Page 31

My weekendprobably wasn’t as exciting as hers. I would have loved to have a girl’s weekend. When the hell had I last done anything like that?

Deciding to take a chance, I reached out to Lea and asked her what she was up to on Saturday evening. PMS was absolutely kicking my ass, so I wasn’t up to heading to Sapph tonight, which pissed me off. Instead I was camped out on the couch in my oldest and coziest pajamas with a heating pad on my junk, painkillers and chocolate within reach, and one of my favorite romcoms on my TV. I’d been alternating watching movies and reading a super filthy romance. Both were helping me feel better.

Not much. I’m pretty boring, lol. I taught two classes today so I came home and hopped into a bath before doing my best slug imitation on the couch.

Perfect. We were kindred lounging spirits.That’s what I’m doing, minus the exercising. Is it as exhausting teaching as it is taking the class?

It can be. It’s more mental than physical, since most of the time I’m not doing all the exercises myself.

We quickly fell into a lively back and forth, going from talking work to our favorite dishes at local restaurants to movies and back to our favorite work drama.

I don’t care how much you pay me, I’m not doing nude Pilates. I draw the line!

I read her message after the story about almost signing up to teach a nude Pilates class at a random resort and had tears running down my face.

I don’t even know how you’d be able to focus enough to teach. And what about the equipment?!I sent.

I try not to think too hard about it. Sometimes I wonder if they ever found someone. Wasn’t going to be me!

It was nice to talk to a friend again, even if we had just met each other. There was something about Lea that just made me smile and want to keep talking to her. The two of us went back and forth until she told me she was falling asleep and needed to go to bed.

In spite of my uterus trying to ruin my life, it hadn’t been a terrible day. I’d even had one Delaney sighting where she hadn’t yelled or brought up the past. That had to be progress.

Getting her to tolerate my presence was the goal and we were getting there. Slowly.

* * *

On SundayI slept in and had to force myself to get up and do what I needed to get done before the start of the week. Laundry, vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, dusting my books, changing the sheets. I put on an audiobook and got down to business after I had a random breakfast of frozen waffles slathered in Nutella, with bacon, tater tots, and Greek yogurt with honey. And then I ate two cheese sticks straight from the fridge. My hormones were making me ravenous.

I checked Delaney’s socials to see what she was up to and was treated to several videos and pictures of her with her friends looking like they were having the time of their lives. Drinks and laughter and cuddling together, and there was a still picture of what looked like a blurry beach at night with the caption “when you’ve never been skinny-dipping, your besties go with you as emotional support towel holders.”

Oh.Oh.

Delaney had gone skinny-dipping in the ocean, I assumed from the picture and the caption. That was…that was quite the image to put in my mind. A fantasy, if you will. When I’d been growing up, I’d been so confused and scared of my feelings around other girls that I’d done everything I could to not look. To keep my eyes to myself. To wait and change when no one was looking and to make sure my eyes weren’t wandering. Locker rooms were absolute hell for me, and I’d done my best to get through it by distracting myself. Sometimes those distractions involved being unkind. It was like my own awful feelings spewed out of my mouth and splashed on everyone else. There was no excuse for it, but I understood it better now. Why I’d done something that was so out of line with what I truly felt.

I was proud of Delaney for reclaiming herself. A person like Connor had a way of consuming all your time and energy and sucking you dry. Taking up all the air in the room so he could hoard it while you were gasping. And then he’d be all shocked when you got angry you couldn’t breathe. And that was somehow your problem to solve.

My fucking brother. He hadn’t been in touch for the last few days, which was nice. I had no doubt that the next time he pissed one of his friends off or “forgot” to pay his rent, or crashed another car, or got into more debt, that he would be blowing up my phone to help him. It was coming. Sooner rather than later probably.

God, she was amazing. Taking her breakup and channeling it into doing what she wanted.

Images of her submerging herself in the moonlit ocean like a mermaid swam through my thoughts and it was hard not to spend my entire day replaying that particular fantasy on a loop.

How cold had the water been? Pretty chilly, I was guessing. Had she screamed when she’d gone in? Had she dived under the water?

So many questions with no answers that I was ever going to get.

Before I could stop myself, I was liking one of her posts. I managed to not leave a comment, which would have been way too much. But a few minutes after I’d liked her post, I had a new message. From Delaney.

Chapter Thirteen

Delaney

Larison and Johad cheered me on while I stripped in the dark and ran into the ocean, crossing my fingers that I didn’t step on a crab or jellyfish. The water was cold as balls and I gasped and shivered as I forced myself to dunk my head underwater.

The cold was sharp, like microscopic knives stabbing me in every single pore. It almost stole my breath, so I breached the surface again, dragging in a gasping breath.

“Holy fuck, it’s fucking cold!” I yelled.