The Pact(37)

“Fuck! It’s cold,” Steph swears as an icy, damp breeze riles up the hair around her face. Her nose is already a shade of red, which is just too fucking cute.

“Aren’t you glad we aren’t camping?” Penny yells, pulling her leather jacket close to her as she runs back to the car for something else.

My own leather jacket, thanks to Stephanie, is doing a fine job of keeping me warm even though it does feel like you’re walking through a winter cloud out here. I’m tempted to take it off and drape it over Stephanie’s shoulders but Aaron comes out of the house and tells her he’ll bring the rest in. For a moment I’m almost impressed because that has to be the most gentlemanly thing I’ve heard the young fuck say to her so far but I don’t let myself get carried away.

I still don’t think he’s the guy for her and I think after this weekend, I’ll have no doubts about that.

I don’t know why I care though. There’s nothing I can do about it at this point.

Once we all bring everything inside, there is the fight for the bedrooms and privacy. Aaron immediately calls one bedroom and I’m about to call the other when I decide Penny and James should have it since she’s the one who organized this whole thing. The cottage is a co-worker’s and we’re staying the weekend for free.

Nadine groans loudly from beside me. “I can’t sleep on a couch,” she mumbles, gesturing to what looks like a really nice pull-out under skylights and before the wide expanse of the fog-shrouded Pacific. “My back.”

She sometimes has back problems. They seem to have stemmed from around the time she had her appendix out, so I have no reason to believe she makes this shit up to get her way sometimes. You know, so she doesn’t have to do the dishes or take out the garbage or go to her job. I can’t count the number of times I’ve left her in my bed and gone to work while she stays at home and of course there’s a scramble at the charter company because she’s my girlfriend and now they have to hire another temp to cover reception.

Nadine didn’t even want to go on this trip. When we’d first started dating she’d been very adventurous and sporty. We did a lot of road trips to go hiking, went stand-up paddle-boarding, we even got into weekly rock-climbing at a gym. But in the last couple of months, she’s changed a wee bit.

I want to say it’s for the better but…it’s not. She’s more suspicious of me and what I do, especially when it comes to other women, especially when it comes to Stephanie, and her nag-o-meter is turned to eleven. She badgers me more about the future and the more that the future approaches, the less certain I am about it.

I want to make this work. I don’t want all this time I’ve put into this relationship to go to waste. I’m at an age now where you’re not supposed to still be finding the one. Hell, aside from my core group here, most of the people I know are already married with children.

I don’t want to break it off with Nadine and discover that we could have worked through it, that it was just a rough patch, that she could have changed back to the way she was, to the happy, fuck-filled days we used to have. I don’t want to give up.

Not without a reason.

My eyes trail over to Stephanie and I know what she’s going to say to Nadine’s complaints. I want to tell her no, she doesn’t need to do that.

“That’s okay,” Stephanie says, smiling at Nadine. “Aaron and I can take the couch, we don’t mind.”

And even though Aaron is the one who called the room, he really doesn’t look like he cares. He shrugs in his slacker way and says, “Yeah, no worries, man.”

“Thanks,” Nadine says quickly and without really looking at her. Stephanie knows that Nadine doesn’t like her and is usually trying to bend over backwards to fix that. I want to tell her there is no point, that Nadine is jealous of our relationship and no amount of sucking up and being nice is going to change anything.

The funny thing is, Stephanie isn’t really sucking up either. She just wants people to like her. It’s one thing I’ve watched with her over the years, something she still hasn’t really grown out of. She has confidence in so many things but she’s still screaming for approval. Sometimes I just want to pull her aside and tell her that she doesn’t need to be the daughter that’s filling the void that her brother left behind, or the best business on the block, or the best looking girl in the room. She is already all of that and more and her own approval is the only one she needs.

I try and meet Stephanie’s gaze but she’s busy bringing her metallic duffel bag over to the couch. She plops down on the cushions and bounces up and down, smiling at Aaron as if to say the couch was a better option anyway. Her breasts, which are looking more spectacular every single day, jiggle all over the fucking place and I avert my eyes before anyone notices. They’re more hypnotic than a lava lamp.