Page 38 of Falling Off Script

This is new terrain.

And I’m wildly underqualified.

17. Emily

Rachel walks into my office like she just got back from a very exclusive, very illegal wellness retreat for your nervous system and your G-spot.

Her blazer’s crisp, but her smile is feral. There’s a slight limp in her step, which I try very hard not to notice. Her cheekbones are practically winking.

She sits down, smooths her hair, and drops this gem:

“So. I slept with him.”

I blink. “Matt?”

She nods. “And Emily.Oh my God.”

There it is. The tone. The “I just got emotionally rearranged by a man who reads exactly one book a year and it’s alwaysThe Art of War” tone.

“He was—” She exhales like she just climbed something. “—so confident. Not cocky. Not performative. Justin charge.”

I raise a brow. “In what way?”

“In thehe picks you up and sets you down where he wants youkind of way.”

I nearly drop my pen.

“And not in a creepy Fifty Shades way,” she adds quickly. “More like... strategic competence. Like he was ten moves ahead, but also somehow reading me in real time?”

My left eyebrow is now trying to defect from my face.

“He didn’t ask what I liked,” she continues. “Hefound out.”

My mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

“He flipped me,” she says, and I don’t even know what that means, “butgently.And then—this is the part that kills me—afterwards? Hejust leaned over andsmirkedlike a man who knew exactly what he’d done and would maybe do it again later if I was good.”

I choke slightly on my own oxygen.

“He said—” she lowers her voice—“‘I’ve been thinking about doing that since the café.’”

I actually black out for a second.

Rachel is glowing like a woman who just got a TED Talk delivered into her pelvis. I’m doing mental gymnastics trying to not picture the scene.

“My legsshook,” she says. “Like cartoon Bambi. I had to sit down in the bathroom after just to recalibrate.”

I nod slowly, like that’s a completely normal response to postcoital alpha dominance. My notes page just saysFlipped?

Rachel giggles. “He even did that thing—where he keeps eye contact while he... you know.”

“Oh, I donotknow,” I say too fast.

She grins. “He kissed meafterlike it wasn’t a reward, it was a promise. And then—get this—he got up and said, ‘I’m getting you water. Don’t move.’”

I snort. “Okay, that’s too much.”

She shrugs. “It worked.”

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