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He warns her not to fall in love with him and she’s adamant she won’t. It’s just sex, she says, a mutual release. Her proposition is borne out of physical need alone and she tells him so. He gives her what she wants and she takes what she needs. She is using him and tells him to use her too. They can still be friends. But she wants him, and he wants her too.
He braces himself for the inevitable freefall, the plunge into emotional turmoil he knows always comes with these arrangements. Never on his side, of course. He’s forward about what he doesn’t want and she listens. They always listen but they never listen . He predicts she’ll be begging for a relationship in a month with just as much need in which she begged him to fuck her.
Instead she leaves. Every time, she leaves. Almost immediately, even before his heart’s stopped racing and the sweat on his back has cooled and the tremors from her climax have quelled, she’s pulling her clothes on and tells him she had fun and she’s out the door. He reminds himself it’s what he wants, finally , a girl who believes him when he says he wants space and not a relationship. Means it when she says just sex.
But he finds himself pulling her back when she gets up, dragging her down for slow, languid kisses. She rolls her eyes when he asks her to stay a little longer, just a few minutes. She never does.
If at any point either of us starts to feel something, we need to stop and talk about it. They agreed to those terms when they started using each other. She insisted she didn’t want either of them getting hurt. He insisted he wouldn’t either way. He thought when they set it in place it would be a rule for her alone.
She talks during sex. Actual conversation, little vignettes of her life, without expecting a reply. He supposes she likes it that way, even if he’s barely registering anything more than the roll of her hips and the clench of her soft, wet heat. She’s riding him when she tells him she’s met someone she might like and this is the last time for a while. She wants to see how this new fling plays out. He’s not listening, not really, but grunts in affirmation and flips her over.
He forgets all about it until a few days later when he texts her to come over. She replies immediately, like always, but he doesn’t check his phone - he knows the telltale ping of his ringtone contains the same “20 min” warning reply she always gives, and instead he wraps a hand around himself and prepares. But 20 minutes later when she still isn’t there, he checks his phone, and he nearly barks in angry laughter.
Date.
After? he types back. He doesn’t close his messages, just waits for the little ellipsis to start twitching. No, comes the reply. He rolls his eyes. He tells himself she’ll be back in his bed soon, and for that night, it’s enough.
The next morning he’s still miffed but refuses to start conversation. Instead he reads back on their exchanges over the last months, conversations that ranged from personal to silly to the nail in the coffin when she told him she wanted him. He’s snappish and irritable and hates what he’s about to do, but he bites the bullet and texts her anyway offering to hang out. Just hang out.
The way his stomach flips when she knocks thrice is telling, and he knows it. He knows he's in trouble, knows he’s missed her when she sweeps into the apartment like she’s done a dozen times before, unassuming and beautiful and wholly his for a little while. He gives her the thing he said he’d never agree to - time. His time, his energy, and for once it’s not self-serving. They hang out, and that’s all.
When she leaves there’s an ache in his chest, a terrifying impulse that suggests reckless things. Grab her by the wrist and drag her inside, it says, push her up against the door . He’d done it before and she loved it, half laughing and half moaning as he laved her neck with hot kisses, weeks ago. She’s only been gone for a few minutes but the reality is crushing, and he’s furiously typing out a message before he can stop himself.
I want you .
She responds when she gets home. Sorry. Even though she isn’t, and he knows this. But he’s always been a bit masochistic at heart and he can’t stop himself from picking at the scab.
I don’t see why you can’t have both .
I like him.
So?
I want to date him. Exclusively.
He feels like he’s been punched in the gut, and he’s halfway to asking Why not me? when she says: You made it clear you weren’t looking for anything but a hookup. You said you’d tell me if that changed. Has it?
His pride surges and even though things have changed irrevocably, even though he yearns for her entirety and not just her body anymore, he can’t bear to leave himself vulnerable and he says No.
So what’s the problem?
He doesn’t answer, because the truth has never been so frustratingly clear. She gave him everything he asked for and nothing he didn’t. She was perfectly content with just sex, didn’t want a relationship, and kept feelings out of the equation entirely. She did everything right, yet here he was feeling slighted, cheated.
You can’t have both, she says, and he can’t bear to look at his phone anymore. Can’t bear to acknowledge how right she is. Somewhere down the line he stopped believing his own rhetoric.
And now she’s gone.