Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Why do I know this, you ask? That’s easy. Because those stupid hands belonged to my stupid boyfriend. My former boyfriend, Eric.
My heart had been pounding a steady, anxious rhythm, but now it shifted from hard to fast. I could feel it in my ears and my eyes. I looked at those big, angry red letters at the bottom of the pages.
“Fuck you, Eric. You said you loved me. I hope you love losing your job, asshole. -Em.”
I wasn’t sure if Em was the woman whose ass was on display, but I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t. Em was probably the other woman Eric was cheating on me with. The other woman he was saying “I love you” to.
It felt like I was floating a few inches above my body, almost like watching myself from the outside. I drifted back through the crowd, eyes glazed over. I kept going until I reached an empty area with two long, padded benches arranged in an “L” shape. I plopped down and stared forward.
The word “asshole” kept repeating in my mind, and not just because Eric was an asshole. It wasn’t because that was the word his other, other woman had used, either. It was because that image had so perfectly captured that woman’s asshole. It was right there in black and white, plain for everybody to see. And somehow, that felt appropriate. That was life, wasn’t it? We dressed things up and made them out to be romantic. We looked over flaws and faults. But when we really zoomed in and paid attention, everything had its own puckered, dirty little secret. The boss who isn’t as well-off as he pretends. The lifestyle social influencer family that fights every time the cameras were off.
I guess my dirty little secret was that my boyfriend was going balls deep behind my back at work.
Welcome to the asshole club, Pearl.
3
DEAN
I was a man who paid attention to detail. Rigorous attention. And when it came to the bodies of women I enjoyed, I was on another level of focus. I knew every curve, freckle, and mole. I knew that weird little spot where their skin didn’t wrinkle because of a birth mark. I knew if they didn’t moisturize their feet before bed they’d wake up with crocodile fins. I liked the details, and I learned them like it was my job.
So when I saw the pictures hanging up on the tenth floor, I knew. I knew it deep, deep down.
I wandered a little closer, ignoring the crowd of people gathered and whispering about the pictures. I raised a hand, tracing the pattern of dots on the underside of the woman’s ass, which was flattened and plastered to the glass top of a copy machine. I’d called that constellation of freckles on her left asscheek “the horny runner.” If you tilted your head a little, it kind of looked like a man running toward her ass crack, which had been greatly amusing at the time.
Right now? Not so much. Because in all my attention to detail, I’d never noticed a pair of balls between her legs.
Conclusion? Those balls belonged to another. Another man’s balls between the legs of my girlfriend. I wasn’t great with math, but if my numbers checked out, that meant I was officially single.
A few emotions considered taking hold in my brain. Jealousy. Anger. Despair. But they all flitted right on through, not doing much more than glancing through the windows and passing by. Instead, the emotion that finally sank in was just disappointment, and not even in Annabelle and her freckles or the balls between her legs–and for the record, a smaller pair than mine. Yes, that matters.
I was mostly just disappointed that it had happened again. Sure, it wasn’t always cheating, but it was always something. Something always came along and led to the untimely detonation of my romantic relationships. More and more, I was starting to wonder if that something was me. After all, I was the only common variable, wasn’t I?
I sighed, looked at the flowers in my hand, and chucked them in the trash. Too little, too late.
I made my way through the crowd, vaguely wondering if Annabelle was even at the office today. Chances were, she’d booked it for home when she saw the pictures on the corkboard. I supposed that meant she was canceling our breakfast in her office plans.
I found a pair of benches in the corner and saw a woman sitting on them, staring ahead with a blank, haunted look in her eyes.
A little voice in the corner of my mind advised me to leave it alone. I was like a dog who just had his bone taken away, but there was another interesting, shapely bone sitting right there. Except my bones were always being taken away. What was the point in even trying to replace them? Maybe I’d be a happier dog if I just stopped eating bones all together.