Mostly My Girlfriend

by Doyle, S.

  Mostly My Girlfriend

  S. Doyle

  Copyright © 2019 by S. Doyle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Afterword

  Also by S. Doyle

  1

  One week apart

  Jules,

  I get it. You’re not speaking to me. Not even through letters. Okay, I admit it: I fucked up. I should have stayed, and we should have talked about it…

  I ran. Like a coward. So do that. Write me back and call me a coward and at least we can talk about that. But shutting me out is killing me.

  Please write back.

  Also know that Mom is here with me now. I pushed and pushed and finally she relented. I’m not sure if it’s me or just the challenge of being in another country, but at least she’s engaged in the world.

  But the sadness, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed before.

  When I work through this, I’ll figure out what to do with her, but the bottom line is I can’t leave her behind in New York. Wherever I go, wherever we go, she’ll need to come with us.

  I just need some time to get my head straight. Is that too much to ask?

  Ethan

  * * *

  A few hours after therapy

  Julia

  I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time…

  The words echoed in my ears and I tilted the bottle of wine back to take a slug. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to make me drunk enough to forget what happened today.

  He didn’t love me. He couldn’t love me. He left me.

  He fucked me the first time and didn’t remember. He fucked me the second time and pretended like it didn’t change anything between us.

  The third time… I couldn’t think about that night. I couldn’t think about it without crying and I didn’t want to cry anymore. Instead, I wanted to get drunk and forget everything that had happened today.

  There was a knock on my door. The building had a doorman—one of the few in Seattle—which meant it could only be Ethan. What had been the point of running away from him if he was just going to follow me?

  You wanted him to follow you.

  Ugh! More honesty. I was tired of it.

  “Jules, you know I have a key,” he called through the door.

  Of course he had a key. He was my closest friend. He was my emergency contact. He was my…

  I pushed myself off the couch hugging my large bottle of wine to my chest. I considered what I’ told him, how I would be willing to put us back together the way we were, and now I wondered if that was even possible.

  I leaned on the door with one hand, took another slug of wine with the other. It was strange because, even though I was drinking from the bottle, removing its contents one gulp at a time, it still felt like it was getting heavier.

  “Go away, Ethan.”

  “You know I’m not going to do that.”

  “I did what you asked. You said one hour and that’s what I gave you.”

  “Fine. Then we’re done. Let me come inside and say goodbye.”

  I pursed my lips. It was a trap. Ethan would never say goodbye. Would he?

  He was the addiction I wasn’t going to be able to beat. The habit I would never be able to end. I was worse than my brother John in that regard. He tried to get sober.

  My attempts at freeing myself from Ethan had been feeble at best. At the first rush of emotion, I backslid.

  I put the bottle down and turned the lock. I opened the door and Ethan stood on the other side looking as wrecked as I felt.

  “We’re not done, Julia. We haven’t even scratched the surface of us.”

  I picked up my wine and made my way to the living room. “This is the part where I say, if you really cared about me, you would let me go.”

  “This is the part where I tell you, you’re full of shit. You don’t want me to let you go.”

  Because I was addicted to him, but that wasn’t healthy.

  “You’re wrong.”

  “We need more time with Carol. We need to work through more of our shit.”

  I shook my head. “The deal was for an hour.”

  “When have you ever known me not to want to renegotiate terms?”

  That much was true. Ethan never settled for the deal on the table. He always wanted more. And because I was a sucker, he would probably win. Only I didn’t really understand anymore what winning looked like. At least for me.

  I’ve been in love with Julia for a very long time…

  I took a pull on the bottle, hating the fact that I wasn’t drunk enough yet. “I’m not going back, and you can’t make me.”

  He looked at me as if he knew what I said was bullshit.

  “Then we really are done?” he asked.

  I nodded. Done and done. Finished. No more. And I was super happy about that.

  “Okay,” he said, slowly walking toward me. “Then at least let me have you one last time. We’ll call it official break-up sex.”

  My heart started beating more heavily and I could feel myself get wet between my legs. I gulped. “I don’t think…”

  He dropped the ridiculously expensive leather coat he’d been wearing on the floor. I knew how expensive it was because I bought it for him as a Christmas present six years ago. It was the first time, after paying him back for my family’s farm, that I’d made an indulgent purchase. It probably said something that the purchase had been for him.

  Next, he pulled off his shirt. Then he kicked off his leather boots. I’d ordered those from Italy for him one year.

  I should have stopped him when he stripped out of his jeans and boxers, but I didn’t. Instead I just sat there on the couch, wearing my tank top and hipster shorts, hugging my bottle of wine, while I stared at a naked Ethan who was very hard.

  There hadn’t been a lot of lovers in my life. Work, I supposed, had been my most demanding lover of all. So I didn’t know what it was, in particular, about Ethan’s lean body that I always found so compelling. He was hard everywhere. His biceps, his chest, his hips, his dick.

  Even his ass was tight, and it thrilled me, like no other body had ever done.

  Or maybe that was Ethan.

  He walked to the couch and pulled the wine bottle out of my arms.

  “Get naked, Jules.”

  Pretty sure that was a bad idea. The last time we’d done this he left me for three months afterward.

  “You know how often I got myself off to that night?” he asked me, even as he was pushing me to lie back while he covered me with his hard, naked body. God he felt good.

  “What night?”

  “Not the night of Daniel’s wedding. That night I fucked you. And while it was hot as fuck, that’s not what I thought about in Japan. I thought about the night after my father’s memorial service…that night I made love to you and it was so incredible it blew my mind.”

  It had felt like that. It had felt like he loved me. Until the next day.

  He pushed his hand into the front of my shorts and smiled when he discovered how wet I was. I had no chance against a naked and aroused Ethan.

  “Yeah, you’re not stupid, Jules. Y
ou know how good it was for us. Every time. Well, apparently not the first time, and you’re still going to pay for that. But for now, let me do it again.”

  I was weak. With his hand between my legs, his thumb circling my clit, I wasn’t doing anything to stop him. In my defense, he felt way better than the wine.

  “Take off that tank top. I want to suck on your nipples. I love how you go fucking crazy when I do that.”

  Again, I didn’t have the most experience with sex, so from my perspective, it was easier to just let Ethan do whatever he wanted to do. But he was right. I did like it when he did that. I liked when he did everything to me because there was a familiarity to his touch. To his voice. To the smell of him that made sex with Ethan seem not as scary as it had been with others.

  The trust was there. Already built in.

  I pulled the tank top over my head and felt his lips pull on my already hard nipples. My fingers ran through his burnished brown hair and I smelled his shampoo. This was different than it had been last time. He’d been in so much pain then and I’d felt such a responsibility to ease it.

  His father died three months ago. He’s still in pain. That’s why he thinks he loves you.

  Which was another reason I should probably stop him. Not for my sake, not to prevent the agony of having him and losing him again, but because he didn’t even understand his own motivations. The feelings and emotions that were pushing him to cling to me in his grief.

  But then he was sliding my shorts down my legs, pushing his hips against mine, and in a single thrust he was inside me. My fingers clenched his shoulders, my nails digging into the hard flesh there. Trying to mark him. Trying to brand him.

  He didn’t move, just stayed heavy and still inside me. Ethan inside me was always different, more substantial. Like he was taking up all the space inside my body and not just my pussy.

  “Fuck, Jules. Your fucking perfect cunt. I missed it. I fucking missed you,” he hissed out.

  “You didn’t even remember you took my virginity,” I reminded him. Finally getting to say it, even when I used to tell myself it was a good thing he didn’t remember it happening.

  He stopped moving then and looked at me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for Nicki. I’m sorry for not remembering. But I am so fucking thrilled I was your first everything and nothing can change that.”

  He pushed inside me again, hard and deep. “Did I even make you come? That first time.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. There had been too much pain at first, then something else. Something that felt too big to control.

  He wrapped his arm around my thigh and pushed it high up close to my chest so he could fuck me deeper into the couch. “No? Then I owe you orgasms, Jules.”

  Yes, I thought. He owed me. Orgasms and answers. And everything.

  “Come back to the therapist with me tomorrow.”

  I shook my head and tried to hug him closer to me. “Harder.”

  Which made him immediately stop. “One more hour.”

  “No. Now fuck me, God please.” I tried to push myself against him, but he had my body under total control. That was the thing about Ethan. He gave the impression of being tall and lanky, not strong, until he was on top of you. Then he was all strength and dominance of will.

  He pulled away, his cock just barely inside me, throbbing—or was that me throbbing around him? I couldn’t tell. A sob escaped my chest.

  “You know me,” he growled into my ear. “You know I’m fucking ruthless when I want something. You don’t come until I get my time.”

  “Fine!” I shouted and pounded my fists on his back. “Whatever. Just finish this.”

  “That’s my point, Jules.” He fucked into me hard and deep, and we both groaned in unison. “This. Is. Never. Fuck. Ever. Fuck. Going to be finished between us.”

  I didn’t hear that last part as my orgasm was swallowing my whole body. I could feel myself clamping around him, holding on to his dick in way that made me think I could have him inside my body forever.

  “Jules!” He snapped his hips and shouted as he came. I felt the pulses of his come inside me and it triggered a small post-orgasmic sensation.

  He let go of my leg and collapsed on top of me. I was pressed into the cushions with his mouth against my neck, my hands on his sweat-slicked back.

  “I don’t know what difference you think another session is going to make,” I told him. “I already promised you I would come back.” Because I was weak.

  “There’s nothing to come back to,” he muttered against my neck. “You don’t work for me anymore. Remember? Which means our only chance is to move forward without the company between us.”

  “I don’t know if I want that,” I admitted. I didn’t know if I could trust forward with Ethan.

  He slid out of me and lifted his weight onto his forearms on either side of my head. “I know. Because I fucked up. But the only way I can think to fix this is to keep talking. At the very least…if we can’t make this work…we’ll have some kind of closure. Promise me, Jules.”

  As if I could refuse him. As if I had any strength at all to do that.

  “Okay. I promise.”

  2

  Two weeks apart

  Jules,

  There are so many things I want to say to you. Being away from you, I know you think it was a dick move to make but being away to get my head straight wasn’t a totally bad idea.

  There are a lot of places to be silent in Japan. Places that Mom and I have been exploring together. Lost in our sadness. Her over my dad, me over my dad, but also you, too.

  I wish you were here. I wish I’d been courageous enough to tell you to come with me.

  But most of all I just keep thinking of all these things I want to say to you. All the things I stopped myself from saying these past twelve years.

  Do you have anything you want to say to me?

  Please write back. I know I fucked up and I’m sorry.

  Ethan

  P.S. My mother thinks you should write back, too. Are you really going to deny a grieving widow?

  * * *

  Therapy

  Ethan

  “Julia, I see you decided to come back,” Carol said with a cool smile.

  It had been a long, hard-fought battle the previous night. Actually, not that hard-fought after I’d fucked her. One new thing I’d learned about Jules after all this time was that she was remarkably compliant after a few orgasms.

  Now that we were here, though, I found myself nervous all over again. What if this didn’t work? What if I couldn’t break through the barriers she’d put up against me? What if this really was the end of us?

  No, I couldn’t accept that. Especially after last night. Jules wanted me. She just didn’t trust me. That was something I could fix.

  “I did,” she said.

  “Can I ask why?”

  Jules didn’t look at me, but I could see her cheeks turn pink. “He said that at the very least, this might be good for us to gain some closure. That didn’t happen yesterday. I agreed. So I came back.”

  “Is that what you want, Ethan? Closure?”

  I snorted. “No, that is not what I want but she’s not hearing me.”

  Not that we’d done that much talking last night.

  “I’m hearing you. I’m just not believing you,” Julia said without looking at me. “Or at least believing that anything you said yesterday was real.”

  “I no longer have a company,” I said, throwing up my hands. “That’s real, Julia. And the biggest fucking gesture I could think of.”

  “I can’t believe you did that without…”

  “Talking to you?” I asked when she stopped herself. “Go ahead and be pissed. You should be pissed. But I felt like I had to act because you weren’t giving me any choices.”

  “It’s your company. You can do whatever you want with it. I don’t have a say in that,” Jules said tartly. “That’s my point. This whole time…it’s like we’ve been in a rela
tionship, but we’re not. Not a real one.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked, feeling the anger bubble up. “You don’t think our relationship is real? We’ve been together, side by side, for the past eight years, and that’s not counting the year in college when we were nearly inseparable.”

  “Working,” Jules added. “We were working these past eight years, Ethan. That’s not personal. Not when you’re paying me to be there.”

  It was like a solid gut punch. “You’re devastating me right now. I thought we were a team.”

  “We are a team, Ethan. But again, you were paying me. Think about it. You paid me in college to take notes for you. You pay me to run your operations. After you left for Japan…I had some time to put us in perspective and I came to the conclusion that what I thought was a relationship…wasn’t. Not really.”

  Was she joking? I looked at Carol. “I know when her period is. I know exactly at what moment she realizes her feet hurt when she’s wearing high heels. I know her family, her history, and her favorite foods to eat. Her favorite city—Paris. Her favorite movie—Pitch Perfect. I even know that her favorite body part is her ankles and that her least favorite are her breasts because she thinks they’re too big, and trust me, they’re not.”

  “And you think knowing those things means you two are in a relationship?” Carol pressed.

  “We travel together, we work together, we share meals together. We have a life…together. What is all of that if it’s not a relationship?” I asked.

  “Hmm. So let me ask you, Ethan, during this time have there been other women in your life?”

  “Only ones that I’ve fucked.”

  Next to me Julia snorted and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “What?” I asked. “They meant nothing to me! None of them ever have and you know that. It’s no different than scratching an itch. You, however, you managed to get yourself a fiancé. That’s way worse than anything I’ve ever done.”