“Tack?” I asked.
“Probably,” Cam answered.
I looked to the floor. Then it hit me and I looked back at Cam.
“She knew,” I stated.
“What, babe?” Cam asked.
“Thursday, she knew. She knew what she was, who she was, her day. She knew his name she knew his number.”
“Well, um –” Cam started.
I cut her off. “I guess if you get a guaranteed slot you get his contact details. But Filler, now Filler is just filler.”
“Gwennie, sweetie,” Tracy whispered.
I shot out of my chair and shouted, “I don’t believe this!”
Camille and Tracy shot up too.
“Gwen, babe, listen to me. The talk now is he’s off routine. This shit with His Days, it is for them what it was for you, night visits, stringent boundaries. He doesn’t date them, he just sleeps with them.”
“So?” I yelled, crashing my mug to my desk, coffee sloshing over.
“So, this is good, you’ve broken through,” Tracy put in quickly and, as ever with my dear, sweet Trace, hopefully.
“No, Trace, this isn’t good,” I returned. “This is humiliating.”
And it was. It was humiliating. Deep down to the core humiliating. And the worst part of that feeling was that I did it to my damned self.
Again!
I lifted my hands, slid my fingers in my hair and held on. “I can’t believe this. I don’t know what to do with this,” I told the floor.
“Maybe you should talk to him about it,” Cam, of all people, advised and my head lifted so my eyes could narrow on her.
“Are you high?” I yelled and her face flinched. “I’m filler, everyone on the grid knows it. God!” I pulled my hands through my hair and threw them out to my sides repeating, “God!”
“Babe,” Cam said softly, “calm down.”
I lifted my hands again to press my palms to my forehead and through my arms I looked at her. “I want him,” I whispered my secret.
“Then talk to him,” Cam whispered back.
“I wanted him to be special,” I kept whispering.
“Girl,” she kept whispering too and got closer, wrapping her fingers around my arm, “talk to him.”
“For him to be special, he has to make me feel special. Not like Scott made me feel.” I heard Tracy make a soft whimper, she knew how Scott made me feel, they both did. “And definitely not worse than Scott made me feel.”
Cam’s other hand came up and wrapped around my arm, pulling them down, she stepped in close, her hands sliding up to grip mine as Tracy moved into our little huddle.
“I did this to myself,” I whispered.
“Baby,” Cam whispered back as Tracy slid her arm around my waist and she whispered, “Honey.”
“I wanted to believe I could break through,” I went on.