Page 36 of Free Agent

Rori giggled, but quickly tamped it down. “Um… I appreciate the sentiment,” she started, sounding muffled at first, like she’d been covering her mouth. “But he is officially not mine anymore. I mean, he was already not really mine anyway if we’re being completely for real, but… yeah.”

“Okay, okay, you decided you were done?” I asked, unable to keep a note of disbelief out of my voice, based on the conversations we’d shared that night.

Rori scoffed. “You don’t believe me?! I sent him the ring via courier, changed the locks at my condo… done.”

I nodded. “Well shit… I’m impressed. But… I can’t lie. I’m also a little disappointed.”

“Huh?”

“I planned on taking you from him,” I told her. “You’re kinda messing up the flow.”

“Wow,” she laughed. “Hate to break it to you, but I’m not available to be taken from anybody. Or taken at all.”

“Is that right?”

“Mmhm,” she confirmed. “I am a single woman, officially. And that’s okay.”

While what she was saying didn’t particularly fall in line with my plan of flying her out to Connecticut so I could find myself inside her again as soon as possible, I was kinda… proud?

“You’re on your free agent shit. I like it,” I told her, and could hear the smile in her voice when she replied.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” She was quiet for a moment, and then, “It’s kinda scary.”

“Not liberating?”

“That too,” she agreed. “Just… also terrifying. I’ve never been single, in all my adult life. I don’t even really know how.”

I scoffed. “It’s easy as fuck. You make all your decisions alone, you only have to make one side of the bed, you don’t have to check in with anyone while you’re out doing grown folks shit…”

“Well yeah, but… you make all your decisions alone. You come home to an empty bed. You risk the unknown to do grown-up shit with new people.”

“How is that different from the position ol’ boy already had you in?”

“Wow.”

“Shit,” I said, eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

“It’s fine,” she sighed. “You’re not wrong. He definitely had me out here exposed to God knows what, and that was just the things I was actually aware of. Who knows what kinda… shit. Here I go again, way off topic. I reached out to apologize, not pull you into my bullshit.”

“I don’t go anywhere I don’t want to, sweetheart,” I countered, kicking my feet up on the ottoman. “If I didn’t like the conversation, we wouldn’t be having it.”

“But we shouldn’t be having it. You’re practically a stra?—”

“Don’t you dare say that shit,” I cut her off, laughing.

“It’s true though!”

“I wasn’t a stranger when I was trying to tongue kiss your cervix though?”

She sucked in a breath. “Wow. We should call it a night.”

“Nah, now,” I chuckled. “After that shit you pulled, don’t you think you owe me?”

“What did I pull? The picture?”

“The making me miss breakfast,” I countered, head tipped back.

“Huh?” she grunted. “I was long gone by breakfast hours.”

---