Stupid Love (Stumbling into Love 1)

But again, make sure if you do the dating thing to make him jealous, the other man knows what’s up. You don’t want to be that guy who hurts someone else to get what you want. You might not be nice to me, but I can see that about you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have Italian food arriving.

There was a knock on my door, so I signed out of my email, determined not to hang out and wait for him to reply.

“Sorry, I went to the apartment across the hall first,” the delivery guy told me.

“Then I should be the one who’s sorry. He’s a little judgy.”

The guy frowned like he was confused. Apparently, Elijah wasn’t judgy with him. I paid, then went back inside. I ate my ravioli, bullshitted with Will through text, then edited some photos.

I was in bed, with the lights off, having just rubbed one out and washed my hands, before I picked up my phone and switched to my Charades & Sexcapades email.

Anon,

This is hard for me to admit (I feel like I’ve said that a lot to you. It’s almost like we’re…f…fri…friends or something), but back to my admission…I didn’t mean to insult you, and I apologize. You’re maybe not so bad. Wow, my fingers totally fought against me when I typed that. It’s like they know that wherever you are, you’re celebrating my confession like you won some game.

Honestly, he wasn’t wrong. I definitely felt like I just scored.

Shaw: 1.

ILWMBF: 0.

Thank you for your advice.

Shaw: 2.

ILWMBF: 0.

I’ll think on it all and let you know what I decide. I’m beginning to get why you’ve written off love. It’s a lot of work.

Wait. Have you had your heart broken? Is that why you don’t believe in love?

I’m not trying to be an ass with that question, but I probably am.

Memories flooded my brain—crying, fighting, broken hearts—not mine, because I already decided I wasn’t going there tonight, but I’d seen enough of it in my life and felt it once.

I shook those thoughts from my head.

This should also have been when I stopped messaging him. This wasn’t what I did, this back-and-forth, chatting thing, but still, I found myself hitting Reply.

ILWMBF,

Wow, I’ve finally picked my jaw off the floor from your apologies and gratitude. It was quite the shock, and now I feel like I must admit that you didn’t really insult me. All you told me were things I know and readily admit about myself. Things I’m not ashamed of, either. People let shame become involved with sex too often, and that’s not how I roll.

There’s nothing wrong with fucking, not if you’re safe.

There’s nothing wrong with not fucking, if that’s not your thing.

Sex and shame don’t belong together. I’m hoping people get that one day.

Now I’m the one getting off topic. As for your question about my heart, well, that’s what all the books and movies want you to believe, right? That I fell in love, and he or she didn’t feel the same. That it crushed me, and now my heart will never be the same. I’m unable to love anyone, but then that perfect someone will come and I’ll fall completely, mending my broken heart, and we’ll live happily ever after.

I figure that happens sometimes.

But I also figure that other times, people are simply the way they are, and that’s okay. Everything doesn’t need to have some big story behind it, does it? Or maybe it does.

This is me being intriguing and mysterious. Is it working?

Not that it matters, since you’re in love with someone.

But it feels like we really are friends now. How…odd. I didn’t see this coming at all.

I paused, wondering what I was doing, then signed the email:

S

I signed out, turned my phone off, and went to sleep.

CHAPTER SIX

Elijah

S.

Why had he done that? Now I was trying to figure out what his name was, or if the letter stood for something else, and if he shared that letter with other people who emailed him for advice, or what.

It was making me lose my damn mind. Steve, Sam, Shawn or Sean, the possibilities were endless and also not something I should care about.

It could have been an accident, which was what had happened when I mentioned Raving Ramen. I hadn’t even thought about it until after he stopped replying, when I was obsessively reading our emails.

Maybe he’d given me the S because I’d given him the D, which obviously made me laugh as soon as I thought it because I had, in fact, not fucked him and I preferred to be on the receiving end of the D, though I did give it from time to time.

Not that I would be having sex with S.

Ever.

He probably lived somewhere like LA, anyway. He sounded like a Los Angeles guy. Well, what I assumed Los Angeles guys sounded like.