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***

“Look at who’s finally showing his face!” Harrison laughs when I walk into the private cigar room at the Hunting Club.

Aaron and Leonard seated next to him chuckle while sipping from their glasses. The air is dense with cigar smoke, and I curse myself because this suit is new and it will be a nightmare to get rid of the smell. I like the smell of cigars, but not on my clothes. I should have gone home to change, but I would have seen Silver and then never left the house to see these three idiots.

“Now that he has pussy at home, he never leaves Malibu!” Leonard laughs and I glare at him.

“Don’t even go there. First, it’s sexist, and second, we don’t have sex,” I counter and he rolls his eyes.

“I know, I know. It was a joke. A bad one, but still a joke. Damn, you’re a pain in the ass these days.”

They chuckle and I fill a glass of whiskey. I sip it and sit in the comfortable leather armchair.

“How is it going?” Aaron asks. He was the one with the most doubts about this arrangement, but with that grin on his face he doesn’t look so worried anymore.

“It’s weird,” I say honestly. “I’m living and literally sleeping with one of the sexiest women I’ve ever met, and I never have sex with her.”

“Not once? Not even a blowjob? A hand job? Nothing?” Aaron clearly doesn’t believe me. According to him there’s no chance a man and a woman can live together without fooling around and fucking like rabbits.

“God, no. Nothing. It’s not part of the agreement.”

“This is bullshit. How can you make out like a teenager and not get horny?” he insists and they all look at me like I’m an alien who just dropped his disguise. Their faces are a mixture of skepticism and amusement, and I can’t blame them. It’s difficult for me too to understand this situation.

“You have no idea. I’m horny all the time and it’s driving me crazy,” I confess, rubbing a hand over my face.

They laugh. I’m here baring my soul and they laugh.

“Are you at least getting off?” Harrison chuckles.

“Alone in the bathroom like a teenager.”

Another heartfelt laugh erupts and this time I laugh too. It’s refreshing to tell someone what I’m going through.

“How do you do it?” I ask Harrison. “How do you shoot all those sexy scenes and not sport a hard-on for the rest of the day?”

He shrugs and swallows a sip of his liquor. “When you film those scenes, you have so many people around you don’t really get aroused. You have to shoot the scene over and over again from every angle, and at the end of the day it doesn’t even get up.”

“Not even once?” My heart sinks. I hoped he had some magic trick actors use to avoid embarrassing situations.

“Oh, yeah, sometimes, but then we usually end up fucking in the trailer and it solves the problem.” He says it like it’s normal to get rid of an erection by fucking your co-star.

Aaron turns to me and smirks. “You do know that at some point you’ll fuck your brains out and end up married for real with kids, right? You can try to resist all you want, but you live together, you’ll give in at some point.”

I smile but my heart sinks. I will not end up like him. I will not fall in love.

“He’s been there, done that. Trust him,” Leonard adds as I down the entire contents of my glass.

Silver is hot and smart and the perfect wife, but I will not fall for her. I can’t. I don’t have a heart anymore to give love a second chance.

***

I walk into my living room at midnight, expecting to find the lights turned off and nobody in sight, surprised when Silver’s head pops up from her computer. She’s sitting on the couch surrounded by papers scattered all over the cushions and the coffee table.

“What are you doing still up?” I ask.

She looks at me with sleepy eyes and a messy bun on her head. Like she just rolled out of bed, and gorgeous still. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.” She grabs the papers to make me some space.

“No worries. What are you doing?” I’m curious. I’ve never seen her so focused on something she didn’t notice the time.