Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Tally
That’s a thing?
How is that a thing?
That can’t be a thing!!!
Shilpa
It’s a thing.
Dred
It’s my turn in the fire, I guess.
Tally
I’m twenty, not a teenager. No one has to worry about corrupting my poor innocent mind. I’ve been to parties where people were boning on the living room couch (which is gross, by the way) while the people who sat beside them played video games (and an onlooker cheered them on).
Dred
Please tell me you didn’t stay at that party long.
Tally
Obviously not. I was worried about getting an STI just from breathing the sex air.
How did I not know contactless orgasms were a thing?
Rix
To be fair, it’s not super common.
Shilpa
This is true.
Tally
How not common is it?
Dred
It’s rare. I probably should have led with that.
Iprobably shouldn’t have said anything at all. Although I’m highly appreciative of how easily my friends have accepted my decision and are supporting me without pressing me for details I’m not ready to give. New messages pop up in my private chat with Lexi.
Lexi
Once again, proving your magical unicorn status.
Why have you never shared this special talent?
Dred
Most people are shocked and then jealous.
Lexi
That’s fair. I would be jealous if I didn’t have my very own personal and dedicated orgasm provider.
Dred
Daddy Roman
Lexi
Can I tell you how excited I am for him to dress up as Santa again this year?
I need to stop talking about this.
My pregnancy hormones are out of control.
Me and the girls will be there to pick you up in about twenty minutes. How are you doing?
Dred
Today is the kind of day I wished I partook in the herbal variety of stress relief. I’m nervous. Even the full-contact self-administered orgasms aren’t taking the edge off.
Lexi
You could ask Connor to help you out.
Dred
It’s an idea.
But probably not a good one.
Lexi
Seeing more than just his pretty face these days?
Dred
The way he loves his Meems is hard to ignore.
So many things about him are now—like the furrow in his brow every time he looks at me, as though he’s trying to figure out what to say.
Or how the past four nights, after I’ve fallen asleep on the couch in the library, like I do every night, he’s come in and carried me to bed. And every night his kiss migrates, moving closer to my mouth.
He’s fine when Meems has dinner with us, but on those evenings when she’s too tired—which is becoming increasingly, alarmingly frequent—and it’s just the two of us, he struggles not to say something that could be hurtful, if interpreted incorrectly. Most of the time I can decode the message under the words, but today I’m stressed.
My wedding is in two weeks—when Connor said it would be a short engagement, I thought maybe a few months, not a handful of weeks. But he’s worried about Meems’s health, and frankly, so am I.
The wedding I can handle, but the bridal shower being thrown by his mother at his sister Isabelle’s house today terrifies the shit out of me.
Meems and all my friends will be there as a buffer, but I won’t have Connor as my bodyguard.
Dred
I have to put my dress on, and it’ll take another ten minutes to get from my bedroom to the front door, so I’m signing off until you get here.
Lexi
You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.
I toss my phone on the bed and head for the closet. Another dress appeared yesterday. This one is exceedingly modest, but also beautiful. I could probably have bought a brand-new car twice over with the amount of money spent on dresses for me recently. Or fund a soup kitchen for a year. Which is gross to think about. But it also gives me pause when I consider the library gala and how different it could look this year, and how easy it would be to fund all the programs if I changed the scope of my thinking.
I shove those thoughts aside. They’re not helpful. When I get my first check I’ll donate to ease my guilty conscience.
I change into the dress and transfer the necessary items from my purse to my matching clutch. I grab a handful of bracelets from my dresser and thread them onto my left wrist to cover the raw skin and faint bruising left behind from the hair tie. I’ve switched to a scrunchie recently, which helps, but the skin isn’t quite healed yet. I hate that I’ve resorted to this old behavior, and that it’s mostly subconscious.
I make sure I have everything before I leave my room, carrying my high heels since it’s half a kilometer from my room to the front door. I was only slightly exaggerating about how long it takes to get from one end of the house to the other.
Connor is sitting in the living room with Meems when I arrive. I smile at her outfit. Meems loves statement pieces just as much as Connor seems to, and together she and I make quite the pair. Our dresses are mirrors of each other. Hers is teal with wine piping and mine is wine with teal piping. This is intentional. And not just because it’s cute, I’ve come to realize. It screams solidarity, and it’s a giant fuck you to Connor’s parents and their apparent love of sad beige dresses.