same. Was I being too clingy? Wasn’t this what people who were into each other did after sex?
“That was awesome,” I said lamely, kissing her shoulder again and trying to pull her closer.
Whitney resisted me, pulling her body away slightly and rolling her head to look at me. Her eyes were open now and watching me with an unreadable expression. Like her sister, my best friend Meg, she had bright green eyes. But while Meg’s were often teasing and warm, Whitney’s right now were dark and almost annoyed.
“Yeah,” was all she said. Then she slid out from beneath my arm and got out of bed, reaching for a red and white striped robe that hung on the back of the door and quickly put it on, tying it tightly at the waist.
“I need a drink. Do you want anything?” she asked, not looking at me. She pulled her long hair up into a ponytail and picked her phone up off the bedside table, staring at the screen, a small smile on her face.
“Water would be great. That was quite a workout, right?” Ugh. I needed to put a sock in it. I sounded like a total douchebag.
But Whitney didn’t seem to hear me. She was staring at her phone, still wearing that smile that had nothing to do with me or what we had just done.
“I need to make a call,” she said distractedly, not bothering to look at me as she left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.
Alright then.
Alone in her room, I sat up and took in the space I had barely paid attention to when I arrived. Things had progressed quicker than I had ever imagined once I showed up at Whitney’s Los Angeles apartment. She led me inside. We shared a beer on her patio, made small chit-chat, then she asked me why I came.
“To see you,” was all I said, and then she kissed me.
I didn’t question it. Why would I? This was what I wanted. This was what I had hoped would happen when I decided to make the trip to see her. I didn’t want to think too much about why, after all this time of ignoring my existence, she jumped into bed with me. Almost too eagerly. Too desperately.
Now I sat amid Whitney’s black bed sheets trying to find clues to who the woman was. I thought I knew her. I had spent so many years cataloging every detail. Her favorite color was pink. Her favorite flower was a lily. She loved salty snacks and wasn’t a fan of chocolate. She got teary-eyed whenever I Will Always Love You came on the radio, and she had seen Dirty Dancing at least thirty times. She and Meg argued but never maliciously, and she and her dad did crosswords every Sunday morning.
Okay, so listing all that stuff out, I sounded like a damn stalker, and I wasn’t. I swear it. I had just spent enough time with her family to pick up on things. So maybe I paid closer attention to anything and everything that had to do with Whitney Galloway. Like my grandpa always said, find something you’re good at and stick to it.
And I was good at loving Whitney.
Only, I was beginning to think that the Whitney that was now talking on the phone in a hushed whisper wasn’t the Whitney I remembered from Southport, Pennsylvania.
For starters, the clothes that spilled out of the tiny closet were nothing like the clothes she wore in high school. Not wanting to paw through her things, but unable to help having a snoop, I looked through the dresses and blouses that hung haphazardly. She used to be a girly girl, liking soft colors and modest hemlines. Clearly, that wasn’t the case anymore. There were more than a few dresses so small I wondered if they covered anything. Her shirts all were either mere scraps of cloth or had necklines I imagined left little to the imagination. There was even a leather skirt and thigh-high boots. I was sure she looked smokin’ when she wore them, but they were definitely different from what I was used to seeing her in.
I also noticed that aside from a framed photograph of her parents, there weren’t any other pictures in her room. I remembered her bedroom back home had been covered with photographs of her friends and family. Whitney was a popular girl, and her room had shown that.
Clearly, new LA Whitney didn’t care about surrounding herself