Until the World Stops - L.A. Witt Page 0,76

but mostly it just made me feel like crap.

Wasn’t it just, like, this morning that we were screwing without any drama? Guess I should’ve known that wouldn’t last. Everything was a disaster right now. Why shouldn’t our sex life—one of the few things that had been keeping me sane—join the shit show?

Well, it was what it was. Life still had to go on. I still had to live with him. I still had to go to work. My mom still had COVID.

I squeezed my eyes shut. If ever there was a time when I needed Tristan—his calm, steady presence, the sex that made me forget everything else, the chill conversations and drives and dinners and board games—it was now, while this virus was hitting way, way too close to home.

But he was gone now. Still here, but gone. Nothing left to do but put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward.

Tonight, that meant sleeping, since I had to be up at the crack of dawn. I got ready for bed, but surprise, surprise, for the first time, I couldn’t sleep after I’d been in bed with Tristan. I wished he hadn’t left. That we’d finished and gotten each other off. An orgasm would’ve made me blissfully tired, and it would’ve meant we’d actually had sex instead of breaking up. That Tristan hadn’t been someplace else, I hadn’t noticed, and he hadn’t told me we couldn’t do this. He’d also still be here now, either cuddled up against me or sleeping soundly a few inches away.

But he was gone now. When I needed him more than ever, he was gone, and the bedroom at the other end of the hall may as well have been on the other side of the country. We were as stuck together as we’d been before the pandemic, but even farther apart than before we’d made this stupid pact.

Swearing under my breath, I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t even bother trying to jerk off, because it wasn’t going to happen. I was way too distracted and frustrated now. I doubted I’d be able to get it up at all, never mind come.

Why did it feel so terrible to be rejected by this guy I’d married for practical reasons? This guy I hadn’t even liked?

I squeezed my eyes shut and sighed.

How could I explain to him that it wasn’t just sex I wanted from him? The sex was cathartic, especially after that earth-shattering news from my parents, but I needed the closeness and the comfort. I needed his support. Even if all he did was hold me up like he had in the kitchen, that would’ve been more than enough.

We don’t have to be naked. I just need you.

I swallowed the threat of tears, not that it did any good.

I don’t know how to get through this without you.

There’d been a time when I didn’t like Tristan, but I was lying to myself if I said I didn’t like him now. It would’ve been easy to say he was still the asshole punk I’d thought he was when we worked together, or the son of a bitch who’d had my teeth grinding with resentment in the months before the pandemic, but that all felt like ancient history now. It felt as far away and alien as pre-pandemic life.

I wanted him here next to me. I didn’t even care if we were naked. I didn’t care if we—well, no, I wouldn’t say I didn’t care if we didn’t touch. Because I wanted to touch him. I was desperate for that contact. The kind we had when we were cuddled up on the couch or just lounging together after we screwed. Giving up the sex was frustrating. Losing that part? Especially when there was literally nowhere else on the planet I could get it? Fuck my life.

And not only was there nowhere else on the planet I could get that kind of affection and contact—there was nowhere else I wanted to find it. I wanted Tristan. Full stop. Too damn late, I realized I wanted him and nobody else.

That was probably just because I couldn’t have anybody else right now. No one else was safe. No one else was accessible.

And if I kept telling myself that, maybe I’d start believing it.

We avoided each other as much as possible after that. We both spent more time in our respective bedrooms, and there wasn’t much communication beyond adding things to the grocery list on the whiteboard.

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