up the rules?” I asked, assuming that after the debacle with Hayley, he didn’t trust anyone again, and hence his rules for hooking up with girls had come to fruition.
“Not quite,” he said, putting up a finger because, apparently, there was still more to this particular story.
The fact that he had been a virgin when he got here and that Hayley was his first made every single thing make so much more sense. Why he’d had that look on his face when she showed up at his bedroom door earlier tonight.
God, was that just a few hours ago? It feels like a lifetime.
“After she broke up with me, I went a little crazy,” Mac started to explain, and I refocused my attention and thoughts back on him. “I basically fucked anyone who let me. But doing that only made the girls clingy. And I wasn’t trying to open my heart back up. I was just trying to fill in the cracks.”
My heart squeezed and promptly began pumping out jealous beats. Even though I hadn’t known him at the time, I still hated hearing about this. I was already attached, and the idea of him giving himself to any girl who wasn’t me made me queasy. It was irrational, but it was how I felt. At one time, Mac had fucked anyone who walked, but when it was our time, he had pushed me away.
“Girls get clingy because we usually have some feelings for the people we’re giving our bodies to. It’s kind of the way we females operate,” I said even though I knew that wasn’t even remotely true. Not every girl thought or felt that way about sex.
But I did. I was not the kind of person who could do it with someone she wasn’t into. Making out was a different beast altogether. I’d kiss anyone without a second thought and go on my merry way, never to think about it again. But giving my naked body and all of its parts to a guy I didn’t actually like? Never gonna happen.
“Yeah. I learned that real quick. It made things hella worse for me, so I stopped fucking around and made the rules instead as a joke one night.”
I adjusted my body a little, but Mac stayed firmly planted in my lap.
“Wait. You haven’t had sex since you started the rules?” I asked, already sensing the answer.
“No.”
“I knew it,” I breathed out, and he rolled over so that he was facing my chest. I felt the warmth of his breath through my shirt and against my skin.
“Knew what?”
“I knew you weren’t sleeping around. There are always rumors, but I never believed them.”
“Why?” He shifted again. “Why didn’t you believe them?”
“Because I’d never seen you disappear, sneak off, or come out of a room with a girl at a party before,” I started to explain. “I don’t know. They just seemed like bullshit.”
“Thank you, Sunny,” he said as his eyes closed, and he seemed to get lost somewhere deep in his head.
“For what?” I asked.
“For believing in me when no one else does.”
I fought the urge to lean down and kiss him, unsure of what to say in response. I started running my fingers through his hair again, replaying the things he’d just said.
“You said you started the rules as a joke?”
His eyes opened. “Yeah. I was messing around when I spouted them off that first night, but the girl didn’t even flinch. She was completely agreeable, like what I was saying was perfectly logical, even though we both knew it was beyond ridiculous.”
I watched as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Hey,” I interrupted. “I agreed to those rules once too, ya know.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but I’d perfected them by then.” He waved a hand in the air, blowing me off. “You should have heard the ones at the beginning. It was some crazy shit. Shit no girl with any self-respect should ever agree to.”
“Are you saying I have no self-respect?” I started questioning how he saw me and how I saw myself and wondered if I’d done something wrong by agreeing last year.
“Sunny, no. The rules now are basically about getting on the same page from the get-go. They aren’t disrespectful. At least, I don’t mean for them to be. It’s more about expectations, so there’s no disappointment or hurt feelings. And it sounds really messed up, but when I started them back in the day, it gave me a lot of power. For the first time in my