"Did the word 'ugly' come up?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Huh? I don't—oh, right, yeah, I looked at the whole disaster and I said 'that's…pretty ugly' or something like that. I almost texted you. Your girlfriend was having a day, Ash."
It all made sense now. I knew that incident had been blown up, and I was right. I shook my head. "She has a lot of those."
"So what's the problem with you guys?"
I leaned forward to pour myself three fingers and drank two. "Remember when I told you I was going under the radar?"
"Back in December? Yeah. You said you had some things to work out. You'd be holing up with her and not hanging with anyone else for a while. I assumed since I didn't hear from you that's what you were doing."
"Yeah, that's what we were doing. I didn't see you, I didn't see my buddies, my sibs, no-one. No digital or phone with anyone this whole time."
"That blows. You weren't at Christmas, I know."
"You went to our place?" Sloane usually spends her holidays with my family, because her parents are assholes.
"Yeah…" She shifted uneasily.
"Christmas was an intimate dinner for two this year. Fucking awful."
"Wow. I'm sorry, Ash. So…the bonding thing didn't work?"
I looked at her. "Actually, it did."
It had been Aura who suggested it. She'd tried plenty of times to get me to banish Sloane from my life. But each time I'd called her bluff. This time, though, with graduation looming—me from college, her from law school—she'd pointed out we needed more bonding time if our relationship was going to work long-term.
She said—and I strongly suspect an issue of ELLE was involved—we needed to become not just lovers, but friends.
I'd thought, well fuck, she's actually right. We weren't friends, but your girlfriend should be your friend. Right?
It was tempting. I mean, I'd witnessed friendship in my parents.
My parents. The perfect example of fuck buddies who are also best friends. Ever watch The Brady Bunch? Imagine if Carol and Mike Brady had made all those kids together. That right there is Mama and Dad. They had six kids, three girls and three boys. It's not much of a stretch to say my parents have fucked every day of their marriage, with maybe a 2% room for error.
And yet they hang out together all the time.
So yeah, I'd been willing to try to change things up, to break the inertia with Aura if there was a chance I could have what my parents had.
"Oh." Sloane sounded confused. "It worked?"
"Yeah. I learned once and for all that Aura and I should not spend all our time together ever again."
"I see. What did you do, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Yoga. Ellipticals. Core conditioning."
Charis burst out laughing. "No way."
She's well aware I consider those activities hell on earth. Aura considers them "spiritually fulfilling." Me, I go for competitive sports. Basketball, squash, swimming, soccer, track—hell, ping-pong works. It's all about winning.
The whole body sculpting craze is my idea of torture. And yoga? Listen, you can "resonate with your inner mind-body chi" or whatever it is all you want, just don't make me fucking join in.
Charis, by the way, is just as bad. She can't drag me to her zumba classes. The one time she tried to bribe me to go along to a body-mind-energy thingamafuck taught by some "amazing" old guy, I laughed in her face.
But I did it for my girlfriend. I'd been told by the foremost authority—my friend Joel—that you have to do that noble shit for women you're serious about.
"Is that all?" Charis snorted. "I can't believe that was a dealbreaker. I mean, not to seem unsupportive, here, dude, but if that was the extent of it…"
"No, it's not all. We did this thing she called quality time. Meaning we ate every meal together."
"That's actually kind of nice? You know?"
"Right, let me disillusion you about that. We ate together no matter how irregular our schedules. I spent more time shuttling between campus and my coworking office than I ever spent with you gaming. Look at these circles under my eyes."
She gazed at me, blinked, then looked away. "Yeah, you look like crap," she mumbled. "But at least you, uh, talked, right? You bonded that way."
I lifted one eyebrow. "Sure, we talked. Damn if I know what about. Celebrities. Fashion. Dieting."
Girl shit. I didn't say it. I mean, Charis is a girl, and she doesn't talk about those things. So logically, that would imply she wasn't a girl, which I've learned over time never gets my balls not kicked. Plus I'm not a hundred percent insensitive all the time.
But seriously, it had been hell.
The inane conversation…and the shopping. Dude, the shopping—for furniture, for shoes, for collectibles, for phones. For fucking hours on end. Just the memory made me go pale. I recall somewhere in there I did manage to persuade Aura to try gaming again, but she burst into tears in one of her perfectionist snits. Chalk up one more defunct attempt at bonding.
But you know what all that bonding time with Aura really did? It raised the cray-cray bar with that girl.
There was that time she went down on me and actually chewed on my balls. She fucking drew blood. Now I'm all up for nails digging into the back and some hot, frenzied roughness, but that wasn't fun, that was passive aggressive messed-up shit and not a little disturbing.
Not that I could tell Sloane that story.
The ban had been successful, all right. It had told me I didn't actually like my girlfriend.
"Okay, well, I can see that didn't work. But don't tell me you broke up because you found you didn't have a lot in common. I mean, you must have known that by now."
"Sure, I knew it." I swallowed the last finger and refilled. "It wasn't just that. I didn't need her to be my best friend. That's what you're for."
I smiled at her cockily.
Would you believe that before Sloane, I've never even had a "best friend?" Swear to God, I've never needed one. My tribe is big. Far as I know, no Norrell has ever been lonely for more than fifteen minutes. There's always somebody to join up with.
Sloane is a different animal, the first person to give me most everything I need. She's the one I count on for every mood, every time…the one person I consistently choose to be with. I'd fucking keep her stashed in my back pocket if I could. Come to think of it, I did have her there, before the ban. She's all over my phone.
Really, the only thing missing between me and her is sex.
Vaguely I sensed her widening the space between us, curling up along the arm of the long sofa and cradling her drink.
"Fair enough," she said. "Then why?"
"We basically broke up," I said, "because Aura didn't believe what I told her. She didn't trust me. She didn't think I wanted her. Nothing got through to her. I'd had it with trying to convince her."
Charis was silent for a bit. Then she said, "Okay, that was wrong. Everybody knows you're crazy about her."
I shrugged. "I wasn't a saint either. My time commitments didn't help the situation."
"That doesn't make it right," she stated. "It's stupid the way people treat each other sometimes."
Sloane's got four years on me and plenty of smarts, but they're not what I'd call people smarts. As an only child of self-absorbed artists, she was left on her own a lot. She's carved her own path in life, and in many ways that left her sheltered from the world's harshness. She doesn't get why people act like assholes.
And when she thinks someone's been assholish to me? She always takes my side. You've heard the phrase "loyal to a fault?" That's Charis Sloane.
I have to admit, it packs a powerful punch, her faith in me.
I fucking love Charis.
"What's up?" I prodded as she frowned.
Her slim chest rose and fell. She clasped her hands in front of her. "Have you ever considered that Aura might suffer from an eating disorder?"
I narrowed my eyes. "What do you know about eating disorders, Ms. Eats A
nything That Walks?"
Charis sighed. "One, my mom was a ballet dancer. She and all her cronies have definite issues with body image. Two, I watched a video where—"
"Have mercy, Sloane." Sloane can turn any subject into a forty-five minute lecture. "The answer's no. I'd have known."
"Not necessarily," she argued. "A person can—"
"Yes. I would."
"Asher—"
"I know every detail of her body, inside and out," I said crudely. "I know all her habits. I know her story. She had a traumatic childhood with a controlling mother who made her feel like shit about her body, a brother who bullied her, and a father who emotionally abused her. She's screwed up in other ways. Believe me, I'd fucking throw a party if it were that simple. I could have made one call and gotten her help."
Charis flushed, to my amusement. She generally did when I referred explicitly to my sex life. Which I didn't often do around her, it's true. I blame the booze.
"Eating disorders are not simple," she argued. "They're complicated and devastating. Maybe bulimia was why—"
"No. She doesn't have bulimia. Zero percent chance. Trust me on this."
"Oh! I forgot about your cousin in the Tri-Cities with the teeth," she conceded.
"Damn right. There's a whole shitload of signs that someone has bulimia, it's not just the teeth."
"Hmm, okay, you win. So…today you just said that's it, we're through?"
"No. I told her the tantrums had to stop. She said if I was going to criticize her, we had to stop and we were through."
"Ouch. So she was the one who called it off."
"No, she was bluffing. It happens. This time I called her bluff."
"I see. Um, out of morbid curiosity, how did you do that?"
"Why do I feel like I'm in high school again?" I smirked.
"Hey, Norrell, I wasn't the one who came here and—"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm teasing you. What I said was I guess we're through, then. So she backed off and said maybe we can work things out."
I paused, opting not to detail Aura's next move, which had been to stick her hand down my fly. That maneuver hadn't worked, though it had been touch and go, I'll admit. Rock on, Stage Three.
"I told her I'd had enough and to get out. She threatened never to come back."
Charis groaned. "I bet I know what you said then."
I stared at her. "You're on. Ten bucks. What did I say?"
"You said 'that sounds good to me.'"
Holy hell. Charis knew me better than Aura did. Damn, I'd missed this woman.
I reached in my pocket and tossed the bill her way. She caught it in one hand. "Close enough. I said sounds like a plan. She hurled names, I flung open the door—"
"You didn't tell her not to let it hit her on her way out."
"Now you're getting carried away. No, I just said, bye, have a nice life. She left. And that was that."
Charis stared at me. I waited, but she didn't say anything else for a while. I wondered what was going through her mind. "You really are, aren't you? You and Aura are kaput. This is it. The final finale."
I closed my eyes again and leaned back, stretching out my long arms along the back of the sofa. "Yeah."
The breath whooshed from her puffed cheeks. "So how are you taking it? Without any of that macho crap you do."
"Not bad, considering."
It was true. I wasn't exactly chipper, but the feeling of being punched to the gut had waned. Now it was a matter of adjusting to the new reality.
The important thing was, it was over. About fucking time, too.
Charis looked doubtful. "Breaking up from a long-term relationship is a huge deal. You must be in denial. It's the first stage of grief. You're probably experiencing an artificial sense of closure. Soon you'll be plunged into the next stage and—"
I cut her off. "We've been going downhill for a while. Almost from the start if you want the truth. Come on, you must have had a clue what was going on."
"No. I don't know. Maybe. Like I said, you guys always seemed real intense. I thought…"
I detected something in her tone and opened one eye. "You thought what?"
"I don't know. I assumed you'd get married one day."
"Not happening. Not getting married to Aura. Ever. The end."
Charis said something under her breath.
I shifted to get a better look at her. She was gazing down at her hands. They were clenched together tightly, her knuckles stark white.
"Char?"
She looked up quickly. "Yeah?"
Her panicked expression startled me. I leaned forward and covered her hands with one of mine. "Don't freak out, kid. Only good things ahead."
My calling her "kid," by the way, is our joke. She may be older, but she's always been much smaller than me.
"You're not just putting on a brave front?" she asked. "Because you do kinda look like shit worked over."
I shook my head. "We were a hot mess, Aura and me. Believe me, I just saved myself a lifetime of hurt."
"All this time I thought she made you happy."
Whether on account of the booze, my supreme relaxation, or who-knows-what, the words were spoken before I could censor them. "Just my dick. Aura made my dick stupid happy. Note the stupid. Other than that, though, I can't say…"
Her expression halted me.
Right. So when your best friend is female, you try to keep the dick references to a minimum. If you do mention it, you don't talk about its aspect as an instrument of pleasure.
At least that's the case if you were raised by a mother from the deep South with strict views on male chivalry and a father who adored his daughters.
I don't know what made me say it, but I knew by her stunned expression I'd crossed a line.
I winced and held up my shot glass in a toast. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Sloane. Crass Bastard Norrell's the name. Stick around, next up I actually stick my entire foot into my mouth."
CHAPTER 7
Three Years Ago, Slightly Before Asher Met Aura
Asher: So you say you dated the same guy all throughout college?
Charis: Ayup, sure did.
Asher: So why didn't you get married after you graduated?
Charis: It didn't come up. Look, you want to talk about froo-froo stuff or you want to play? Uh, Ash…
Asher: What?
Charis: You're looking at me funny. Are we playing, or what?
Asher: We're playing. You know, Sloane, you're not like the other girls.
Charis: How so? Aw, now I'm toast. Come on, we're going again. Round four. Ready?
Asher: Mm. How come you dress like that?
Charis: Because I actually think it's better to wear clothes than go around naked and be arrested?
Asher: You know what I mean. That gray thing.
Charis: This cardigan.
Asher: Yeah, the cardigan. How many layers do you need?
Charis: Don't get on my case about my clothes, dude.
Asher: Not me. I'm just pointing out your unique style.
Charis: Uh-huh. And I know a slick talker when I hear one.
Asher: And then there's the fact that you never say anything about guys treating you shitty.
Charis: What do you mean, shitty?
Asher: You know. It's all my sisters talk about. Whatever guy has just done them wrong.
Charis: Oh, right.
Asher: So who's done you wrong in life? Seriously, no joke. Some dude has to have pissed you off.
Charis: Well, yeah—you! I'm trying to cream your studly ass, Asher Norrell, and you keep flapping your lips like a sissy. Now take your death rays!
Asher: They're not death rays, woman.
Charis: They look like death rays and they act like death rays, they contain essence of death ray, so they're totally death rays, but with, I will grant you, all new branding. Hey! What's that for? Hands to yourself, mister. What's wrong with you? You're acting weird.
Asher: Sorry. My hand must have slipp
ed.
Charis: Right, slipped three feet over—foul! I call foul! Oh!
Asher: Oh, what?
Charis: Um. Nothing. So, uh…where were we?
Asher: I have no idea, Sloane. I was innocently tickling you, using an age-old tactic to distract you into defeat. Then you cried foul.
Charis: Right. Foul.
Asher: Maybe it's time to quit.
Charis: Hungry. I'm hungry.
Asher: Mm, me, too.
Charis: That's my phone. I have to take it.
Asher: Okay. Fuck.
Charis: What's that?
Asher: Nothing. Hey, I'm taking off.
Charis: Sounds good. Catch you later.
Asher
CHARIS TOOK MY DICK WELL in stride.
So to speak.
Her face had gone red, but she cleared her throat and gave me her Big Sister look from under her lashes. I think she's under the impression it makes her look severe.
It doesn't. It makes her look younger than me and fucking darling. Especially with those pink cheeks.
"It's okay, really. It's no big deal. I, uh, gather the sex with Aura was, uh, above average."
Now, when Sloane refers to sex, she always makes it sound like an esoteric activity. Like it's a hypothetical concept for her. Maybe that's why I have the vague idea that she's a virgin.
She's years older than me. Four, as I might have mentioned before. Which makes her 26. I know she had a boyfriend in college, though she doesn't talk about him much, so….I'm probably wrong about her being virginal. But as near as. I'm fairly certain of that.
When I think about it.
Which I don't.
Much.
"I mean," she rushed on, "you're implying the physical stuff was the best part of your relationship together. So your…your encounters…the sexual…sex…must have been unbelievably, outstandingly, supremely incom—comparable."
She was drunk. Maybe drunker than me. It hit me that I hadn't been the only one drowning their sorrows tonight.
But…sorrows? Charis isn't supposed to have sorrows. The very notion that she might have sorrows necessitating drowning ripped me open. Note to self: probe Sloane about her sorrows when we aren't both wasted.
Unfriended: A Geek and Stud Romance (Love in New Highland Book 1) Page 4
