“Thank you.” She sounds grateful, and it hits me in the heart. My grandmother has been dealt with a shit hand in life, and it explains her overprotective nature. That nature saved me, so I’m not going to curse it. “That makes me very happy, Aidan. Take care of yourself and find a damn woman that isn’t dense and after your pocket.”
I laugh lightly. “Alright.”
“I want grandbabies.”
“I know.”
“There’s more to life than hook-ups. Just because you’ve been burned before, it doesn’t mean they’re all the same.”
I sigh and shut my eyes briefly. “No more, Ruth.”
But she rattles on about my sex life, and I sit through it until she’s finally happy to let me go. When I disconnect the call, I stand in my bedroom and blankly look at my surroundings. My eyes focus on the bed, and I wonder how many women have fallen into it. How many women have I undressed? How many have fucked me senseless, cock-hungry and salivating for more? And why the fuck can’t I remember a single face?
The silence feels loud somehow. The loneliness I feel inside of me is like a pickaxe chipping away at my soul. There’s a gaping hole in my chest and for the life of me, I can’t fill it with the bodies that have come and gone.
I find myself gravitating to my phone again. I swipe the screen and open the conversation I’ve been having with Ivy. She didn’t respond to the messages I left last night, and instead moved on to other things. I knew she would do that. I set the phone back down, determined not to get distracted. Then I change into loose clothes, take an elevator down to the gym and wreck myself over the next two and a half hours, until my lungs ache and I’m broken from lifting.
Why can’t I stop thinking about this woman?
It’s defying all logic.
I’m pissed off that I don’t understand it. One flight, one chance encounter with this girl, and nothing has felt the same.
I think about her smile, her big eyes, her cheeky little mouth. God, what a mouth. The fucking things I would do to that mouth. Fuck. I think about those random red strands of hair. I imagine fisting that hair, of shoving my cock inside her mouth. I imagine her looking up at me, full of me.
Have I blown her out of proportion? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want her.
“You are a machine,” a feminine woman remarks as I wipe the sweat off my head with a towel.
I recognize the voice. Sienna. “I have to move,” I reply. “Why are you so late?”
She comes to stand next to me and I peer at her. She looks fresh, her blonde hair tied up, her face make-up-less, wearing the usual torn up workout tights and motivational tee. Sienna is a workaholic like me. She works as a contract lawyer, lives in the same apartment building, and works out at night the same time I do. Usually, anyway. We’ve acquainted well the last two years, never taking our dialogue outside the gym. Mostly because we have no time. It works well.
“Long night at the office,” she explains. “I’m pretty run down.”
“That’s the perfect time to work out.”
She shrugs. “I suppose. How have you been?”
I shrug back. “Same shit, different day.”
“You’ve been making rounds on the news again.”
“What have I done this time?”
“Apparently you’re an asshole and you abuse your staff.”
I give her a flat look. “So what’s the problem?”
She smiles. “You’re going to need friends in your corner, Aidan. You can’t sit at the top of that mountain alone.”
I don’t answer.
“How is your conceited girlfriend going?” she then asks.
Fucking hell. She was never my girlfriend. “She’s out of the picture.”
“Is she really though?”
“No. She called my office another sixty-seven times today.”
“Bunny boiler.”
“I’m starting to think that.”
Sienna smirks and heads over to the elliptical machine. She sets her water bottle inside the cup holder and wraps her towel around one of the handles. Then she turns to me and leans against one side against the machine. “So now we’re hunting for more pussy?”
I don’t respond, my gaze returning to the weights as I finish wiping them down.
“You know I’m here, right?” There’s a hint of fun in her voice, but also seriousness too. “I’m not crazy. I don’t want a relationship. It would work well.”
I start making my way to the exit of the gym. “Have a good night, Sienna.”
“Aidan,” she says in a hard voice.
I stop and look at her. “What?”
“It would work well,” she repeats sincerely. “What could go wrong?”
I don’t answer. Nothing would go wrong technically. Sienna is a beautiful woman. She’s independent, flirty, and intelligent. But…nothing stirs when I look at her. She doesn’t get my blood pumping the way Ivy did on that plane.
Ivy has ruined flings for me.
“Good night, Sienna,” I tell her again without looking at her, and then I’m gone.
Ivy
If someone were to ask me, why do you take so much shit from him? I’m not sure what I would say, but it’s definitely a question I mull over in my head the next morning.
Why do women take so much shit?
Why don’t we just walk away?
What are we holding onto exactly?
How much hope has been wired in us until it’s gone? At this rate, I’m not sure it’s hope I’m even clinging to. Maybe it’s habit?
I’m packing lunch in the kitchen, brain absorbed by these questions, trying so very hard not to concentrate on the fact that Derek has disappeared into the toilet and has not come out in nearly forty minutes.
He’s doing it again. I pause and run a weary hand through my hair. When trust has been blown, paranoia follows, and that damn paranoia ensnares you
