Not Your Fault (2 page)

I press my hand to his chest. “I’m just not in the mood right now.”

He rolls closer to me, the hairs on his chest brushing against my arm. “What can I do to get you in the mood?” he whispers. I look down to avoid meeting his sad little puppy gaze, but instead I focus on his chubby man boob pressed against my skin. I’ve never had a problem with him being overweight. And I still don’t. But right now, I am not the least bit turned on and this is not helping. I just want to go home.

“I’m sorry,” I say, sitting up and grabbing my shirt from the nightstand. “I think I need to leave.”

“What the fuck, Delaney?” Nathan throws himself out of bed and crosses his arms, his boner pointing straight at me as if it’s accusing me of treason. “We haven’t had sex in over a week because of your stupid job.”

I jump into my clothing as fast as possible, buttoning my jeans without bothering to zip them. I never meant for this to turn into an argument. This was supposed to be a good night. I don’t know why I’m ruining it by getting upset over something stupid. But my gut tells me to leave because I know I’ll be happier at home, on my own couch, watching old episodes of whatever is on Netflix.

I press my lips together and keep my voice calm. There’s no need to yell, because I’m not angry. But he’s been with me for six years and he deserves to know what’s in my heart. “We haven’t had sex in over a week because I haven’t wanted to.”

Susan shakes her head from the elliptical machine next to me. “Honey you’re gonna make that boy cry. I can’t believe you said that.”

The lime green LED lights on my elliptical show how many calories I’ve burned, and it’s not nearly enough to make up for this morning’s two glazed donuts. And bacon. And, well, that third glazed donut. I raise the machine’s resistance and give Susan an apathetic smile. It’s my day off work and yet I’m here with Susan, working out instead of doing something fun. I think that says a lot about my situation. “I can’t believe I said it myself. I feel like an asshole.”

“Nah…” she begins, trailing off, I guess, after she realizes there’s no truthful way to deny what I just said. I am an asshole to Nathan, and he doesn’t deserve it.

“There was just something about his hairy man boob,” I say with a shudder that makes her laugh. “I couldn’t bring myself to have sex with someone who farts loudly in front of me and then presses his boob against me.”

Susan eyes the dashboard on my elliptical and then raises her resistance level to where it matches mine. “I thought you two had a great sex life. Why did you suddenly change your mind?”

It wasn’t sudden, but she doesn’t know that because I’ve kept her out of my private life for a few weeks. I wonder if I should tell her the truth, about the total life-hating assholery adventure I’ve been on lately, or if I should just continue with the lie and let her think I’ve suddenly fallen out of love with my boyfriend.

Someone lets out a low whistle. “Damn that ass, Sunshine.” I glance back to see Austin and his sixteen-year-old brother walking past us toward the weight room. “He shoots a finger gun at me and then at Susan, giving us a wink. “Both of those asses.” He shakes his head and covers his brother’s eyes. “You’re not old enough to see gorgeousness of this magnitude, bro.”

“Jesus Christ, Austin. Stop teaching the boy to be a pig like you,” Susan says in a horrible imitation of someone who’s actually annoyed by the compliment instead of flattered. She turns back to me. “Thank God for sixty dollar ass-lifting yoga pants, eh?”

She’s right. The yoga pants are magical. “Oh, my
god
!” Susan squeals right as my arm stings from where she slaps me. “You
like
—” she glances toward the weight room and then lowers her voice. “You like Austin!”

“What?” I spit out, gasping for air as I race against my own endurance on the elliptical. “No I don’t.”

“Girl, you’re red as hell, and it’s not from working out.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. “I saw the way you looked at him just now. And don’t even act like you didn’t stand straighter to make your ass look better.”

“You are out of your mind,” I mutter as I stare straight ahead. “Austin is merely eye candy. Nothing wrong with that.”

She rolls her eyes and lowers the resistance on her machine. “Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself.”

“He’s slept with just about every girl who graduated with me in high school. I have no desire to be with him, ever.”

She finally shuts her freaking mouth long enough for us to finish our workout, shower and get dressed. I’m halfway through applying my eyeliner when she brings the subject up again. “I think I know what your problem is,” she says, tousling her long blond hair into a messy bun.

“That I have a nosey friend who needs to shut up?” I say as I glare at her through the locker room mirror.

Susan presses her lips together in a sarcastic duck-face and slides two bobby pins under her bangs. “You’re surrounded by sexy men. You need to date a sexy man.”

She says the last two words as if all I need to do is go to the man store and pluck one off the shelf labeled Sexy. “Nathan is sexy,” I say. “I think maybe I’m just not good at relationships.”

“Do you want to break up with Nathan?” She asks the question as if it’s a threat and I’m not sure how to answer. Though the thought has occurred to me a lot lately, I can’t bring myself to think or even say the words
break up
. It’s just so…harsh. I mean, he hasn’t done anything wrong. This is all my fault.

Her cold fingers grab my shoulder. “Your silence says it all, sweetie. Get out there and ask Austin to take you lunch.”

“Oh my God, shut up,” I say, shoving my mascara wand at her. “I do not like Austin. He is probably crawling with diseases. In fact, we should go sterilize the weights.”

Susan perches on the bench next to me, touching her finger to her lips and then pointing to me. “Do you remember why you went after Nathan in the first place? Because he was cute and chubby. The last—what?—four guys you dated were total beanpoles and you spent all your time bitching that their skinny asses made you feel fat.”

I groan, not wanting to be reminded of all the loser men I’ve dated in my twenty-seven years on Earth. Susan continues, “So you made it your mission not to date any skinny guys and then you found Nathan and his beer gut won you over. But now you spend all your time with these sexy body builders and now you want a meathead.” She says it like she has it all figured out—like she has a PhD in Delaney Psychology.

I cap my mascara and turn toward her. “You know your stupid rambling kind of makes sense.”

She winks. “You wanna rub your hands over an oiled up six pack, don’t ya?”

I smile and this time I really do throw the mascara at her. “You are such a pervert. There is more to dating than sex appeal. I love Nathan and I’m not going to break up with him.”

“Right,” she says, following me out of the locker room and out of the gym, whispering dirty things about biceps and sex positions that only strong men can do.

“I think you need to lay off the wine at work,” I tell her, pointing toward the desk where she keeps her stash in the mini fridge.

“Oh I’m not drunk,” she says, poking me in the ribs while she does this little hip-shimmy dance thing that only a drunk person would do. “I’ve just got you all figured out. You’ll come around eventually. I’m telling you…muscles will have you in bed begging for more in no time.”

She stands in the doorway while I walk to my car, completely ignoring how I tell her to shut up. “You know I’m right,” she calls after me. “But why don’t you prove me wrong and go have sex with your boyfriend?”

Chapter 3

Cat groans when I flip on the living room light. She’s passed out on the couch, or at least she was a few minutes ago, and now she mumbles something about
fuck me
and
lights are stupid
as she rolls over and shoves her face into the crease of my brown suede couch. Ever since our parents chose to combat their mid-life crisis by going back to college for doctorate degrees, my twenty-one year old sister Cat has taken to crashing at my house much more than she used to.

I sit on the back of her legs and rest my feet on the coffee table. “It’s almost eight-thirty. You have to be at work soon.”

With that, she pulls her head out of the couch and gives me a pathetic version of a puppy face. “I need breakfast, Del. There’s no food at my house. Mom and Dad don’t buy food anymore.”

I punch her in the back of the knee. “There’s an envelope of cash stuck to the refrigerator, dumbass. You’re supposed to buy food with it.”

She wriggles out from under me and sits up, pulling her knees to her chest. “But I don’t want to.”

I roll my eyes and head to the kitchen while she tells me thanks and singsongs about how I’m the world’s greatest sister. I make us both fried egg, bacon and cheese sandwiches and meet her back on the couch a few minutes later.

“You okay?” she asks, diving into her breakfast after shoving a stray piece of bacon back under the bread.

“Yeah,” I answer. Butterflies appear in my stomach and I’m not sure why.

“You never make me breakfast without bitching for ten minutes first,” she states all sarcastic and matter-of-factly. “And you have dark circles under your eyes, plus you’re dressed like total shit, and—”

“Okay, okay,” I interject with a wave of my hand. I set my food down on the plate in my lap. “These are my workout clothes so I’m not dressed like shit, thank you very much.”

“So what’s wrong with you?” Cat asks with a mouth full of food. “You on the rag or something?”

 I sigh. I wish a little PMS was all that’s wrong with me. “You really want to know? Because I could use some advice.”

Her lips squish to the side of her mouth for a second and then she shrugs. “Lay it on me.”

I tell her all about Nathan and how he’s such a great boyfriend and how he loves me a lot and how I just suddenly feel…not into him anymore. She listens with an apathetic gaze on her face, and when I’m finally done pouring out my heart to her, she laughs.

She freaking laughs.

“Dude, you’re thinking way too hard about this.” She stands and takes our plates to the kitchen sink. “I’ve always known you would outgrow Nathan sooner or later. Frankly, I thought it would be, like, way sooner than later. He’s so not your type.”

“He is too!” I object, following her into the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of myself in a decorative mirror on the wall, and damn if my eyes aren’t circled with dark half-moons. “He’s educated and successful, and he makes more money than I do which is a first for all the guys I’ve dated—” as I say all these things, I realize how shallow they sound, but I keep talking anyway. “And he’s super nice and he loves me a lot. He wants to move in together and get married and all that. It’s time for me to settle down, and I just don’t know how to make myself love him. This might be my only chance for happiness.”

My face crumples when I finish talking, but tears don’t form in my eyes. It feels like the kind of emotional relationship moment where I should cry, but I don’t. Cat steps forward and places her hands on my shoulders. “Nathan fits a checklist in your head of what you want in a man. That doesn’t mean he’s your soul mate or that you should keep dating him when you don’t want to.”

“I do want to.” My voice breaks but I clench my jaw tightly and pretend that I mean it. Because if I say it enough, I’ll eventually believe it.

“Del,” she says, shaking my shoulders this time. “You just need to find someone else. You’re hot and you’re a ripe young twenty-seven-years old. You got this.”

I shake my head. “I’m old as hell. Twenty-seven is the new forty. All my friends are married now.” I put my hands on her shoulders, making it look like we’re slow dancing in the middle of the tile floor. “And this town is so small I’m pretty sure I’ve rejected all the eligible guys in a fifty-mile radius.”

She gives me a sinister smile. “Yeah, you probably have rejected them all. Maybe you should broaden your search to a seventy-five mile radius.”

I smile back at her but those words stab into my heart with a sharpness that makes about three dozen guys flash through my memory at warp speed. Maybe I have rejected every guy around. My only happy relationship was when I was a junior in high school, but that doesn’t count because I was a kid back then. Kris and I dated since the summer before ninth grade. Back then I never thought about dating anyone else. I never thought I’d be pushing thirty years old and still single.

Wait, I’m not single. God, what is wrong with me? I shake my head to clear thoughts of my old high school sweetheart. The guy who left me when I needed him most. The guy who does not matter at all anymore.

Cat pulls me into a hug and my face presses into her shoulder, smearing wetness on my cheek. I hadn’t realized I’d started crying. I suck in a deep breath and pull myself together. A loud buzzing fills the air.

“Your ass is ringing,” Cat says, grabbing a drink from the fridge. I slide my phone out of my back pocket, hoping it isn’t Nathan and hating myself for thinking that. It’s my boss, calling from her personal phone and not from the gym. Judy and her husband Dwayne founded Carson’s gym back in their twenties, when they both competed in professional body building championships. Now they’re pushing retirement age, but are still just as muscular and fit as ever. I couldn’t ask for better bosses. They’re like family to me.

I consider letting it go to voicemail just in case she wants me to cover an additional shift or do extra work for her around the gym. But then I realize that any extra work would fill up my free time, so I answer.

“Delany, honey, we need to talk,” Judy says, her voice tinged with anxiety.

“Yes, ma’am?” I squeak out, my fingers tightening around the phone. My heart speeds up as my mind contrives a million possibilities before she has a chance to say another word. Am I being fired? Did the gym burn down and now I’m jobless? Is Dwayne dead?

“As of today, I am no longer your boss.”

My heart drops into my stomach. “I don’t understand,” I say as Cat’s expression turns serious when I look at her. “What did I do?”