Page 17 of Rapunzel Is Losing It

Victor • 07:29am

Errands. Smoothies in fridge. Back for dinner.

MaybeErrandswas the name of his long-term, long-distance, low-commitment casual girlfriend.

Sitting on my office floor with a banana chocolate smoothie, I stared at the little blue button on my laptop screen. I just had to click that and I’d know exactly where Victor was running errands. Technically, he was on the clock, so it was well within my right. But it was a huge infringement of privacy. I’d already kissed him against his will. I couldn’t turn into a full obsessed stalker now.

Amani had pinged me about the photograph for the website, and a wave of acid had swept up my insides at her gorgeous smiling profile picture. So instead of looking for a photographer, I had brought up the app that let me track Victor’s phone.

This was truly a new level of pathetic.

I was obsessing over nothing.

Realistically, I knew that.

Didn’t stop the images from forming in my head. Of Victor’s large hands wrapping around Amani’s waist like they had around mine. Of the metal in her pierced lip pressing into his mouth…

Still glaring at the blue ‘track now’ button, I grabbed my phone and dialed a number I had saved but never actually used before. Tabitha, one of Del’s best friends, picked up after a few rings.

“Cordelia?” she asked, sounding about as confused as I felt. Her short dark hair was wet and slicked away from her glistening face. If her bare shoulders and lack of visible fabric were any indication, Tabitha was currently naked.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to call.”

“Are you okay? Is it Del?” She asked while throwing a towel over her shoulder.

“No, everything is fine,” I quickly shot out.

Of course she thought that I’d only call her because of Del. We’d never even been alone in the same room without Del or their other best friend, Defne. As much as I loved Del, it was always Tabitha who regaled us with tales of her romantic and sexual adventures. It was Tabitha who might have some sort of wisdom to share with me. Because if I knew anyone who had ever kissed someone they shouldn’t have been kissing, it would be her. And I’d never been good at learning from theory. I needed tutorials with real life examples.

“I need to talk toyou, actually.”

“If this is about the bachelorette party, I already told her I wouldn’t plan that. Way too much responsibility.”

“Is this a bad time?” I asked when I clearly spotted someone else behind her shoulder. Even if the background was blurry, that someone else was also very naked.

“No, just got out of the shower. It’s fine.”

Part of me wished she had told me to call back later. I could have so easily chickened out of that. “You’ve kissed people before, right?”

“Uh,” a grin spread over her lips, “yeah. Plenty.”

“Ever kissed anyone who actually had a girlfriend?”

“Are you asking if I’ve ever had an affair with someone in a relationship?” Her face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the view of a ceiling fan. “Keep talking, just getting dressed.”

Not having to look her in the face made the next words a lot easier: “If you kissed someone, and he had a girlfriend, how would you know?”

Someone chuckled in the background. Amanlychuckle. As if this phone call wasn’t humiliating enough. At least Tabitha barked “Get the fuck out!” at him, before returning to the screen, now wearing a turtleneck. “Well, if he’s a stand-up guy, he’d tell me something along the lines of ‘This can’t happen. I actually have a girlfriend.’ but if he’s a dick, you won’t know until you’re sixty-nining on his couch and his girlfriend walks in because she got off work early.”

“That’s very specific.”

“Real life example, but you get the gist.” She raised her brows at me. “Care to tell me who you’ve been kissing, Cordy?”

“Cordy?”

“Kissing. Who.”

I told her everything that happened Friday night. At least this time, it came out a lot more coherently than when I’d told Del. I’d replayed the whole situation in my head so much, the words tumbled from my tongue.