Page 4 of Ghosted By Texas

“What do you mean?”

“If she’s just a friend, then clarifying the fact that you are only friends, who happen to fuck when you’re not seeing someone else, shouldn’t be cruel to anyone. If you’re lying, then I guess it would be cruel to both that woman and myself, Austin. I’m telling you now, either you call her over here and get this out in the open, or whatever we started between us ends here.”

Austin stared at me for a moment, as if I might change my mind, and then his shoulders slumped and he took a step to the left and crooked his finger, inviting the woman to join us.

My stomach had gone from being filled with beautiful butterflies to lead balloons, and now it felt like a bottomless pit about to suck me into a hellscape of my own making. Why had I thought confronting the other woman in Austin’s life was a good idea? Shoot. Wait. Was I the other woman? He was dating me, but they were lifelong friends and fuck buddies for who knew how long. Dammit, logistically, that made me the other woman.

My cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the thought as I turned to greet the naturally blonde girl who stood only a few feet behind us.

“What’s going on, Aus?”

“Jordan, this is Becs,” he introduced her to me. That didn’t sit well because I was his date for the night. It felt like that introduction should have gone the other way.

“And?” She turned that one word into an effective question with the attitude that dripped from it. If I thought she resented me spending time with Austin, it was proven by how she responded.

“And, since you’re throwing around so much attitude, my date had questions about our relationship,” he added.

Jordan glared my way before turning her attention back to Austin and smiling viciously. “Did you tell her we were best friends?” She asked, to which Austin nodded his head, and I could almost see the relief alleviate some of the sag that weighed his shoulders down. His bestie wasn’t quite done, though. “Or that we fuck? A lot,” she tacked on those last two words before turning her venomous smirk back my way.

“Why are you being like this?” My date asked the woman. “I told her that we had an arrangement whenever we weren’t seeing anyone else.”

“Yeah? Well considering we exercised our arrangement just a few days ago, and had plans tonight that got cancelled unexpectedly, I wasn’t aware that our arrangement was paused again.”

A few days ago? That lead balloon feeling morphed to something far worse as I felt the need to hurl my popcorn and candy mixture.

“It’s been weeks, not days,” Austin corrected as he huffed out a frustrated breath. The woman grimaced and shrugged her shoulders, as if that little fact changed anything. It did, in a way. At least he hadn’t been having sex with her while he was trying to date me. That would have been a lot worse.

“I wasn’t aware there was any arrangement with another person before five minutes ago,” I explained to the woman. “I’m sorry for that because I never would have gone out with him had I known.”

Jordan ducked her head, seeming almost embarrassed by my admission. Austin turned on a dime and reached out to take hold of my arm and stop me from moving any further away from him.

“Becs?” He questioned with a hint of desperation in his voice. “Please, stop. I don’t want you to leave. It’s not like I’ve been seeing you both at the same time. I haven’t even seen Jordan since last week, and that was only in the gym on campus. I haven’t been with her since before the day I ran into you.”

Jordan sucked in a breath, no doubt realizing that he cut her off, apparently without a conversation about it, the day he met me.

“It looks like you have some things to work out with your friend. That was something you should have done before asking me out,” I scolded him. “This is an awkward position for me because you made me the unknowing other woman. You should have clarified a bit better when I asked if you were dating anyone.”

Austin cut me off, but that was all I had to say to him. “I told you that I wasn’t seeing anyone, and that was the truth.”

I scoffed. “That was your cue to come clean about having a regular fuck buddy. Don’t try to bullshit me with semantics, Austin.”

“It’s the truth, though. I never would have touched Jordan again while dating you.”

“But the minute we end things, you’ll be right back in her bed, right?” I asked, hurt on Jordan’s behalf that he could so callously dump her and then expect to pick right back up when she was convenient again. He shrugged sheepishly and I turned to look at the woman whose cheeks were flaming with embarrassment.

“We’ve only ever been friends who have sex when we’re both single,” she admitted while kicking at a pebble that seemed to be taking all her concentration.

“When was the last time you were the unavailable person in your little arrangement?” I asked out of curiosity. The woman glanced up at me, a pained expression in her eyes, and I knew the answer without her having to say a word. She hadn’t been dating other people. Jordan was waiting for Austin to take their relationship seriously and become more than a fuck buddy or his friend.

“I can’t do this,” I told Austin, before turning and getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I ignored Mr. Texas as he pleaded for me to come back. There was no way in hell that would ever happen. It was a damn shame too because there was a spark with Austin that I’d never experienced with another man in all my years of dating. We clicked on this crazy, other-worldly level that I dared to call magical when I told my best friend about him. Unfortunately, the magic turned out to be a healthy dose of deception and disappointment.

Clea was my best friend. I should have told her what happened with my date, especially since I had waxed poetic about him being my soulmate and a bunch of magical crap that turned out to be a load of bullshit. I wasn’t the type of girl to delude herself into thinking things were true that weren’t. I certainly had never been the type to fall in love at the drop of a hat. I’d never been in love. We were in college, I’d dated. Okay, I’d dated a lot of men and a couple of women. There hadn’t been any that I would ever say anything magical, poetic, or even a single lovey-dovey sentence about. Not one. Not until him.

My epic failure stared me in the face as Clea waited to hear all about my date the night before. What to tell her? Shit. I had nothing.

“Well?”

I sighed. “Maybe he wasn’t as magical as I originally thought,” I admitted.