Page 63 of So Not My Type

They’d wandered nearly a full city block when Sophie checked the time. Forty-five minutes was good enough for a break. She was going to head back in and send a client-friendly, but stern, email to Devil’s, warning them they were in danger of not executing this campaign in time.

Words, traffic, and pedestrians passed by as she composed the email in her head. Firm warning, grave warning, critical warning, wait… no, this was a friendly reminder. So caught up on the words, Sophie barely noticed the faces blurring in front of her. A full moment passed for the face in front of her to blink into focus.

Holy shit.The one-night-stand woman was walking toward Sophie and Ella. She’d changed slightly in the last year—she now had short cropped pink hair, instead of a dark red, but everything else looked the same. Oh Christ, should she say something? Sophie was the one who’d slipped out that night before the woman woke up, a total dick move on reflection. Maybe she wouldn’t remember her. Besides, what would she say? “Ella, meet hot one-night-stand woman, sorry we never actually exchanged names. Woman, meet my girlfriend.” Nope, she was going to pull the oblivious Seattle card trick and pretend she was so distracted in her thoughts that she didn’t see her.

Sophie peeked up from the sidewalk and accidentally made eye contact. The woman’s gaze locked with Sophie’s and she approached Sophie and Ella.Double shit.Ugh. They absolutely did not need to engage. Sophie wanted to bolt.

“Well, if this isn’t awkward as fuck,” the woman said in a clipped tone, with a smirk rising.

A million words swirled in Sophie’s mind about how to explain who this woman was. She turned to Ella, ready to be as vague as possible until they could talk later, and time shifted intoslow motion. Traffic sounds and weaving bike riders whizzing by muddled in the background as Ella’s face morphed from joyful to a frozen scowl. Red, angry stripes flashed up Ella’s neck and Sophie’s stomach rolled in response.

“Good to see you again, Ella.” The woman crossed her arms with an amused grin and turned to Sophie. “I guess good to see you, too.”

No… Wait, what? Sophie’s heartbeat thudded so loud in her ear that she felt dizzy.

Ella’s gaze flickered between the woman and Sophie. “Jasmine,” she whispered. Finally, she straightened her shoulders and firmed her jaw. “Can’t say the same for you.”

TWENTY-FIVE

ELLA

Sophie’s voice echoed behind Ella, faint and distant, like she was in a tunnel. A horrible,what the fucktunnel that was in serious jeopardy of collapsing and sucking her into the darkest abyss known to humankind.

“Ella!” Sophie grabbed Ella’s arm, her breath expelling in spurts. “We have to talk about this.”

How could Ella talk about this when she barely processed what just happened? The last five minutes kept playing over and over in her mind. The moment when Jasmine got that look, that stupid effing satisfied grin like she just one-upped Ella, and said to Sophie, “I had a good time with you last year. I don’t think I ever got your name.”Sophie’s eyebrows had cinched. Then her face dropped, her cheeks flushed, and she turned nearly green… and Ella knew. It took all of five seconds to piece everything together. The realization of what had happened slapped her in the face. Neither of them had to say anything else.

Her insides raged, and her belly burned with a foreign sickness, the type that she’d seen in movies, but never felt herself. “Jasmine, though?Jasmine?Of all the women in Seattle,she’sthe one you fucked?”

“I didn’t know she had a girlfriend! I would have never done that had I known.” Sophie’s eyes searched Ella’s, caged like an animal, frantic and rushed. “Ella, please. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. You know that, right? How could I have possibly known? I didn’t even know her name.”

Oh, Ella knew Sophie barely knew Jasmine. She kneweverythingabout that night because of course she asked, like an absolute idiot, about the hot, sordid details to feed her voyeur kink. She’d consumed every word Sophie was willing to share and dove in for second and third scoops. How many times Jasmine made Sophie orgasm, the dirty shit they whispered in each other’s ears, how Sophie tugged off Jasmine’s underwear with her teeth—everything. She was told the excruciating details on how Jasmine bit then blew on Sophie’s most sensitive places, that the kitchen counter provided perfect leverage for round one, and that the upstairs apartment banged on the floor to get them to shut up.

She knew it all.

Images of the two of them rolling in the bed flashed in front of her. She squeezed her eyes shut hard, but that only made the picture more vibrant. That night, Ella knew something was off with Jasmine. Jasmine was supposed to come over as she did almost every night. But soon short, sporadic texts replaced their usual long-winded, funny banter. When Jasmine stopped texting and finally went totally silent, it triggered Ella’s Spidey-sense.

Ella remembered pacing in her room, bouncing between being livid at being ignored with being sure Jasmine was in an accident and lying somewhere in a ditch. The feeling, the panic, the hopelessness, the worry, was because of Sophie.

When she went to Jasmine’s place that next morning, she smelled it in the air—an unfamiliar perfume and the sweat of someone else on the sheets. Then she found the bunched-upfishnet stockings in the corner. Fishnets! How did she only think of this now? Sophie’s signature outfit was right in front of her eyes this entire time, and she never made the connection.

She confronted Jasmine that morning, who transitioned from “You’re acting crazy” to “Oh, honey, I would never… I love you” to “So obviously you must think I’m the worst person in the world.” After every gaslighting trick in the effed-up relationship book, Ella picked up the stockings and threw them at Jasmine’s face. Finally, Jasmine had crossed her arms, deviant and unapologetic, and blamed her tryst on Ella being too controlling, too obsessed, tooboring.

This can’t be happening.Ella couldn’t breathe. She needed more air. Her collar was tight and gross and constricting her airways. She clawed at it, pulling it away from her sticky neck. Everything happening right now was too much, and she needed to get the hell out of here, far away, and process. She bulldozed her way up the sidewalk, refusing to listen to Sophie’s pleas.

Her belly knotted into a ferocious twist and she wanted to cry and hit something and throw up. The crushing devastation was not about ownership over Sophie, not about jealousy. Sophie, the woman she’d fallen for, the woman who she saw a real future with, the woman she’d felt the most intense connection of her life with, now represented the pain Ella had felt for so long. The self-doubt had been so heavy and thick for a year, where she constantly wondered why she wasn’t good enough, why someone she loved chose someone else, someone more fun, someonebetter.

She bolted around the corner, her low heels clacking into the pavement. Pedestrians stepped out of her way as she marched straight ahead, searching for oxygen. She needed to not look at Sophie right now. She needed to get as far away from her as possible. If she looked at Sophie, she wouldn’t be able to think, and right now she needed to think.

“Ella. Stop.”

The sound of Sophie getting closer approached from behind her, and soon she felt fingertips grip her forearm.

“We need to talk about this. We need to figure this out.” Sophie’s fingers dug into Ella so tight her skin started turning white. When Sophie looked down, she dropped Ella from her grip in a snap.

Ella rammed her thumbs into her temples, the prickles of sweat beginning to brew beneath the surface. She looked at Sophie’s watery, regret-filled, wide green eyes. Reflected was Ella’s past and future colliding in the most gross, gruesome way, and she pivoted on her heels. She couldn’t look at her face. Sophie had captured her heart. Sheownedher heart. But now she also owned her heartbreak.

“I can’t… I can’t even look at you.” Ella’s mouth quivered and she drilled her teeth into her lip to stop. She was not going to cry here like a rookie, fifty feet from her office.

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