She was the sweetest person I knew-not necessarily a good thing, by the way-and he was by far the nastiest.
I guess I was supposed to think about the 'what if?' because Millie used to be my girlfriend. Because the human brain is designed to fill in the gaps, and I was twenty-nine, and Millie was my only serious girlfriend, so people might assume it was some big, lost love.
The truth, as always, was both disappointing and unflattering.
Millie was never a big love. I liked her, but it wasn't fierce or deprived or insane. I cared for her and wanted to protect her, but never in a way that drove me out of my fucking mind, like it did to Vicious.
The fact that I still liked her after she bailed out on me and fucked off leaving a half-assed breakup letter just goes to show we weren't really meant to be. Because the truth was, I was enamored with Emilia LeBlanc … until I wasn't.
Sometimes I think I just loved the idea of her, or never loved her at all. Either way, one thing couldn't be disputed-when I was with her, I was good to her. Loyal. Respectful. She, in return, fucked me over.
To this day, I don't feel like I truly knew my only ex-girlfriend. I knew her traits, sure. The crap that would make it onto your dating website profile. Dry facts. She was artistic, shy, and well-mannered. But I had no idea what her fears and secrets were. What kept her up at night, what made her blood simmer and her body sizzle.
The other part of my ugly truth was I never felt like I wanted to know these things about anyone other than Rosie LeBlanc. But Rosie fucking hated me. So, I stayed single. She was going to change her mind. She had to.
Speaking of Rosie, she didn't take money from Vicious and Millie unless it was out of necessity. That was common knowledge, and she made that point a year ago by furnishing my two-point-three-million-dollar New York condo she had been living in with Craigslist discards that cost less than two hundred bucks in total. I doubted I could change her mind, but when it came to her, I was always up for trying to.
So, anyway. Back to the important stuff-fucking.
It was when Kennedy took me in her mouth, exhibiting some serious deep-throat talent, that I heard a knock on my door. No one was allowed into the building without a code, and no one had asked me for one recently, which brought me to the simple conclusion it must be Miss LeBlanc herself.
"Dean!" Her raspy voice crawled from the outside hall into every tissue in my body and I immediately grew harder. Kennedy noticed, I'm sure, because her grasp on my dick loosened, then I felt her breathing hard against my thigh. Natasha stopped the tongue-action. They both froze. Three more knocks. "Open up."
"Is that the weird girl again?" the latter inquired with a hybrid of a scowl and a pout.
"Sure fucking is."
"She's freaking me out."
"Such a weirdo," Natasha agreed. Like their opinion mattered. To me. To Rosie.
I rose to a sitting position and tucked myself into my black sweatpants. I didn't mourn the unfulfilled fuck. I was more eager to catch a glimpse of that tiny thing, wondering what she came here for. I got up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, my hands sliding up to purposely mess my hair. "This was fun." I kissed both the backs of their hands before I started stalking to the entrance door with purpose. "We should do it again sometime."
We weren't going to do it sometime. Or anytime. This was goodbye, and they both knew it. I was clear when I picked them up the night before at some Manhattan bar I went to. They were inhaling cocaine like it was powdered sugar, maybe a grand's worth of it, on a table in a glitzy place I went to whenever I needed to make use of those custom-made condoms. I sat at the bar, exchanged some flirty looks with them, then signaled the bartender to send the girls some drinks. They invited me to come over and do some shots with them. I invited them to sit on my face. One drink turned into seven. This script was getting old.
"Whoa, you're such a piece-of-work." Kennedy was the first to get up from the bed. I twisted my head to watch her collect her dress from the floor, yanking it up like it wronged her somehow.
Really? I thought. Before I hailed a taxi to take us to my place, I laid it out for them, clear as the fucking August sky: this was a random hookup. Christ, what part of picking them up from a bar and using Two Girls, One Cup as a small-talk topic made them think there would be more?
I offered the girls a consolation wink before swaggering my way into the vast, champagne-lit hallway, cream marble flooring, and black and white family portraits glaring at me from every corner with huge, white-toothed smiles.