Page 55 of Treat

Brynn didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It was good.”

“How good?”

“I don’t remember anything that happened in the entire seventh inning.”

“Yeah, it looked like a thought-clearer. What happened after?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

Tilly had left her a little present on the sidewalk, so Brynn pulled a doggy doody bag out of her pocket. “I mean, he asked if I was okay, I said ‘not really’, he said ‘me neither’, then we went back to watching the game.”

There was silence on the line while Brynn busied herself playing chambermaid to the dog. She was tying off the bag when Amy said, “What a couple of dummies.”

“Hey. Watch the ableist language.”

“Sorry, I forgot. I’ll rephrase. What a couple of not smarties.”

Brynn walked the bag to the bin on the corner and tossed it in. “Well, as long as I’m racking up—what’s the opposite of gold stars?”

“I don’t know. Shit bombs?”

That sounded about right. “I might as well tell you I kissed him earlier.”

“Earlier when? Earlier than he kissed you?”

“Before the game,” Brynn confirmed, starting the walk back to the apartment with Tilly trotting happily beside her. “But his friends stopped by and that kind of ended that.”

“So you got cock blocked by his friends and then by thirty thousand baseball fans.”

“Pretty much.”

“So, how horny are you right now?”

“I left the baseball game early so I wouldn’t get arrested for indecent exposure.”

“Right. What are you going to do now?”

“He’ll be back soon,” she said, slowing as she approached the building. “I guess we’ll talk.”

“Fifty bucks says you fuck first.”

“Stop betting on my sex life, dammit.”

“I’m only betting with you,” Amy pointed out. “You’re going to go for it, right?”

“I don’t think I have a choice. That didn’t sound right,” Brynn amended, pushing into the building. The lobby was cool and dim and to her relief, empty. “Obviously I have a choice, it’s just that…”

“You’ve crossed the point of no return,” Amy supplied, “and you can’t go back to the way things were before.”

“Yeah.” On the elevator, Tilly scratched behind one ear while Brynn tried to calm her racing heart. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“You still planning to ‘carpe the goddamn diem’?”

“You would throw that in my face,” Amy muttered, then sighed. “I think I have to. I can’t keep doing…whatever it is I’ve been doing.”

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