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“How about we play it by ear? When you want to see me, text me and we’ll meet up if I’m free. I might do the same, and I promise not to crowd you. Would that be okay?”

“So... We’d be like friends with benefits?” She looks up at me from beneath her eyelashes.

“Something like that. If that’s what you want.”

“We can try. The idea is not making me feel like I’ve got a gorilla sitting on my chest, so I take it as a good sign.”

“Sounds like a plan, then.”

I kiss her softly and hug her close, and she hugs me back. We stay like that for a long while. It seems we’re both having a hard time letting go.

As long as I don’t press her about the future.

“Sure you don’t want another whirl against the car?” I say with a smile.

“Ugh. You’re incorrigible.” She laughs and gently pushes me away. “Okay, I’m definitely leaving now.”

Liz turns around to unlock the vehicle, and I take the opportunity to slap her on the ass. Chuckling, she shakes her head, then folds herself inside and then she’s off.

I stand there waving at her, steeling myself for the long wait until Liz realizes what I already know—that we belong together.

Chapter Ten

Liz

It’s mid-September, two weeks since I finished my interview at Qpik, and so far I haven’t heard back. I’m no longer holding my breath and I’ve been interviewing other places, but it would be nice to work at the same company as Roxie. Hanging out with her a couple of times a week has been a highlight of my time here. Well, at least the kind of highlight I can tell my family about.

The other kind of highlight—the one where I go to Joe’s place most evenings and he fucks me into the mattress, over and over, until I don’t know which way is up, where I can barely get out of bed after round two or three in order to go back to sleep at my place, even though he always gently reminds me I am welcome to spend the night, then when I say I know and leave anyway he just nods and puts on his clothes and sees me to my car and gives me a deep goodbye kiss and waves until I’m out of sight, where even though I keep saying this thing between us is nothing, it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that’s true—this kind of highlight is not something I can share with anyone. Not my cousin, who’s got enough on her plate and whom I haven’t seen since I moved into my sublet, not Roxie, who is quickly becoming the most important person in my life that I don’t want to see naked (okay, I kind of want to, mostly out of curiosity, because I realize I kind of want to see everyone naked now, and it’s a bit weird to realize that about myself, but I guess all this free time that I have for the first time since I became an adult, combined with Joe’s dick, must be scrambling my mind, because I am horny all the time and everyone looks delicious).

It’s strange, the way I feel about Joe. Like this thing between us is something primal, inevitable, but also something I want to keep to myself because it’s precious and fragile. I know it started with me being all torn about sleeping with someone so soon after my engagement ended, but now it’s been two months since I left Minnesota, and I honestly don’t feel that guilty anymore because I can’t even recall how Jake smelled or how his lips felt on mine. But what my mind has no problem producing at all times of the day, some of which are very inconvenient because I might be at the store or in the middle of an interview, is the warmth of Joe’s breath just before we kiss, the sting of his teeth on the inside of my lips, all my lips, the dull pleasurable ache where he leaves small bruises on my breasts and ass and all over my arms and legs, how he buries his fingers into my soft belly, savoring my yielding, malleable flesh, worshiping it, molding it like he’s trying to find a way to get closer, fuck me deeper, spread myself all over him like hot melted butter.

Great. Now I am turning myself on again, out of nowhere. This is so not me. Who is this person inhabiting my body? And where was she during the seven years with Jake?

Roxie interrupts my horny daydreams. “As soon as I get the promotion, I am buying my own place. And I’m getting a cat,” she says, sitting sideways in a giant armchair in her living room, legs dangling over the armrest. She sips Warped Speed from a bottle.

“Why don’t you get a cat now?” I ask as I try to peel the label off my own beer.

She shrugs. “I mean, I could. Most apartment buildings allow cats. But I’m holding off more as a treat to myself.” She looks at me quizzically, then rubs across her chin and mouth. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

I laugh. I must’ve been gazing at her adoringly. I can’t believe this cool, amazing woman wants to be friends with me. “How come you hang out with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I am completely unremarkable, and you’re—” I motion to indicate the entirety of Roxie’s person, “all this.”

She throws her head back in laughter. “I so am nothing special. And I like you. We hit it off.”

“I feel like you decided to adopt me and I had no choice.”

“Well, yeah, there’s that.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. You needed a friend in town and I thought I could help out.”

“So is this some sort of outreach program for clueless Minnesotans?”

“Yes, exactly. I am extremely charitable. All my friends are charity cases I took pity on.” She rolls her eyes. “Liz, you’re great. You’re fun and funny and go with the flow. I don’t often hit it off with other women, but it’s been easy with you.”

“Same here,” I say. “I grew up with brothers and have never been too girly, but it’s been easy with you, too.”

We smile kind of sappily, and the moment is filled with warmth.