Page 175 of Scrimmage

“Should I be worried about you?” I can see him, scanning my body for fresh wounds.

I flash him a smile. “You should always worry about me.”

He doesn’t laugh.

“No,” I concede. “Penny.”

It’s the only explanation I’m going to offer.

“Someday you’re going to talk to me.”

“Well, today, you’re going to help me move that desk. So get up, Golden Boy. We’ve got painting to do.”

“I’m putting a lock on the front door first.”

I don’t protest. I think I want that, too.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ashland

Are you a sex addict if you’re addicted to one dick, and that dick is addicted to you, too? It feels like mutual hypersexuality. Koda can make me feel better than I ever have before. It’s like being depressed and getting an insane dose of oxytocin.

It’s not the same game that it once was. Now, I don’t know what we’re trying to win, and I can’t tell who’s ahead. I’m fucking distracted by him in every sense of the word. Most of my bookings have been an athlete of some sort, and they always let Koda stick around. We’re almost never apart.

He's so demanding, possessive, of my attention. It makes me feel wanted in the way that Damien made me feel. I don’t want to compare the two, and I do my best not to, but it’s hard. I’m not seeing that fucker in my sleep, so I’ll take that as a win.

Because of his obsessive nature, Koda likes things a specific way. He has gone through my house and reorganized everything that he’ll be forced to look at. I didn’t stop him. It turned me on. I ended up having sex with him against the kitchen cabinets, throwing things onto the floor, because organization apparently makes me wet as long as I’m not the one doing it.

I also like it when he’s irritated. He has an insane amount of patience when it comes to me, and I know I’ll break it eventually. That’ll probably be the last time we see each other. Sometimes I think about holding myself back, ignoring the intrusive thoughts, and then I feel this need inside of me so I follow through anyways. I’m the person who presses the one button you aren’t supposed to and smiles as it all implodes.

I might be using him to fill Penny’s absence, but he doesn’t seem to mind. When she went off to the internship I knew there would be changes. Hell, she would be living away from me for the first time ever. I knew it would be hard, but it’s more difficult than I thought. Movie nights have become far and few between. Our daily chats have been limited to a few text updates a day. She’ll be home to visit in less than twenty-four hours and I’m vibrating with excitement.

I’ve been glad she isn’t worrying about me, and I’ve been sad that I’m not witnessing her life first hand. I feel dirty because I’m also happy that we’ve had space. It’s not that I want to be away from Penny, not ever, but there’s something freeing in having people around you who don’t know you at all. There’s safety, though, in knowing that Penny is there and that we aren’t separated forever. It means I’m not completely alone.

I want to talk to her. I want to gush to her about Koda and hear her squeal at the details, but my expectations for myself have stopped me. Does Penny know that we’re fucking? Yes. Does she know he’s calling me his girlfriend? Also yes, but she doesn’t know that I’m being consumed by him. Every single night it’s his place or mine. Recently? It’s been mine. I’m having a hard time reminding myself that it’s just a label he’s putting on me to tell everyone else I’m off limits until he’s tired of me.

He never presses me for information, but he finds the perfect time to ask me about myself. After telling him I’m from the South, he has tried to guess which state. He’s said Kentucky, like, sixteen times, and no matter what he says my answer is ‘good guess’. I might be obsessed with him, but giving anyone information about myself is still off limits.

We’ve been painting my room, and each time I pick a color, half way through painting I change my mind, and we have to start all over again. I turned the heat in the house all the way up just so he would strip his shirt off while he worked and I could watch him sweat. A few times we ruined the paint because I’m an insatiable slut when it comes to seeing his muscles flex.

I stare at the wall with a paintbrush in my hand and pout. It’s cathartic to paint over my own thoughts, and it also feels a little strangling, like I’m silencing someone who doesn’t want to be. I’m putting tape on a dead girl’s mouth and threatening her not to speak, not to scream into the void. I don’t know how to move on for good. Whether Koda is here or not, deep down I’m fucking haunted, and I don’t know why. It should be so simple.

“Ashland,” Koda pulls me from my existential crises.

“Yes?”

“Please, do not tell me you are changing your fucking mind again. Two of the walls are already dry. I do not want to paint this goddamn room for the rest of my life.”

“What? Do you have better things to do? Are you supposed to go to the beach for spring break with the gym bros and lift bitches for fame and glory?” I nibble on the end of the paintbrush before taking a deep breath and covering the last of my inner turmoil.

Koda slips his arms around my waist and squeezes me into him. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you in a wet t-shirt.”

His fingers manage to find my pierced nipple through my paint covered crop top, brushing against it. I shudder.

“Yeah? You like it when women douse themselves on stage and shiver like wet cats?”

“Mmm,” he hums in my ear. “There’s only one pussy I’m interested in, and I’m betting it’s already soaked.”

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