Page 89 of The Match Faker
“What are you doing?” I ask into the comforter. “I don’t think I can take any more fucking.”
“No fucking.” His breath is warm on my cool, wet skin. Gently, like he’s pulling apart the petals of a rose, he spreads my tenderest skin. “I’m just going to clean you up.”
His nose bumps gently against my ass, then he laps at my pussy.
I squirm. Apparently, I’m fine if Nick looks directly into my asshole but my discomfort draws the line at him sucking his come out of me.
But then his chin bumps my clit, his tongue a soft brush against my skin, his beard a velvety rasp on my thighs. His kisses are sucking and wet, around my hole and inside of me. He grunts, the sound affirming his pleasure and mine. I wish I could see us. I open my eyes, my cheek pressed against his bedspread, the room dark except for the electric glow from the windows and the kitchen, and watch, out of body, my fist grip his pillow.
He thrusts his tongue inside me, his nose and chin bumping against me. I come in a wave rolling slowly down my back, his name a whispering gasp on my lips. I come around his tongue as he laps the last of his come from inside me, shuddering against him and biting my knuckles. When he finally pulls away, steadying me or maybe himself with a warm hand on my lower back, I bury my face in the linens.
Finally, Nick leaves the bed, returning with a warm cloth and some water. He lets me lie there as he pulls back covers and sheets, rearranging me so he can finally pour me into bed and slide in behind me.
Nick was right.
There was no way he was the only one to feel this way.
But as he pulls me against him, kissing the back of my head in such a casual way, I’m not sure I can admit that.
I’m a coward. I was a coward when I asked him to pretend to be my boyfriend, for not choosing this Nick in the first place. I’m a coward because I won’t take a risk, even when it’s not really a risk at all.
After long minutes of silence, Nick shifts, hugging me closer to him. “Do me a favor?”
“Okay,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“If you’re going to leave,” he says, his tone matter of fact. “Don’t come back here.”
My heart crumbles, like ash. A pain so searing I can’t speak, not yet.
“I think it would be easier that way. For both of us.”
I can’t respond, but he doesn’t need one. He goes quiet and eventually his breaths slow, lengthen as he falls asleep, and I watch the sun rise across the wall.
Around noon,Jade slams open my bedroom door and thunders across my floor before I have time to turn over in bed.
“Leave me alone, troll,” I whine as she snuggles beside me. In response, she pulls one of my pillows away from me, pounding it into submission for her own comfort.
“You’re late for work,” she says in a creepily chipper voice.
“I called in sick.”
I left Nick’s apartment early yesterday morning, after sleeping almost not at all. I’d walked out onto the sidewalk on wobbly legs, my heart lodged in my throat. It wasn’t until I was on our front doorstep that I was brave enough to pull out my phone, open my text chat, and typed the words I should have typed long ago:
Me: I’m sorry. I can’t see you again.
I haven’t been able to look at my phone since.
“But you’re not sick.” Jade places the back of her hand against my forehead for confirmation.
“Haven’t been sleeping well,” I mumble, rolling deeper into my pillows. “Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
Mostly I just don’t want to go to work today. I can’t muster up the energy and make myself, which is really messed up because if there’s one thing I’ve always been able to do, it’s walk into a job I hate with my head held high. The idea of having to doAnaïs’s bidding, of looking Mitchell in the eye, makes me want to simultaneously scream and throw up.
Jade huffs and rolls me over with the kind of strength a little sister shouldn’t have over her big sister. “You’re real dumb for such a smart woman, you know that?”
“Hey.” I reach for her forearm to apply a pinch to the tender triceps area, but she bats my hand away and I give up. I don’t even have the energy for retribution. “That’s rude.” I pout.
Jade sits up, cross-legged. Her hair is a mess, sticking up at odd ends and flyaways clinging to unseen static. She bounces on her butt just to hear the mattress springs creak, and even though she’s much older and there’s only one of her, I’m suddenly transported right back to Nick’s parents’ house. His bed filled with niblings and the joy he gets from them.