Mindgasm - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 3) by Gabi Moore (18)

Chapter 7 - Emily

Jesus, is that like the fifth message from him just this morning?” Becky said and eyeballed my phone.

“Seventh. It’s the seventh one,” I mumbled, and tossed the phone back in my apron pocket.

“You not going to answer him?”

I sighed. If I answered him, he might take that as a sign I was interested. And I sure as hell was not interested.

“Um, Emily, I’m not trying to be weird here, but don’t you think …you should? I just mean, I thought the bakery really needed the loan.”

I shot her a hard look.

“This has nothing to do with the loan,” I snapped.

She looked away and blushed.

“I know. It’s just …well, it’s getting really difficult for me to keep buying at the rate we do without knowing if we have anything coming in soon.”

“I told you to just use the credit card to float us for now.”

She blushed even harder.

“We maxed it out yesterday,” she said quietly.

I bit down on my jaw. Of course we had. It was only a matter of time. In fact, it was a wonder some days that we still had anything to go into the ovens at all. My face softened towards her. It wasn’t her fault, naturally. This wasn’t the wild west and Buck Fuckface wasn’t singlehandedly responsible for getting me out of my financial trouble. I wanted to tell Becky that no, I certainly didn’t need to screw the loan manager for the pleasure of a loan from the bank. At least, not yet. In the meantime, I wouldn’t exactly turn Buck down. But it felt easy enough to ignore these stupid day time texts for now.

One of the servers cracked open the door and poked her head inside.

“Emily? There’s a patron out here who says he wants to see the manager.”

I sighed, gave Becky one more apologetic look and then got up to go and see what the problem was. Some douche who wanted a refund on a drink he ordered wrong, most probably. I patted the flour dust off my apron and elbowed through the swing doors to see a man standing at the register, with his back turned to me. A man in a suit. Oh shit. Buck. I took a deep breath and tried to tell myself that I could deal with it. I’d just politely tell him to fuck right off.

But as I approached, the man turned around. It was Felix. Oh shit.

He turned to look at me and the instant our eyes met his face lit up with something half like excitement, half like apprehension.

“Felix,” I said quietly, which is just about the only thing that I could think of.

He smiled broadly. I had never seen him like this – clean shaven, polished up and in a fancy suit that fit him so well it looked like it had been painted onto him.

“Uh, please, do you want to …?” I said absentmindedly, gesturing for us to walk into the back room. He nodded and followed me back through the swing doors. Becky took one look at him, smiled strangely and eyed me on her way out.

I ran a cloth over a flour dusted chair and invited him to sit. He cleared his throat a few times but said nothing.

“How did you find me?’ I said at last. I had meant it to sound like an accusation but it had come out as a sincere question. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“I know how to do all sorts of things,” he said teasingly. “Just kidding. It didn’t take very long to figure out that you’d be here. I see you went into the family business after all.”

After my father died, I mentally put Felix into the same ‘dead to me’ box and now had to shake the weird feeling that he had nevertheless been following the details of my life from the grave.

“Yes, well, thank god I had the option,” I said curtly.

“The …option? Huh. I guess I just always pictured you as kind of running the world by now or something, teaching everyone how to save the planet and all that,” he said and gave me a crooked smile.

“Yes, well, I never pictured you as some space cowboy who’d run off to get involved in all the Mars drama, either.”

He looked a little deflated.

Once, I had been teased a lot for being a hopeless idealist. But for one, people like him didn’t get to mock me anymore, about anything, and for two, I wasn’t even an idealist anymore. I hadn’t been hopeful about anything for a long, long time.

“I guess our paths took us in quite different directions,” he said. “I’m sure you’re still into that work, though, right? Your zero-input farming and stuff?”

“No I’m not, actually. What would be the point? While people are busy trying to save one ruined planet, other people are already getting a head start on ruining the next one,” I said, and gave him a thin smile.

This seemed to genuinely shock him.

“Ruining Mars? Is that what you think? Don’t tell me you’re one of those conspiracy theorists,” he started to say.

“Conspiracy theorists? Oh, that’s nice. Really nice. Did you just come down here to insult me again?”

I hated the idea that he of all people might have seen the video. The whole shitshow with Buck happened well after he had left, and I didn’t know how long he had had been back now. But the way he was wisecracking about craving carrots was more or less proof that not only had he seen it, he had decided to react like everyone else had. Endless, merciless judgment. Heaps of shame and contempt and ridicule. I had been surprised that people had been so willing to turn on me and start jumping in to revel in my humiliation, but Felix? I was surprised and genuinely sad.

I saw his broad chest rise and fall as he took a deep breath and looked like he was gearing up to lay a speech on me. He was bigger than I remembered. And, it made me feel strange to admit, but hotter, too. More damaged, yet …stronger looking. They must have worked them hard out there. He lifted timid eyes to me and tried to smile again.

“No, not insult. I’ve never insulted you. I came here to apologize,” he said and then stood and took a step closer to me.

What did he think, when he had seen that video? Seen me, the woman who had told him that he was her first everything, with her eyes rolling back in her head and a grotesque smile on her face as she let strange boys do whatever they wanted with her? I had already died a million times over in my life so far. Nobody can ever understand how it feels to carry that burning shame with you, and feel it refresh itself with each sideways look someone gives you in the street, or every time you see your naked body in the mirror, or at the mere sight of a fucking carrot. But the humiliation came rushing back again. Like I hadn’t spent hours in therapy, trying to get over it all. Like I was back in college all over again. And now Felix was here, and even he was a part of my crushing shame, and I didn’t know if I wanted to ignore it and pretend I was still the same old girl he knew, or rub it in his face and make him understand that yes, I did it all because he left me, but it’s too late for apologies now because actually, maybe I liked it all along.

But I said nothing. I had the sneaking suspicion that if I opened my mouth I’d choke up and make a fool of myself and say something I regretted. So I kept quiet.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, like he was wading through a prepared confession. His eyes were downcast, giving me a good look at his face. There were new things in his expression that I didn’t recognize. He seemed more grown up. A little more cautious. When he spoke I could make out tiny scars on the left side of his face, and I was mesmerized for a moment by the way they shifted and moved fluidly over the hard surface of his cheekbones.

“Everyday I was up there I thought about you, Emily. Some days, you were the only thing that kept me sane. I thought about all the good times we spent together. I kept a picture of you, and man, I looked that picture every spare moment I had. Being in the program was nothing like I imagined it. Actually, every day I would tell you all about it, you know? I would write you letters. Ok, maybe you’re thinking this sounds a little sappy…” he said and smiled secretly to himself. “But you were all that kept me going.”

I could do nothing but return a stony gaze at him. He carried on. He told me about how the program had so many glitches to start with, how the political pressures situation up there was actually a lot more complicated than the media was portraying it, that he had caught a virus up there and narrowly avoided losing his eyesight. He told me about what they were trying to grow, about the immense funding they had received, some of it from surprising and top secret sources. He told me about their tiny, lonely bunks. About how some of the female cadets had started prostituting themselves. I sensed he was getting further and further from his pre-planned speech. Then he raised his eyes to me again, as though just remembering that I was there at all.

“But what I really wanted to come here to say is that …Emily, I’ve missed you. More than you can imagine.”

I could hear him breathing. Though the bakery outside those swing doors was bustling and busy, inside this room it felt like a little bubble separate from the rest of the world. A little bubble where the past and the present were hard to tell apart. Being with him in this room felt so easy. And yet the weight of the past still wedged itself between us. He had a whole separate life he had lived for five years. And I had a whole three-minute sex video that I would never live down.

“I wanted to say that leaving you was a mistake. I regretted it every day, Emily. And I’m so sorry about leaving you. I was stupid. I thought it was what I wanted and …but you don’t want to hear my whole sob story I guess. I just …I loved you Emily. I still love you,” he said, his voice getting quieter and quieter until it was nothing more than a whisper, pausing on those familiar three words that he had uttered to me so many times before, secretly under the warm comforter in my dorm room, secretly in my ear when he held me close and nuzzled his head into my neck, secretly when he would collapse down on top of me and catch his breath, both sweaty, our bodies still knotted together and our hearts still beating madly at one another through the walls of our chests.

“Well, I don’t know what to say about that. Surely you didn’t come all the way back down here to tell me that? It sounds like you had a lot of good prospects opening up for you out there, and clearly you haven’t had your arms blown off in a terrorist attack, so…”

His face contorted and I realized with horror that I had said something truly stupid.

“Felix, oh my god, were you? Felix, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I don’t know why I said that,” I blurted.

The thought never occurred to me that he could have been wounded, that he might even have a virus right now.

He tried to force a smile but couldn’t make eye contact.

“Well, it’s true that you’re not the only reason I came home,” he said as neutrally as possible. Then he leaned forward, pulled up the hem of his trouser leg and rolled it back, revealing a twisted mass of shiny, purple scarring below the knee. I gasped. And just as calmly, he rolled it back down again. I felt awful. Apologizing further just felt like useless. I wanted to reach out and touch him. I felt sick with the thought that he had been hurt, that here I was being a cold bitch to him without caring at all what he had been though…

“I’m sorry,” I said eventually, when he had straightened up again and laced his fingers together.

“Don’t be. I’m not,” he said simply.

“Well, I don’t know what to say. I’ve missed you too, Felix.”

His face brightened.

I still couldn’t imagine what he wanted from me. I was in debt to my eyeballs and worked almost seven days a week, every week. I hadn’t been with a guy in years, and if I ever hoped to live down my shame, I’d more or less have to take a vow of celibacy for the new next few decades more. I was a train wreck.

“A lot has changed for me over the years, though,” I said. “I’ve changed. I didn’t think you were ever coming back. I …I don’t really have anything to offer you now.”

“Offer me?” he asked. “Actually, yes, there is something you can offer me.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Let me work for you,” he said quickly and smiled.

“What?”

“Give me a job, I want to work for you.”

I laughed out loud.

“I don’t understand.”

“You need the help, Emily. You have only two servers out there and they’re both overworked, right?”

I was all of a sudden reminded of how the muscles in his neck would twitch like that whenever he got excited.

“Felix, I don’t need any extra employees, and don’t be ridiculous, you? You’re hopelessly overqualified,” I said and tried to wave him off.

“Yeah I know.”

“What would you even do?”

“Whatever you needed me to,” he said without skipping a beat. I found my eyes irresistibly drawn to his neck again. I wondered if he still looked the same under those clothes, after all these years. I wondered if he felt the same.

“Really? I think the Martians must have removed your brain for you or something. Are you going to make cakes? Unload flour bags from the van?” I said and laughed.

“Yes. All of it.”

“Serve coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Clean the toilets?”

“Happily.”

“OK, but …why?”

The smile faded a little on his lips.

“Because I know that words don’t mean anything. I want to show you that I’m sorry for what happened back then. That I mean it when I say I still care for you. And then …then you remember you love me and you give me a second chance,” he said.

I couldn’t help grinning like an idiot. It had been so long I had forgotten what a complete charmer he could be. I shook my head and tried to think.

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But just say yes.”

“Felix, this is insane. I couldn’t even pay you much.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’d be helping me out anyway. Just say yes. Say you’ll hire me.”

His eyes were alive and sparkling, looking at me intently. I wondered if he was wondering if I looked the same under my clothes, after all these years. But then I remembered the video and my heart sank.

“Ok, fine. Let’s see how it goes …but just for a week or two. And then you’ll realize it’s a dumb idea.”

He gave me a full, juicy smile and stood before me like he had just won the lottery. It felt strange. I knew that he judged me along with everyone else. For all I knew, him and Mars buddies sat around laughing at my disgrace and making carrot jokes together. And yet, I felt no judgment from him. In fact, he was treating me like I was …just myself. Just a normal girl. I realized with horror that I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be treated that way.

“I’ll be here tomorrow morning at oh seven hundred hours ready for briefing, ma’am,” he said and gave me a salute.

I laughed. It was dead true that I needed more help around here, but I couldn’t let him know that. Just the thought of opening myself up to him again made me break out in a cold sweat.

“Ok, ok, you’ve made your point. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

The moment grew awkward. I realized that he wanted to hug me. I extended my arms and he came forward. Putting my arms over his broad shoulders for the first time in five years felt strange. My memory told me about all the lines and contours of his body, even though I could only vaguely make them out now through the fabric of his suit. I lingered in the embrace, resting my head on his shoulder. He smelt so good.

After I realized I had been there longer than what anyone might call a platonic hug, I sunk in deeper, and he just held me there, not rushing me, just holding my ear close against his chest, his other hand on my head, cradling me. The time between us disappeared. For a moment, we were back in my old dorm room, hidden and giggling under the blankets together. When I finally pulled back, I saw dark marks on his crisp suit.

“I’ve gone and cried on you!” I said, and brushed my hands over the wet spot.

Chapter 8 - Emily

Those bags go right at the back of the storeroom, it’s driest there,” I said to Felix, looking up from my work, a piping bag half filled with cream still in my hands.

I watched him amble over, a sixty-pound bag of flour hoisted up on his shoulders. After a late afternoon of helping offload the new stock (and saving me a ton of cash by cancelling the full delivery service), I noticed how his slightly sweaty t-shirt was sticking to his ab muscles. He didn’t look like what I remembered. He looked much, much better.

“Hello? Earth to Emily?”

I snapped to attention to see Becky coming through the swing doors and removing her apron.

“I’ve closed up the register,” she announced, but had obviously seen me ogling Felix. I cleared my throat, tried to hide my blush and carried on rinsing out the piping bags.

“Great, see you tomorrow then,” I said breezily. Felix came back from the storeroom, looked at us both while panting like some kind of caveman, then went out again for another load.

Becky’s eyebrows went way up high on her forehead.

“I can see why you hired him,” she chuckled.

“Don’t objectify the poor guy, Becky, I’ll sack you for sexual harassment,” I laughed.

“Who said anything about that? I only meant he looked really strong and helpful. Although it’s clear what’s on your mind, huh?” she said and tried to flick me with the end of the apron string.

Becky eventually left; I threw the rinsed piping bags into the washer and peeled off my own apron. I had postponed a ‘date’ with Buck twice already and knew that something had to give soon. But I held onto the tiniest glimmer of hope that the bank would approve the application without me needing to deal with that asshole beyond a few evasive text messages here and there. I don’t know what made me feel worse – the prospect of letting the bakery fold and calling it a day, or knowing it was saved by someone who saw me as nothing more than easy pickings.

“All done ma’am.”

I turned to see Felix standing good-naturedly in the storeroom doorway, hands hanging at either side of him like he was ready to start a brawl.

“You learn to rustle flour bags like that on the big red planet, cowboy?” I said, switching to a hammy Southern girl accent and teasing him for calling me, yet again, “ma’am”.

“Why yes ma’am, I surely did, only up on the Mars Station we was deprived of, shall I say, charms of the more feminine kind” he said in his own silly accent, and tipped an imaginary cowboy hat at me.

I giggled.

I don’t know how he kept his spirits up like he did. Here I was moping and stewing over the accounts and he was joking away, even though I could tell the heavy lifting sometimes bothered his leg.

“Hey, it’s late. I don’t mind if you wanna take off,” I said.

“Take off? Why? I’ll stay and help you load up the washer.”

He was instantly at my side, helping me pile the massive baking sheets row after row into the industrial size jet washer that had cost me a truly obscene amount of money.

“Felix, you should take a break. You’ve been working here day in and day out, aren’t you tired?”

He shook his head.

“I’m getting in the way at Claire’s, to be honest, so it’s best I stay out of her hair when I can.”

I couldn’t understand how he ever imagined he’d move out of his sister’s, especially with what I could manage to pay him, but I didn’t press the issue. Besides, I kind of liked having him around. Becky thought he was a riot and honestly, he just brightened the mood around here.

We worked in silence together, two pairs of hands moving quickly to stack the dirty trays.

“Hey Em?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a question to ask you,” he said casually.

Here we go. The moment of truth. I knew this was coming: sooner or later, he’d ask about the video. Because everything in my life ultimately came down to those tragic, slutty, disastrous three minutes. He’d want to know what the hell I was smoking to do such a thing. He’d slyly try to ask me if I’d enjoyed it at all, and if that was just the kind of thing I did now. You know, just because he was curious. He’d want to know, do you kinda like it? Knowing that every male in this small town has jerked off to footage of you being fucked by an indeterminate number of college frat boys who took turns calling you names? This is what he’d want to know, but he’d ask another cover question, the kind I’d been asked more times than I cared to remember. He’d maybe say, gee, I heard about all these rumors, are they really true? But it would be obvious that he’d already seen the video and just wanted to see my reaction, to see if I’d squirm… then he’d stare at me but I’d know that he wasn’t really seeing me. He was seeing Fuck Bunny.

I sighed loudly and banged the trays into their slots, just wishing he’d say it and get it over and done with.

“This is kind of difficult for me to talk about though,” he said, and slid in another tray, sending pie crumbs sliding into the machine like tiny snowflakes.

“What is it? Just spit it out.”

His eyebrows twisted a little.

“Ok.”

He straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and then carefully wiped my fingers clean with the same rag, before setting it aside and taking both my hands in his. Then he got down on one knee and cleared his throat.

“Hey Em?”

“Yes?”

“Emily, will you marry me?”

I burst out laughing.

“What?”

“Be my wife. Promise me we’ll never lose each other again…promise me we’ll--”

“Woah woah, just …wait, are you’re serious?”

He rose up off his knee.

“Of course I’m serious.”

“Felix…”

“If you give me a second chance to make things right, I swear to you I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I would do anything for you, Em.”

I looked at him gob smacked. His shirt still clung to his hard body. He had little pats of flour all over his torso. For some reason, the sight of these little white fingerprints nearly broke my heart.

“Felix, I don’t know what to say.”

His eyebrows kinked up again. He released my hands and they fell limply back down again.

I didn’t get it. Didn’t he care about the video? He was some big shot who had beat of thousands of hopefuls to get a place on the Mars program; he had won a medal for his service and contributions. I had personally seen some women come into the café and fall over themselves when they realized they were being waited on by someone who had not only been to Mars, but had come back to tell the tale. So why me? Why would he want to marry a slutty college drop out with no career prospects at all?

I couldn’t look him in the eye. There was a time when Felix was my everything. When even his body felt like a home for mine. When his voice was like sanity, like the only thing that made sense when the whole world seemed crazy. There was a time when I couldn’t even imagine that Felix wouldn’t be mine. And yet, that was a long time ago. I had changed. Maybe he couldn’t see that yet.

We stood in silence together. Suddenly, he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled pink envelope.

“What’s this?” I asked as he handed it to me.

“I get it, Em. It’s been a long time. I know you might have… other people in your life, other plans,” he said quietly, choking through the words. “It’s OK if you’ve moved on, if we’re not in the same place anymore. I get it. But I wrote these letters while I was up there. Almost every day I wrote you one. But I have five years’ worth of them!” he said and laughed nervously to himself.

“I know what I did to you back then was unforgivable. Just give me a second chance? I’ll wait, however long it takes.”

I looked down at the pink cardboard in my fingers. The paper certainly looked like it had spent a few unfortunate years being jetted back and forth around the solar system. I ran my fingertips over the softened paper, the beginnings of tears in my eyes. On the front, in a crooked, untidy handwriting that I would recognize anywhere, was my name, written in ballpoint pen. I threw myself against his chest and hugged him close, squeezing him so tightly I couldn’t breathe. His arms wrapped immediately and easily around me. For a while, I just cried.

“I missed you so much, Felix!” I cried into his already damp shirt.

His only response was to stroke the hair off my brow, kiss the top of my head and keep holding me.

“Felix, I can’t believe you left me. Do you know what that did to me? Do you know how hard it was without you? Do you have any idea…” my words were muffled against his chest and I found myself crying, softly at first, and then in big, gulping sobs that seemed like they were coming from somewhere buried inside me. Without noticing how or caring to stop it, I lost myself and soon was babbling as he held me, telling him how much I had loved him, how he had broken me, how I had wondered about him every day and now that he had come back.

I pulled back and looked at him, eyes wet.

“And now you ask me to marry you?”

I gave him a hard shove and broke free of his hold, and in an instant my fists were pummeling his chest.

“Em, hey Em, just calm down, please…”

“You asshole! I was all alone here! I trusted you!”

I was sobbing loudly now, pulling against him as he tried to restrain my wrists. And all at once his lips went to mine. And I didn’t resist them.

Even though I was still crying, I stopped fighting him. My wrists went limp in his hands and the tension melted out of me, out through my angry body, down and out through the floor like something molten. My body shuddered as I cried against him, and all at once I felt how warm his body was against mine, how deliciously solid her felt and how it good it was just to press against him.

Before I could understand what was happening, he pushed back against me, pulling me firmly to him and up into a deep, deep kiss. It took me a moment just to breathe, just to relax into that sweetness for a second… I wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to let him know just how painful it was to lose him, and for him to feel how he had hurt me. But my fists had loosened and rolled open again. It was impossible to hate him.

I groaned and rose up onto my toes to kiss him tentatively. Could he soothe the hurt he had caused me all those years ago? Our lips were warm and soft and delicate with each other, as though we had to ease our way into kissing again, trying to remember the old ways our lips used to fit together, surprised by how little had changed.

My hands spread wide over his back, stroking over the rippled muscles there, then I couldn’t help but let them slip down and under the warm cotton of his shirt, onto his silky hot skin. In an instant he raised his arms up high and peeled the shirt off, tossing it aside and looking back down at me again with tenderness in his eyes. This time we kissed with more confidence, throwing ourselves into it with relish, like we were both frantic to find a way to kiss everywhere all at once.

His hands went to the curve of my hips and squeezed and rolled, nearly lifting me off the floor as my hips ground against his. I was on fire. A buzzing ache right at my clit thumped desperately against my jeans. Lips still on mine, his hands undid the button, then pulled the zip down.

I gasped.

“Felix …Felix, I…”

“Shhh,” he said, and kissed away my protests. How could I protest, when he was being so perfectly persuasive? He was the same old Felix I knew and loved, but there was something else in him now. Something a little bit dangerous. Darker. His body was much more toned than before. His movements were more sure, more commanding. He was no longer the goofy boy I had spent lazy Sunday afternoons with back in the day. This was a man. A firm, in control man with abs that felt like rocks under my fingertips and a way of curling his body around mine that made me lightheaded and tingly all over.

He yanked my jeans down a few inches and then, lips still locked in mine, slid his hand inside my jeans and into the cotton of my underwear, cupping a greedy hand between my legs. I gasped for air, letting my head fall back. Fuck. I really had missed him. The thick bulge of his hard cock was pressing against my thigh, and I felt my whole body pulse in response. Oh fuck.

One finger dipped down to the soaking entrance of my pussy and hovered there, before sinking in slowly and surely, making my whole body curl and rise up off the floor. Face close to mine, our eyes glued to one another’s, he smiled at me in delight, and slid in another. I melted around him. I hadn’t been touched in so long. And it felt so fucking good I thought I’d scream. It was nothing compared to how he penetrated my eyes, though. He stared deeply at me, watching mesmerized as I wriggled and writhed at how gorgeous it felt to be opened up by him, to be stretched and teased and claimed like this, after so long… I had never been watched so intently before.

“You like that,” he said, half question, half statement.

I nodded.

In went one more finger, this time finding even more delicious resistance, pushing a silent gasp from my throat that had me clutching at his shoulders to steady myself.

“You’re beautiful,” he mumbled to my cheek, and pressed his fingers in as deep as they’d go, slid them back out and them pressed inside again, stirring up a slow, maddening rhythm that had my hips chasing after him, desperate for more. He looked down at my eager face and smiled.

“Wow, you really do like that,” he growled and picked up the pace, his other hand still clasped around my wrist. I moaned and sunk down harder onto his hand, still balancing on my toes. I pulled hard against his grasp on my wrist but he held me firm. He wasn’t going to let go of me.

“I’ve waited so long for this,” he moaned, moving deeper and deeper into the rhythm, the most delicious stretch thumping all the way through me.

“Me too,” I breathed.

His cock came out bouncing hot and rock hard as he yanked down his own jeans, then pulled me closer again. Slowly, he pulled out his glistening fingers, then grabbed himself and guided the swollen head of his dick between my thighs. I spread my legs a little accommodate him, suddenly unable to contain the urgent ache where his fingers had just been, frantic for him to touch me again.

“Hm, I love how much you want this,” he purred into my ear and smiled. Hi other hand squeezed hard around my wrist. Very hard. Maybe a little too hard.

And then all at once I thought of Buck.

My body went cold. What the fuck. Felix was slowly stroking himself against my wet clit, teasing me there, making me rise even further onto my toes to meet him. But all I could think about was Buck. And the other nameless, faceless jocks. Waves of weird nausea flushed through me and I felt like I had suddenly woken from a dizzy spell.

I put my hand out to his chest and stopped him from coming any closer. He looked at me, concerned.

“Maybe we shouldn’t…”

“Oh, I definitely, positively think we should,” he said naughtily, but there it was again. There was that fucking …smile. I couldn’t explain it. That smile that could have been a jeer, could have been an insult. He was making fun of me. Of how much I wanted him. Flustered, I pushed him away. He looked confused.

“Em?”

“I just …I don’t want to do this, OK?” I said, and quickly pulled my jeans back up again and tried to smooth the loose tendrils of hair around my face. Embarrassed, he quickly did the same.

“Oh, yeah, of course, it’s my fault, I didn’t want to push you or anything,” he began saying, but looked like he ran out of steam just to look at the expression on my face.

“Was it something I did?” he said, looking a little pathetic.

The trouble with having a bad reputation is that you can never be sure how people would have treated you if they had known you for you, without the reputation. There’s just always a parallel universe running beside yours, one where people just treat you like normal. Felix was the only one who had known me before everything turned sour in my life. Didn’t he care that I was ‘damaged goods’ now? Could he tell that I was different somehow, by looking at me, by …touching me? And an even worse thought: what if he was no better than Buck, trying to take advantage because he thought I was easy? I couldn’t decide what I felt – petrified that he’d be disgusted with me, or insulted that he wasn’t disgusted at all?

I straightened out my t-shirt and shrugged, trying to gather myself.

“Look, will you just finish up loading the machine? I’m going home. You can lock up when you’re done,” I said briskly, then walked out before he could try convince me to stay.

After an anonymous person posted that video everywhere for the world to see, I had stopped expecting people to treat me with anything other than disdain. And now Felix was in the picture, desperately trying to pretend that he didn’t care about my past. I know I should have been grateful that someone was willing to date the notorious Miss Fuck Bunny herself.

But I wasn’t grateful. I was suspicious.

Chapter 9 - Felix

It was icy between us for a good while. But hell, after not seeing her for five solid years, it felt like a privilege even to have an argument with her.

She came into the bakery the next morning and said nothing, and I followed suit and did the same. She was good at that – pretending. But even after our time apart I could still recognize all her tells. I knew she was more worried about the bakeries money situation than she was letting on. I knew that she took her responsibilities more seriously than she let on, and didn’t admit just how much was riding on the bakery pulling through.

And of course, I knew that she wasn’t really as angry with me as she appeared. So I lay low. I mopped the floors, I hung around, waiting. I’m not sure what exactly I was waiting for, but I waited. It was a bright morning, one where you can just feel the first little movements of spring gearing up, and I felt sure that she’d soon warm up to me too. That she’d confess she was just confused, just hurt. That she’d come around eventually. I can’t explain how I knew that she wanted me, I just knew. I just saw it, written in bold all over her beautiful face. I just had to wait for her to realize it.

I turned the corner and felt a spring in my step. I deliberately put extra weight on my knee, then, pleased it didn’t hurt, put a bit more. I was pleased with my progress. I was getting stronger, everyday. I walked on briskly, keen to get to the store and open up before she arrived. I don’t know why I liked doing that, but I liked being there first. I liked welcoming her inside. Silly, I know.

Lost in my thoughts, I nearly didn’t hear the stranger address me the first time around. I turned to see a guy in front of me, calling my name.

“Felix?”

I looked over and saw a guy in a suit walking quickly over to me from the other side of the road. My body tensed. I didn’t recognize him.

“Hey are you Felix? You work at Warren’s Bakery?” he said, a weird smile on his lips.

I nodded but something in me felt a little on edge.

“Sure, yeah, I work there,” I said. He didn’t look like the kind to go running after an ex-Mars program mini celebrity, but who knows.

“Yeah, cool, cool, I love that place, just thought I’d seen you around somewhere. Hey, aren’t you the guy that came back from the mission?” he asked, eyes squinting a little in the sun as he looked at me incredulously.

I nodded and smiled. I really needed to open up shop early this morning.

“You are! Huh, awesome! So uh, you’re working at a …a bakery?”

I officially felt irritated. I turned to carry on walking on my way. I didn’t have time to explain to people why humble, honest work right now was in fact a massive step up, was a blessing actually, and that I was too tired these days to play hero for anyone.

“Well, it is a hell of a bakery,” I said drily and carried on walking. He trotted beside me and kept talking.

“Hey uh, you wouldn’t happen to know Emily Warren would you?”

I slowed a little.

“Sure. She’s the owner,” I said. I didn’t know what this guy’s deal was but I wanted him gone.

“Yeah, yeah, she’s the owner. Old college friend of mine actually, how’s she doing?” he asked.

I stopped in my tracks and looked at him. The expression on his face felt like a challenge, but I didn’t know what he was getting at. He was tall, but clearly out of shape. Your classic aging High School jock who seems to never quite shake that ill-behaved, locker room vibe. His work clothes fit him poorly.

“Hey, is there something I can do for you?” I asked sharply. He kept smiling, like him and I were both in on some massive, hilarious secret.

“Nah, nothing like that man. But shit, must be a few perks to working for the splendid miss Warren, right?” he said and gave me slimy smile. I wanted to punch him.

“I’m sorry I don’t know what you mean,” I said, trying to sound cool. Would this fucker ever stop grinning at me?

“You uh… you guys an item or what?” he said, trying another tack.

Within a few minutes I’d be at the shop. And I was tired of this clown holding me up. I said nothing. He sprang back, eyes wide, as though I had just told the funniest dirty joke.

“Woahhhh! So you are screwing her! Nice work buddy. Getting in there with the boss lady, I approve,” he said and extended his fist to me. I took no notice of him and walked on. For the first time, his face dropped a little and he stopped smiling. He walked on with me for a few more paces and then started up again.

“You do …you do know about her, right?” he said in a completely different tone of voice. I didn’t know what he was getting at, but I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like his ugly suit and I didn’t like how familiar he was being and I didn’t like his smug face. I stopped and looked at him again. I was already going to be late.

“Know what about her?” I could see the cogs churning behind his eyes.

“Seriously? Emily Warren? Have you been living under a rock or something?”

“Yeah. A great big fucking red one, as a matter of fact. Look, I have to get going--”

He laughed and slapped his hands together.

“So you don’t know,” he said with relish. “That’s fucking priceless.”

I eyed him with irritation. I had never met this asshole in my life. An ex of Emily’s? It hurt to even think about. So I didn’t think about it.

He put his arm around my shoulder like he was my best bud and leaned in close.

“Emily Warren, my good man, is like, the town slut, right? She was really wild in college. Really wild. Totally lost her shit and did about half the football team, you name it, she sucked it,” he laughed.

I threw his arm from off my shoulder and shot him a poisonous look. “I don’t know who the fuck you are but I’ve had just about enough,” I hissed at him under my breath. He backed off a little, holding his hands up in defense but still smiling that big, irritating smile.

“Dude, just trying to help.”

“You’ve got the wrong Emily,” was all I could think of to say. We walked on together.

“Nah, man. I’m serious. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were… in any case, I’m not lying. Don’t believe me? Watch the video.”

I wasn’t sure if my leg had started hurting again or if I was just about to burst with rage for this asshole that had for some reason appeared smack bang in the middle of my perfect morning to talk shit about Emily. I said nothing.

“Yeah, it’s a classic. Try searching for “Fuck Bunny”, she never even bothered to get the video taken down. I guess while you were up there blowing up grow houses or whatever, we were all down here sampling miss Warren’s peach cobbler, if you know what I mean.”

I swung around swiftly and slammed the heels of both hands square into his chest, sending him staggering backwards.

“Will you fuck the hell off?” I yelled. For a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of fear in his eyes, but soon the smarmy smile was back on his face and he was gathering himself again.

“Dude, whatever, just wanted to let you know who you were dealing with,” he said, with a haughty shrug. He cracked his knuckles, took one look down at my limping leg and smirked.

“Who are you? Her ex?” I said as I saw him walking off. “What’s your name?”

“Buck Johnson,” he said with a little triumphant skip in his step. “Don’t let it make you mad, bro, I’m sure she’s not so bad anymore, just forget I said anything.”

I stood for a moment, mind racing. It had to be bullshit. The whole thing was just too ridiculous. But why would a complete stranger come out of nowhere to warn me about Emily? I knew she had dropped out of college, and before I left I had heard she was having a hard time with her old man dying. But ...this didn’t sound like her at all. It couldn’t be true. Now way. Not the Emily I knew. He was just a bitter ex, some twisted fuck who was trying to stir shit or something. It had to be. I walked on, so quickly I was nearly running. I should have punched him in the face when I had the chance.

By the time I reached the bakery she was standing outside, unwinding the awning and giving me a smile even warmer than the yellow spring sun around us. He had to be right? “Fuck Bunny”? It had to be a mistake.

“Hey Em.”

“Felix! There you are. Come inside and look at the Easter cakes, you’re gonna love this,” she said and raced inside, beckoning me to follow her.

What if he was on to something though? I guess it would be an easy thing to verify. Just search “Fuck Bunny” and see what came up. Easy. That would clear all this up. I followed her, put down my coat and went over to see her and Becky fussing over a few pastel colored Easter cakes and cupcakes. I had to say, they looked kind of sweet.

“They’re rainbow colored on the inside, see? So each time you cut them in half, like this, ta da!” she said and showed me a pretty white cupcake sliced in half, revealing a joyful rainbow of pink, green and yellow on the inside. They were beautiful.

“Awesome,” I said, looking out at the spread. I liked seeing her excited like this.

“Why no carrot cake though? It is Easter. Don’t you need, like, bunnies and chocolate eggs and things?” I asked casually.

I saw Becky’s entire body freeze as she slid her gaze onto the floor. Emily paused as well.

“What? Is that out of fashion these days? I’m a guy, I don’t know about cakes, sorry,” I said, trying to sound casual. But they were acting strange.

“Guys, what? What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, Felix, just drop it. We don’t do any carrot themed things in this bakery, that’s all. No bunnies and stuff, I hate it,” she said, and just like that she had turned away from me and was prattling on with Becky about how to price the cakes, the tension of the moment whizzing by. But my blood was slowly going cold. It came together in my mind like something nasty congealing. Bunnies. She hated bunnies. It was just a stupid coincidence. It was nothing. Wasn’t it?

“Guys I’m just heading to the storeroom for a second,” I said, and took off to the back of the bakery. I felt Emily’s eyes lift to follow me for a second but she went back to chatting to Becky. I went to the bathrooms at the back, slammed a door behind me and sat down on the toilet seat, heart racing.

This was stupid. This whole thing was stupid.

I whipped out my phone and typed Fuck Bunny, my fingers trembling above the screen. I hesitated for a moment but forced myself to hit search, feeling a heavy, cold wave of nausea starting to come over me.

The results appeared but I looked away. So what if it was true? What if Emily had a …promiscuous past and did some questionable things? Did it matter? Why did I think that I had any say over her life? I left. Hell, we had been living apart and dead to one another for longer than we had been dating and happy. So why did I care? And worse, if she really did have some sketchy video of her and a bad reputation, well …did I really want to know? It made me sick to think of that boneheaded Buck creature having anything to do with her at all. That he knew something about her that I didn’t.

I sat for a few moments more, my phone screen turned away from me, wrestling with whether I wanted to see what had popped up. If it didn’t matter, if the past was the past, why not just look then? She was still Emily. Did I really have the right to be offended that her sex life had carried one ever after I had left? Fuck, I was the one who had gone into monk-ode, not her. Just because I had been pining for her for years, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t lonely down here, that she didn’t…

I looked at the screen.

“Fuck Bunny begs for carrot,” blared the first hit. It felt like all the blood had drained out of a small, painful hole at the back of my skull. I opened the link and saw a video on a porn site. The video still was blurry, caught mid-action with a man’s grinning face taking up most of the frame, some distorted flesh colors and shapes behind him. Would I really watch this?

The video had been watched millions of times already. I felt sick. Then I felt even more sick: was that…? I looked closer. The smarmy smile. The thick, stubborn jaw. It was him. It was the fucker I had bumped into. I exhaled loudly and rubbed my face, then turned my phone off.

I couldn’t do this to Emily. I had broken her heart, who was I to judge if she had …had …well, whatever she had done, I’m sure she had her reasons. Of course she did. I didn’t want to embarrass her. It wasn’t my business. I turned my phone off and shoved it into my pocket.

I loved Emily. With everything that I had in me. And if that meant accepting that there were others in her past …then so be it. I bit down on my jaw to stop the tears falling. I forced myself to keep breathing, to think.

Don’t be an idiot, Felix, of course there were others. Lots of others, apparently. Get over yourself…

It had stung badly when she shut me down, that night we had kissed, that night I had been so close, so close to what I had dreamt of for years out there, so close I could taste it. It had hurt, but I got over it. Winning back her trust would give me something to do with my wasted life. But this …this video changed everything. Did she actually date that guy? What even happened in that video? Did she …like it?

I found myself near crying again, and shook my head to clear my thoughts. It wouldn’t help now. I was the idiot that had thrown away the good thing when I had it. I was itching to get my phone. To pull up the video and watch it, watch what she was apparently so eager to do with another man, watch just exactly what it was about that bonehead that was better than me.

I looked down into my lap. I was hard. I cursed under my breath. I slammed the bathroom door open, splashed some cold water on my face and looked at my image in the mirror. I would have to ask her about it. There was nothing else to do. It wasn’t her problem that I was a jealous asshole. But I had to know. Up on Mars they drill it into you: communicate. Make no assumptions. Share what you know as soon as possible, clarify misunderstandings, keep going. Assumptions killed missions. Paranoia broke up the very fabric of a team.

I marched out of the bathroom and went back into the bakery, where Emily was now alone at the register.

“Hey, you OK?” she asked. When she saw the look on my face, she stopped what she was doing.

“Felix, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She looked beautiful today. She had done that thing with her hair, where she pulled two little ropes up on either side, close to her head, so that their tales flicked out at the back, like two little tales, or maybe ears. I hated how hard it was to be angry at her.

“Can I talk to you about something?” I said. It was her turn to go pale. “Can we step outside for a second?”

She nodded silently and we walked out to the back together. When she closed the delivery door behind us, she wasn’t smiling. In fact, it was almost as though she had been expecting this all along and was now just wincing, waiting for me to say something.

“What’s wrong?” she said, staring at the ground. This attitude, this weird avoidance, this way she was looking at the ground and cowering …this wasn’t an Emily I recognized.

I didn’t know how to start.

“I bumped into someone this morning, some guy who said he knew you,” I said, testing the waters. Her face tensed up and she stared ahead at nothing, waiting for me to continue.

“He was talking about a video…”

For a split second it looked like she was about to scream, but almost instantly her lip quivered and she kept staring ahead, glassy eyed.

“I know it’s none of my business, and I feel weird even mentioning this to you, but I wanted to …I just wanted to…”

I wanted her to tell me it was all a silly mistake. That no way in hell would she find her way into a nasty porn clip online and that it was just a misunderstanding, and that she was and always had been my sweet, perfect Emily.

“I wanted to know if you were OK, I guess. I know a lot must have happened since I left,” I said meekly. I suddenly realized how pathetic I must have sounded to her.

She shot me a cynical look.

“Am I OK? Am I OK?” Her face went red.

“I just …do you know this guy? Buck somebody. He seemed like a real jerk. He was saying some really awful shit about you.”

I had never seen such intense rage on a person’s face in my life before. But she swallowed it down, looked at the ground and laughed sarcastically.

“Saying shit about me? Tell me something I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t noticed Felix, but this whole town is constantly talking shit about me.”

The tone in her voice broke my heart.

“What happened Emily? Can you please just tell me what happened, when I was away?”

When she flicked up her gaze to mine it was twinkling a little with tears. I just wanted to hug her. But something told me that this wasn’t the time or place for that. Clearly, I didn’t know Emily as well as I thought I did. She looked like she was chewing over the words, figuring out how to say something she couldn’t say.

“Did you make a video with him? Can you just tell me that?” I asked. She was shaking her head now, getting angrier.

“Oh my god, Felix, please don’t bullshit me like that,” she spat.

“What?”

“You and I both know you’ve already seen the fucking video.”

“What? No, I haven’t.”

“Pshht.”

“Emily,” I said and grabbed her shoulders. “Emily, I didn’t watch the video. It didn’t feel right. I wanted to ask you first, I wanted to know what was going on with you.”

She squirmed out of my grasp and started walking off. I blocked her path back into the bakery and tried to catch her eye.

“Em, don’t run away, please.”

She sighed, then looked towards the bakery.

“Can you keep your voice down, Felix? The last thing I need now is to do this at work”

“Em, just talk me.”

“Shhhh!”

“What? Nobody cares, Em,” I yelled, and pulled her aside, into the back storeroom, slamming the door behind us and locking it.

“There, nobody can hear us now,” I said in the semi-darkness. We were surrounded by flour bags and boxes. Emily’s beloved zero-input fermenter sat in the back, its control panel lights blinking dimly. She looked like she was ready to claw my eyes out.

“Hear us what? I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Can you at least just answer my questions?”

“Felix, it was a long time ago, why stir it all up?”

“Did you make a video? Did you make a video with Buck and he leaked it? Is that what happened? I swear to god I’ll rip his head off, I’ll…”

She eyed me suspiciously.

“You really haven’t seen it?”

“Of course not.”

“Promise me?”

“Em, I promise you. Why would I look at shit like that? But he… what this guy was saying…”

“I don’t believe you,” she blurted.

I rubbed my temples.

“Em, you can’t let people treat you like that. There are lawyers for this kind of thing. How long has this been going on for?”

She shrugged.

“I’m going to help you sort it out,” I said.

A thought flittered around the edge of my consciousness. The thought of her. And him. The thought of them fucking. Just the idea was so exquisitely painful I couldn’t think about it for longer than a moment. I shoved it out of my mind and tried to focus on keeping her here with me, keeping her talking. I had left her, all those years ago, but I wasn’t going to leave her again. Not ever.

“It’s way, way too late for that, Felix. I don’t think you understand. I …I consented. They didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You consented.”

“I consented. I’m a big, fat slut, OK? There, I said it. It wasn’t their fault, it was mine, I was the one who went over there, I was the one who let it all happen, I was the one…”

“Em just slow down for a second.”

“I deserved it. I didn’t stop them. I’m smiling, Felix, I’m fucking smiling.”

“What?”

“In the video. I’m smiling. I’m enjoying myself. It’s plain as day. Do you have any idea how that feels? For the whole world to see… to see how you…”

My mind reeled. I tried to understand what she was telling me. So she had enjoyed it. I tried to force the image of that grinning asshole’s face from my mind. It didn’t matter anyway. This wasn’t about me. With all the strength I could muster, I leaned forward and gave her a slow, broad hug.

She pushed me away.

“Don’t you get it, Felix? I’m Fuck Bunny, right? That’s me. Fuck Bunny. You should watch the video. I know you’re dying to. Just watch it and get it over and done with. You want to know what happened after you left? Everything went to shit. I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle my dad…” She started sobbing. “I was drunk that night. Very drunk. I think they gave me other stuff too. I had taken all my anxiety meds. I was in a bad place. I did it all willingly.”

“You were sad, Emily,” I said quietly.

“I was a slut.”

I hugged her again.

“So what? And so what if you were?”

She looked up at me, not resisting me anymore.

“You’re a slut? Fine, I’m a cripple. Can we just get on with our lives?” I said and gave her a crooked smile. She burst into shocked laughter.

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy. I just love you,” I said.

Her face was softening. I just wanted her to stay here with me. Stay here and never leave again, and it hurt to think about what had happened to her, it hurt to know that someone had hurt her, and I didn’t know what I would do when I allowed myself to really think about that, but it didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that she was in my arms. That she wasn’t crying anymore. That there was even a faint hint of a smile on her lips.

“You’re an idiot to want me,” she said.

“Then so be it.”

“I’m sorry Felix.”

“Don’t be. I just have one question. Why bunny?”

She tensed up again in my arms. I stroked her hair and kissed her.

“Forget it. You don’t have to answer, it’s not important. Forget I said anything.”

Her reactions the first time I bumped into her at the supermarket, her strange behavior about the Easter cakes …it was all starting to make sense now.

“Promise me you’ll never watch it,” she said. She looked up at me expectantly.

I couldn’t hold back. I lowered my head and planted a hesitant kiss on her lips. She didn’t resist. I lived for kissing this woman. My entire life could be divided up into the eons and eras that lay in the wastelands between each of her perfect kisses. With Emily, it was more than chemistry. The electricity I felt for her was almost subatomic, it shot right through me.

“I’ll never watch it. I promise.”

“Do you think I’m a slut?” she asked between pecks.

I smiled. “Do you want me to think you’re a slut?”

She playfully slapped my chest.

“Oh my god, be serious.”

“Why?” I gave her a mischievous look.

She melted in my arms a little.

“You’re not a slut, but if I remember correctly, you were a real firecracker. You always blew my mind…” I whispered. She frowned.

“I hate you for leaving me, Felix.”

I kissed her jawline, her neck.

“I hate myself for leaving you,” I mumbled between kisses. I stroked her hair off her shoulders and kissed her there.

“You don’t know anything about me, Felix. I’m not some helpless girl, I’m not some little innocent baby, you know.”

“Then show me what you are,” I said. My lips were playing now on her shoulder, and I peeled a few inches of her shirt away to kiss the pale skin underneath.

“I’ve changed, Felix,” she said, her voice coming in rasps. “You’re the only one who really knows me, the only one who knew me,” she said distractedly, succumbing a little the kisses I was raining down on her. Her little hands were resting gently on my shoulders now, and her head had fallen back, letting those two pigtails fall back and long down her shoulders.

“And I’ll never forgive you for just abandoning me here.”

“Then don’t forgive me, just kiss me,” I said, and she did. Her kiss was soft, yielding. But there was something edgy in it. Something hard. She was angry. Before I knew what was happening, her body came to life and she was responding to me, and in one quick movement she had yanked at the long slit that ran all along the front of her dress, sending all the buttons popping off and flying into the darkness of the storeroom. She half shimmied it off, then pressed her bare midriff against me again, the black of her bra and panties catching my eye.

“Woah, easy tiger…” I laughed, but she was kissing me again. Hard.

Her hands flew frantically all over my body, trying to find an opening, and when her hands sunk down into the waistband of my pants, she moaned softly and fumbled with the zip, her eyes wild. I had never seen her like this. But I liked it. I wasted no time in opening the buttons of my own shirt, and when she caught sight of my chest she forgot about her mission to remove my pants for a second and was instantly kissing and caressing me there instead. She seemed to know exactly where to linger, exactly where send that warm, sweet breath of hers. My nipples stood hard on end as her beautiful fluffy hair tickled against me.

She had shrugged off her dress and now had both hands angled behind her to pull off her bra. I leant forward and slid off her panties while she did this, and in a second she was completely naked in front of me, except for her shoes. For a second, the frenzy between us stopped as she felt me gazing at her. The moment snapped with electricity. I felt every hair stand on end. She looked wild. And angry. Surprisingly angry. Her body was just what I remembered – those elegant lines, the beautiful way her stomach gathered and hung just so in a soft swell under her navel, her collarbones, that perfect, impossibly white skin right on the inside of her thighs.

She dove at me again and we melted together into another hot, devouring kiss, hands everywhere, hair messy and breath even messier. It was fantastic. But as we stood there pressed up against one another, I caught sight of her face. She was angry. I saw tears streaming out the side of her eyes.

“Hey, Em,” I said, clasping her head in my hands and lifting her gaze to mine. But she pulled away and carried on, her hand now between her own thighs.

“Em, wait, please, we don’t have to do any of this,” I said feebly.

“Just shut up.”

I was stunned.

She glanced behind her, then hoisted herself up onto a pile of flour bags, laying back and bringing her legs up high, exposing every last delicious part of herself to me.

“I want you to fuck me,” she said simply.

“Well that’s very direct.”

She reached forward with her leg and hooked me with her foot, pulling me in closer to her. Needless to say I was rock hard, my cock seemingly still riled up from the time she teased me and left me hanging days before. I wanted her. Fuck, did I want her. But she wasn’t herself. She seemed so …unhinged. So out of control.

She drew me in with her feet so that the tip of my cock hovered just inches away from that glistening spot. In the soft darkness of the storeroom, I could see how turned on she was. She reached forward and grabbed hold of my shaft, rolling her curled fingers over me again and again, and I could do nothing but shudder, every inch of me responding to her. I had wanted to fuck her for so long, I had waited for this moment for so long, that her just touching me almost felt like it hurt…

“I said fuck me,” she purred, a hungry look in her eyes. Her hands slinked down and slipped between her legs, and she held my gaze as she parted those slick folds, pulling her legs up higher still and inviting me in. It nearly drove me insane, to see her like that.

“Fuck me like the dirty slut that I am,” she said, and teased the tip of her cock against her clit. I was shocked. “Do it. I want it,” she said, daring me with her eyes.

“Emily, this isn‘t like you, you’re not a slut,” before I could finish my thought, though, she had pulled me forward and eased herself onto the tip, and instantly the dripping heat of her body engulfed me, and I was speechless.

“Emily…”

“I’m done with you telling me what’s good for me and what isn’t…” she said, and clasped her hands round my hips, inching me in deeper and deeper. The sensation of sinking into her sent violent goosebumps all through me. “I want you to fuck me, hard, and I want you to call me a dirty, filthy whore while you do it…” she whispered. My ears burned. I wanted to pull out. To tell her that she was crazy. That I would never treat her like that. That I wasn’t like them… but as she gently guided my hips close and closer to hers, I couldn’t resist. I was stuck. The air left the room, we both went silent and after a few moments my full length was buried in her to the hilt, the faint blondish fuzz at the top of her pussy pressing hot into the skin at the base of my cock. I think I stopped breathing.

I could feel her body internally twitch and undulate against mine. I could feel her breath, feel her heartbeat. I was deep, way, way up inside her, and fuck it if it sounds cheesy as hell but for the first time in many years, I felt like I was home. Her pussy was the sweetest fucking thing. Holy hell did I love it. Did I love her. I wanted her to have all of me, and if I had even a single millimeter of dick more I would have gladly given her that too. I thrust my hips hard into her, pressing in as deeply as I could go, and her mouth opened for one long, silent moan.

“Are you going to leave me again, Felix?”

I felt her little feet clasp one another behind me, pulling me in snugly to her.

“No. Not ever.”

“Even though I’m a slut?”

I felt like I was suddenly in very dangerous waters. I didn’t know what had really happened to Emily all the time I was away. I didn’t know what she wanted form me now. But I knew that at least some of it was my fault.

“Emily, whatever you are, I love you. Nothing can ever change that,” I breathed. I leant forward and kissed her brow, and I felt her pussy kick against me as she moaned, then began grinding against me, sliding herself off my cock and then slowly back on again. I eased into the rhythm with her, our bodies moving slowly but deliberately with one another, each delicious thrust slightly quicker than the one before.

I could still see wet tear tracks falling from the corners of her eyes down into her hair.

“Then call me a slut. Fuck me and tell me what a dirty girl I am. I want you to.”

I couldn’t help my body responding to how desperate and sexy her voice sounded. I growled and kept fucking her, much harder this time. I didn’t want to hurt her. But it felt so, so good to have my hips coming down hard against hers.

“Do it. If you fucking love me so much, then do it. Tell me how dirty I am.”

“Emily,” I moaned, now collapsed onto her, breathing in the faint memory of shampoo on her hair, my cock now pummeling hard into her.

“Tell me how good it feels to fuck my little slutty cunt, tell me--”

“But Emily…”

“Tell me.”

Something hot and fierce snapped inside me. I couldn’t hold on any longer. I cried out and drove my hips even harder into her, bringing her whole pelvis high off the rough flour bags with a brutality I had never felt with her before. She squealed and clung to my shoulders but I pulled back my hips and did it again, and then again… It seemed to nearly knock the breath right out of her. Her eyes flickered half closed and rolled back.

“You like that? You fucking like that? Fucking slut” I snarled, and the instant that tight, stinging word left my lips, she came alive underneath me, squirming with an energy and strength I couldn’t understand, bucking back up against me and moaning like an animal. She didn’t falter. She was right – she wasn’t sweet, innocent Emily as I had known her. Wedged balls deep into her glorious, greedy body, I saw it: she was a slut. I understood.

I grabbed her ass cheeks and pulled her back down onto me, linking my one arm around her tight waist and the other over her thigh, easing into a faster, more brutal rhythm now. She accepted it all, her red-brown hair bobbing and bouncing around her.

“Little fucking whore. Getting fucked on camera, is that what you like?” I whispered, and the moan that left her body didn’t seem human anymore. Her pussy was streaming wet, sending little wet rivers all down my thighs. I loved it. I pounded her harder, to see just how wet she could get.

“I think you do like it. I think you love being fucked by that asshole, and having the world see how dirty you are, having the whole world see your little tits and your filthy little pussy, you love it don’t you? Being fucked? Say how much you like it, how much you love being fucked like this…”

I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. I was soon speaking without thinking, the obscene words just rolling off my tongue, the words melting into one another, and every time her body clenched and warmed against mine, every time she leant into my cock and pulled me deeper, I said more, and I went further. I started to enjoy myself.

“I love it,” she cried.

I clutched her at the waist and spun her around, my cock still in her, and continued jamming myself inside, every stroke pushing me closer to the edge. Everything was wet now. It seemed like her whole body was covered in a film of sweat. I could smell her. I felt like I could almost taste her. I couldn’t believe how turned on she was. I could almost feel her body swell against mine, deep inside. I knew she was close to coming.

“Oh fuck,” I groaned and grabbed her ass tightly to steady myself.

“Now tell me how much you like fucking me,” she moaned, her voice muffled against her hair as she pressed her face down against the flour bags. I slammed into her.

“Fuck, Emily, you little whore.”

“Yes…”

“I never knew how fucking naughty you were, you hot little slut.”

“Oh god yes…”

“I’m going to fuck the living shit out of you. You’re my dirty little fuck bunny, aren’t you?” I said, pressing my whole weight down onto her.

When she came she bucked so hard it felt like her whole body lifted off the floor. She convulsed silently for a second, but then all hell broke loose and she cried out, wracked through with an orgasm that looked like it was possessing her. I had to clamp down at her waist to stop her from flying off my cock. The sight of her twisting, ecstatic body and the way she arched her spine and clenched down on me was enough to send me over the edge, too. I growled and grabbed down hard on her ass, slamming my eyes shut and trying to contain myself as I shot glob after glob of hot cum deep into her.

“Oh fuck, Felix, fuck,” she moaned and collapsed down onto the flour bags, completely exhausted. The blood came rushing back to my face. I didn’t know what the fuck had just happened. But I think I liked it. It took effort to pull back and slowly slide out of her. It felt strange to be outside of her body again. My body flushed again in goosebumps. I staggered a little, reached for her as she turned around and smiled at me with a look of intoxication on her face.

“Em… Em what did we just do?”

She lowered her body and crouched down on the floor in front of the flour bags, hugging her knees, her hair wild. But she was smiling. There was something loose and wonderful and unspeakably beautiful on her face. I knelt down in front of her and grabbed her.

“Emily …oh Emily…”

I rocked a little with her, and our bodies began to cool again.

“Emily, I don’t know what I was saying …I don’t know what just happened…”

“I liked it,” she said simply.

I squeezed her.

“That was …intense,” I said.

“It’s been hard for me, Felix” she said. Her voice was edged with something that sounded almost like crying. “I don’t know why I feel this way. I just needed you to… I can’t explain it. I needed you to see me, too.”

“Shh, it’s OK, I understand.”

And I think I did understand. It didn’t make any logical sense. She hadn’t told me all her secrets. But I knew there was pain there. I felt it, somehow. She had shown me something. Something special, something very, very private. I felt honored that I had seen that side of her. Honored that she felt safe enough.

“Of course, I’m not really a slut though,” she said.

“Of course not.”

“It’s just, it turns me on. I know it shouldn’t but…”

“I understand.”

“Well, just a moment ago I asked if you’d ever leave me again and you said no. What about now? Are you still so sure?” she said and smiled at me. Her face was bright and clear and sex-flushed. She had a halo of disheveled hair all around her. Fuck she was gorgeous.

“Leave you? No.”

“No?”

“No. In fact, I’m going to ask you again.”

“Ask me what?”

“To marry me,” I said.

Chapter 10 - Emily

And so we played this game with one another. For the next few weeks, I kept daring him to lose interest, kept holding my breath, waiting for that moment he’d realize that getting involved with the girl with a sketchy past maybe wasn’t the smartest idea, kept waiting for him to forget about this stupid marriage business and move onto something better.

But he didn’t.

Every day, he’d come into the shop with another pink letter, one that brought us one day closer to ‘catch up’, a little window into his head as it was five years ago. I never told him what a comfort it was to see how little he had changed since then. Even now, he used all the same little phrases he had always used, the same pet names, the same corny jokes. He started every letter with “Hey Em”. Some letters had little cartoons scribbled on the back. Others had (admittedly rather bad) poetry included. Each one left me feeling warm and happy.

Gradually, though I can’t say when exactly it happened, I fell in love with him again. One letter at a time. Every day he’d come in, he’d hand me the day’s letter and I’d read it quickly while he was out getting a delivery or dealing with a customer. It was a like having a secret affair …with him. I made jokes about it at first, but there was something soothing about this daily ritual. A letter, every day, no matter what happened. Written in the past, preserved way back on a planet I had never been to, during the time when everyone else on this planet had decided I was scum.

It made me a little sad to think how I could have used some of these kind words back when they would have really mattered. There were nights I had felt so alone …were any of those nights the same nights he had spent, scribbling secret pink letters to me? It felt strange. But a good kind of strange. Getting a new letter from him every morning soon became the highlight of my day. It was a second chance. Like getting the opportunity to merge a little with that parallel world in which I didn’t throw my life away the night I swallowed all those pills and went to that party.

“Hey Em!”

I looked up from the register to see him tinkling through the front door, already taking his coat off.

“Sorry I’m late”.

He was never late. He was always on time.

“Hey you,” I said and smiled broadly at him. I went over, hugged him and then watched him wind his scarf on the coat hook at the door. We hadn’t …done anything more since that unexpected day in the storeroom. In fact, Felix, either being a complete gentleman or else feeling confused as hell about it all, had kept his mouth shut and never mentioned it again.

He plonked himself down at the table and spread out some notebooks.

“Now, I’ve had a look at that new fermentation model you mentioned you wanted, and honestly we’re just not ready to scale up to that volume yet, but there’s this,” he said and held out a brochure to me, “and that looks like it might be in our price range for now. Oh and I also got in touch with that woman? The woman who does the branding? She’s really keen on doing some work for the bakery.”

“Wait, her? She’s so expensive though.”

“I know, but this place desperately needs a rebrand, Em.”

“I’d really rather concentrate on sorting out the fermenters first, so we actually had something to brag about. I don’t see the point of marketing ourselves as zero-input until we’re actually there.”

“Absolutely. But don’t sell yourself short Em. The place needs money for now. If you focus on that first, you’ll actually have the cash to start making money from all these good ideas of yours…”

I smiled. He had a point. I did tend to treat the bakery like some giant lab experiment, forgetting that practically nobody else shared my passion for, I don’t know, what hybrid strain of wheat ultimately went into our croissants.

“So with that in mind, I wanted to show you this,” he said, then sprang up, went over to the main counter, crouched down and pulled out a big chalkboard. He held it up proudly. On it were painted the most wonderful designs, all leaves and flowers with geometric shapes as their petals, and everything curling up and around a giant logo that said “Warren’s”. There was blank space in the middle to write a daily message.

“Felix that’s so beautiful!” I cried and went to run my fingers over the chalk designs. “But I thought we decided that this wasn’t a priority? I don’t know if I can actually afford something like this.”

I gazed at it, amazed at what people could do with mere chalk. It was a work of art.

“Nevermind about how much it costs. It’s a good idea. Give people something cute to read every time they pass by your shop.”

“But…”

“Come on, Em, this isn’t exactly the most outlandish marketing idea in the world. Seriously. Have a chalkboard outside your shop.”

I sighed. He probably had a point about that too. I had no idea what I was doing when it came to …ugh, branding.

He whipped out a stick of chalk from his pocket and handed it to me.

“Your handwriting is prettier than mine,” he said, and angled the board to me.

“But what am I going to write?” I asked.

“Say, ‘sweet buns inside, get ‘em while they’re hot.”

“Felix! Be serious.”

“Ok, say ‘come in and lick me till ice cream’”

“Oh my god you’re not helping.”

“Think about it this way, you keep telling me how everyone can’t stop talking about you, well, that’s good publicity. Forgot what your shrink says, this right here is how you get over shit.”

“With crappy food puns?”

“Precisely.”

I laughed.

“I need to let them know that we’re not like other bakeries because of our production methods, because we’re even better than ‘sustainable’, we’re actually zero-input…”

“Hey Em?”

“Yeah?”

“No offense, but we’re not trying to put people asleep with this board.”

He ducked as I swung a playful fist at his shoulder, which he then caught and pulled me towards him, my body bumping into him and my lips coming just a few inches away from his. Up close, the little flecks in his eyes looked like cracked amber. I smiled, and pecked him on his cheek.

“I should get on with things,” I said and smoothed down the front of my apron.

“Ok, but I’m leaving this up to you now. You’ll think of a hilarious bakery themed pun, and we’ll put it out tomorrow morning, deal?”

I smiled. “Sure, deal. But no sex jokes or anything,” I said, and slid the chalkboard back under the counter.

“What? Those are the best jokes. Come on, don’t pretend you’re not already thinking of a good one,” he said and gave me a naughty wink.

I blushed, blew him a kiss and went to the back room. I had work to do. But just the sight of the laptop and the books, still open from yesterday, made my heart sink. It would take a miracle to make what little there was left stretch to last us just this month, nevermind next month. I sat down and took a deep breath. It was already Thursday. I was waiting for a call back from the bank. Though I didn’t technically qualify, I had been testing as many alternative angles as I could – because of the bakery’s reputation, because I had never loaned before, because of my father’s sudden death and his history with the bank, they were considering applying for a different category of loan altogether, and maybe pulling some strings to get me a loan through some other channel. I had been on tenterhooks for days waiting for word from them.

I took another deep breath. Stay positive, Emily. Felix was right – I had allowed the place to stagnate. It had so much potential, it was time to start taking advantage of that fact. No sooner had I woken up the laptop and started to have a look at the day’s tasks, the phone rang. I recognized the number.

The bank.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

I exhaled loudly again and tried to gather myself. It was OK. It was all going to be fine. Loan or no loan, I would make this place work. I didn’t know how yet, but I would, dammit. Just relax.

I answered.

“Emily Warren speaking,” I said, as if I hadn’t been waiting for this call so hard I was even dreaming about it.

“Hey bunny.”

My blood froze. Buck.

This was his new thing. His latest attempt at forcing familiarity: calling me “bunny”. He thought it was hilarious. Maybe he also thought that me cringing nearly half to death every time he said the word was also hilarious, but noticing other people’s reactions wasn’t one of Buck’s strong points.

“Please don’t call me that,” I said coldly.

“Relax, bunny! I’m just messing with you. A joke, right? You do know what those are, right?”

“I’m waiting for a response from the bank.”

“Yeah, I know. Hence my call.”

“I was dealing with the other guy.”

“I know. I wanted to be the one to speak to you, though. That’s fine with you, right?” he said. Yes, fine, whatever. I consent.

“Sure.” I just wanted this bank bullshit to come to an end. I hated feeling like this, like the fate of the bakery hung in someone else’s hands.

“Ok, well, you’re not going to like this, but there’s just no way we can pull it off,” he said, then went quiet.

“Not even with taking my father’s credit history out of the equation and reapplying as--”

“Yeah, no. Not gonna work. I hate to say it but it was a long shot to start with.”

Silence.

“Ok, well thank you for the call. I had to explore all my options,” I said on autopilot, wanting to get off the phone as quickly as possible so I could cry.

“Em, wait. You’re not completely out of options though.”

More silence.

“Let me help you,” he said, slowly like he was just thinking of it for the first time.

I scoffed.

“You? No thanks. Goodbye.”

“Em, wait.”

“What?”

“Think about this very carefully, Em. You’re not in a position to be turning down help right now. This is the last time. I won’t offer again. Some of my own investments are doing really well, and this last month …well, let’s just say I can easily front you the money. No interest, no need to go through the bank, no nothing.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not interested in loaning money from you, Buck,” I said, barely masking the venom in my voice.

“Then don’t loan it. Just have it.”

I laughed out loud. “What?”

“Think of it as a gift. When the bakery recovers, you can pay me back if you want, but not obligation.”

“Bullshit. What do you want?”

He seemed as taken aback by my frankness as I was. I could hear him take a deep breath on the other side of the line.

“You have to fuck me,” he said simply.

My face burned. And yet I couldn’t hang up.

“How dare you,” I whispered.

“Look, Em, can we just drop all this? You’re in a tight spot, I can help you out, but I want something in return. It’s not like some massive moral dilemma, it’s just …it’s just business.”

I felt too choked up to tell him where to stick it. I didn’t know what I hated more, the fact of what he was asking, or the fact that I was actually considering it.

“Do you enjoy this? Manipulating me?” I could feel my voice wavering. He exhaled loudly on the other side.

“It’s always this way with you, huh? Poor little Emily. You want to know? I don’t enjoy manipulating you, actually. But maybe this is just how it is now, between us. I don’t cry about it, I just try to make the best of it. You broke my heart, I’m doing what I can to get you back.”

“Wait, I broke your heart?”

He laughed sarcastically.

“See what I mean? You have to stop being such a victim, Em. Have you considered that I actually care a lot about you? That I’m also fucked up about the past?”

“You care so much about me, you’re bribing me to have sex?”

“Well, the money’s for free. But yeah, so shoot me, I want you. I’ve never made a secret of that. And you want me too, Em.”

“That’s not true.”

The line went quiet but it was as though I could hear him thinking. What if this was my last chance to save the bakery? I stared down at the books, hands shaking, wondering what others options I even had anymore.

“I’ll say it again, Em, this is your last chance. I’m done begging. I’m in the financial position right now to start making some smart choices. You should try make some smart ones too.”

It felt like a slap in the face. I couldn’t think. My head was whirring.

“I’m not going to sleep with you Buck” I said. It was as though my body, seeing what a mess my mind had become, simply spoke on my behalf. I would be mad to consider it. I was a sad, stupid girl. I had made horrible mistakes. But I wasn’t a …prostitute.

He sighed.

“Is it Felix?”

My face was burning so much it was beginning to feel cold instead.

“That’s’ none of your business.”

“What do you see in him anyway? He had absolutely nothing to offer you. He’s broke, he’s just some Mars reject and that leg? Man, I knew you were into some kinky stuff but Jesus.”

“I’m hanging up now,” I blurted.

“How much are you paying him?”

“That’s also none of your business.”

“Em, honey, you forget that I’ve seen your accounts. You’re not paying him much, are you? Admit it.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“How long do you think he’s gonna hover around, obsessed over you and mopping your floors like a slave? Do you honestly think that situation will last, when you can’t even properly pay the guy?”

It was the first time I had really considered it.

“He wants to work here,” I said feebly.

“Yeah, for now. This is what I’m telling you Em, you’re on the edge here. The bakery is dying, do you get that?”

“I just need… I just need time to consider things, to think things over,” I muttered, suddenly crushed under the weight of the realization that I had been hurting Felix somehow, and taking advantage of the kindness he had shown me.

“Think things over? Bunny, no. I told you this was your last chance. Time’s up. I don’t even really want it anymore. Good luck with the bakery. You’ll need it.”

He hung up.

For a moment, the silence in the room felt it stung me. I sat, unbreathing, unable to blink, holding a great swell of anger inside me so big that I was almost too afraid to let go. But before I could stop it I burst into tears, big, ugly sobs washing over me as I threw my head into my hands and cried. He was right, of course. Right about everything. I had been feeling so sorry for myself, playing the victim. I had used poor Felix, whose only crime ever was to love me. I had thrown away my life and now I was ruining the only thing left of my father’s life…

The door cracked open and a pair of eyes peaked in.

“Em? Oh god, Em, what’s wrong?”

Felix came rushing into the room and put his arms around me. I shrugged them off.

“I can’t employ you anymore,” I bawled.

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“There’s no fucking money, Felix. You need to get a real job and stop wasting your time here with me.” I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

‘Hey, shh, Em, just calm down, just tell me what happened.”

I pulled away from him and dried my tears quickly, setting my face into the stoniest expression I could manage.

“I mean it, Felix. Tomorrow’s your last day. Come in to finish up and then leave. This can’t go on.” I could see the muscles in his neck clench as he looked at me and nodded.

“Ok. If it’s what you want. Just tell me what brought this on… has the bank called?”

“So what if they have? Of course they rejected the application, everyone knew they would.”

“Ok, Em, that’s fine, it doesn’t matter, there are always options…”

“Just, will you leave?”

He looked hurt. I wanted to take those words back, to tell him that all of this was my fault, that it wasn’t because I hadn’t appreciated everything he’d done for me so far.

The words that left my mouth were, “I think this is for your own good.”

He drew back as though I had slapped him.

“I see,” he said quietly.

“Please don’t be mad, Felix. It’s just that I can’t be your responsibility anymore.”

“I’ll always look out for you, Em. Making you happy will always be my responsibility. And I hold onto responsibilities like a pit bull.”

It was a strange way to put it, but one look at his face and I had no doubt that he meant every word. Poor fool. Maybe he was obsessed with me. If only I was worth being obsessed over.

Chapter 11 - Felix

My leg hurt the next morning. It hurt a lot.

I had woken up to see it more swollen than I had seen it in weeks. I had showered, slightly alarmed at how much more purple everything looked than usual, then idly watched the news and threw back some coffee. The usual shit. They had found the “terrorists” responsible for the latest rash of attacks, but now came the fiasco to decide who to blame. Maybe Em was right to be disdainful of the whole damn project. As far as I could see, they were all to blame. I switched off the TV, yelled a goodbye to Claire who was fussing with the kids in the kitchen, then dashed out before she could catch me and needle me for details about why I was acting so sullen.

The pain flared up even more as I set off for the bakery. My last day. But I got it. I understood. I had to face the fact: I had missed my chance with Emily. There was a day where she clung to my every word, where her whole face lit up every time we met, and she and I would talk excitedly about the future, never once questioning the fact that we’d both be in it together.

I had thrown that all away to pursue some dumb dream that seemed so empty now. I had left her when she needed me …and now she didn’t need me anymore. It hurt, but I had to stop forcing her to humor me, forcing her to find a place for me in her life when clearly she had enough on her plate already.

I didn’t rush. There was no point being a little early on the day you were meant to get sacked and told to fuck off. But as I turned the corner something instantly caught my eye and stopped me in my tracks. It was Emily, but she wasn’t alone. I squinted to make out a man through the window. It was him. Fucking Buck Whatsisname. I laid low and tried to spy on what was happening. So he was behind this? What exactly happened between them anyway?

I could see her slumped despondently over a chair, her shoulders tightened around her. He was walking around casually, arrogantly posing himself here and there and eyeballing the baked goods like he owned them. I crossed the road, marched over and flung open the door, sending the little bell tinkling. They both spun to look at me.

“Felix. You’re here,” she said. She seemed so tired.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Felix, my man. Reporting in for toilet scrubbing duty, huh?” he said, and chuckled to himself. It took everything in me to restrain the rage I felt against him. I turned to Em to see that she was OK. She wasn’t.

“Em …are you …do you need any help?” I asked her. It occurred to me that in fact, I might just be another male she was exasperated to have to deal with that day.

“I’m fine, Felix,” she said curtly. “Mr. Johnson is here to discuss a …business proposal. Can you just take care of the packing in the back for a moment?” I hated seeing that pleading look in her eyes. But no, I wasn’t going to leave her alone with this creep. No way, no how.

“Sure, I just wanted to sort out a few things out here first,” I said, and shot her loaded glance. She looked away and then to Buck.

“Don’t worry, Em, he can join the grownups in their conversation, I don’t mind,” Buck said and gave her the most revolting wink. It made me feel physically ill to imagine that they had ever been together. And that, in some roundabout way, she had landed in his clutches because of me…

“I was just telling Emily here that it’s her lucky day. Rooting around trying to find out how to get a loan for her, you see, made me think, hang on a second – why don’t I just buy Warren’s? Then it hit me. It’s a win-win situation. I get to junk this business once and for all, put something really valuable on this premises, and poor Emily gets a break from running things,” he said, self-satisfied. Emily’s head hung low and she made no sign of acknowledgment. She looked crushed. He paced around and eyeballed the truffles in the window, and continued.

“So I’ve proposed this idea to the lovely Miss Warren to see if she’ll see the light and get out while she can. I’m thinking a strip joint,” he said and narrowed his eyes, then traced his hand abstractly through the air. “A stage there, rip out all these shelves and things, turn this whole front part into a bar, that kind of thing. Sex always sells, right?” he said and laughed at his own joke.

Emily didn’t move.

I tried to pretend to be interested in organizing the napkins and teaspoons on the counter, but my mind was racing. I couldn’t stamp out the violent fantasies bubbling up in my head – fantasies in which this Buck asshole got exactly what he deserved.

He looked irritated that he wasn’t getting a rise out of either of us.

“Hey, Captain Scrub Brush, what do you say? Emily’s not so keen, but I’m sure I could find a place for you, too” he said, hug idiot grin on his face as he looked me up and down. I’ve met a lot of assholes in my life, but this guy was something else.

“Leave him alone,” Emily said, finally lifting her head. “Buck, I said we could talk about all this later, we can make some arrangement, just please stop coming round to the shop, the customers will start coming in any second now.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Was she actually submitting to this guy? I loudly threw the knives and forks into their container, dawdling just a little long than necessary with the knives… but I checked myself. I had already hurt her enough. If she needed my help, she’d say so. I couldn’t keep barging into things like this. I mean, she was gearing up to fire me the second this idiot walked out. He was smiling, first at me, then at her. I could almost feel the loathing radiating off of her. What ‘arrangement’?

“There’s a good girl,” he said under his breath, then impatiently drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s what’s best here, honestly. You’re making the right choice.” He took his time straightening his jacket lapels then sauntering out, but not before giving me a long, luxurious stare. Bragging. He was bragging. I caught his eye and he smiled at me, then tinkled out through the front door and disappeared.

The room felt so heavy. Emily made only the quietest sounds as she cried. Then all at once she sprang up violently off her chair, grabbed a coffee mug on the table beside her and hurled it crashing into the ground, sending splinters flying and a long, coffee brown stain arcing right across the bakery floor. We both stood staring at the teetering half cup as it careened to the edge of the room.

“Emily, what the hell. What’s going on? What arrangement? What have you done?” I blurted. I was almost as angry as she was. She stood blankly for a moment staring at the smashed mug, her chest heaving, her mouth twisted in some expression of disgust.

“Emily, please just tell me what’s going on.”

She spun to glare at me.

“What’s it to you?” she yelled. I took a step back.

“He’s the guy from the video,” I said, voice cold. She made no acknowledgment that she had heard me, she just paced slowly up and down, walking right through the spilt coffee.

“Buck. That’s’ the asshole who was spreading all that crap about you. He’s bad news, Emily. I don’t know what you think you’re doing with him, but you don’t need anything from a guy like that.”

“How do you know? Maybe his help is exactly what I need,” she spat.

“So what? You’re selling the bakery? Emily, I spoke to you just the other day, you were so excited about all the things we were going to do to fix this place up, don’t you remember? How can you let that all go?”

She marched over to the bakery door, flipped over the open/closed sign and then lowered the blinds.

“Can you keep your voice down, please? I’m not selling the bakery,” she said.

I threw my hands in the air.

“What the fuck, Emily? Then what?”

She sat down, stood up again, paced some more, sat down again. I’d never seen her this agitated before.

“Buck is an asshole, but he can help me. I can’t do this alone anymore.”

“But you’re not alone.”

She shot me a look prickling with tears.

“It’s better this way. I don’t want to lose the bakery. I just can’t sell it, it’s the only thing I have left. But I can’t keep it on my own. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, Felix. Buck has offered to help me out, he’s offered to pay for the upgrades, to pay off my father’s debt.”

“And then what? What debt do you owe him?”

“He’s not a bad guy, he just wants a second chance with me,” she said, not looking like she even believed the words herself.

She was still crying. I couldn’t believe the nerve of this fucker. He dangled money over her head to save the bakery and still had the gall to threaten that he’d buy her out if she didn’t comply and take the one thing away from her he knew she couldn’t part with. It was sick. But more sick was the fact that she was going along with it. That she had never told me what was going on, never asked me for help.

“He doesn’t want a second chance, Emily, don’t be coy. He wants to fuck you. He wants to take advantage of you.”

“And so what if he does? So what if that’s all it is? I don’t get to be all high and mighty about that kind of thing anymore. I’m the town slut, in case you haven’t noticed, maybe that’s just the kind of thing I do now.”

I was at her side in an instant, grabbing both her shoulders firmly.

“Emily, listen to me, don’t you ever speak like that again,” I whispered to her. She shrugged.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” she said. Great big, round tears were rolling over her red cheeks. I hated seeing her like this.

I squeezed her so tight I didn’t know if it was to stop her from crying or to stop me from starting. I looked her straight in the eyes.

“Emily, you have to let it go. Whatever happened with that asshole, that’s a long time ago, OK? You don’t have to keep punishing yourself forever for something that happened so long ago.”

She stared down at the floor, despondent.

“Emily? Are you listening to me?”

“None of it would have happened if you’d have just stayed,” she said, so quietly it sounded like a threat.

I released her. Her arms flopped down to her sides.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

My ears were ringing.

“You left. I trusted you and you left. And then my dad left, too. I had nobody Felix. I trusted you and you left me to rot,” she said, still speaking to the floor.

“Emily, I’ve told you a million times that I’ve regretted that day ever since, you know I have. But what do you want me to do? You can’t blame me for everything that happened afterwards…”

“But I do.”

I took a deep breath and tried to think clearly.

“Then let me do something to help you. Then forgive me. Then let’s move on. Let’s fix this.”

“You can’t.”

“Emily, you have so many options, you don’t have to do business with that guy, for fucks’ sake, he’s just taking advantage, you’re so much better than this.”

“Am I? Or maybe this is who I am now.”

I was getting sick of this conversation and fast.

“I may have made some mistakes in my past, but I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here right now, trying to put it right.”

She said nothing. I couldn’t believe it. This was really happening? Of all the possible scenarios I had played out in my head all those long, lonely Mars nights, I had to admit that this was one I had never dreamed of. The Emily I knew used to be feisty. And principled. She could put a bully in his place with one look and wasn’t ever afraid to speak her mind. And though I hated to see her so compromised, I was mad that she was putting it all on me.

“So that’s it? You’re just going to ignore me?”

I stood up and made for the door. She didn’t budge.

“You know what Emily? I’m going to tell you something honestly here. This whole video thing of yours? The ‘town slut’ stuff? I don’t think that’s your real problem. In fact, I think you’re just using shit that happened five years ago as an excuse. Nobody even remembers any of that. Nobody cares anymore. You’re stuck in the past, Em. And as long as you don’t forgive yourself – and me! – then assholes like Buck are going to keep swarming around trying to take what they can from you. I’m done begging you to trust me again. But please Em, please don’t do something you’ll regret.”

My little speech had fallen on deaf ears. I spun on my heel and turned to leave, but then she straightened up and said, “you mean, sleep with him? Why don’t you just say that, that you’re jealous and you don’t want me to sleep with him?” she said. The look on her face shook me to the core. She was challenging me. Trying to hurt me. I said nothing, but just as I was about to leave I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pink envelope. I threw it down to the ground and it went flitting from side to side before landing in the spilt coffee. She watched it float down but said nothing.

“Goodbye, Emily,” I said, and left.

Chapter 12 - Emily

Being mad at Felix was hard. But every time I tried to call him or open his letter, I found that that was even harder. I don’t know when things got so messy. It seems like my life only ever comes in big, dramatic moments mixed in with long, sad stretches where nothing happens at all. The big joke, of course, was that Felix was right. I wasn’t the ‘town slut’. Truth be told, I wouldn’t even know what that looked like.

But something about Buck’s offer had an appeal to it… he was a coarse, nasty idiot who had shown me how little he thought of me again and again. And yet, doing something as shameful as sleeping with him for money seemed like the more natural choice for me. Hadn’t I been cocooned up in shame for so long? Buck knew what I was capable of. He had seen me. He knew. And Felix didn’t. Maybe Felix got his brain fried up there somehow, after his accident, and now he couldn’t bare but to think of me as anything other than a perfectly pure little princess, just as he left me.

The whole thing was fucked up. And I was beyond tired. I wanted to stop stressing about money. I wanted a holiday. I wanted to go far, far away from here and start fresh and never look back. But since that wasn’t an option for me, why not go for the next best thing and take Buck up on his stupid offer? After all, I’d already done the deed, hadn’t I? It’s not like I had any reputation to save. How much of a crime could it be, when the worst was already over, in a way?

These were the kind of thoughts spinning around my head as I closed my front door behind me and stole into the night. Buck’s place was just a quick drive away. I froze with my hand on the car door, thinking about wat I was about to do. Even in the darkness I could see the pink envelope sitting happily on the passenger seat of the car, unopened. I hadn’t had the heart to. Maybe I was afraid of my mind being changed.

I climbed inside and started the engine, ignoring the letter. This would be over before I knew it. Not like it mattered, but I didn’t actually remember anything from that night. I don’t remember smiling. Saying the things I did. I don’t even really remember Buck. I pulled off and drove slowly, not wanting to rush my fate. The night was colder than usual. We hadn’t had a dust storm in at least a week, and things had gone a little quiet, just the way they usually did before another one hit. But people had long ago stopped trying to predict the weather. I could understand that. Sometimes not knowing is just better anyway.

I drove silently through the night, the pink letter reflecting in the windscreen, tempting me. I would just be in and out, as it were. He said I had to fuck him, not enjoy it. He knew I was being coerced, and he didn’t care. But there was no way in hell I was going to do any more than I needed to.

As I got closer though, I wondered if I was losing my nerve. Then I saw it: was that Felix’s sister’s house? I slowed down to take a good look. I had forgotten her name – Christine? – but I could vaguely remember visiting him there once years ago. Felix had been super secretive about where he was staying, but I was pretty sure I recognized those steps. That front door. Fancy that. It would have been a sign, if I believed in that kind of thing. I crawled past the house, but saw nothing but a few lit rooms, and a car parked out front. I don’t know what I was expecting.

I drove on but then saw an open parking spot, pulled over and hung my head on the steering wheel, trying to calm my breath. It was just a business transaction. No big deal. The sooner I got it over with the better. I peered over at the playful pink paper and snatched it, tearing the envelope open. It was a letter just like all the others he had given me every morning at the bakery. The same loopy, casual handwriting with the tail of the letter Y stabbing straight down. The same smiley faces peppered throughout, the same smell of the same light blue ink.

Hey Em

You’ll be glad to hear that the performance review yesterday went REALLY REALLY well. Turns out, I’ve managed not to blow the place up yet and I think they’ll let me stay ;) Andrew K. says that if I play my cards right I’ll have my own team by the end of the year, isn’t that awesome? But then again, you know better than anyone how much I suck at cards…

I think about you all the time. I see all these weird little things and I keep wishing you were here, just so I could see how you’d react to them. There’s some cool stuff here, but it would be much cooler with you around. And you could show some of these guys a thing or two about growing plants, I promise you that!

Anyway, just a short one from me today. It’s super late here and I have to get up at 5 tomorrow morning (eeeeek!) so wherever you are right now, spare a thought for me. Stay warm and happy.

I love you

Felix

I quickly folded it back up again and slid it into the envelope. Wherever you are right now, spare a thought for me. I took a deep breath and started up the engine again, then swung the wheel right round so I was driving the other way. What the hell, why not? Just because I had broken the guy’s heart and fired him on top of it, didn’t mean we had to end on such a sour note.

It took me only a minute to double back and find the familiar house again. I parked in the street, turned off the engine and sat alone in my silence. It took me a few minutes just to calm my galloping heart. I shoved the letter under the seat, tried to wipe away any evidence of tears from my eyes and stepped out of the car. The doorbell was the same as I remembered it. I had visited Felix here one Christmas, when his sister had just bought this house. When I pressed the buzzer, I found that I remembered the rusty jangling sound it made, too.

I felt like I waited there for an eternity. But eventually, a woman opened the door.

“Emily?”

Her eyes were kind and her hair fell in soft, easy waves all over her face. She was wearing slippers and sweatpants, but still had on the kind of blouse you’d wear to an office. Claire, her name was Claire. I remembered now.

“I know this is going to sound strange, but is …is Felix in?” I asked.

She looked confused for a moment, then ushered me quickly inside, where two curious toddlers had appeared behind her legs somehow and were now peering at me with interest. She shut the door and looked as though she was thinking of something appropriate to say. But in the end, she just gave me a warm smile and shooed the kids off.

“He’s downstairs in the basement. I’ll go and get him for you,” she said, her eyes moving madly all over my face like she was trying to figure something out. Yes, it was another part of my burden. Woman had seen the video too. They had hated me extra for it, actually. I could recognize that look, that expression that told you they saw your very existence as a threat to them, their lives, their men. I smiled politely and all at once I saw him come up the stairs.

“Emily.” His eyes went wide and he froze mid-step.

“I’ll leave you two to chat, shall I?” Claire said breezily, grabbed both kids and disappeared off to another room.

We both stood there, me no more sure of what I was doing there than he was. He seemed tired.

“You want a drink?” he asked. I shook my head. He was wearing loose track pants and one of those irresistible cotton shirts of his, the kind that always seemed to pull and cling at just the right places. I don’t know if it was just me, but at that moment I was struck by just how good looking he really was.

“I came here to apologize,” I said.

“Let’s go sit outside,” he said, and swung open the door again. I followed him outside and crunched behind him on the driveway gravel, and through a little wooden gate. It was dark and I could make out little else beside the moon above and the faint grey of his t shirt as he walked ahead of me. He turned around and invited me to sit on a small wooden swing. My eyes adjusted to the light. He seemed so much more vulnerable now, with his track pants and without his usual optimism, here in the dark in some suburban mom’s back garden.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t treated you very well since you came back,” I said, watching my voice turn to white plumes in the cold night air. He nodded but said nothing. My phone bleeped loudly and its screen seemed obnoxiously bright in the dark. It was a message from Buck asking where the hell I was.

“Is that…?”

“Buck. Yes. I was heading over there right now.”

I could almost feel his muscles stiffening and then relaxing against the wooden swing chair.

“So why did you come around here?” he said. His voice sounded defeated.

“Because I …because I had to tell you that,” I didn’t know why it was so hard to say. “Even though I’m doing this, even though I’m about to go and see him and give up everything to save that goddam bakery, I still wanted you to know that I still care about you. I never could say it before. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I was so mean to you. But I’ve always cared about you Felix. Always. I thought about you every day you were gone. And now that you’re back …I just …I feel so ashamed of everything that happened. I never thought I’d see you again. I never realized how much I hated my life until I saw how good it could be when you were in it again.”

I was beginning to feel just how cold it was out here. As though reading my mind, he shifted up closer towards me and just let the side of his body press up against mine.

“I don’t know why I’m here. I’m probably bothering you. It was stupid of me to fire you. But you know the bakery couldn’t handle another employee. I don’t have anything to offer you, you know that. But you were right. I’m just a big scaredy cat. It feels like the whole world just stopped making sense after you went away.”

“I’m here now,” he said. And that was all he said. His voice sounded tired, but not unkind. I was amazed that after everything, he was still even talking to me.

My phone pinged again when I failed to answer the first message. He looked over at me, and in the darkness I could just make out his facial features. He wasn’t angry. In fact, there was something gentle there, something soft but deeply persistent.

“Are you sure you really want to do this?”

I felt glued to the seat.

“I’m sure I really don’t want to do this. But I’ve made my bed and now I have to sleep in it.”

“But what do you really want?”

It was a good few breaths before I could answer him. The answer was: I wanted him. I wanted to wind back time and be with him again, before things took the turn they did. I wanted nothing but his sweet, soft, perfect lips on mine every single day, and I wanted his body, and I wanted that beautiful way I could feel the breath moving in and out of him when I had my arms around his chest, and I wanted to never, ever stop hearing his lame jokes.

“Honestly, Felix? I want to just run away. I want to go someplace nice and start again. I want to plant a garden. I want to bake. I want to sit on the porch and read in the sun.”

“With me?”

The question made my hairs prickle up more than the cold did. It was now or never. I had to say it. I had to be honest with him, at least once, at least now that I was busy heading off to exchange the last shred of my dignity for money to save the bakery…

“Felix, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

The night itself seemed to lean in and quieten down to eavesdrop on us both.

“You were the best thing to ever happen to me, Felix. I was an idiot to blame you for all the shit that happened afterwards. I just missed you. I just wish we could go somewhere, you and I, and just get away from all of this, once and for all…”

“Do you mean it, Em? You really …love me?”

“Of course I mean it.”

“Then let’s do it.”

I laughed drily.

“What?”

“Let’s do it. Let me take you away somewhere, you can plant a garden and bake and do all of that.”

“Ok. Yeah, sure. Are you going to go and sleep with Buck then? The bakery barely has another month left in it, Felix…”

“Forget about all that. Just don’t go and see him. You don’t have to.”

“But--”

“After the accident the mission gave me a massive injury compensation, and I have a fat state military pension. It’s a lot of money, Em. And they’ll give me business loan whenever I want one. We can use it to bail out the bakery, or let fuckface have it and we’ll do something else with our lives.”

I was stunned. Money?

“But …but then why are you staying with your sister? Why are you working at my horrible little hole of a bakery then? I don’t understand.”

“They take time to process these things. And yeah, I confess, I never told you about it. If you thought I didn’t really need the job, you would never have given it to me, right? Anyway, I had to find a way to spend time with you again. You were my priority.”

My mind skipped and hiccupped over itself. I saw a brief window of light opening up in front of me, but I was almost too afraid to trust it.

“All this time…”

“I didn’t want you to think I was …I knew you were having trouble with the bakery, Em. I knew how proud you were, how headstrong. I didn’t want you to think I was …manipulating you. I didn’t want that to complicate things. I wanted to know if you still cared …just for me, as I am. Mauled leg and all.”

“Felix, your leg is wonderful! It’s not mauled,” I protested.

Somehow the protests melted into tears and all at once he was in my arms. In the darkness I couldn’t make out his form, but I felt it easily enough, and as I crumpled into his warm chest and let his arms wrap round me, I felt like a noose had been lifted off my neck.

“You really mean it, Felix? You’ll help me out with the bakery?” I said through sobs.

“On one condition” he said and pulled back. I froze. Then, with his signature goofy grin, he looked at me and scrambled down onto one knee, right there in the darkness, right there on the damp ground.

“Knowing that one day I could have a second chance at making you happy again has kept me going all these years, Em. Will you say yes now? Say yes and let’s walk away from all of it. Let’s leave the past where it is and go have an adventure together.”

I squealed with laughter.

“Get up off the wet ground, you big idiot, you’ll catch a cold,” I said, and pulled him to his feet. We landed squarely on one another’s lips, and as I fell into a deep, slow kiss with him, something inside me began singing.

“Yes. Yes, I will marry you. Of course I will.” I wanted to say more but was lost in a flurry of kisses and tears, all my resistance melting and eventually with it the need to explain anything further.

We sat out there for ages. I started to feel my hands growing cold and clammy as we snuggled together and whispered excitedly about the future. I didn’t want to go back inside the house. I didn’t want to ever leave this cold wooden bench, if it meant ending this peaceful moment with him.

It was the cheesiest, gooiest, over-the-top romantic-est moment of my life. It was utterly ridiculous. And yet it happened. A few months ago, I had not felt worthy of even the simplest kindness. And now, I was swimming in something warm, something so happy and sweet and blissful.

As we sat and talked and talked, and held one another and kissed and talked some more, I realized all at once: I no longer felt ashamed.

Chapter 13 - Felix

April 18, 2082

“It’s not that I really mean any of it,” she said, gazing off thoughtfully. “It’s not that I actually want any of those things to happen, or that that’s what I really think about myself… I just find the words really hot.”

“I think I can get that,” I said. “Like how some people like being tied up, but it’s not because they are actually slaves or think of themselves as slaves. They just like the idea of it …they just like how it all looks.”

“Exactly.”

Even though I found myself wary of ‘insulting’ her again somehow, the more we talked about it, the more I understood her position.

“That night at the fraternity, it’s so hard to explain, but what I lost that night wasn’t my dignity or a good reputation or whatever. What I lost was the option of finding any of that stuff a turn on ever again. Do you know what I mean?”

I felt like I was beginning to. We hadn’t talked much about that night, about the video, but from out of the convoluted web of events, I was beginning to see where she was coming from. Why she was the way she was in the storeroom that day. And why we were now discussing the prospect of me calling her a filthy slut, again.

“I think I know what you mean. Like, it’s a hot situation, but only if it’s on your terms. It wasn’t what you did or what they did, but because their attitude was what it was, because they were taking advantage of you, it suddenly became this shameful thing. I think I get that now… Your problem wasn’t that you wanted to push the boundaries, or be super sexual, it was showing that side of yourself to people who didn’t deserve to see it. They should be ashamed of themselves, not you.”

She looked at me wide-eyed.

“I’ve never thought of it like that before,” she said quietly.

“Maybe you should think of it that way.”

We were tucked safely inside her duvet, and I could just feel that the 6 am alarm clock was about to go off. It was still dark, still cold outside, but coddled together in her bed blankets, we were temporarily outside the real world and could whisper and talk as much as we liked.

“So you don’t feel weird about it? About calling me names like that?”

“I could never feel weird about something that made you happy.”

Just the thought of how ‘happy’ it had made her before was enough to make me hard. We were both naked. We lay in warm silence together for a moment, wondering if this was the moment. I loved her body. Loved its generous, silky folds. I Loved how soft it was, how gracefully the skin was smoothed over her hipbones, over the ridges of her ribcage, over the delicate pebbles of her wrist bone… I lazily stroked her skin as we breathed together, wondering at the strange events that had brought us back together again, two kids in love, wrapped in a blanket.

I traced a long line from her collarbone all the way down between her breasts, down over the line of her abdomen, around the soft mound of pubic hair and over onto her inner thighs, then all the way back up again. She closed her eyes and leaned into it. I did it again, this time tracing closer to that soft mound, then snaking all the way back up again to tease her. After five years without her, it was nothing for me to spend this much time on every square inch of her beautiful form.

She groaned and wriggled, spreading her legs a little, her face disappearing into the cloud of her curls. I stroked, my cock stiffening between us. The next time my fingertips descended to that sweet cleft, I caressed even closer, and discovered a silky wetness there. She tilted her hips towards me. Dutifully, I traced a delicate finger into those soaking depths and swirled till I found the swollen, impatient nub of her clit. I could hear her breathing kick down a gear now. I was rock hard, but I wanted to draw this moment out for all it was worth. I loved watching her getting excited like this, watching the slow, syrupy waves of arousal wash over her.

“I love what your body does when you’re this turned on,” I whispered. I could tell she was hanging on to every word. My middle finger rested just slightly on her juicy clit, but I kept tracing tiny, insistent circles right where I knew she liked them, knowing that if I kept talking, and kept circling, she wouldn’t be able to take much more. And making her cum was the best fucking thing in the universe.

I pressed a little harder and teased my finger down to the entrance of her drenched little hole.

“You want it, don’t you? You want it so bad, I bet you can’t wait to get fucked, can you?”

She moaned, her body twitching in response.

“But I’m going to make you wait for it. I’m going to wait till you’re really turned on, because I want to see you come so fucking hard you nearly pass out. Because you’re my little slut, do you hear me? And I’m going to fuck you hard you’re not going to be able to sit down for a week.”

I could hear the short, jagged breaths as they entered and left her body. Her eyes were squeezed shut but one hand gripped the sheet and the other was wrapped tightly around my neck. It was as though I was hypnotizing her. I teased at the entrance and then slowly sunk in one finger, but quickly pulled it out again.

“My little whore, show me how wet you are. Spread your legs so I can see just how badly you want it.”

She obediently spread her legs wider, pulling her knees way up and turning her head to the side. Fuck I loved that. How she offered herself up to me like that, all hot and quivering.

“Good. That’s good. Now tell me what you want, you little bitch. Tell me exactly what you want me to do to you.”

She whimpered.

“Tell me. I already know what you want but I want you to say it.”

“I want… I want your cock,” came the muffled reply. Her juices were flowing over her perfect ass cheeks and onto the sheet beneath us.

“Of course you do baby, you’re my little fuck toy and I’m going to show you just how hard I can pound you.”

It was amazing how fired up she was getting.

“Mmm, that’s good. I can feel how badly you want it. Little slut. In a minute I’m going to shove my cock in you and give you what you deserve, but first I want to see you beg for it.”

“Oh god, please,” she blurted immediately.

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me.”

By now I had sunk the tips of two teasing fingers into her tight pussy but I lingered them there, not going any further, teasing her to see just how desperate she would get.

“Mmm, that’s very sexy baby, but you’re going to have to beg much harder than that.”

“I want you fuck me!” she gasped.

“I know baby. How bad do you want it though?”

“Fuck me please…”

“Mmmm…”

“Oh god, Felix, I want it so bad. I want your big fat cock all the way in me, I want you to fuck me and fill me up with your cum, please Felix, I want you to just fucking destroy my little slut pussy.”

I couldn’t hold on any longer. I grabbed her hips forcefully and yanked her towards me, sending the duvet and her fluffed up curls flying everywhere. It took no effort to slide right into her, till her swollen body had swallowed me completely, and I was pressed all the way in as far as I could go. She cried out and clawed at my chest, but was already gyrating her hips around me, already clenching somewhere deep inside around me, her entire body on fire.

“Fuck yes,” I moaned, and began to pull her hips down onto me as I threw all my weight into one vicious thrust after another. Each pump forced a cry from deep inside her throat. I wanted her to keep talking. To keep saying all those dirty things. I leaned forward and slipped my fingers into her mouth, wanting as much of me to be inside as much of her as possible. She opened her mouth wide and threw back her head, her tongue hot against the fingers that had only a moment ago been stretching open that sweet little cunt of hers. It was an obscene gesture. It was disgusting. It was dirty. And it was indescribably fucking hot.

I pounded away at her, every time my balls came slapping hard against her body she grunted, releasing a slew of obscenities. She was possessed, taken over by the delicious sensations I was pumping straight into the core of her. I loved seeing her squirm like this, a complete little fuck animal, a little pleasure machine in full raptures. And I loved that it was me doing it to her. My cock that pleasured her, my cock that she wanted so badly, my cock that had her pussy streaming wet and her brain so fried with lust she couldn’t talk properly…

We came together, one big, juicy orgasm that convulsed so roughly through both our bodies she forced me out, leaving my wet cock to spurt strings of white all over her naked thighs and that sweet, damp little mound of fur of hers. I tried to stifle a growl, felt it shudder through me then collapsed on top of her, soaked with sweat.

“Holy shit,” she said, still panting.

I laughed.

“I think you enjoyed that almost more than I did,” she said with a teasing smile. The alarm bleeped, and we both roared with laughter and tried to untangle ourselves from the blankets.

“You think that was some sexy talk, baby, just wait until you hear what I have to say next,” I said, standing up and feeling the cool air on my hot body.

“Oh? Go on then, bad boy,” she said, following suit and getting up, looking for her robe.

I caught her eye and gave her a mischievous look.

“One word,” I said.

“I’m listening…”

“Cake.”

She laughed.

“Oh right, I forgot. I have a bakery to run, don’t I?”

“Yes ma’am. But this morning I think we should switch things up and go for something a little different.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like carrot cake,” I said, and watched closely for her reaction. She paused, looking at the ground and then at my still naked body.

“You know what, Felix… you’re right,” she said and smiled at me. “Carrot cake it is.”

I could make out the tiny sweat beads on the edge of her brow.

“Just relax,” I said. “I told you. Nobody gives a damn about any of that, and nobody remembers you or the video or what happened.”

She smiled and took a deep breath but looked nervously again at the row of carrot cakes laid out behind the glass.

“They’ll think I’m gloating or something. Like I’m proud of myself,” she said, tying and retying the knots on her apron.

“And? Shouldn’t you be?”

She relaxed a little but was still eyeing everyone who came in, ready to analyze to death the first person that would ask for a slice.

Then someone did. A sweet, unassuming girl glanced at the offerings, and casually asked for three slices of our new Easter cake special: carrot cake, cream cheese frosting and a flaked almond and candied lemon peel sprinkle on top. I watched closely as Em served her, took the money, carefully piled the slices into one of Warren’s signature yellow cake boxes and sent her on her way. When the whole interaction was over, she immediately turned to me, astonished.

“She must not know who I am,” she said simply.

“See? Sometimes carrot cake is just carrot cake,” I said and smiled.

It was weird that that’s what it came down to, but I think it was that morning that Emily’s healing truly began. With carrot cake. I wondered if a few people did in fact know who she was, but as I watched her bravely push herself to serve them and dish up those slices of cake, I could see that nobody made the connection, and what few splinters of rumor and bad memories remained were all inside Em’s head alone.

The morning rolled on, I made coffee for the customers, helped Becky with deliveries and cast a watchful eye over Em, who seemed to be growing more and more confident with each carrot cake slice sold. I walked passed her and she grinned at me, remarking that she wondered why she had been so hung up on any of this before. There was one slice remaining. And that’s when Buck showed up.

He made eye contact with her immediately, and didn’t see me lurking out of sight. He took a look around, waltzed in and when his eyes found her, he smiled to himself and walked over.

“So what the hell happened?” he said through clenched teeth. “I waited for you. You never answered my calls.”

I kind of felt bad for the guy. But I mostly wanted to see him get what was coming. I had to restrain myself from stepping in, from telling him to fuck off once and for all and leave Emily alone… but I knew she had to do that for herself. So I watched them both unseen, poised to pounce should she need me.

What I saw unfolding made my heart glad.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to speak to you. And I don’t want to speak to you now, either,” she said breezily, and with a perfect 50s housewife smile on her face that in any other situation might have been funny. He took his time eyeing her, like he was trying to figure out what the hell she had to be so happy about.

“This isn’t a game, Emily,” he hissed.

“Nope! It’s my bakery, and you’re holding up the line,” she said with a cheery smile.

“You’re a disgrace, you know that? I’m done with your teasing. I was willing to take care of your father’s debt for you, to help you--”

“Thanks, Buck, but I don’t need your kind of help anymore,” she said briskly, sneering her words but keeping the same stubborn smile on her face. Now this was the plucky Emily I knew and loved.

“You’re crazy,” he said and laughed in her face. But she leaned in close, dropped her voice and let the cake knife in her hand softly clink on the marble counter.

“And you are no longer welcome here. You’re going to turn around right now and walk away, and so help me if I see your face in here again I’m going to call the police,” she said, delivering each word like a slice. His eyes went wide as he tried to think of a retort.

She leant back again, grabbed the last slice of carrot cake and plonked it down into a yellow box, closed it and handed it over to him with a flourish.

“I’ve come into some money, lately, Buck, and I won’t be needing any help from you or the bank, so now I’d like you to kindly fuck off please. But here, have a slice of cake on the house.”

He took the box and looked down at it, gobsmacked.

“It’s carrot cake!” she said joyfully. “My favorite.”

Chapter 14 - Emily

Four years later. 14 July 2086

He dipped the teaspoon into the mixture, scooped some up in a swirl and then offered it to me.

“Hm, what does this remind me of?” I said smiling, and leaned forward to take a sexy lick of the new cupcake icing. Felix laughed.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, ma’am,” he said, and gave me a naughty wink.

I smacked my lips together and thought for a second.

“Needs a little more vanilla,” I said.

He looked down at the series of bowls on the table in front of him, each one filled with a different color frosting. I loved him in an apron. I loved him in only an apron. Felix was always full of surprises, but the fact that he was a closet kitchen fiend all along was a surprise even I hadn’t been able to anticipate. He put the spoon down and jotted something in a notebook. Then he grabbed another bowl, gave it a brisk stir and held out another spoon to me to taste.

“Now try the chocolate,” he said.

I dutifully leant forward again to take a lick, this time being slow and provocative about it, making playful eye contact with him as I swirled my tongue around the dollop of sweet cream.

“Delicious,” I said, eyes still on his. He blushed a little and looked down at his bowls again.

“Well you’re in a good mood for someone who was freaking out just a little while ago,” he said and scribbled another note.

He was right. My final exam was in a few hours and I had just spent all of last night in a complete panic. It seemed like only yesterday that Warren’s was celebrating its successful relaunch, and Felix had gotten me drunk on celebration champagne and convinced me I had to go back to college to finish what I had started. I don’t know how it happened, but here I was, just one written exam away from the degree I had once wanted with all my heart. And there he was, powdered sugar in his hair and eyebrows kinked as he focused on my newest frosting recipes.

“Still can’t believe this shit is rice protein,” he said, whipping up another bowl, this blend filled with pale yellow frosting. I tasted this one too. It was also only yesterday that my half-baked zero-input experiments in the back storeroom had started to yield interesting new Oryza sativa strains. And after that, things had gone so quickly – I started working with a high protein rice and barley blend, and we soon found ways to use it in everything, unable to keep up with our customer’s demands. It was ethically produced, delicious and practically a health food. It was like Soylent green, but the dessert edition, and people were travelling from all over to sample the cakes and cookies we made with it. The project had started as a practical assignment for one of my alternative biomech classes, but once we set up the system, we soon realized the potential for profit. This was a natural ingredient, it cost us next to nothing to make, and it made me feel that we were actually doing some good in the world. It was perfect.

“Are either you and Becky going to be in at the shop this morning to take that delivery?”

“Yup, I’m heading over there in a bit, just wanted to see you off. Today is a big day, after all.”

I looked at him sideways.

“It is just me or are you naked under that thing?” I said. I was roughly towel drying my hair after my shower but paused to eyeball him with a smile.

“Me? Oh you know me, I don’t like to let anything get in the way of me and the baking, you know,” he said with a wink.

A year ago, when juggling the course load and the shop commitments had become too much, Felix had promised to step up and take more responsibility for the bakery. He used to laugh and tell customers that the ‘women’s work’ of running the bakery was way more hardcore than anything he had to do when he was posted up there on the big red planet, and that he loved it. They loved him.

I sauntered over to him, took the gooey spoon from his hands and angled him towards me.

“I’m going to get very distracted if you keep walking around like that,” I said quietly as I traced my fingers around the edges of the apron. I could smell his warm skin, and pressed up close to him, nothing between his naked body and my naked body but the fabric of the apron.

“Oh yeah? Sounds terrible. I bet it’s this apron that’s causing all the trouble,” he said and leaned down to linger in an almost-kiss just an inch from my lips. “I should probably get rid of it.”

Off came the apron and then we pressed together again, bare skin on bare skin, lips to lips. Kissing him always felt so easy, so right. He curled his strong body around mine, cradling my head in his outstretched hands and lifting me tenderly up into a deeper kiss. I raised onto my tip toes, eyes closed to savor just how sweet it was to caress my tongue against his, how easily my skin broke into goosebumps under his fingertips as it trailed down my naked spine.

“Mmm. And what flavor is this?” I said, teasing him with my tongue.

“Felix flavor. Something new I’ve been working on,” he grinned.

“Delicious,” I said and kissed him again.

He gently raised both hands, placed them on my shoulder blades and gently pushed me backwards till my bare ass bumped into the kitchen counter. I giggled.

“What are you…”

He tore his lips away and then was back at the bowls, this time picking up a big dollop of green frosting on the spoon and then standing before me, a naughty glint in his eye. I lifted my eyebrows.

“Felix, I have an exam in three hours and fifteen minutes.”

His smile was big and easy and confident. What was I saying? Felix could make me come in four and a half heartbeats. This man knew how to pilot a half dozen specialized space aircraft, and he could whip together a perfect batch of choux pastry that could make my grandmother weep… but his real talent was knowing how to magically get me from a stone cold zero to coming so hard I could break headboards. It was uncanny. It didn’t even matter if I was tired, or if we had just had an irritating argument. Once he set his mind to pushing me over the edge, it happened.

I watched as he raised his arm up high and let the frosting drizzle straight down off the spoon and land cold and wet right between my breasts. I leaned back, elbows propping on the counter, trying to prevent the sugar glob from sliding down. He held the spoon out to the side and descended on me, pressing his way between my legs and then laying down a broad, warm, pink tongue down to lick it back up again. I squealed.

“Tastes much better like this,” he mumbled into my skin, and he was already tracing a line on my skin with the rest of the frosting, down towards my navel and past it, stopping just short of the cropped coils between my legs. Although our little apartment’s kitchen was always chilly this time of year, I felt my body temperature soaring. And although the sugar in the mixture felt gritty and ice-cold against my exposed flesh, I felt like I was already burning up. I knew what I was in for. I knew that with the look he had in his eyes right now, with the way the muscles in his torso were tightening, that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave here until I had been thoroughly, utterly fucked.

I let my head fall back and shuddered with the anticipation. Down went his tongue to lap up the trail he had just laid down, and then his lips closed around my skin in big, wet kisses, inching closer and closer down to where even the thought of what he was about to do made we wet.

The spoon clanged loudly as he dropped it back into the glass bowl, now completely focused on me and getting my legs to spread as wide as possible. I obediently lifted them high, exposing myself to him, desperate for that sweet tongue of his to get to work where I wanted it the most. I could hear the tendons in his legs crack and stretch as he squatted down in front of me, one ass cheek clasped in each of his hands. I couldn’t help but moan out loud as he planted a firm, broad tongue down onto my pussy, licking all the way up like I was the most delectable ice cream cone.

But he wasn’t going to linger. Just as soon as I had settled in and clutched at the his hair to anchor myself, his tongue began to move relentlessly over just the spots that he knew drove me wild. I knew it was difficult for him to crouch down low that now, even now, with his leg still not entirely healed, but he did it anyway. I loved how Felix was never half-hearted about the things he wanted. I loved how happily he threw himself into wanting me.

His hands were still propping me up and open, splitting me like a peach so his tongue could dig even deeper into the sweetness there. I felt his thumbs inching closer to that slick opening.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered.

I didn’t need to be told twice. My fingers flew to my clit and I shuddered as my middle finger took up his rhythm and he pulled back to admire me. I locked eyes with him, gazing down at his strong, tight body crouched down on the kitchen floor like a big cat. My other hand flew way up over my head and hung off the other side of the table in complete abandon. I knew he liked seeing me like this. Liked seeing me pleasure myself.

Slowly, he rose up and came to standing, sliding his hands down my inner thighs to part them and stretch them away.

“Show me,” he growled. I giggled and split that slick cleft wide open, making sure he could see just how turned on he was making me, just how hungry I was for him. Through half closed eyes I could make out his dominating form in front of me, towering above, naked, and his now rock hard dick in his hand. He caressed himself idly, slowly, cupping the tip with each stroke as he watched me rapt.

I swing my knees up and to my chest, knowing that this view would drive him wild. He wouldn’t stand there gawking much longer with an invitation like that.

“Fuck you’re beautiful,” he whispered. I squeezed my eyes shut and reminded myself to breath.

“Do you want to…?” he asked. God, he had a sexy voice. Like warm gravel. Like beach sun that’s hot from a day under the sun.

“Yes, I’m ready,” I said.

This was our game. There was no win or lose with this game, but it was still very, very important to play by the rules. Over the years, we had taught one another these dirty rules, one fuck at a time.

“Good,” he breathed as he came closer. “Me too.”

And then the game began.

“Do your parents know you’re not in school?” he said quietly.

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” I said in a different voice.

“No? What do you think everyone would say if they knew you were bunking here with a man ten years older than you?”

I giggled. The unhurried way he was stroking my bare ass was the most divine sensation in the world.

“Are you sure you want me to do this? It’s gonna hurt,” he said.

Fuck yes.

“I know, do it anyway,” I purred.

“Once I start baby, I won’t be able to stop, you know that right?”

“I know. I do have a boyfriend you know.”

“But does he fuck you?”

“No.”

“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t fuck you like I’m going to fuck you.”

“I’m a little scared.”

“That’s OK, baby. Everyone’s scared their first time.”

“Be gentle.”

“Maybe…”

On an on he stroked, with his fingers but also with his words. He examined me closely, his fingers taking their time exploring every last aching fold and crease of my body. It was a fantasy game, one that didn’t make much sense in the real world, but here, in our little apartment, it followed the twisted, sexy logic of a world we had made together, just the two of us. I was the virgin whore, the ultimate fuck toy, the naughty little girl who asked for it, who pushed herself too far, who dared a guy too mature for her to do his worst.

“Look how little you are,” he said and pressed his cock into my navel, his length covering my entire stomach. I giggled nervously.

“Where’s that all going to go?” I said.

“Oh, we’ll figure it out,” he whispered, and stroked the hair from my temples. “Now, get down on your hands and knees” he said, and I obeyed him, teetering high up on the kitchen table, the bowls of frosting pushed aside and long forgotten.

“Wider,” he ordered. I obeyed.

“You want to run around and act like a little slut? You think you can handle it? You’re just a baby,” he said, now examining my upturned ass as I swayed my hips side to side, my hair falling over me and making a curtain over my eyes.

“No I’m not. I can take it,” I peeped from inside my curtain of hair. I could almost hear him smiling.

When the swollen bulb of his cock pressed into me, it was really as though it was the first time. I winced and bucked my hips as his girth split me open, but his firm hands squeezed hard on my ass cheeks and held me down, lowering my whole body down onto him. I cried out as his heavy, veined cock shoved itself into me one stinging inch at a time. I twitched and gasped around him, overwhelmed by the sensation of being taken by this older guy, this almost-stranger who had lured me to his home and was now taking full advantage of my innocent body. I whimpered softly and the whimpers warped into deep, delicious groans as the full meaty heft of him sunk all the way in, completely ruining my make-believe virginity.

“Oh god, it hurts,” I mumbled.

“Good.”

“It’s too big…”

“You can take it,” he growled.

“But I …I shouldn’t be doing this …this is so wrong…”

“I said fucking take it,” he snapped, and his voice alone sent a crazy thrill all through my body.

He slowly slid out and took his time pumping all the way back in again. He was my math tutor, he was an older boy from a few grades above me, he was my best friend’s bad boy older brother, he was big and intimidating and didn’t want to be bothered by some immature girl who didn’t know how much trouble she was getting herself into…

He was going to teach me. He was going to hurt me. And I was going to let him.

Miraculously, his cock slowly disappeared again inside my tight pussy. I had never done this before. I never knew it could hurt so bad. Or feel so good. I arched my back and leaned into him as he pulled out and fucked again, then again, plunging slow and deep into my young body, only the slightest movements of his hip necessary to completely dominate my slender frame.

“Imagine if your boyfriend could see you now,” he moaned, opening me up with each stroke.

“He doesn’t do this to you, does he?”

I pouted and shook my head. No, I was a good girl. Until that now, that is.

He picked up the pace and was now gliding harder and faster into me, each stroke reaching somewhere deep inside my overwhelmed body. I pushed back into him, my hips meeting his toned ab muscles and bouncing off, a gentle slap of skin with each pump.

He was strong, much bigger than me. He could overpower me any time he wanted. But for now, he was being relatively gentle. He was breaking me in. I groaned and whimpered to let him know how hard it was for me, accommodating all of him, but though he held back, he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to make sure that when he was done, I would well and truly be deflowered, every last shred of innocence gone.

I felt his fingers drift to that secret place, and as he fucked me, he spread me open further and circled a thumb over the small pucker of my ass.

“If you’re a good little slut and do what I say, maybe I’ll even fuck you in here someday,” he said.

Fuck. He always knew just exactly what to say. My body clenched and churned internally as I felt myself edging closer to a big, sloppy, ridiculous orgasm. I always came the hardest when he fucked me like this.

“It’s too much for me,” I cried, daring him to keep going.

Here he reached forward, yanked my knees off the table and pulled me down to standing, me still impaled on his stiff cock and barely managing to keep my balance on my tip-toes. I flopped forward and gripped the edge of the table to steady myself against him. I was dripping wet now, and he had long since stopped holding back. Each time he pounded into me I could hear the faintest animal grunt in his voice. Every sense of mine seemed to collapse down into one and zoom into hyper focus on that one, beautiful sound. I loved the noise he made when he came. He was animal, when he got like this, but when he came? It was a few brief, gorgeous seconds of pure defeat; beautiful, juicy ecstasy that even he couldn’t control.

“You wanted to play this game, little girl, now you’re getting what you deserve,” he said, pumping faster. The place we connected was hot, so hot it felt like we had melted together.

“I want to stop, this is wrong… I’m scared…”

He paused for a second as he considered this. It was a new game we were playing. A dangerous one. The kind of game where the first move is to admit you even want to play.

“Not so grown up now, huh?” he said with a mocking laugh. My entire body came rushing right up close to the precipice of an orgasm. Eyes closed, my body buzzing on some other frequency, I began to struggle away from him. He pinned me by the wrists and brought them both to the base of my spine, pulling down hard to fuck me even deeper. I squealed, feeling almost as though he would lift me off the ground.

“My little slut, see how good that feels? That’s not so bad is it?”

I let out a long, shuddering groan.

“There’s a good girl. I know I’m being a little rough with you, but that’s what you need right now.”

He was fucking me so deep and so hard I could feel his balls slapping into me.

“This little pussy is mine, and I’m going to teach you to take cock like a real little slut, do you understand?”

I could only cry out in response.

“You fucking like that? Dirty little whore. You love it.”

“I love it,” I squeaked, knuckles going white against the table.

“You fucking love having a cock in you.”

“I love it so much…”

“Say it. Say how much you love it.”

“Oh god, I love your dick so much, I want you to give it all to me, show me how to fuck.”

With one super hard, super deep thrust, he sent my hips banging into the table. All at once he clenched his fists around my waist and roared as he came, shaking, inside me, one hot gush after another. That was the best feeling of all. Feeling that wet, sticky explosion inside me was so sexy it could push me over the edge alone. It claimed me. In our game, this was how we knew that my pussy was his; his to do whatever he wanted with.

I twisted around to see his curled hips and expression of delicious torment all over his gorgeous face. I caught his eye and held his gaze, a knowing smile on my face as I watched him jerk and spurt inside of me. In a second he had regained enough composure to throw one more thrust into me, and it was enough to send me hurtling over the edge, into that delicious abyss that he had plunged me into so many times before.

It was a slow, gooey, inelegant orgasm. I lost all control, my body limp and collapsing down onto the table, his dick still in me. The game was now over. Felix – life, solid, ordinary Felix – folded down on top of me, laying his broad chest down over me until I stopped shaking. He hugged the back of me like this until he softened and slid out of my exhausted pussy. I lay crumpled, the temples of my hair damp. I spied the frosting bowls at the edge of my vision. He softly began to kiss my neck.

“We’re pretty fucked up, you and I, you know that?” he said eventually and peeled himself off me.

I laughed. “Mostly you though.”

He spun me around and gave me a sweet, chaste kiss on my cheek.

“Actually, you’re fun when you’re stressed out about exams.”

I groaned.

“Oh fuck. How much time do I have?” I said. I could feel the warm evidence of what we had just done seeping out of me. I’d have to shower again. He peeked over my shoulder at the clock and smiled.

“You’re good. We only have to leave here in about an hour, don’t worry.”

I smiled and relaxed into his arms. I could still feel how hard his heart was beating.

“You OK?” he asked.

“I love doing that with you,” I said to his chest.

He kissed me again then gave my ass a playful slap.

“Want to try some more in the shower, then?”

Chapter 15 - Felix

I thought of Emily and the games I’d play with her all that morning, as I walked into the shop, greeted Becky and took a glance at the customers in the café area, every one of them carried away with their own lives and conversations. They couldn’t possibly know what it had taken to bring this place to the bustling hub it was today. They couldn’t know what went into bringing it back from the dead, and the woman behind it all. Nobody knew Em like I knew her.

We barely talked about The Incident anymore these days. It was eons ago, when both of us were young and stupid. Now, there was a fresh batch of young, stupid kids to make bad mistakes, to take their blessings for granted, to realize what’s really important in life, and to find it all out the hard way. We didn’t talk about any of that anymore, or about Buck, or about the crushing humiliation she forced herself to live with for years.

Instead, we played games. Emily taught me that the past is never truly behind you. You always pick it up and carry it along with you, only it may change shape quite a bit. When I met Emily, she was neurotic and wracked with the guilt that the whole world was judging her for being such a righteous little deviant. These days, god bless her, she was just a righteous little deviant, period. In some of our games, I was a dirty professor dangling a good grade (and other things) over her to get what I wanted. In others, I was a bad boy boyfriend, a criminal luring her into a van, a pervy Sunday school leader or, when she was feeling really naughty, one of her friend’s fathers.

I happily went along with any and all of her dark little scenarios, finding it surprisingly easy to slip into character when I saw how truly wild it made her. I was always watchful, always making sure she was OK, not pushing too far. I stayed alert so that she could wander off into the many landscapes of her sordid imagination. I was always there when she came back, always with a smile, glad for any opportunity she gave me to accompany he, to be the one she trusted to open up that much to…

I smiled and told Becky she could take a break and that I’d watch the ovens for a while, and spent the next few moments daydreaming as I served the odd customer. We had fucked here, on this very table, after hours when she had been super stressed, covered in flour and looking for a fight. But I knew what to do when she got like that. It never took me longer than ten or twenty minutes to have her in a sweaty, whimpering pile, thanking me and kissing me, cooing in my arms, flushed and giggling at how mad she had been about nothing.

We often fucked in the shower. I’d spread her legs wide to stop her from slipping all over, and she’d fall back onto my cock and bounce there, the sound of the falling water muffling her voice. We’d fuck on the floor sometimes, when carrying her to the bed seemed like wasting too much time. I liked to put her on her hands and knees. Sometimes, we’d just watch old movies together, and under the blanket, I would lay her hand on my stiff cock and she would understand, shifting her weight onto me without pulling her eyes from the screen.

And when she got back from this exam of hers, we’d do a celebratory fuck for sure. Just the thought of it had me distracted enough to spill a customer’s frothed milk all down my front.

“Whoops! Oh man, did you learn that trick from Emily?”

I turned to see Becky walk in and smile, rag ready in hand to mop up my accident. I laughed and shrugged.

“Yup, learned from the best, what can I say?” I said.

“When is she back?”

“She said the exam was only two hours, so she should be back here any minute now,” I said, and started making another cup. She sighed and stared off into the distance.

“I can’t believe she’s almost done already. Where did the last few years even go, Felix?”

“Beats me. After all this time I’m still learning how to make a proper cup of coffee, so what do I know?”

“Well, she must have put your sorry ass in charge for some reason, right?” she said, giving me a silly smile.

“Well, obviously she put me in charge because I’m dead cute,” I said, posed a little on my chair and then jumped out the way as she aimed at me with the tail of her dishcloth.

“By the way, this came this morning,” she said and pulled out a small envelope from her apron pocket. I instantly recognized what it was: a letter from the university. Em had been receiving her results piecemeal throughout her part time studies, and had always given me permission to open them if she was away so I could call her with the results as soon as possible. I took the envelope and opened it, fully expecting the usual distinction result and congratulations.

But this was something different. I unfolded the letter and skimmed it through. It was an offer. The university had partnered with a research facility on Mars and they wanted her to join them. She had made such headway with her new hybrids and the techniques she was using with her fermentation tanks that they wanted her to oversee a new grow project there, as soon as she was finished with her degree. Then my eyes stuck on one phrase, like a thorn in the words. It was the name of a Mars mission. My old Mars mission. I tossed the paper aside and tried to think.

“What is it…?” said Becky and took the page herself. “Oh my god…”

I looked at Becky and she looked at me.

“I always knew Em was destined to go and do awesome things,” she said a little sadly.

I snatched the paper back and tried to hunt out the important details. It was a strange letter – full of praise and commendation, not unlike the letters I had received once, a lifetime ago. It was so different in tone from the usual college correspondence. It was plain as day. The university wanted her. The mission wanted her. I read those words again and again. There was no other way to cut it: what I held in my hands was what people usually call an opportunity of a lifetime.

Emily had spoken often about this new project, about how she admired the staff there, about the amazing work they did. It turns out, the admiration went both ways. Word of the things we were doing in this humble little café had reached our local news stations, but I never imagined this. I felt numb. I was overjoyed that Emily was finally getting all the good things in life that she deserved… but petrified that everything was about to change for us. With a lump in my throat I folded the letter and quietly put it back in its envelope. And just like that the whole day was different.

Becky looked miserable, but I forced a smile at her and squeezed her arm.

“Hey, don’t be like that, we must be happy for Em, this is like, her dream,” I said, mostly convincing myself.

“Do you think she’ll accept the position? Do you think she’ll just go to Mars now?” Becky said.

I sighed. “Well, she should. I hope she does.”

“But what about us? What about the bakery? What about you?”

I thought back to that night I had broken up with Emily. The night I had told her that I had a dream life to pursue, and that she didn’t have a place in it. I remembered the pain in her eyes, the way she had begged me to stay, the way she had eventually agreed that if I wanted to go she wouldn’t want to keep me anyway. Dreams and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities are rare, it’s true. You need to grab them with both hands when one comes along. But I had also learnt that real love is also rare, maybe even more so. I was lucky. I had found my second chance with her. And now, there was nothing that would take priority over her place in my life ever again.

“I don’t know what will happen,” I said simply. It was the truth. “But if she wants to go, I won’t stop her. We can sell the bakery. Maybe I can find another post up there. We’ll make something work” I said. Becky frowned and walked off, and was sullen for a while. I sat with my thoughts as well, occasionally glancing at the letter again, just in case I had missed something important the first time around.

Then she came in. Emily flew into the bakery and plonked her bag behind the counter.

“Ta da! Done and dusted, ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at a lady who’s basically almost technically kind of done with her degree! All of it!” she said, then did a triumphant little twirl and bounded over to Becky and I. She paused.

“Oh my god, guys, who died?” she said, big smile on her face as she found a seat.

I went over to her, gave her a big hug and handed her the letter.

“You big showoff, just take a look at this” I said and pecked her cheek. She tore the letter out of the envelope and read it quickly, mouth hanging open. Becky and I stared at her for a few moments, waiting for it all to sink in.

When she was done, she dropped the folded sheet to her knees, looked at us in shock and then all at once started squealing and laughing. She bounced off her chair and threw her hands to her mouth, then skipped around hysterically like a kid on Christmas morning. She ran into me and I grabbed her and laughed with her, kissing her hair and releasing her for another victory lap. Some customers looked up from their coffee to see what the commotion was about, but she barely even noticed them.

Then she started to cry. I held her again, then she hugged Becky, then me again. It was beautiful, seeing her so happy. It felt strange. It hurt, but in a good way. Emily had put her dreams on hold for so long already. It was her time now. And I felt a weird, possessive sense of pride as I watched her excitement. The letter, now crumpled and stained with tears, was set down on the table and she began to talk, suddenly serious.

“I’m sorry, I got carried away there, obviously I …ugh there’s just no way, it’s on Mars,” she said with a sniff.

“Hey, what are you saying sorry for? It’s on Mars…so you go to Mars!” I said and smiled at her.

“Felix! There’s no way in hell I’m going!” she said immediately. It broke my heart. Not to see how ready she was to think of me, but because I knew I hadn’t been able to do the same for her when it mattered. I grabbed her shoulders and gave her a serious look.

“Em, listen to me, this is a very serious opportunity you have here, you need to think very carefully about what they’re offering.”

“I can’t go,” she said plainly. She was quick to wipe away her tears with the back of her hand. The look on Becky’s face was priceless. I didn’t know what to say.

“How could I leave you guys? Look, I’m really flattered that they’ve made the offer. In fact, it makes me really hopeful about how far we can take what we’ve learnt here in the bakery. If they want it on Mars, just think of how many people would be interested in it down here.”

I shook my head.

“Em, don’t be ridiculous. You should go. We’ll be OK without you. We’ll look out for the bakery, and when you come back…”

Becky burst into tears. I couldn’t finish. We all knew what the chances of that were.

I took a deep breath and tried to focus. This wasn’t about me. Or about the damn bakery.

“Ok, just think carefully about this, Em. You deserve this. You’ve earned it. It’s your time now, you should--”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said again and stood, letter still on the table. She looked down at me and gave me a loaded look, then smiled at the people in the bakery. I know life doesn’t always pan out the way you expect it to, and I’m OK with that. Mars is a great idea for some, but there’s enough work down on Earth here for me.”

Becky stood, hugged Em again and left, sensing that I wanted to speak to her alone. But once she had gone I found myself struggling to say anything at all. Of course I didn’t want her to go anywhere. I wanted her to stay here with me, forever… I had so much more I wanted to do with her. Being posted on Mars was like a death sentence – a happy, lucky death sentence, sure, but one that would take her away from me all the same. I knew that. I knew that if she left now I would never be the same again.

But I had no right to ask her to stay. Not after the choice I made, all those years ago.

We had built a life together, but I had nearly thrown that all away once before. It wasn’t for me, now, to stand in her way if she needed to go and find something better. She looked down at me and frowned.

“Hey! Are you going to make a big deal out of this?” she said in lighthearted voice. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t taking any of this more seriously. She reached out her hand and pulled me up, then led me out the back of the shop and into the courtyard, completely renovated except for the old wooden storeroom we never used anymore.

“What… where are we going?” I asked.

She dragged me along and into the storeroom, locking the door behind her. It was dark and cool inside, and I could make out tiny dust motes drifting to the floor as she looked at me and started whispering.

“Do you remember what we did in here once?” she said, naughty glint in her eye.

I laughed and looked at my feet. It was one of my fondest memories.

“I know we had a rough start, Felix. Maybe we both needed to have that time away from each other, to grow up a bit, I don’t know. I blamed you for a long time, for everything that happened. But I can also blame you for everything that’s happened since. It’s your fault that I still even have this bakery. It’s your fault that I went back to school, and I blame you for pushing me to pursue all my nutty professor experiments and forcing you and Becky to pick up the slack at the shop…”

She had both her hands propped lightly on my chest, stroking the way you would stroke a large beast if you wanted it to calm down. She was still so, so beautiful. Like her hair had a few secret filaments of gold woven into it that you could only pick out in certain lights.

“Long story short, I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time now how thankful I am that you came back, that you stuck around.”

“Eventually,” I said, a little sheepish.

She laughed, quietly. This was our secret place.

“If you’re sure you don’t want to go, I’ll support whatever decision you make, I swear that I won’t live with myself if you turn it down and--”

Her she kissed me to stop me from speaking.

“I belong here, with you, in this ramshackle old storage room on boring old earth,” she said between kisses.

“You should really let me tear this thing down and build you something new,” I said, leaning in to kiss back.

“Of course, but do it later… for now, you have other work to do…”