The Pretend Girlfriend (29 page)

He made a fist and pulled back, making Gwen expose her neck. This he kissed, his stubble tickling her. She liked giving him the control, liked how he commanded her body.

Aiden's insistent strokes brought Gwen to another climax, this one leaving her shaking and sweaty.

How can he make me feel so good?
Gwen wondered. Again, she considered whether this could possibly be another dream. The most erotic, sensual dream of her life. But she knew that it couldn't be a dream. Despite being almost unbelievable, it felt far too real. He felt real.

And Gwen wanted to make him feel good the way he made her.

So they uncoupled, kissing as Gwen rolled him onto his back. She mounted him again, letting her body sink down onto him. He filled her so nicely.

And then Gwen rode him, supporting herself with her hands planted on his strong chest. She loved watching the way his lips and eyes expressed his pleasure.

Aiden's hands moved from her hips to her bottom, helping lift her up. Soon, the big bed groaned beneath them from the force of her movement.

"You make me feel so good, Gwen..." Aiden said. He gritted his teeth, his eyes squeezing shut. He was close, Gwen knew.

Just like he did with her, Gwen guided him through his climax, never relenting, never slowing. His fingers squeezed her, and his whole body seemed to clench up beneath her.

When it ended, she rolled off of him and he held her.

Gwen's body buzzed in the afterglow, and no more how deeply she breathed, she couldn't seem to catch her breath for several minutes. At first, she thought she must be in shocked disbelief. But it had happened. She could tell by the pleasant, satisfied ache starting low in her stomach and going deeper every moment, and from Aiden's arm draped over her.

In essence, everything felt right with the world. She could tell that no matter what happened to them, they could get through it. They had to strength to weather anything.

Everything was laid bare, physically and emotionally. Gwen even felt the stirrings of desire again when she let her fingers trace up Aiden's arm to squeeze his bicep.

Gwen smiled in the darkness of Aiden's bedroom. This also meant that he could no longer deny his true feelings for her. No more of that nonsense with that silly contract. With that out of the way, maybe they could move on.

But thoughts of the contract led Gwen to the unpleasant recollection of telling Beatrice about it, and then not telling Aiden straight away. Uneasiness flooding into her, getting rid of that lovely afterglow, she glanced at him. Aiden lay on his side, watching her quietly.

"What are you thinking?" he asked. He cupped her breast gently and nuzzled her neck, and Gwen thought that maybe he felt the stirrings of renewed desire, too. She wanted to just fall into that, into him, but knew that she needed to get this off her chest.

It's okay,
she told herself.
You can do it. You can get through it. You both can.

She took a deep, calming breath, and tried not to think about what his hand was currently doing. "There's something I need to tell you."

"You're actually already married and we can only be lovers?" Aiden supplied.

Why was he making this so difficult? "No... It's about the contract."

Aiden's hand stopped doing that pleasant, wonderful thing, "What about it? Why bring that up now? Just forget about it; it doesn't matter anymore. Not to me."

That seemed like a good out. But Gwen valued the honesty they'd been trying to cultivate with each other, and she knew that this would just hang over her head as long as they stayed together.

"It's just that... That I..." Gwen said, her throat starting to close up, not wanting the words to escape. But they needed to come out.

"What? Just tell me," Aiden said, pulling a few strands of hair away from her neck so that he could kiss her again.

"I told Beatrice about it... I didn't mean to; I'd had a few drinks, and she was making me angry..."

Aiden stopped breathing behind her, his whole body still. She wanted him to say something, anything. This silence was worse than anger.

"Will she tell anyone?"

"I don't know... I don't think so," Gwen said, remembering the final few words she and Beatrice had exchanged at the bar.

"But you can't be certain?"

"No," Gwen replied.

Aiden rolled over onto his back, putting his hand behind his head. They weren't touching, and Gwen suddenly felt cold without the heat of his body pressed against her.

"I'm sorry," Gwen said. The last vestiges of that afterglow vanished, replaced by a twisting, awful feeling in her stomach. She'd needed to tell him about that, but she didn't know what to make of his reaction. Was he mad?

"We're going to have to hope that she won't," Aiden said.

C
losing the door to her apartment behind her, Gwen leaned against it. She buried her face in her hands, pulling her fingers down her cheeks.

On one hand, things had gone extremely well. Shockingly so, even. Aiden had seduced her. Or had she seduced him? Maybe it was mutual. In any case, it really happened. The aches now flaring up around her body attested to that.

But then I had to open my big mouth,
Gwen thought. At one point last night, Gwen thought that Aiden might actually ask her to leave. He'd been somewhat cold the rest of the night. Cold and withdrawn.

Though she did have some pleasant memories of spooning during the night, waking up in his bed and realizing that yes, Aiden really was asleep next to her. Getting to sleep proved to be somewhat difficult, as she felt terrified that she might snore. Or whisper more secrets into the darkness.

When she woke up, she'd climbed out of bed as quietly as she could and snuck out of his condo.

And now here she was, wearing the same wrinkled dress from yesterday.

She went into the kitchen, squinting when she turned on the light. A few dirty dishes cluttered the counter, and the place smelled vaguely of the half-empty bottle of lavender dish soap which sat beside the tap.

Throwing a slice of bread into the toaster, she wished for the hundredth time that she'd just kept the truth to herself for a little bit longer. Aiden knew how to cook, he'd said. What sort of breakfast might he have made? Pancakes, Gwen bet. Nice fluffy, buttery pancakes.

The bread began toasting, filling the kitchen with what Gwen now considered a lackluster aroma. Lackluster compared to the gourmet pancakes that she was sure she was missing out on.

Peanut butter toast in hand, she went to her room. More unpleasant sights greeted her there, from the pile of unopened, unstudied books, to her laptop and the incomplete essay, the messy bed, the pile of clothes...

Sighing, she sat at her desk and took out her phone.
Should I try giving B another call?
Gwen wondered. This was exactly the type of thing she'd want to talk about with her friend. But she doubted that B wanted to talk with her, yet.

Another thing to throw on the heaping pile of things to do. There were so many things in that pile already that she expected an avalanche of overdue due dates, lost friendships, and squandered opportunities to come crashing down on her at any moment.

And lurking beneath it all: the fear that even Aiden now hated her, or thought less of her at the bare minimum.

Gwen glanced around her unkempt bedroom, her mind going out into the empty apartment beyond the door.
I'm alone
, she thought.

Despite having the rent paid, feelings of fear and worry descended over her almost to the same point as when the reality of her roommate skipping out on her came crashing down.

And there, on the desk, sat her ticket to London. Gwen picked up the glossy piece of paper, watching the light coming in from the window leave a glittering streak across the type.

The plane was probably already over in the UK. Probably refueling, ready to haul another load of people back over the Atlantic.

Not wanting to think about it anymore, Gwen yanked open a desk drawer, threw the ticket in, and slammed the drawer shut. She flinched at the sharpness of the sound.

Gwen ate the piece of toast mechanically. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. Unfortunately, she hadn't grabbed any drink for the Rinse stage, and peanut butter quickly gummed itself to the roof of her mouth. Each mouthful felt like a hard little ball in her stomach.

From there, she flipped open her laptop and stared at her essay for a good ten minutes, moving the mouse when the screen darkened in an attempt to enter power saving mode. Her fingertips grazed the keys, unable and unwilling to apply the force necessary to make letters appear on the screen. Her mind filled with the staticky grey fuzz you used to get on old TV stations that weren't in service.

She knew that throwing herself at school might be the best idea right at that moment. She could lose herself in facts and dates and theories, forgetting real life for academic sophistry.

Yet her mind simply wouldn't allow it. The more she tried to force an idea, the further from her grasp the ideas fled. It was like trying to herd cats.

Clearly
, Gwen thought,
I need some recovery time.
So, leaving her crumb-covered plate on her desk, she dragged herself out to the living room, plunked down on the couch, and turned the TV on. It was still pretty early in the morning, so it was mostly stuff like the annoyingly happy face of Kelly Ripa, and other equally cheery morning people.

But then one channel caught her eye and she stopped.

It was
When Harry Met Sally
. Just as the road trip was beginning. Why were they showing this movie so much?

It just reminded Gwen of Beatrice, and their long-running debate centered around the film. They'd just watched that movie around a week ago, but so many things had happened in those intervening days that it seemed more like a year.

It was kind of like how Gwen thought about Aiden. They'd met at that rich person party, and then he'd made that ridiculous offer which she'd then accepted. They'd been together only that long.

But it was more than that. Despite the mysteries still swirling around him, Gwen felt as though she and Aiden had known each other most of their lives. It was one of the reasons she liked being around him. It was one of the reasons she wanted to be with him, and why it hurt so much when he tried not reciprocating those feelings.

"Stupid movie..." Gwen muttered, reaching for the remote, intent on changing the channel. Even a blank screen would be better than being subjected to this again.

The movie reminded her of the friendship that she'd probably lost, and the relationship that now had a large question mark as its status, and she didn't want to think about either of those, at least for a little while.

She wanted the screen saver experience, like those big old bulky computer monitors used. Except instead of a monitor, it was her mind. She just wanted it turned to standby mode so that she could just slip away from everything for a little bit.

However, Gwen's finger did nothing but lightly graze the button to change the channel. Billy Crystal had once again launched into his theories on the impossibility of friendship between men and women.

Gwen had always disagreed with him and Beatrice both. But as he talked about it, she realized that her own experiences had forced a change in opinion on the matter.

It would have been better, she thought, for all involved in the contract to remain at arm's length. But her own feelings had gotten in the way and mucked it all up.

Thinking about it, leaning back and letting the old, abused couch cushions take her weight, Gwen arrived at a somewhat different conclusion. A caveat, to put her education to good use for once.

It wasn't that men and women were incapable of a platonic friendship; they could be just friends. But here came the caveat, the variable that, if present, precluded friendship.

A woman could be friends with a man provided that the element of attraction was not present. And by this, Gwen meant totally absent. If one person felt attraction for the other, the friendship was just a relationship waiting to happen. The guy or the girl not experiencing the attraction might not be aware of it, but the other person sure was.

And if both people felt attraction but never acted on it... Well, that was just tragic.

There were other niggling details to iron out and lay down, but that looked like the gist of it.

That was why this whole girlfriend contract thing hadn't worked out the way either of them expected. Because they both felt that attraction. For it to have worked, neither of them should have felt anything for the other.

However, the more Gwen thought about it, the more she realized that had Aiden not felt any attraction to her, he probably wouldn't have created the contract in the first place.

Basically, and this made Gwen sigh, it was doomed from the start.

She did take some small comfort in one thing, though. It wasn't that Beatrice had been right and she was wrong about the whole friendship thing. They'd both been right and wrong. But that just boiled down to there never being just two sides to any argument or idea.

Of course, Beatrice did seem to be more right (was that even a phrase?) than Gwen about it.

So Gwen went and grabbed her phone and called Beatrice. As she expected, the call went directly to voicemail.

The tone sounded.

"Hey, B, it's me again... I don't know if you're checking all these messages I sent you. I must sound like a crazy lady, filling up your inbox with all this. But I hope you get this one, at least.

"This is gonna sound a little weird, given all the stuff that's happened lately, but I just wanted to tell you that I think you're right—mostly right, anyway—about the whole men and women impossibility of friendship thing. I could really use you in my life right now, but I also understand why you don't seem to want to be a part of it anymore. If you think all this is crazy from an outside perspective, imagine living in it! Anyway, I'm going to come clean about everything, get a fresh start... Aiden's father offered me a way out, and I think I should take it. I don't want to hurt you or Aiden anymore, even if neither of you want to be in my life anymore."