Always Have: A Bad Boy Romance(11)

“Hey, gorgeous,” Dylan says when I get back to the table. I don’t think I know the rest of the people sitting here. They must be Dylan’s friends. I don’t know Dylan either, but he’s here, and he’s hot, and he’s looking at me with just the right expression. The I’m going to f*ck you later look.

I give him that look right back. Yes. Yes, you are.

He pulls me into his lap, and I put my arm around his shoulders.

Selene catches my eye from her spot at the other table. She raises her eyebrows, but Dylan says something and I burst into laughter. I’m not even sure what he said, but everyone else laughs, so I join in. Then the laughing itself seems funny, so I keep going.

I’m starting to fade and I haven’t gotten another drink. I open my mouth to ask Dylan to get me one when he puts his mouth near my ear.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

“Oh god, yes,” I say—at least, I think that’s what I say. My head is spinning so much, it’s taking a lot of effort not to fall right out of the guy’s lap.

He helps me to my feet and pretty soon I’m fumbling with my key to Selene’s house. We were right around the corner, and I planned on staying here anyway. I lead him inside, pulling my clothes off as we make our way to my room.

***


My eyes are so gritty I can barely open them. Holy shit, what did I do to myself last night? My head is already pounding with the hangover from hell. I shift a little, and something feels weird. I peek beneath the sheets. Yep, I’m naked. Why did I go to bed naked?

Oh no. I’m not alone, am I?

I look over my shoulder; sure enough, there he is. He’s asleep next to me, eyes closed, his chest rising and falling. The night comes back to me, hazily. Lots of gin. Me sitting in his lap. He was either very funny, or I was very drunk.

At this point, I strongly suspect the latter.

I put my hand to my forehead and close my eyes. I remember now. Stumbling up the hill to Selene’s house. Fumbling with the keys. My clothes are probably still strewn across the living room. We got in here, and—

Fuck, he was awful.

He slapped against me like a penguin waddling across a f*cking glacier. How that’s an apt metaphor for crappy sex, I have no idea, but it definitely fits. In five minutes—if I’m being generous—he was done, rolling off me with a self-satisfied groan, like he’d just done something amazing.

I can assure you, there was no amazing.

I get out of bed as quietly as I can and put on a zip-up sweatshirt that’s sitting nearby. I’m achy, and it’s not the I had hard sex last night kind. It’s the I didn’t have an orgasm when I expected to kind. Maybe I should have taken care of business myself afterward, but I think I more or less passed out at that point.

Now? I’m mildly throbbing. I figure I’ll duck into the bathroom and see if I can DIY the tension away before Mr. Penguin Sex wakes up.

“Morning,” he says, his voice sleepy.

I freeze, like a kid caught shoplifting. I turn and give him what I hope is a nice enough smile. I probably look like hell, but I’m definitely not seeing him again, so what the f*ck do I care?

“Hi, um, bathroom,” I say. “You can go whenever.”

I duck into the bathroom, but there’s no way I can relax enough to get off if I think he’s listening. For a girl who hooked up with a random dude—I’m fairly sure his name is Dylan—last night, I’m surprisingly uptight about masturbation. I don’t do it on a regular basis, saving it for times when I’m particularly tense. Like when I’m expecting a good O and don’t get one.

But I can’t do it if I feel pressure, or if I think someone is listening. There’s a certain amount of relaxation necessary for any orgasm, self-induced or otherwise, and without that I can’t make it happen. At this point, touching myself is only going to make the problem worse.

I linger in the bathroom, hoping he takes the hint and leaves. He doesn’t. Apparently this guy is really clueless. Fortunately, I have a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt in the bathroom. I give them a quick sniff—they smell decent enough—and slip them on. I’ll have to deal with going commando, because I have no idea where my panties are. I only hope I didn’t take those off in the living room too.

I decide ignoring him is my best plan, and come out of the bathroom. It’s actually a terrible plan, but I’m hoping he gets the hint, even if he didn’t before.

No one else is downstairs, for which I’m immensely grateful. I pick up our clothes, draping his on the couch in plain view of my bedroom door, so he won’t have to hunt for them when he comes out. I hope Braxton didn’t crash here last night. I feel like I’m doing the equivalent of the walk of shame, and he’ll get way too much of a kick out of it if he’s here to witness it.

The front door opens, and Selene walks in with two big coffees. “Morning, sunshine,” she says. and hands me a coffee.

“I am so in love with you right now,” I say. “Maybe we should just say f*ck it all and become lesbians together.”

“There are days when that is so tempting,” she says.

I hold the coffee beneath my nose and breathe it in. My headache already feels better, just by the proximity to my only real love.

“So, did you hook up with that guy last night?” she asks.