How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,67
calling me. She never called me, especially at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night.
I answered, running a hand through my hair and trying to wake up. “Megan? What’s going on?”
“Hey,” she said, her voice tentative. “Were you asleep?”
“Nope,” I said, rolling on my back and staring at the ceiling of my bedroom in my mother’s basement. “I’m out partying. It’s nuts. I got a tattoo, and I’ve got two strippers in string bikinis. They say I can lick whipped cream from their—”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “You’re home. I get it.”
I laughed. For a split second, I was just happy to hear her voice. “What’s the matter? You sound all tied up.” I shouldn’t have said that. Now I had an image in my head. Megan with her arms over her head, her wrists tied, her back arched, her dark hair curling over the pillow. I’d lick right down her tits, over her flat stomach. I’d make her beg. I closed my eyes. I had a big fucking problem.
“I want you to come over,” she said into the middle of my dirty fantasy.
I cleared my throat. Those words were like a bomb going off inside me, but I said, “Are we watching an X-Men movie?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t,” I said, the words forced out, painful. “I’m not scratching your itch, Megan. We did that, and it was fun. But that’s done.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s not what I’m asking.”
“Uh huh. And what are you asking?”
“Why did you take me to the wedding?” she said. “Why did you do all of that for me?”
Was this a trick question? I couldn’t think of how. “I wanted to,” I said.
“But why? You didn’t want to go to a wedding, Jason.”
“No,” I admitted.
“So why did you do it?”
“For you, I guess. You asked me to.” I tried to think of the right way to put it, a way that described the sex and the way we were the rest of the time, the way I felt when I was with her. “We fit.”
She was quiet. I had been too nice again. “Listen, Megan,” I said. “I know it was too much for you—”
“I’m tired,” she said abruptly. “I’m tired of being here while you’re there. I’m tired of you not being in the same room with me. It’s making me miserable.”
Breathe, I told myself, because it was suddenly hard. I hadn’t let myself want this. I hadn’t even let myself think the words. She was too vulnerable, and the rejection was too hard. “You’re going through a lot right now,” I managed to say.
“This isn’t about that.” I could hear how hard this was for her, how much she hated being exposed. “I told you, that doesn’t mean I get to make excuses. I can do this alone. I know that. But the thing is, I don’t want to. I’d rather go through this with you. Go through everything with you. With us.” Her breath hitched. “I keep wanting to think there’s an us. And then I remember that I screwed it up and there isn’t an us. Not right now.”
“There’s always an us,” I said to her. God, it must be hard to take on everything alone the way she did. She was fucking fierce. “There always is. Whether we’re fighting or we’re fucking or we’re just friends. Whether I’m here or I’m in your bed, inside you. Whether the news is good or bad. Whether you want me or you want to kick me in the balls. All of that is us, Megan. All of it.”
She sniffed softly. “I want that. I don’t want to kick you in the balls.”
I choked a laugh. My heart was exploding in my chest. “Okay. That’s a start.”
“What do you want?”
It was easy. And terrifying. And the best words I’d ever said. “I want all of it,” I said to her. “Everything you’ve got.”
“Then for God’s sake, Jason, come over here.”
“Hold on,” I said, getting out of bed. “I’m on my way.”
Thirty
Megan
It felt like it took an hour for him to get to my apartment. I just sat still, waiting. I had almost thrown up with nerves before I made that phone call. For the first time, I had understood to the bone how terrifying rejection could be. How deep it could hurt.
But he hadn’t rejected me.
Finally, there was a knock on my door. He was wearing jeans and a thick zip-up jacket against the autumn cold, his hair mussed, his cheeks red. When he walked me back