by Carlos Dash
I go into my closet, threw on some weekend clothes, and then head for the kitchen.
Okay, now the silence is starting to feel a bit odd, so I call out to the girl.
“Emily? Emily, are you there?”
No response.
“Emily?” I raise the tone of my voice and for the second time that morning, I do a tour of my home in search of the girl. “If this is your idea of a joke and you’re planning on jumping out at me…” I trail off. I can’t even threaten her. What am I supposed to say?
But such thoughts melt away, replaced by a sense of uneasiness. It really does seem like I’m the only one in the house.
“Emily?”
Still no response.
I walk around the place with growing apprehension and look everywhere I can. This time, the girl doesn’t pop up and reveal herself. Her clothes are gone, meaning she’s gone. She left the house while I was still in the shower.
The question is why.
Things were going so well between us. Or was that just an act on her part?
Another why: Why the hell do I care? I should be relieved that she’s gone.
A lone wolf isn’t supposed to crave the company of another. He isn’t supposed to become attached to someone he barely knows. I didn’t even get her last name.
I shake my head like a dog trying to rid its fur of water, and then I force myself to go about my usual morning routine.
Knowing that I need to take my mind off the situation, I go to my living room and dive right into my daily morning workout. After several sets of pushups and abdominal crunches, my heart is racing.
For a moment, I really believe that I’ve gotten over whatever was happening to me.
And then it all comes storming back.
Emily’s face appears in my head. I can see all her features so clearly. Her eyes. Her nose. Her lips. Her hair. She isn’t smiling at me, but she doesn’t need to. Even the stoic expression on her face makes my heart throb wistfully.
I scoff at myself and try to occupy my mind by cooking up an omelet, but that fails to do the trick as well.
Finally, as I’m sitting down on a stool next to the breakfast nook and eating my meal, I realize that I have no choice but to accept that I’ve formed some sort of bond with the girl. I don’t know if she feels the same way about our time together, but it’s hard not to laugh about the situation.
The whole thing is so ironic. I’ve gone my entire adult existence trying to avoid letting people into my life and keeping my sexual relationships as casual as possible. And now this has happened, and it’s all because of one of those casual sexual relationships.
My plan has backfired on me.
Make no mistake about it, I don’t love Emily. Not yet.
Despite what romantic comedies with Sandra Bullock tell you, you can’t fall in love with someone after just one night.
It isn’t love. But it is something else. Something interesting. Something that fills me with equal parts dread and excitement.
That being said, I know that as long as I never see her again, I’ll return to normal after a little bit of time. Her impact on me will fade away and she’ll soon become a distant memory.
But it all depends on me never seeing her again. That’s important. That’s the key detail. I can never lay eyes on that beautiful face again. That’s the way it has to be.
I just hope the universe doesn’t have other plans.
Chapter 23
It’s been two days since I last saw Emily.
Unfortunately, she’s still on my mind, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about that. It isn’t a constant thing, but I can’t take much more of it. The recovery process isn’t working as fast as I had hoped. I need something to speed things up.
It’s 7:15 in the evening. I have the whole night ahead of me. Theoretically, going out and doing something to relieve the tension is very possible. Maybe it’s just an itch that needs to be scratched. Maybe sex with someone else will get my mind to reset—Then I won’t have to think about Emily.
Yeah, that’s an idea.
Why not?
I quickly get dressed and walk to my car. I get inside the thing, fire up the engine, and then contemplate where I should go. It’s a little early for that bar where I met Emily, but I’m not in the mood to go anywhere else.
“Might as well try my luck there,” I say to myself.
With a destination in mind, I pull out onto the road and get moving. A few minutes later I’m looking around to see what the scene in the bar is. There are only eight people milling about. Five of the eight are men. As for the three women, they all appear to be with one of the five men.
I’m not surprised. A part of me expected something like this to happen.
But onwards and forwards. I can’t just sit here lamenting my bad luck. I have to look to the next option on the list. There’s a nightclub about fifteen miles away that seems to have decent traffic around it regardless of what night of the week it is. Obviously the weekends are a lot more intense, but even on a weekday the place is guaranteed to have a higher population count than the bar.
So off I go. I know about the location because I drive by it on my way to work every morning. Getting there isn’t a problem, nor is getting in. I arrive to see a singular bouncer there by the door to the place. He sees me getting out of the Mercedes and instantly steps aside to let me in through the door. His job is to keep out underage kids, not to stop handsome men who probably have no trouble in the money department. I’m exactly the kind of customer that club wants.
I’m met with a wave of noise and energy as I cross the threshold—That’s the thing about nightclubs, the higher up they are in quality, the more you’ll feel like you’re on a different planet.
There’s a bar located in the eastern corner of the large area, but I’m not craving a drink. If I change my mind about that, I can just make myself something at home once I’m done having sex.
But first thing is first.
I need to find a willing partner. I can’t have sex with myself, obviously.
Well… technically I can, but that’s not the kind of sex I have in mind. Why perform solo when you can form a duet?
Besides, masturbation isn’t going to make me forget about Emily. Actually, there’s the risk of the opposite happening: I might not be able to prevent myself from thinking about her as I treat my body like an amusement park. What if her face is the last thing that goes through my head before completion? That’ll just make things worse.
No. That isn’t an option I’m going to seriously consider. It’s also been over a decade since I last resorted to the self-pleasure game. I don’t want to go back to that.
“You look a little dazed.”
I whirl around as I hear someone say that very close to my ear.
Looking at me with interest is a pretty face complete with full lips and long black hair.
“Sorry, did you say something?”
The woman smiles, forming cute dimples in her cheeks. “I said you look a little dazed.”
“I was just thinking about something,” I reply, unable to prevent myself from returning her smile.
Where did she come from?
Never mind. I didn’t want to know. Fact is that she’s just made things a lot easier for me.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Chapter 24
An hour later I’m looking down at the woman’s naked body. For the life of me I can’t recall what her name is, but I’m certain that she told it to me sometime during our conversation in the club—a conversation that required us to get very close to each other in order to be heard over the dance music that kept increasing in volume.
Neither of us minded that closeness one bit.
Not a whole lot of effort was required to get into her pants. Seemed like she was looking for an excuse to leave with someone. I was more than happy to make that a reality for her.
A coat of sweat glistens all over her nude form a
s I look down at her. I’m trying to decide whether the experiment has been a success or not before I have her for a second time.
On one hand, Emily’s face didn’t appear in my mind’s eye even once as we had sex. On the other hand, just as I was jizzing inside of her, Emily’s name did creep into my consciousness. The context was that I knew I would rather be having sex with Emily than this girl.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with her, it’s just that Emily has done something to me. Something that no one else has ever done.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
How could I allow this to happen?
But I have to keep going on. There’s no time to contemplate what exactly is happening to me—if sex with a beautiful woman isn’t enough to defeat it, then I really have something to be worried about.
And what’s the best way to combat your worries?
You guessed it.
I reach down and spread the woman’s legs apart. She has a bit of a bush down there, which is why I don’t have the slightest temptation to go down on her. She doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, the only thing that seems to matter to her is having my cock inside of her body, stretching her walls to the limit.
I meet that need and put my cock inside of her. She gasps in return and I get to work. I’m relentless. I take all my frustration about my feelings for Emily and unleash it on… fuck it, let’s just call her something. A name. Any name.
Hmm. How about Jenny? Yeah, that works.
“Jenny” raises her hips to meet mine after every thrust. She’s definitely more experienced than Emily, that’s for sure. But more experience doesn’t automatically equal better. She isn’t as tight as Emily, and that’s a bit of a downer, but there are worse problems a girl can have.
Halfway to my climax, I pull out of Jenny and put my hands on her waist. I turn her around with ease and reenter her from behind. It occurs to me that I don’t want to face her as I come inside her. There’s no time for me to understand the full framework of that feeling. I’m too busy trying to get myself off. I don’t care about Jenny’s pleasure, or even if I’m going too fast for her, causing her to feel a bit of discomfort.
The only thing that matters is sweet release.
As the moment gets closer and closer, I keep up the pace and reach forward towards Jenny’s head. I gently push it down onto the mattress and make sure it stays there.
I slam into her again and again—her screams of passion becoming lost sounds in my head—until the mounting pressure is too much.
An explosion goes off inside of her. I pull out and see the state of the condom I’ve been using. Thankfully you don’t have to use those things twice, because this one is completely spent.
I release my hold on Jenny’s head and close my eyes, my head tilted upwards towards the ceiling. I part my lips and try to regain my breath, pulling in as much oxygen from the room as I can.
A singular bead of sweat rolls down my forehead. I feel its movement and use my left hand to wipe it out of existence. Then, I slowly open my eyes. I force every bit of my concentration to focus on the girl I’m with.
Jenny. I want her to be all I’m thinking about.
And you know what… it’s working.
Chapter 25
I fall back against the soft but firm texture of my bed and smile to myself. I think I’ve done it. I thought I’ve got it beat. I think I’ve overcome the problem that’s been plaguing me.
Jenny is the only woman that matters because she’s the one I was with tonight. And then the next woman after her will be the only one that matters. And so on and so forth. That’s how it has to be. That’s the way I lived my life before, and that’s the way I want to live it from now on. I can’t let myself behave like a lovesick teenager ever again.
“You’ve got that glazed over look in your eyes again,” Jenny says to me, running a hand along my chest.
“Uh-huh,” I say absentmindedly.
Her hand then drifts south towards my cock. She caresses it and brings her mouth closer to the shaft. Her tongue darts out and she playfully licks my member from end to end.
I sigh in bliss and rested my hands underneath my head. I let her lick my cock back into a firm state, and then, roughly ten minutes later, I come again thanks to her oral skills.
Three times in one night.
If I’m going to be falling for one of my one-night stands, it should be Jenny.
Think about it. She’s closer to my age than Emily. She isn’t some college brat who doesn’t have a place of her own outside of campus. And the way those dimples form in her cheeks every time she smiles or moans from having my dick inside her… I can’t get enough of that.
But that’s not the way feelings work. You can’t force those things. You can’t order them to fall perfectly in place for you so that your life will be easier.
They’re like a hurricane. Uncontrollable.
Jenny spends the night with me. There’s no talking. No attempt to start up a conversation. No compulsion to open up to her about my upbringing.
Basically none of the stuff that happened with Emily makes a repeat appearance.
Everything is as it should be, and I don’t have any problem falling asleep. The sex has taken its toll, and within minutes of my head touching the pillow, I’m out like a light. It’s a dreamless sleep. Very peaceful. And when I wake up, I don’t even care if Emily exists. So while the sex itself wasn’t enough to wipe her from my mind, a good night’s sleep was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I’m over her... and damn excited about it. But I don’t want to put any special attention on that. I want to act like it isn’t a big deal. I want to continue with my life the way it was before I met Emily.
In case you’re wondering, despite the great sex and her considerably skilled tongue, I don’t bother to get Jenny’s phone number. In the morning, I just call a cab for her and see her out after it arrives. Not even a kiss goodbye.
See, now that’s how a one-night stand is supposed to work. None of that emotional attachment stuff.
After the cab is gone, so are all thoughts of Jenny.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. I regret not getting a chance to bang her one last time before she left, but it isn’t something that’s going to cause me much turmoil. The fact that I still don’t remember her real name says it all.
So for the time being, it seems as if all my problems have been solved. I feel like my old self again for the first time in days.
Sigh. What a relief.
That was a close call.
Chapter 26
The days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into a full month. That’s how long it’s been since my night with Emily. A little over thirty-one days.
And you know what, I’m doing pretty well. I’ve slept with two other women since “Jenny,” and everything has gone down perfectly. I get what I need from them, and the next morning I send them on their way. Within hours of each departure, I forget the name of the girl in question.
And my work is still the most important thing in my life. I’m fully dedicated to it, and most of the people in the Reed and Gideon building continue to regard me with that perfect look. The look that screams that they hate my guts because I’m so successful despite being less than thirty, but that they also respect me for that same reason.
A perfect balance. If anyone tells you that they don’t want to get that look from their colleagues, they’re lying.
I park my car in the assigned spot—that’s supposed to be a status symbol to let you know that you’ve made it: a sign sticking out of the ground with your name on it—and then I walk towards the towering structure that can be seen from miles away.
As usual, before I enter the building, I take a few seconds to admire the sight of it, tinted blue windows and all. Very impressive, especially if you’ve never seen it before.
The moment I cross the threshold I’m met with a wave of noise. Men and women dressed in business attire are running in every direc
tion to accomplish one task or another. The usual hectic turmoil of a normal day here.
I don’t have to worry about any of that. I just walk in, get into an elevator, and make my way to my office. Not to say that I don’t have responsibilities of my own, but those don’t involve me scrambling around like a rabid monkey.
My office is on the thirty-second floor. It’s everything a man in my position would want from an office. Five large windows that offer me a pleasant view. Marble-tiled floors. A brown oak desk which, thanks to the custodial services of the building, is always well-polished. A couple of chairs for visitors who want to see me about something. And of course the masterpiece of the whole place: a leather chair of my own that’s so damn comfortable, it’s a miracle I’ve never fallen asleep over my desk while working. At least not yet.
The first person I see as I approach the office is my secretary, a stoic middle-aged woman who always keeps her graying hair locked up in a tight bun. I once jokingly asked her if the bun cut off the supply of blood to her brain. Rather than laughing, she looked at me as if she was plotting my murder inside her head. That’s when I knew that this was not a woman to mess with.
“Hey, Teresa. How are you?”
She raises her head and peered at my face. Give her a pair of glasses and she could pass as a stereotypical librarian.
“I’m fine.”
Short and simple. Her usual style.
“Any messages for me?”
“Nothing in particular… other than one from Mr. Reed”
Huh.
I put on my brakes and came to a stop, my shoes making a slight squeaking sound against the floor.
“Could you say that again?”
Chapter 27
Teresa scowls at me. She isn’t the biggest fan of having to repeat herself. “Mr. Reed. The boss.”
“I know who he is,” I say with a bit of an edge to my voice. “What about him? He left a message for me?”
