it was because I loved him back then, or maybe because he was Landon, which could have been found in the thesaurus of my life under good. Unfortunately, he was an even worse dick for abandoning me.
Apparently, he also took my last chance of orgasming with a partner.
Macey leaned forward, empathy in her brown eyes. “Kira?”
I snapped out of it, dragging myself back to the conversation. “Right. Yes.”
Ariadne let out a soft sigh, her gaze flicking between the two of us. “Must be nice to be in a successful relationship.”
I laughed lightly. “Please. You’re thriving solo.”
She gave a half-smile. “Sure. Living the dream.” Then, more quietly, “It just feels like everyone’s coupling up and moving forward…and I’m still stuck.”
Britney raised a hand, mock-offended. “Um, rude? Did you forget about your favorite fellow single lady?”
Ariadne snorted. “You make single look like a power move, Brit. I make it look accidental.”
“I’ve dodged at least three red flags this month alone.” Britney sighed. “I think I’m growing.”
“Meanwhile,” Ariadne muttered, “I downloaded a dating app, panicked when someone messaged me, and deleted it five minutes later.”
“You can always try again later,” Macey said encouragingly. I didn’t miss the frequent concerned looks she shot in my direction.
I pushed my empty drink forward and stood. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Xavier made us dinner, so I’m heading to his apartment. Love you guys.”
Before anyone could make a Xavier-related, or worse, sex-related, comment, I threw down a few bills and walked toward the exit. Yes, I was one of those weirdos who always carried cash.
I didn’t make it very far before a hand touched my back.
“Hey.” Macey had run after me. She whispered low enough that I had to strain to hear her. “We kind of brushed over the whole Landon thing. You’re okay, right?”
I forced a smile on my face. I appreciated the gesture, really, but I didn’t want to talk about Landon any more than I had to tonight. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.”
She squinted her eyes at me. “Two dollars that Xavier gets jealous about Landon.”
It was part of a years-old game we’d invented. We used low-stakes bets, always just a couple of dollars, with the winnings going straight to our shared utility fund.
“You’re on.”
When people asked a girl her favorite thing about her boyfriend, the usual answers were his intelligence, his kindness, his protectiveness, or maybe something as simple as his smile.
My favorite thing about Xavier? His posture.
He was constantly languid, like there wasn’t a thing in the world that bothered him. As someone who found something to worry about in every scenario, I admired that characteristic.
Even now, he sat at the dinner table—small, square, and designed for two—with a relaxed posture.
One elbow was on the tablecloth, head tilted ever so slightly as if listening to the neighbors’ daughter practice her piano skills.
His elegant fingers traced down the line of his chin, peppered with a five o’clock shadow as he listened to me talk.