Page 61 of Playing for the Hat Trick
Scottie: We have a problem?
Jason: Yeah, I don’t know about you, but I’m sex-starved. It’s been too long. It’s, like, medically concerning levels of dry spell.
Scottie: You saying we need a treatment plan?
Jason: I’m saying maybe we stop dancing around this and do something about it.
Scottie: :eyes: emoji
Jason: Are you interested?
Scottie: Depending on what you’re suggesting.
Jason: We share benefits.
Scottie: Say that again.
Jason: You heard me.
Scottie: Benefits? As in: we’re acquaintances with benefits? Can you even handle me?
Jason: You make it sound like a task.
Scottie: I dare you to try.
Jason: Ooh, a challenge on top of a challenge. I like where this is going.
Scottie: So, how does this work?
Jason: We let our urges take over—orgasms and mutual satisfaction. It’s good for my recovery. And. . . it might save our sanity.
Scottie: Sounds doable, I accept. Just don’t confuse therapy with foreplay, Tate. Even if you come out of it healed, I might not.
Chapter Twenty
Jason
Rule #69: When Therapy Becomes Foreplay
The second I put my phone down, I start pacing.
Not limping, nope. I’m not even wearing the brace. This is just me in the raw, even when my knee is screaming ‘fucking stop it, or I’ll give up, asshole.’ I’m running on adrenaline, post-sexting tension, and the slow descent into what can only be described as a sexual nervous breakdown.
I tell myself this is normal. That pacing around your expensive apartment after proposing a friends-with-benefits arrangement to your physical therapist-slash-your-best-friend’s-sister is something every man does at some point in his life.
It’s not.
This is not fucking normal.
My apartment is too quiet. Stainless steel surfaces. The floor-to-ceiling windows offer me a front-row view of Manhattan, pretending to be interested in my life choices. Today, everything feels all too polished, too cold, too aware of what just happened.
It should be very simple to summarize. I proposed sex. In a very casual, ‘this is for you, take this sanity-saving sex’ kind of way.
And I offered it to . . . well, Scottie. The worst and best part might be that she fucking said yes. I think. Right, that’s what she said.
That part’s still debatable, though, because of Tokyo. She never called me after that and . . . then there was the accident. I was not allowed to see her. Being in a different country made everything ten times harder to reach out to her, but now . . .
Maybe I got all this wrong, so I will go back and reread the thread. Her messages are burned into my retinas. I scroll anyway, hoping for a different ending. I get to the part where she says,I dare you,and yeah, no. That’s where I lost the plot. She didn’t just agree—she dared me. And like a desperate, touch-starved moron, I hit accept like I was signing a fucking contract.
