Not Your Fault

Her eyes bulge at my double use of the f-bomb, and my trembling hands and clenched jaw must finally get through to her because she puts one hand on my arm and the other across her mouth. “I’m sorry, Del. I am.” She pretends to zip her mouth closed. “I won’t talk about it anymore.”

I spend the next two hours working incredibly hard behind the counter, despite having exactly nothing to do. Under no circumstances do I look around the gym, especially in the direction of the free weights where Kris deadlifts five hundred and fifty pounds. Not that I looked long enough to see how many plates he loaded onto the bar.

Nathan texts me more than usual, and I happily reply to him. Each time Kris sees me on the phone is a victory as far as I’m concerned. I hope he thinks I’m dating a rock star—no, two rock stars, and that I live a glamorous life that has no painful traces of him.

My phone lights up with another text from Nathan, bitching about his favorite basketball team losing the game. I burst into a girlish giggle and type out a reply, biting my lip as if I’m replying to something sexy or scandalous. Kris actually sits up from the weight bench, wiping sweat off his forehead as he watches me send the text.

You know, not that I was looking or anything.

Chapter 8

The sports announcer freaks out as the Houston Rockets score another goal, bringing their losing game up to a tie. I don’t like basketball but I can’t exactly look away while Nathan thrusts into me from his place behind me on his leather couch. Couch sex is his favorite—although I’m not sure if it’s because of his view of my backside or of the television.

I reach my hands behind me, squeeze the top of his thighs and peer over my shoulder at him. He’s biting his lower lip as he watches the basketball game. “Uh, hello,” I say, my voice bouncing with the rhythm of my body. “You’re having sex with me, not the Houston Rockets.”

“I know, baby. I know.” He grabs my waist and pulls me further into him, grunting at his own pleasure. I don’t feel much of anything but annoyance. Usually I can mind-over-matter boring TV sex, but today my mind wanders places it should never go. Places that are boarded up and shackled, covered with DO NOT ENTER signs nailed there from ten years ago.

My mind ignores the signs and I’m thinking of Kris-fucking-Payne before the next commercial break. Nathan’s hands slide up my waist, cupping my boobs. I wince as he squeezes them a little too hard, but he takes my gasp of pain as one of pleasure and squeezes them even tighter. I grab his hands and pull them away.

“Too hot for you to handle?” he asks in his mock deep voice. The voice I guess he thinks is indicative of a porn star, but, well, I’ve always found it stupid. Kris and I never had sex—we were kids back then and although he was willing, I was ignorant to all things after second base and therefore had a deep-seeded fear that I’d end up pregnant or dead if my clothes came off in front of a boy.

Even without having sex, Kris loved touching my boobs. He never squeezed them, or did this weird nipple twisting thing that Nathan does now. Kris was eighteen and as inexperienced as I was; he kept his hands above my shirt and only pressed my B-cups together, occasionally pressing his face into my cleavage during make out sessions in the backseat of his car.

A ripple of pleasure pulses through me as I glance do

wn at my jiggling boobs, now C-cups and tinged pink from Nathan’s rough grasp. My cheeks flush as I let out a moan at the thought of Kris’s face buried between them like the old days. Only I don’t imagine what he looked like back then. I imagine him now. I let out a groan. I so should not be thinking about him!

“You like that?” Nathan asks. The sudden sound of his voice snaps me out of my daydreams. I glance down again and see Nathan’s hands pressed to my body, not Kris’s face.

“Mmm-hmm,” I moan, tossing my head back like the pornstars do in the videos he keeps saved to his desktop. No, I don’t like it. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t exactly climb off him and say that’s enough sex for today, I can’t stop thinking about my ex-boyfriend and wondering if he would be better in bed than you and that’s really killing the mood of our weekly couch sex and basketball routine.

I may be fucked in the head but I’m not that fucked up. Nathan’s breathing gets harder as he slides to the end of the couch and pulls me harder and harder against him. I’m losing any ounce of desire I had when we started twenty minutes ago, and now I’m just ready for this encounter to be over. Thanks Kris, for ruining yet another thing in my life.

I know from experience that faking like he’s the best sex god in the world will have him coming in no time. So I groan and moan and gasp for breath and tell him he feels so good baby, just like the girls on his computer do. Thirty seconds later, he finishes and I get to fall back on the couch and snuggle against his chest. The snuggling part is my favorite part of sex with Nathan. I always call him my teddy bear; a snuggly warm body I can fall into after an exhausting day.

I rub my hands across his chest, my hands making an arc across his belly. I don’t mind that he’s overweight. After dating too many stick-thin guys, dating someone with some extra meat on him is a nice change. Susan’s words float into my mind as we lay together on the couch. Maybe I do want a muscled man. Maybe that’s why I feel so apathetic about being around Nathan lately. I spend too much time with meatheads at the gym, and now maybe I subconsciously want someone like that. Or maybe it isn’t like that at all, and maybe Susan’s big mouth put those ideas in my head.

I watch the hairs on Nathan’s chest flow around my fingers and I imagine what it would feel like to touch the smooth, chiseled surface of Kris’s chest. Nathan twists a lock of my hair around his finger, the smile on his face showing how oblivious he is to my internal thoughts.

“So, have you given any more thought to my question?” he asks.

I look up at him. “What question?”

He hesitates for a moment, and when he finally talks, his voice quivers with anxiety. “You know…my question about…moving in with me?”

“Oh, that,” I say. I’m fully aware that is a terrible answer, but my mind is fog and nerves and forbidden fantasies right now so I can’t possibly answer any other way. My eyebrows knit together as I struggle to think of an answer. “I don’t know.”

“If you think I’m moving too quickly, that’s okay. You could have your own room. I can clean out my man cave.”

“I’m not going to make you get rid of your man cave,” I say with a snort. He spent a few thousand dollars on that room. I’d rather sleep on the kitchen floor than ask him to give up his wall-to-wall collection of arcade games and vintage video game systems. But the fact that he even offers sends a chill down my spine. This relationship means a lot to him.

Probably more than it means to me.

“I just want you to be happy,” he says, adjusting on the couch so he can put his hands on my shoulders. First Cat, then Nathan. I’m not sure why everyone wants to have serious hands-on-shoulders talks with me lately. Nathan dons a serious face that somehow makes the dimples in his cheeks form in the same way they do when he smiles. “You’ve been stressed out and just…weird ever since that asshole bought the gym. It’s not healthy and I’m just trying to make things better for you.”

“I’m not sure moving in with you is going to fix my problem,” I say.

“Moving in and quitting your job will fix it.” His voice is absolute and it brings a chill over my skin. He isn’t just suggesting that I quit my job for fun—he’s dead serious.