“I’m sure you do,” she says. “Sex has a way of tipping the scales in that direction—especially for people like you.”
I ignore the barb.
“You don’t understand,” I tell her. “I can’t see you anymore.”
That smile is back, but the lighthearted aspect to it is gone.
“Oh, you can’t tell me you’re that whipped already,” she says. “I’m very discreet. I’ll even meet you at the office for your lunch break or dinner break, or whatever the fuck chefs do. We’ve got too much sexual chemistry for either of us to just walk away from it now.”
She’s fucking with me. She has to be.
I smile.
She smiles back.
“Really,” I tell her. “I’d like to stay friends, but we can’t see each other that way. Not anymore.”
“Oh,” she says. “All right, I get it.”
“Riggs—”
“Do you really think now is the time to debut a pet name?” she snaps. “Just what happened to make you such a pussy anyway?”
And I actually, for a moment, believed that things were going to be idyllic from here on out: how naïve.
“I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I know you’re basking in the glowing warmth of strange, so I’m going to give you today, tomorrow and—what the hell?—I’ll throw in Tuesday. After that, though,” she says, “I’m expecting your call.”
“I’m sorry, Wrigley,” I tell her. “It’s just not going to happen. We can be friends, but—”
“Has anything ever given you the impression that I wanted to be your friend?” she asks.
“The other morning, you told me that I should figure out what my feelings for Leila were,” I rejoin. “I thought you were—”
“A bit freaked about settling down?” she asks. “Uh, fuck yeah. I was willing to give it a shot, though, ‘cause you seemed so into the idea and I figured that it might not be so bad. Sure, I’d go a little crazy being with someone who starts bitching when I pull out a simple riding crop—”
“It might not have been such a big deal if you let me know it was coming,” I interrupt, clearly focusing on the wrong part of the discussion.
“Whatever,” she says. “Take your little vacation and spend some time going balls-deep in Ms. Goody-No-Clit, but we’re not done here, and I’m sure as hell not going to let you forget that.”
It sounds like a threat.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“I have ways of burning your shit to the ground that you can’t even imagine,” she says. “Just think about it and tell me if I’m really the type of woman you want as an enemy.”
“I don’t want you as an enemy,” I tell her. “Really, though, I don’t want you as a friend, either. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“You know what they say about crazy chicks, though,” she says, licking her lips.
This conversation’s gone from surreal to disturbing to surreally disturbing, and I’ve had about all I can take.
“Give me a call sometime if you decide to get your head out of your ass,” I tell her.
“I am pretty bendy,” she says. “You’re going to miss that before the week is out. Trust me.”
“I think I’ll live,” I tell her as I move for the door.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” she calls from behind me.