Page 91 of The Wild Card
Sadie cackles and clinks her glass against mine. “Look at you! Getting off with your fake boyfriend!”
“It’s not—” I take another sip. “It’s just physical. We agreed. No feelings, no complications. Just… blowing off steam.”
The look Sadie gives me could curdle milk.
“What?” I ask.
“Emmie.”
“What?”
“You have feelings for him.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I don’t.” I set down my glass too hard, wine sloshing. “It’s just attraction. He’s hot and we live together and there’s proximity and tension and—it’s just physical.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It is!”
“So you’re telling me,” Sadie says slowly, “that you had a deeply intimate experience with a man you’ve been living with for weeks, a man who makes you coffee and remembers your complicated drink order and looks at you like you hung the moon, and you felt nothing?”
“I felt… things. Physical things. Orgasm things.”
“But no emotional things.”
“Correct.”
Sadie just stares at me.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for me to realize something.”
“I’m not waiting for anything.” She sips her wine, the picture of innocence. “I’m just sitting here. Being supportive. Listening to my best friend lie to herself.”
“I’m not lying to myself.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not.” I set my glass down harder than necessary. “Sadie, I know what I want out of life. I’ve always known. Marriage. Kids. Sunday dinners and Christmas mornings and someone who wants to build something with me. A partner. A family.”
“And?”
“And look at him.” I gesture vaguely, as if Crew is standing in Sadie’s living room instead of back at the apartment, probably reorganizing the pantry by expiration date. “He’s a federal agent who probably color-codes his sock drawer. He flinches when people touch him. He’s had seven failed roommates because someone used the wrong coffee mug.”
“So?”
“So can you picture that man changing diapers at 3 AM? Hanging Christmas lights? Standing at the end of an aisle saying ‘I do’ to anyone?” I shake my head. “Because I can’t. I literally cannot imagine it.”
“People surprise you sometimes.”
“Not like that. Not him.” I pull my knees up to my chest, hugging them. “He’s… he’s fun for now. He’s very muscle-y and apparently great with his hands and I’m not going to pretend I don’t enjoy that. But that’s all it is. All it can be.”
