If I Let You Go

Her new forkful – this time of beef chow mein - sl

id messily back onto her plate as she gaped at me, open-mouthed. “But you always insisted, insisted, that there’s nothing between you! I knew it! I knew you had a thing for each other!”

“Did you listen to anything I just said? It was a heat of the moment thing, that’s all.”

“Pfft, I’ve got into blazing rows like that with my boss, but it’s never ended with me flat on my back on the desk with my legs in the air!”

“Erica!”

“What? Have you ever done anything like this before with anyone else?”

“Of course not, but this is a unique situation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as strongly about anything before, and things just got way out of hand.”

I reached for my glass, thinking I should have gotten far more drunk before starting this conversation. Erica was a firm believer that men and women can never be just friends, which is why she’d always been so certain that Dominic and I were secretly screwing each other. At least, I assumed that was the reason. She never specified otherwise. It was in her nature to pair up any two people of the opposite sex if they seemed to vaguely like each other.

“What was it like?”

Slowly, I swallowed my mouthful of red wine. I’d purposely not thought about that part, because even though I knew - because it had been on my mind all day - I also knew it didn’t matter. Not in comparison to the big move.

“Oh, it was great, wasn’t it?” she asked, and burst out laughing.

I nodded. “Hot. Really, really hot.”

A tingle ran through my body as the memories I’d blocked out came flooding back. Erica squealed, clapping her hands together like an over-excited seal. “I want details!”

“Well, you’re not getting any!” I laughed. “Admitting it happened at all is bad enough!”

“Why? Why is it so bad that it happened?”

“How could it be anything but?”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Madison. Dominic is sexy.”

“Maybe to you. To me, he’s Tilly’s dad. And it was her we were fighting over, which kind of makes the whole thing worse.”

“Oh, you don’t think he’s sexy now? You know, after you shagged him?”

Clearly, she’d missed the point of the conversation.

“All I think now is how weird things will be,” I told her. “I told him we had to put it behind us, but I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“Because you think he’s sexy.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh at her or scream. She was certainly persistent.

In honesty, I hadn’t taken even a second to think about how I viewed him after the event. I couldn’t afford to. If I tried to spin a brief moment of angry sex into something more, the only thing I’d accomplish would be to create more complications.

“I think a subject change is called for,” I said, pouring myself another drink. “Tell me more about that guy you met last night!”

I wasn’t crazy about hearing yet another speech about how Erica’s latest eye candy was “The One,” so when the doorbell rang, I’m ashamed to say, I did an inward dance of joy.

“Oh crap!” she said, jumping up from her seat, “I forgot to tell you, Neil said he’d drop by after work.”

“It’s Saturday night, shouldn’t he be in a bar by now?”

“Yes, but he said he’d come over because I didn’t feel like going out after you cancelled on me, and he suggested watching a movie. And then I forgot to tell him you changed your mind.”

Erica rushed to the door to let him in, while I began loading as much food on my plate as I could. With Neil around, there was a high chance that if I didn’t stockpile, I probably wouldn’t get anything else to eat.