“So, you guys are all fine now?” The girls and I were at Barkers for lunch on Monday and I didn’t know how to answer Erica’s question. Since Saturday night Greg and I hadn’t talked at all. I tried texting him a few times, but nothing. When I came into work this morning, Max had let me know that Greg was out of town for a few days on a last-minute business trip.
With whom, I had no idea, because I knew Greg’s calendar like the back of my hand, and we didn’t have any clients who were so remote to the city that they couldn’t come here right now. I didn’t question, though. I liked having the time to think everything out and this was exactly what I needed to do until our session on Wednesday.
I knew what I wanted to ask Tessa. I just hoped she would approve and say it was a great idea.
“I guess we’ll see when Wednesday comes. Greg won’t answer his phone at all and he’s away on business.” I looked down at my phone, checking just one more time, and still nothing.
I had sent him at least three messages already this morning. I didn’t care if I looked needy, we needed to talk and I wanted to do it before we went to our next session.
“You can always come over tonight and we can drown everything out with movies and food,” Erica suggested.
“Or I could kick Max out for the night and we could build a fort in the house!” Alexa was jumping up and down in her seat.
“I think,” I took a bite of my sandwich, “that I’m just going to stay home.”
I couldn’t look at the girls’ faces because I knew I would only see disappointment. I just needed time to sort everything out. And, to do that, Greg and I needed to have a serious conversation.
When we got back to the office I finished up everything I needed to do and looked around to see others quietly working at their desks. I was starting to pack up my bag when Erica rolled around the corner in her chair.
“And where do you think you’re going?” She was leaned back, with a smile on her face like she had caught me red-handed. As long as I had all the work that I needed to finished, the office could run itself. I had emailed Max to let him know that I would be finishing anything that I had at home and would do so for the next few days. This way I was there whenever Greg got back and could get him to talk to me then.
“Home.” I stood up and slung the bag over my shoulder. “To think.”
Her face fell and she moved out of my way as I walked to the stairs and left work. I went straight to my apartment, tossed my bag on the couch and then went into my room to fall into bed. I was still fully clothed, but I pulled the covers over me and let sleep overtake me.
I finally woke up around midnight with a growling stomach. Ice cream it was, since it was the only thing I typically kept in my fridge. I didn’t cook, even though I loved food, so I only kept snacks and I ate out all the time. I grabbed for a bowl and spoon. When I finally looked down at my wrinkled outfit, I cringed and made my way back to my room to at least get myself looking decent, if not for anyone but myself.
I grabbed my phone out of my bag which I had left on the couch. Four missed calls, none from Greg, and six texts. I didn’t bother scrolling through them because I knew they were from Alexa since she was the one who had called me.
I made quick on my ice cream and crawled back into bed, leaving my phone out in the kitchen. I made sure to grab for my laptop while I was near the living room and propped it on my lap. I made quick on some emails that would need to be sent out tomorrow, timing them so it didn’t seem like I was working in the middle of the night. I set up a few meetings for Greg over the next few weeks and then finished off with the last few spreadsheets we had been working on last week. It was four in the morning by the time I was finished, but it meant I could sleep in a be a bum for a majority of the day tomorrow. I didn’t tell Alexa or Erica that I wasn’t going to go into work tomorrow, just Max, so at first, they probably wouldn’t notice my absence, but then around lunch the whispers would start, because I never missed a day of work. That’s why I had left my phone in the kitchen, I knew someone was going to start blowing it up and all I wanted to do was sleep and not stress out. I was lucky to have a boss who managed the company himself and understood a hard worker and my need to just have a day to myself.
I just hoped that this little plan I had would work to my advantage to get Greg to talk to me.
Hopefully.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
“Open the fucking door, woman!” Greg’s yells had me rolling over in bed. I moaned at the aches I felt in my body, because that’s what happened when you spent two days straight in bed, locked in your apartment, not answering your phone, working from your laptop and waiting for a man to show up, just so you could talk to him.
I know, a little dramatic, but truly I didn’t know what else to do. Max had been fine with my missing work today as long as I got everything I needed to done and contacted everyone in my department to make sure everything was running smoothly, which it was. My team had their shit together because they knew if everything went well, then we never had to stay late at the office.
“For fuck’s sake, Lilly.” His voice was closer now, and I knew he had used his key to get in and that thrilled me a little. My bedroom door swung open next and there he was. In all his glory, standing in my doorway in jeans and a tight black shirt. He looked like he had recently gotten a fresh cut and I wanted to run my hand along his head to feel the buzz under my fingers.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He moved closer checking my night stand and then pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen. A loud vibration came from the other room. He was calling my phone, not checking in on me. I slumped back into the bed and pulled the covers over my face, trying to take myself back into the sweet slumber that Greg had awoken me from.
“Hell, no.” He tossed the covers off me and pulled me from the bed and into his arms. I was wearing only sleep shorts and a tank, so my body was basically touching his. Well, that’s what my half-asleep mind thought.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled into his arms. I felt him relax beneath me and his hand that was on my back started to rub in circles. I made a noise that almost sounded like a child whining, but it was a praising whine. I felt ready to go back to sleep, but then we were moving and the sunlight hit my eyes. I tried to hide in Greg’s neck but he just laughed at me and sat us both down on the couch.
I sat up a little to look at him. His face was serious and it woke me up a little more. He wasn’t allowed to be mad. Not right now he wasn’t.
“You scared the shit out of me.” His comment was a matter-of-fact.
“And you hurt me.” I spat back at him.
Greg’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion at my reply to him.
“How?” He tried to pull me closer to him, but I stayed right where I was with my hand on his chest to keep us separated.
“Is that really a question you have to ask?”
“It is when I’m not sure how I hurt you, especially when I’m the one who’s supposed to be pissed off here.” He readjusted me so I was no longer on his lap but sitting beside him. “You can’t just drop off the face of the earth. No one could get ahold of you. I leave for two damn days and you go fucking AWOL.”
The way he shook his head and looked at me screamed disappointment, but I was disappointed first. He was not going to turn this around on me.
“Max and my team know where I was. Thank you very much. But you, you took another woman on a date and even brought her to the club and introduced her to our friends. How fair do you think that is, especially when I had no clue about it.” I smacked him on the shoulder. “You were supposed to tell me, Greg.”
The last part came out as a choke and I felt a lump in my throat start to form.
“You were supposed to communicate with me on this. That was the whole point to the assignment. Instead you went out and found a random girl and never said anything.” I tried to swallow a gasp, but I couldn’t. The tears fell and I couldn’t hold back what I needed to say any longer.
“You thought you could fix it with a quick fuck and I know that it was all a game that night, but it wasn’t for me. You played with my heart in a way that makes me never want to let you have it again. What you did that night is one of the reasons why I guard my heart so much and why I never let you in like that, because I can’t ever predict you and you always think if you just ignore things they’ll go away.”
I threw my hands up in the air like I had the night of the club, but this time I wasn’t giving up or giving in.
“You run. You ignore things. You aren’t an adult. You’re a child, Greg.”
With each sentence, I jabbed my finger closer to him, trying to get the point across and I knew I looked like a crazy woman because my hair was still in a bun from the other day, and I hadn’t taken the time to redo it.
He sat there speechless, then grabbed for my finger and brought it up to his mouth, biting the pad of it. I pulled away quickly.
“We aren’t solving this with sex, Greg.” He shrugged his shoulder.
“I know that, but I need this conversation to be lighter than it is.” My body relaxed into his, knowing that this wasn’t going to be some game again. That we would be able to talk about what had happened and it mean something. “When I see you like this, I can’t but think I keep messing up.”
“You do, Greg.” He looked away from my, but I reached across and moved his face back to look at me. “But so do I, so that’s talk it out.”
“Ok.” He brought my legs across his lap and I got comfortable in his side with his arm draped over the back of the couch.
“Why did you bring her to the club?” I stopped myself from asking more about this April girl and just wanting to know the important parts, why he brought her there and why he didn’t tell me. “More importantly, why didn’t you tell me…?”
I let the question linger between us and then I saw him ready to speak up.
“After you left our session on Friday, I went out with the guys to one of the local bars. We were getting sloshed and I wasn’t thinking clearly. We started talking about my asking someone on a date and the guys thought it was a horrible idea, but I didn’t even think about what they thought.” He took a deep breath, like he needed to calm himself. “All I could think about was that look you gave me in Tessa’s office that had me believing that we wouldn’t be doing this homework assignment. But then you just fucking left. You didn’t say a word, you just left her office and left me. Wasn’t that was the one thing you said you were afraid I would do?”
“You were being an ass!” I didn’t answer his rhetorical question, because he knew I did the exact thing I was afraid of, but in that moment in Tessa’s office, I was more afraid of the look in Greg’s eyes. “It wasn’t like I couldn’t see that you wanted this. You were smiling when she confirmed all you needed to do was go on a date with someone else. You even pulled your phone out and sent off a text!”
I was shouting now, the anger I had felt from that day coming back like a freight train.
“Stop.” He held his hand up to me and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered against my cheek, rubbing softly against my skin. “I don’t want to yell. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have.” I crossed my arms against my chest, but Greg unfolded them and held my closer to his chest.
“Let me try again.” Greg begged of me. “Please.”
I waved my hand between us for him to continue, but I really did want to know what he had to say, as long as it wasn’t him accusing me of making this all happen.
“I don’t even remember asking her out, truthfully, but when I woke up on Saturday afternoon to a text from a girl named April, saying I had asked her out on a date that night, I just went through the motions and confirmed everything with the guys and then went on the date. I figured I would tell you everything after we ended the night, but apparently that plan blew up in my face.”
“Ya think?” I huffed at him but looked up to see a smirk on his face. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because you look gorgeous.”
I got up from the couch, running away from his sweet talk and into the kitchen.
“Why didn’t you go into work or answer you phone?” I whipped around at Greg’s question.
“Why did you just leave on Sunday morning?” It was Greg’s turn to look sheepish. He looked down and placed a hand on the back of his neck and rubbed it, like it was going to help him think better.
“Truth?” He looked me in the eyes now.
“Yeah.” My voice was soft because, for some reason, I knew the words that were about to come out of his mouth were going to rock my world on this Wednesday morning.
“Because I knew if I stayed and saw you lying there in my arms when I woke up in the morning, I would want to marry you all over again.” To say tears started to form in my eyes again would be an understatement. Tears poured out of me like a waterfall and I collapsed onto the kitchen floor.
All I could feel were the fuck ups. We kept messing everything up and it didn’t seem to matter how much we loved each other because each time one of us did something stupid, the other took drastic measures.
Greg gathered me in his arms and took me back to bed and spooned me so that my back was flush to his front. I tried not to wiggle around as I continued to cry, even when I felt his cock growing behind me. He placed kisses on my neck and took my hair out of its bun and then replaced it into a ponytail. His warm hands traced down my body and the tears finally subsided.
His hand reached my thigh where he had bitten at me on Saturday and the moan that escaped me would have made me blush if I hadn’t been already so flushed and turned on.
“I told you this wouldn’t be fixed with sex, but it didn’t mean I didn’t want to fuck you out there on that couch like I’m wanting to do now.” Greg’s whispers in my ears drowned out everything that we had just said. Granted it wasn’t everything we needed to talk about, but the conversation had done what it needed to. We were on the same page before going into our session with Tessa tonight. And now I knew for a fact that I needed to ask for our next homework assignment, rather than wait for her to give us one. Because the only way I would know for sure if this was going to work was if Greg and I did wake up every morning together, well, at least for a few days.