Page 85 of Size King

“Even if I am being hormonal, so what?” I ask pouting. “I’m pregnant. If anyone gets to be hormonal, it’s me. I was wrong before. Now, I see it more clearly. Masonisjust a typical man after all. I made him go because I refuse to let him do what a lot of guys do: leave. I did this on my terms, so now I can’t get hurt.”

“I think there are better ways you could’ve done it.”

“Maybe, but it’s done,” I say, throwing my hands in the air. “I think what bothers me the most is the ‘friend’ label, and not the bragging or the way he so easily opened up about our sex, minutes after it happened. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Well, so much for ‘not talking about Mason,’ huh?” Emma chuckles.

“You’re right,” I say, putting on the brakes. “I need to stop talking about him right now. I’ve talked about him longer than I wanted. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Jillian,” she reassures. “We can talk about anything you want.”

“Then, let’s talk about your shoot in Vegas,” I say trying to get excited for her. “Help me forget Mason even exists.”

She is unable to eradicate Mason entirely from my train of thought, but she does a fine job of distracting me nonetheless. She recalls tales of Vegas and what it’s like to shoot at the Vegas Strip. She also recalls adventures she and the other models shared involving heavy drinking, gambling, and waking up in places they didn’t recognize.

During Emma’s stories, I receive a text from Mason. I don’t shine a spotlight on it or even mention it to Emma, but I reread it repeatedly:

“Did I do something to upset you? What was up right before I left?”

After I can’t think of a clever retort or reply, I reply with just one word:“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” he texts. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”

I don’t reply for a while, and so he sends another: “If I hurt you in any way, I swear that wasn’t my intention.”

The reason that I don’t reply back is because everything I want to say doesn’t come across right through text. I try,“It had to end sometime. We can’t just live in a fantasy world,”but choose to delete it. I try,“If you have to ask, there’s no point in explaining it,”but that seems like something my parents might say. I nearly settle on“We don’t belong together,”but I can’t send it. Even though I feel, at the time, that the sentiment is true, I can’t bear to put it in writing. It doesn’t feel right to send.

I fear that Emma’s theory regarding my hormones might have some weight. Before she has even finished telling me about her Vegas adventures, I wish that Mason was back under my roof so that I can have my way with him. Even though I am hurt and confused, it doesn’t stop me from being irresistibly attracted to him.

34

Mason

True to my word, I am staying in L.A. for a few days in case Jillian wants or needs help. What I need is a healthy distraction—a way to put the pregnancy and everything else providing stress on the backburner and just enjoy being alive. Anytime I initiate a “party dialogue” with Luke, he becomes incredibly enthusiastic and starts naming off places we can go, and what the ladies are like at each of his favorite spots.

Luke and I do what we often did years before. We dress up nice, squirt a spray of cologne on our necks, get our routine down if and when we met girls, and we head out into the havoc and congestion of the city to face our fate on that Saturday night.

Of course, once we step out of Luke’s Lamborghini and start hopping from bar to bar and club to club, I rapidly begin to lose all interest in everything that is going on around me.

It isn’t Luke’s fault, by any means. My haze is caused by Jillian, and I only want answers. While Luke is working like a lunatic to get the girls’ attention, and all while random girls approach me and throw themselves at me without hesitation, I am sitting around like a log. I am contributing nothing to our night out other than bad vibes and aggravation. For a while, Luke doesn’t respond to me. I suspect he is too horny and focused to notice me at first. But once he really sees how disinterested I am, he has to put his fun on hold.

“What’s going on with you?” he asks me. “I want to know. You have been riding on autopilot whenever we go out these days.”

“That’s not true.”

“You must be so reliant on autopilot that you’ve forgotten that’s what you’re doing,” says Luke. “You’ve had so many hot chicks come up to you tonight. Why aren’t you trying to score? And please—”

“We both know what’s going on with me,” I interrupt. “Be a bro, would you? Are you really going to make me say it?”

“Say what?” he asks with concern. “I am going to say, ‘Please don’t tell me you’re abstaining from sex just because you like a chick.’”

“I’m definitely not abstaining from sex,” I assure him. “Didn’t you hear what I was saying the other day? I’ve been having the best sex of my life lately.”

“I’m sure some girl in this place will be able to top her,” Luke says. “If not, we’ll walk around downtown until we find the first chick that looks like Jillian.”

“Why would I settle for someone that looks like Jillian when I can have the real woman?” I ask. “I don’t think I could have her right now. She’s acting mad at me, and I don’t know why.”

“This girl is really embedding herself in your head.”