Actually, no. I do not like it. I am bored out of my mind, and if you have ever made a girl come in your entire life, you would know this is not all about your dick.
I wanted something different. Physical. Darker. In my head. In my body. Something that lived under my skin. I wanted starlight and pain, dripping like ribbons from Threx’s mouth.
And something else.
The word came to mind, and I could not say it out loud. But it was there. Simmering, the way it always has been.
Kandy tossed me a little black number that hugged my breasts and was completely open down the back, then nodded toward the black combat boots because she knew it would be a snowy day in hell before I ever wore heels. I caught the dress midair and peeled off Threx’s Nine Inch Nails shirt I’d worn to rags, and tossed it to the floor.
“So, you’ve never really explained to me what you and Threx are,” she prodded from the end of my bed, rummaging through my things like a toddler who didn’t understand boundaries.
“That is because,” I sighed, shoving hot curlers into my hair. “I am not sure.” It was the closest thing to the truth I could manage.
“Well?” she hesitated, clearly deciding whether to open the can of worms she’d been shaking at me since the day we met. “Are you together?”
“Ish.” I peeked my head out mid–batwing, immediately fucking up the line. She rolled her eyes so hard I felt them from the bathroom.
“Okay, let’s put it this way. If I fucked him, would you be upset?”
Fire crawled under my skin, grinding into my jaw and knuckles, sending that embarrassing tint of metal over my tongue. I picked up a bottle of face moisturizer and chucked it at her from the bathroom. I guess I was the toddler now. Too bad my big-girl words were wrapped in rage and metal that tasted like fear.
“I guess that is a yes,” she laughed when the bottle bounced off my nightstand, demolishing half the clutter. “Explain to me again how you two met?”
That is the thing. I cannot remember an exact moment or date when Threx came into my life. We might have watched eachother from our windows, tracking what was on the other side, but I could have made that up. Everything from those days is blurry, dripping in cotton and smelling like iron.
“Threx lived in the building across from me,” I explained, brushing out my curls and letting my dark brown hair fall to the center of my back. “His parents were violent while mine were neglectful. I think I was six the first time he crawled through my window and spent the night in my bed. I don’t know. From that moment on, we were inseparable.”
I turned the corner to grab my boots, sitting in a straight line.
Threx liked things that way: linear, orderly, with an endpoint.
Not me. I thrived on chaos.
He must have adjusted them the last time he was here.
“We ran away together when I was fifteen, lived in a lot of Black Wing side houses until he took the pledge. Then he got a dorm at the clubhouse, and I stayed with him until I got into college and ended up here with you.” I smiled wide.
“And in all that time, you two were never together?” She threw me a side glance, tossing me a tube of lip gloss and admiring my ass.
“No.”
The answer hurt, but it was the one line he refused to cross with me. Well, that and kissing. We both had relationships along the way, but they never lasted.
Apparently, finding us snuggling in bed or me walking out of his shower violated the unspoken agreement of partner fidelity. And they were right. It did. But it was not about sex. That only happened once. It was because whenever we tried to set boundaries with one another, they stuck like dollar-store adhesive, peeling off the wall with an inevitable thud. I couldn’t stay away from him, and judging by all the moments Threx came bursting through my walls, neither could he.
“We slept together once, right before I got into midwifery school,” I laughed, remembering the copper from his split lip and the yellow morning light bleeding through the curtains. It was slow. Emotional. And when it was over, we never talked about it. Not once. “But that is it.”
Kandy’s brow fell, her lips curving into her thoughts, and I could smell the storm brewing inside her chest.
“That is trauma bond shit, Daph,” she said, her big black eyes peering up at me in the half-light. “You know that, right?”
I looked at her and blinked. Of course, I knew that. I was not in denial about Threx. I just did not care about buzzwords liketoxicityortraumabecause they did not erase a goddamn thing. We were messy and broken and probably should stay the fuck away from each other, but that would never happen.
“Have you ever considered moving from Seattle and trying life without him? I mean, I get you two are forged in flames, but he is a bad guy.”
Kandy stood at the door, giving me a look.
“No, he is not.” I swept past her, grabbing my phone and pushing down the nausea of imagining a world without him in it.