Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120326 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“Well, when you put it like that, it kind of makes sense,” he replies, leaning in to steal a crouton out of my bowl and pop it in his mouth.
“Hey! Go make your own dinner,” I protest, shifting the bowl out of his reach.
He chuckles. “So how did you like your first day?”
“It was good. Other than this one customer being particularly difficult and then randomly giving me a fifty-pound tip out of nowhere,” I say, eyeing him curiously.
That gets a smirk out of him. “How very strange. Why don’t you just return it if it makes you feel uncomfortable?”
“No chance. I’m keeping it as compensation for all the years I had to suffer you calling me names as a teenager.”
“Lana…” he starts, but trails off, his eyes on my feet. “I told you I was sorry for being a dickhead back then.”
“You’re still a bit of a dickhead,” I interject.
“Oh, yeah, and how did you come to that conclusion?” He shifts closer, and I move my feet before they touch his thigh.
“Well, leaving out what you did yesterday in the back garden, you also recently cheated on your girlfriend with a married woman. If that’s not dickhead behaviour, then I don’t know what is.”
“Ah, but you don’t know the whole story there, Lana. Kara had been cheating on me for months with Gary, so why shouldn’t I have given her a taste of her own medicine?”
I let out a small gasp. “She had? But I thought she’d only just met him.”
He shakes his head and folds his arms. “Nope. She still thinks I don’t know. A friend of a friend told me what she’d been up to. Since there had been so much infidelity in our relationship already, I wasn’t too pushed about confronting her.”
“Why were you even together if you couldn’t be faithful to one another?”
Shrugging, Robert answers, “The sex was pretty good.”
Finished with my salad, I place the bowl down on the coffee table. “I don’t think I could ever be with someone if they cheated on me. Even if it was the best sex in the whole wide world.”
He briefly trails a finger down my calf. “In that case, you clearly haven’t had very good sex.” He pauses then, considering, and whispers, “Shall I show you what all the fuss is about?”
Little does he know that I haven’t had any sex at all: good, bad, or mediocre. But no way will he ever be finding out about that. Yep, a twenty-two-year-old virgin is a bit of a pathetic thing to be. Sasha always tells me not to worry about it, that in reality sex is eighty-percent hype, nineteen-percent disappointment, and one-percent thrill. Still, I’d like to give it a try at some point. You know, to pass the time on a slow Saturday if nothing else.
It’s more a fear thing with me, rather than a lack of opportunity. I guess I have my mother to thank for that. I know she meant well, but hearing about the dangers of being sexually assaulted day in and day out eventually did something to my brain. When a situation that could lead to sex arises, I become the human embodiment of anxiety and run away like a scared little nun. Add to that the fact that my illness and hospital appointments meant I never really had time for boys growing up, and it all makes for one lifelong dry spell.
I once wondered if it’s an actual thing, to be afraid of losing one’s virginity.
It is.
I Googled it.
It’s called primeisodophobia.
I still haven’t managed to get my tongue around that one. Or my fearful vagina.
I study the television, where a woman is serving the guests at her dinner party wearing a Betty Boop costume. “Don’t do that,” I say to him quietly.
“Do what?”
“Pretend to flirt with me.”
“Who says I’m pretending?”
“Pretending or not, just stop it, okay?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he swears, and then he’s leaning over me, his hands braced on either side of my head. I think I start to hyperventilate. Looking me directly in the eye, he says, “I want you to forget about how I’ve treated you in the past. It was meaningless bullshit. I was simply acting like the teenage shithead that I was at the time. You don’t have to wear it like a never-ending crown of suffering on your head.”
“Why? Does it make you feel guilty when I remind you of all the things you did?”
“Of course it does!” he exclaims. “Nobody wants to be the guy who bullied the innocent little girl next door.”
“And how come you didn’t feel guilty when you were doing it then?”
Well, this is new. I never realised how powerful it could feel to be the calm one and have Robert be the one showing his emotions.
He pulls back, running a hand through his hair. “Because…because sometimes the only way I can feel anything is when I get a reaction out of others, and pain is the easiest emotion to provoke.”
He looks a little surprised himself that he actually just said that.
“That’s the answer of a serial killer in the making, Robert,” I tell him with pleasure.
“It didn’t come out the way I meant it to,” he explains.
I smirk. “Oh, of course not.”
When he realises that I’m messing with him, he grins. “You’re being mean,” he tells me, peculiarly delighted. His eyes stray to my lips and stay there.
“I’m only returning all the meanness you’ve bestowed on me over the years.”
Suddenly, his expression turns serious. He reaches up and softly takes hold of my chin before swiping his thumb over my lower lip. I instantly regret not getting out from under him sooner, because now I’m frozen solid.
“Your mouth,” he says, low and deep. “It moves and I just want to…”
“Zip it shut?” I interrupt nervously, not wanting to know what he was about to say next. Kiss it? Devour it? Neither of those are answers I can handle. Jesus, if Sasha knew what’s been brewing between Robert and me these past few days, she’d probably punch me in the face to knock some sense into me. And I’d probably have to thank her for it.