The Roommate's Baby

10

Cannon

Great. Today started out amazing. My dream with Rina literally came true less than half an hour after I woke up—I got to fuck her and savor the view the whole while, enjoying the sight of her lithe, sexy, curvy body rocking up and down on my big cock as she gasped and moaned. And work was going fine too, things were starting to calm down after our business trip a couple of weeks ago. Everything was going perfectly. Hell, even Chris and Lacy were working out, which, who the hell could have predicted that outcome?

And then, this.

Chris, and his stupid fucking bright ideas.

His goddamn double date plans.

He kept egging me on the whole time he was suggesting the date in the break room, knowing exactly why I was declining, trying to push me into admitting that I didn't want to go on the damn date because I only want one woman now. Rina.

But I promised Rina I wouldn't tell anyone at the office about us, and that includes Chris, so instead I had to keep dancing around rejecting him, offering slimmer and slimmer excuses that he talked his way through every time. And then, out of the blue, Rina walked in.

I don't think either of us expected that.

But Chris, damn him, had to turn that into an excuse to push me even harder. He tried to get Rina to admit to things too. And that made her defensive, which, I don't blame her for, but goddamn it all, the last thing I want to be doing tonight is hanging out with Chris, Lacy and some random woman named Karen, even if she is totally a 10 out of 10 bombshell, as Chris enthusiastically described her.

Old me would've been down for this in a heartbeat. Old me would've jumped to attention the minute Chris said blonde, bottle or not. That was before Rina and I started to hook up. That was before I got a taste of her wild redhead sex drive. That was before I developed a whole new type.

Her.

I tried to convince Rina to give me an out. Tried to ask her, without outright begging, to tell me not to go, so that at least I'd have a good reason to blow Chris off. I thought maybe, once she admitted she didn't want me going on this date, we could brainstorm an excuse together.

Instead, she told me I should go.

No, really, it's fine. You're free to do what you want. Same as me.

The thought makes my stomach churn and my chest do weird, painful, annoying shit. I don't want to do this. I don't want to sit through some boring dinner with some other girl, pretending I'm interested. Pretending I'm still the old Cannon, the one who just wanted to get his dick wet and didn't care who it was with or what she was like.

But I have to. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place—namely, between Chris's prying and Rina's insistence on maintaining a purely professional NSA agreement.

Maybe it's better this way, I think. Or try to convince myself, anyway. From her texts, it sounds like Rina doesn't even mind the thought of me going out with another woman. She must really have a handle on her emotions. Must really be able to compartmentalize what we're doing.

I had thought, especially over the last week, when we started to go out more, sneak around on dates, almost, that something was shifting. That our NSA was maybe, just maybe, starting to become something more, for her as well as for me. Now I realize I was kidding myself. She wouldn't be fine with me going on this date, not if she felt the same way I do.

Which means, for her sake, I need to pretend that everything is the same.

Even if that means suffering through this damn date tonight.

I might as well get started, anyway. I'm going to have to get over Rina eventually. Maybe this will be good practice. A test, to see if I can handle hanging out with another woman, at least for one night. That's what I tell myself.

Deep down, I already know, it can't possibly be this easy.

The double date starts out innocently enough. Lacy and Chris want to check out this new rooftop bar downtown, super swanky. We head straight from work, so at least I have a suit on, which means I blend into the crowd here. It's all lawyers from other firms—a few I recognize, from being across the bench from them in court. There's some hot shots here, big names in our field.

There's a lot of hangers-on too. Guys and girls in skimpy attire clinging to their date's arms.

To my chagrin, Karen turns out to be just one such girl. She sashays over to our table and plants a too-long kiss on Chris's cheek, right before looping her arm through mine as she joins our standing table, with a cocktail already in hand—and already almost finished, I might add.

"You must be Cannon," she breathes straight into my face, her breath smelling strongly of liquor, among other things. "Chris told me so much about you." She tightens her grip on my arm as she says those words, practically purring.

Across from me, Chris wiggles his eyebrows as if to say, you're welcome. And I get it. I know what he means.

In another life—in a very recent life, admittedly, Karen would have been my type. But that was pre-Rina. That was before I started having sex with my best friend. That was before I realized that there could be more to the world than just hookups. Hell, it was before I realized that I was even capable of feeling or wanting more than just a hookup.

Before Rina, I was half the person I am now. A shell. A fucking idiot. I thought NSA was the best way to be; I thought I could go through life never caring for anyone else, never falling for anybody. I thought love was for suckers, and that only dumbasses let themselves care so much about one person, one woman.

That was all before her.

And this is when it happens. I swear to God. Standing right there in that grimy bar, with cigarette smoke in my nostrils from the people taking advantage of the open-air rooftop and lighting up on every side of us, I realize.

I love her.

I love Rina Smith.

"So, are you going to tell me about yourself?" Karen is asking, and her breath makes me want to cringe away from her. Everything about this situation makes me want to just not be here right now.

So I listen to that impulse.

"Hey, guys?"

I hate to interrupt, because Chris and Lacy are engaged in a heated—and flirty—debate about which one of them is going to pick up the tab tonight, apparently based on some running game they'd been playing all day at work that hinged on which one made the most inappropriate jokes based on things their coworkers said in meetings. It's cute and all, but I need to break in.

"What's up?" Chris takes one look at my face and frowns. I know it's written all over me right now. How uncomforta

ble I feel. And he can think whatever he wants about that, about why I'm acting so fucking weird. I don't care anymore.

"I have to run."

"What, really?" His frown deepens.

"Is everything okay?" Lacy asks, her face a mask of concern as well.

"It's fine. I just realized something, that's all. Something important." I disentangle my arm from Karen's. She's leaning harder on me, so it takes a minute to extricate myself properly. When I do, she stumbles a little before she manages to grab onto the table. "Sorry about this," I tell her, even though I'm really not.

"Whatever, your loss," she mutters.

"Probably," I agree, to be polite. "Catch you guys later," I add across the table to Chris and Lacy. Then I bolt. I beeline straight out of that stupid bar toward the exit, toward my ride, toward home. Because I know where I need to be, and it's not here on this stupid fucking other date.

I need to be home. I need to be with her. I have to tell her.

11

Rina

My pasta tastes bland.

The TV show I'm watching is boring as hell.

The next five shows I try to watch are also boring as hell. So is the book I try to read. The only thing I really want to do is sit here clutching my phone staring at my texts and refreshing them every few seconds just in case a message came through from Cannon that I didn't see yet.

But of course, that's pathetic. So I can't let myself do that. So instead, I shut my phone off and shove it under a couch cushion and change the channel yet again, hoping against hope that maybe one of these damn shows will finally distract me once and for all.

It doesn't. The only image that keeps playing over and over in my head, impossible to drown out no matter how loud I turn up the TV, is the thought of Cannon and Karen. I imagine them at the bar having a perfect date—laughing, chatting, touching one another's arms as they talk. Acting normal together in public in a way he and I never can. Shooting each other longing gazes over the rims of their cocktails as they chat about something mundane.