Chapter 23
TJ
She pulls my T-shirt off and throws it to the floor.
She tries to move on top of me in bed, but I don’t let her.
I didn’t use to mind not always being on top, but now I—I can’t seem to have sex any other way.
Being under someone now feels… suffocating.
She gives in to being under me and starts kissing my neck.
I close my eyes, letting myself drift into a fantasy of being with the person I truly want.
“Cornelia,” I murmur, without even realising it.
Suddenly, she stops.
“What did you just call me?” she asks, irritated.
I open my eyes to see a girl who’s clearly not Cornelia looking furious.
“Nothing,” I say, trying to play dumb, and lean in to kiss her.
She rolls her eyes and pushes me off her. I move aside as she slips out of my bed and begins gathering her clothes from the floor.
“Hey, don’t go,” I tell her from the bed.
I don’t really mind if she leaves, but I need someone to help me get my mind off Cornelia and whatever might have happened with Nate. And I’m not in the mood to head out again to find another girl.
She slips into her grey blouse, finishing getting dressed before turning to me. “Why should I?”
“Because we were having fun.” Not really, to be honest. And now that I’m taking a closer look, she doesn’t resemble Cornelia that much.
The only similarities are her height and the colour of her hair, and even that isn’t quite the same shade.
I have accepted that no girl will ever have the kind of beauty and perfection Cornelia possesses. Luckily, I have a good imagination.
“You just called me by another girl’s name,” she says, livid.
“I didn’t,” I lie.
“Okay, fine, what’s my name?” she challenges me, crossing her arms over her chest.
Fuck, she really got me with that one. I’m pretty sure it starts with an M…
Mariam?
Miriam?
Wait, I think I got it—I’m pretty sure it’s Mary.
“Mary,” I say, feeling confident.
“It’s Maya, arsehole.”
I wasn’t actually that far off, just two letters wrong—technically, just one wrong and one misplaced. I’ve had occasions where I was completely off-base.
She leaves my room, slamming the door on her way out. I follow her, thinking maybe I can still save this.
“Wait,” I call after her, but she ignores me.
I try to think of something to say in order to stop her before she walks out of the flat, but every line I come up with sounds fake—probably because they are. But I doubt she would stay if I told her the truth, so a fake line it is.
“Maya,” I say her name just as we’re a few steps from the door. She turns to look at me. “You’re right. I didn’t remember your name, but it’s because your beauty distracted me when you told it to me.”
I feel bad the moment I say it—calling a woman who isn’t Cornelia beautiful feels wrong.
She sees right through my bullshit, as that only seems to make her angrier.
“Fuck you,” she yells at me, yanking the front door open. She storms out and slams it so hard behind her I’m pretty sure half of the building heard it.
“It’s a good thing you don’t offer a satisfaction warranty,” West quips, strolling out of the hallway in nothing but blue boxers. He looks like he just came to the living room in search of something.
“Shut up,” I mutter, throwing myself onto the couch.
“Two in one week. Maybe you need some medical help down there?” His amber eyes flick towards my trousers.
I roll my eyes. “That’s not my problem.”
I’d have preferred if he’d just grabbed whatever he came looking for and left, but he drops onto the white couch across from me. “So what happened?”
I sit up straighter to look at him. “I might have called her by another name.”
He bursts out laughing, and I shoot him a glare.
“Sorry,” he chokes up between laughs. “But you have to admit, it’s really funny.”
I point to the door. “I don’t think she found it funny.”
“Of course she didn’t,” he says, still grinning. “You need to know the context to find it funny.”
My patience is running thin. “What context?”
“That after months of bringing one random girl after another to hook up with in order to replace Cornelia, your subconscious is finally telling you that it’s no longer working.”
He’s wrong. I never tried to replace Cornelia. I’ve always known it’s impossible. She’s like the Taj Mahal, the Sagrada Familia, or the Petronas Towers—a masterpiece, one of a kind, irreplaceable.
What he also doesn’t know is that my subconscious has had me saying Cornelia’s name in moments it shouldn’t since the first few weeks after we broke up. The thing back then was that the slips were spread out, so he didn’t notice.
He probably thought the other times a girl ended up fleeing my room were because of my back tattoo—girls don’t tend to appreciate you having another girl’s name inked on your back, which, in fact, has happened to me. But it hasn’t occurred as often as the name slips.
“It’s not that,” I tell him, running my hand through my hair. “It’s just that not knowing what happened between Nate and Cornelia is driving me insane. For all I know, they could be a couple now or something, and I wouldn’t even know.”
What a terrifying thought.
West sighs. “If it’ll get you out of your misery and stop girls from almost breaking the door, she turned him down.”
“What?” I ask in disbelief. While it’s what I had hoped for, a part of me always thought he was the better man.
“Do I really have to repeat myself?”
I nod. I’m still processing, and I need to hear it one more time to fully believe it.
“Cornelia. Turned. Nate. Down,” West repeats, very slowly, seeming to enjoy saying the words as much as I’m enjoying hearing them. When I told him I’d given Nate free rein to shoot his shot with Cornelia, he asked me if I’d gone insane.
As I assimilate it, I realise something.
Nate has been in New York for the past few days, so this must have happened almost a week ago.
In our friend group, most of the time we’re all up in each other’s business, so what one person knows, it doesn’t take long for everyone else to know—unless they deliberately don’t want you to find out.
That’s why I thought either Nate hadn’t talked to Cornelia yet, or she reciprocated his feelings, and they were hiding it from me.
“For how long have you known?”
He takes a few seconds before finally saying, “Laurie told me four days ago.”
“And you’re just telling me now?” I snap.
I’m boiling. I understand it from Laurie—his loyalty has always been with Cornelia. If we were both falling off a cliff and he could only save one of us, he’d choose her. In truth, I’d thank him because that’s exactly what I’d have wanted. But I’d hoped West’s loyalty would lie with me instead.
“Yes,” he answers without batting an eye.
“You intentionally let me torture myself, thinking all this time they could be together?” My voice rising.
He looks amused, which only makes me angrier. “Actually, it was Laurie who told me to wait a minimum of two weeks to tell you. But I was nicer and told you earlier than I promised. Besides, I think I did you a favour by waiting to tell you.”
“A favour?” I scoff. “Are you high?”
“Yes, a favour, because now that you know how much the idea of her with someone else repulses you, maybe you’ll actually do something about it instead of sitting on your arse, hoping she’ll magically forgive you and take you back.”
It always repulsed me—the idea of her with someone else—but maybe West isn’t entirely wrong. Maybe I should do something about it. The problem is, I don’t even know where to start, and I don’t know if she even wants me to.
“West,” a female voice calls from the hallway, “what’s taking you so long—” Her words trail off the moment she steps into the living room and sees us sitting together. “Hi, TJ,” she tells me.
I wave my hand. “Hey, Laura.”
Laura is West’s current… I wouldn’t say girlfriend, but she’s also not just a one-night stand, and I wouldn’t say they’re friends-with-benefits either, because I don’t know what he could possibly have in common with a woman almost twenty years his senior.
Let’s just leave it at that—they fuck a lot.
She continues walking further into the room until she reaches where we are sitting.
She’s wearing nothing but one of his black shirts, her dirty-blonde hair a mess, though she doesn’t seem to care—she usually would, so I guess whatever she wants is more important.
“Did you ask him?” she asks West, side-eyeing me.
“Ask me what?” I reply before West can answer her.
West turns to me. “That if you have a spare condom—which, judging from what just happened…” He points towards the door with a smirk. “You probably do.”
It’s not the first time he’s asked me for condoms, and I’ve also occasionally asked him for some myself.
I flick him off but get off the couch. “I’ll be right back.”