By the time I make it home, the sun it starting to set and the lights in my apartment are already off. Door locked, no candles, no music. Great. A note lies on my counter.

Greg came home. Sorry, babe, -E

Wonderful. Greg is Ellie’s other plaything, and she’s about as tied to him as I am my job.

I love my job, but there’s times I feel like I chose the wrong profession. Always working or traveling, I feel like my home life consists of fucking different people, and not having time to be a mid-twenties girl in Chicago.

Of course, that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? When choosing my life, I chose the path that didn’t allow for much ‘me’ time, because my brain can’t handle too much of that.

Dinner in the fridge, the pictures of what Ellie had planned for tonight start flooding my phone. Oh, she’s good. How she got herself into those poses and had the camera there for pictures is too much. She’s very… intense. She knows about Benton, but she hates him: a jealousy type of hate.

All I can tell her is that he stays. I don’t tell her why, because I’m not entirely certain why. What I do know is that every time I see him, I want more. Just being around him… seeing him, hearing him, smelling him… makes me want so much more than I deserve. I know I should get rid of him before it becomes something bad, but he’s just so good. All of him.

After heating up leftovers, I grab my phone to call Benton back. If Ellie isn’t keeping me company tonight, maybe I can pay him a visit. When the call goes to voicemail, I grunt and toss my phone on the side table, then head to the kitchen to grab a beer. The attack today hit me hard, and my head is starting to pound from it. Popping a few aspirin and downing them with the beer, I chuckle that I’m not at all worried about the fact that I just took medicine with a beer.

It’s hard to care when you don’t even want to be here anymore.

Lately, the guilt from twelve years ago has been eating at me, and I know it’s because his birthday is coming up, but, for some reason, this year it feels worse. It could be that work is adding a whole new stress to my life, it could be that I’ve been on these medications for a while now and maybe it’s time to switch up, but I’m fairly certain it’s because I’m starting to have feelings for a person that isn’t myself… and that isn’t supposed to happen. I still remember the conversation we had when all of this started. It was the night of Annaliese’s birthday party. Adam rented a rooftop at one of the hotels in downtown Chicago for the entire weekend as a surprise and invited all of Annaliese’s friends. One look at Benton, and I knew I’d be having a replay of the night they got engaged. That was the night he learned just what type of person I am.

***

“So uh… can we keep all this to ourselves?” I ask, pulling the black dress strap back over my shoulder.

“Oh.” He acts surprised in his response. Like he was expecting me to run and tell the world that I just slept with Benton James for the second time. Uh… sorry, guy. If I screamed to the world every time I had sex... well... I’d have a very sore throat. “Yeah,” he mumbles as he fiddles with the zipper of my dress to help out. His fingers graze my skin and I feel the tingles start between my legs again. It’s happened both times now. One look from this man and I’m putty.

“I mean… it’s just fun. All fun and games.” I shrug and smile back at him as he kisses my shoulder once he has the final clasp of the dress together. He’s good at that… like he’s had practice before.

Probably because he’s a widow, Gabby. He’s damaged goods, too.

“Right, fun and games,” he says, then trails off, looking around for his shirt.

“Benton, I don’t do relationships. Look… this was a grand time. Great fucking sex… but I don’t do monogamy… or long-term shit. I’m down for doing this again, and again, and again. What I’m not down for is you expecting something out of me that I’m not willing to give. I can’t.”

He silently nods at me as he stands in the hotel room, bare-chested, and the color from his tattoos, brilliant in the moonlight, glowing in through the window. Beautiful. And I suddenly feel terrible for hurting his feelings.

“Yeah, sure. That’s fine… just sex. I can do that.”

“I’m with other people now, Benton. It’s not just you… you understand, right? I’m not going further with this if you’re the jealous type,” I say, crossing my arms under my breasts, watching his gaze immediately flick to them.

“Got it. Not jealous. Now, come here. I just decided we’re not quite finished here yet,” he growls, chucking the shirt and pouncing on me, laughter erupting from me as he tackles me to the bed.

***

Smiling, remembering that night like it was just last week when it was really months ago… I still miss that dress. He ruined it that night. Apparently, zippers take too long for him.

I head to bed that night frustrated that he never called me back. Angry that Ellie dropped me, and even more upset at myself that I’ve got too wrapped up in something that I swore up and down I’d never do.

I’m not looking for pity, but I’m not looking to tell anyone about my issues. We all have them, some bigger than others, but I’m not ready to set mine free. Being with one person, and one person only, is bound to make those secrets come out.

I can’t have that.

Benton

Jealousy

“What the hell, man? What’s your deal today?” Adam huffs. “You need to get laid, B.”

I chuckle, so goddamned tired from being up with a teething baby last night that I can barely focus on the words on the page.

“Right, Adam. I’ll be getting laid when my daughter is about thirty,” I joke. He knows nothing about my sex life, but he thinks he does. He thinks he knows everything about me, but he’s wrong.

Adam likes to think he knows a lot, but he doesn’t know about the piercings, he doesn’t know about the tattoos, and he doesn’t know about Gabby. I want like hell to tell him about her. It’d be nice to have another dude’s point of view… but I promised her. No one knows. Now, here I sit, so fucking tired and still worrying about the girl that wants nothing more than to fuck me and leave.

Most guys would be ecstatic about having a hot as hell ‘fuck buddy’, but not me. I’m thirty years old with an almost one year old. I’m coming up on her birthday, which also happens to be an anniversary of my wife’s death. I’m a fucking widow with a baby… Can’t I get a break here and not fall for the crazy ones?

Sure, I knew going into it that she doesn’t do relationships, but my dumb ass thought I could change her. I thought ‘well, we will just have to see about that’. Now, seven months later, I’ve had the best sex I’ve ever had my entire life more times than I can count, I think I’m falling in love with her, yet she still won’t fess up and tell me she just wants to be with me. It kind of puts me in a hard position.

I see something in her eyes when she starts to get to comfortable with me. I see the flicking of the bands on her wrist, the constant taking down and putting up of her hair, over and over. I see the little nervous habits, and know she’s got something deeper than a hate of relationships going on, but I can’t really do anything about it to help her until she opens up to me. And that’s the thing… I want her to open up to me. I want her to be comfortable with me. The only way she’s ever going to do that is if she commits.

Unfortunately, she’s afraid of that.

“Listen, you’re obviously busy inside that fancy head of yours,” he scoffs. Was he talking to me? Shit? “Just be at lunch tomorrow, okay? It’s a big client. Don’t fuck it up,” he warns, and I chuckle.