Page 17 of Unforgettable You
“Oh my god,” I said as I dropped both bags outside my door so I could get my key out.
“Hi,” A voice said, and my heart nearly stopped for a second when I realized that Sophie was standing right next to me. How had she snuck up like that?
“Heyyyyy,” I said slowly, turning to face her. Her entire face was beet red, and she couldn’t make eye contact with me.
“Sorry about last night,” I said, keeping things vague.
She let out a little squeaking noise.
“I shouldn’t have banged on the wall,” I clarified.
She nodded like a bobblehead as she twisted her fingers together so hard that I thought that one of them was going to snap.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped out. “I didn’t know I was that loud.” The last part was mumbled so low that I barely heard it.
“We can just forget about it,” I said, and she finally looked up at me before her eyes skittered away again.
“Okay,” she said, nodding again. “Let’s forget it.”
“Sounds good,” I said, turning back to my books that I needed to drag inside before I got ready for work. Tonight was definitely going to be better than last night and Sophie was partially responsible. I wasn’t going to tell her that, though.
Sophie went back inside, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Chapter Eight
Sophie
It was hard to believe that my conversation with Reid didn’t kill me. Death from embarrassment wasn’t real, but if it was ever going to happen, this would have been the situation responsible.
As much as I wanted to hide in my apartment and literally never leave, getting the first encounter over with would be better than putting it off and just simmering in a pot of my own anxiety for hours. I was getting better at confronting things and I was proud of myself for that.
Reid hadn’t seemed embarrassed or awkward at all. She was a cool customer, always. I wished I had that kind of confidence. That kind of ease with myself instead of being a ball of nerves all the damn time.
She’d said that we should just forget about it, which was the best-case scenario. I mean, she probably would. I sure as hell wouldn’t. Knowing that she had definitely heard me masturbating and knew what I sounded like when I came was a level of humiliation that I never quite reached and might never reach again.
My masturbating days were over. Finished. I should throw away all my vibrators and take up celibacy.
Only one very small problem.
The idea that she’d heard me? That she might have listened?
It turned me on. It turned me on so hard that I could barely think for the rest of the day.
No matter what I tried to do, my brain was stuck on what had happened last night. Stuck so hard that I kept wanting to put my hands in shorts dozens of times, but I’d held back.
Eventually things got so bad that I ended up taking a bath and masturbating with a washcloth in my mouth to muffle any sounds and music blasting. Just in case.
Even after I came hard, twice, I got out of the tub and didn’t feel satisfied.
Summer was supposed to be a chance to do what I wanted, but so far I was feeling…untethered.
Having all this time stretched out in front of me, even with my part-time job hours and my class coming up felt almost dangerous. I was so used to being a student that when I didn’t have an absolutely packed academic schedule, my brain went into panic mode.
Right now, I needed to relax for a few days. I knew this. But doing that wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and this whole thing with Reid wasn’t making it any better.
Before I’d seen her, I’d run out to the farmers’ market to get some fresh veggies and fruit and bread and then I’d come back and made a huge bowl of pasta salad to have for the week, cleaned up, rearranged my books, and sent Larison a million funny memes.
Then Reid had come back and I’d seized my moment to talk to her. The rest of my night had been taken up with making dinner and reading and staring in the mirror deciding whether I wanted to get bangs or not.