Yawning, I took a seat on the couch before kicking off my shoes. Jason removed his and came to join me. Already I was reading his signs. It was nearly eleven; if he was trying to get comfortable, that usually meant he was trying to stay. Unfortunately for him, I had no interest in entertaining him tonight – in the bedroom or otherwise. However if he needed lotion and a hand-towel to get himself together, he knew where to find both. On cue, I yawned again.
“It’s too early to be tired,” he said with a smile. When his hand went to the hem of my dress, I almost pushed it away…but I didn’t. His fingers pushed the material up my thigh a few inches and I felt frustration climbing up my spine. This might just be my thinking, but if I was a guy and my girl and I had just gotten into it about another chick earlier that evening, I’d let her have her space for at least the next twenty-four hours. But not Jason.
He leaned over toward me, hand creeping between my legs, and sucked at the side of my neck. Now that he couldn’t see my face, I rolled my eyes freely.
“I don’t feel like it tonight,” I sighed, unable to make that sound as polite as I meant to. As if his touch would change my mind, Jason continued on until his fingers reached my satin panties. I wasn’t even fazed. There was no twitching, no chills, nothing. When he made his way inside the material and touched me, he found out the hard way that I truly, truly wasn’t interested…not even a little.
Defeated, he pulled back and rested his head against the back of the couch with a sigh. I ignored him and straightened my bracelet on my wrist.
“Is this about that text?” he asked, eyes trained on the ceiling.
“Me not wanting to have sex? No. It’s about me being tired,” I lied. Truthfully, turning him down did have at least a little something to do with the text, but I didn’t feel like arguing again. “I have to work in the morning.”
He exhaled sharply again. About half a minute passed before he stood from the couch and slipped back into his shoes. I watched as took his keys from beside mine and unlocked the door to my apartment. Apparently, if he wasn’t getting any, he wasn’t staying.
Fine by me; I needed time to think anyway.
“Goodnight,” he announced, followed by the sound of my door slamming behind him.
I lay in bed alone and awake, still thinking over the convenient story Jason told me. It may very well have been the truth, but I still wasn’t as settled as I wished I was about it.
When I flipped over onto my back I didn’t bother to straighten the sheets tangled around my legs. I stared at the ceiling and let my thoughts shift to someone else, wondering what he was doing instead of wondering if I’d hurt Jason’s feelings. This would be AJ’s second night sleeping beneath the same blanket of stars that we’d always shared, but now he was sleeping a little closer than before. I knew Kira wasn’t able to move here with him yet – something about her job. That left me wondering if he was lonely.
Frustrated?
Bored?
Under typical circumstances, it would’ve been nice to be able to give him a tour of the city, teach him how to get around on the subway, show him all the good places to eat, stuff like that. However, there was no appropriate way for me to reach out.
I couldn’t continue to deny that a small part of me did want to contact him, though. Not to get anything started…just to talk. Now that I knew that we were capable of getting along, it seemed weird to pretend like I didn’t know he was in town. But that’s basically what I’d have to do.
It sucked, but I’d learn to deal with it…eventually.
Chapter Nine
AJ
I didn’t even bother closing the door behind me when I rushed into the loft with a visual of where I’d left my laptop beside the air mattress in the bedroom. The sound of my footsteps ricocheted off the walls as I made my way down the hallway. The laptop bag was hanging on a hook in the closet. I grabbed it and started winding the charger to pack it away. As soon as I put it in the front pocket, Kira’s ringtone blared from inside my suit jacket.