Page 25 of Sext Addict

TESSA:Sex study?!!?

It was sent and gone and I wasn’t getting it back. I covered my face with my hand and groaned. It didn’t take long for Cade to text back.

CADE:Hey, Tessa, look I thought you were looking for something more. I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work.

Great,I thought.Just great.I sank to the ground and wrapped my arms around my knees. Moments later, I watched from my hiding spot as Cade walked along the side of the restaurant and out toward the parking lot.

I thought I couldn’t feel lonelier than I had before deciding to do the sex study. But as I crawled out of the shrubs a few minutes later and picked branches out of my hair, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Cade

As I’d sipped my beer on the patio and stared out over the sunset, I’d been buzzing with excitement to see Tessa.

That was before the texts, of course.

My first thought was that something terrible had happened to Tessa on her way to the restaurant on the beach. Surely she had been mugged and the person who stole her possessions and left her bloodied in some ally was attempting to impersonate her so I wouldn’t grow suspicious. I actually pondered for a moment calling the cops, because the person texting me from Tessa’s number could not possibly be the same girl from the gym.

It was impossible. Absolutely impossible.

Maybe one of the other women from the gym had stolen her phone, I thought as the texts became more wild.

I’d turned down drinks with Patricia after nearly every yoga class at the gym because I knew she only wanted my “cobra” in her “downward dog.” Perhaps Patricia had followed Tessa, knocked her in the back of her head with her yoga mat, and was using her phone to lure me into her bedroom in her mansion in the Hills. The thought made me shudder despite the warm sunlight through the bamboo roof of the restaurant patio.

But the longer the texting went on, the failed attempts at sexiness got worse and worse, and it grew abundantly clear that Tessa hadn’t been mugged or attacked by Patricia or inhabited by some extra-terrestrial life force. It was Tessa texting from her phone. Well,sexting, really. Or at least, some rancid version of sexting.

And it made me sad.

I didn’t know her at all. Had barely spoken a few sentences with her before asking her out. But we’d watched each other so long, I’d felt like I’d known her. At least, I’d known enough about to her to believe she had depth to her, and that maybe she liked me more than just for my body. Hell, I wasn’t looking for a serious commitment or to put a ring on her finger given this was supposed to be our first date, but I’d grown sick of meaningless hook-ups a long time ago.

I left the restaurant before she arrived and wondered how I had been so wrong.

I ducked into my van that was parked in the far corner of the restaurant parking lot, and slipped off one suit and pulled on another. Grabbing my board off the top of my van, I walked across the sand toward the waves.

I was disappointed so I shouldn’t have been humming. But I was, and when I realizedwhatI was humming, I had to pause. A song by recording artist Kelis.

I smiled even as I shook my head.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard…

Chapter 7

Tessa

“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you’re saying it was,” Ellis said, reaching toward the bowl of popcorn in my lap to grab another piece.

I wasn’t fast enough to snatch it away from him. Before we put onA Philadelphia Story, with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, I asked him if he wanted some before I decided how much to pop and he told me he didn’t want to “ruin his appetite” (winky face, winky face) before his date later that night. He forfeited his right to popcorn.

“Just forget about it,” he said, grinning at me as he plopped the stolen kernel into his mouth.

“Ellis,” I replied, pulling back the bowl and smacking his hand away as he stretched across the couch for another handful, “there are still leaves in my shower. Leaves. From being in shrubs. Shrubs, Ellis.”

Ellis shrugged.

“I one time had Jello in my shower after a date,” he answered with a mischievous wink.

I rolled my eyes and refused to ask him how he ended up covered in Jello. After what we did before my date with Cade, I was intent on staying away from any remotely sexual topic. Ellis and I were best friends and best friends shouldn’t sext. Besides, he was the have-sex-in-a-pool-of-Jello type and I was the awkwardly-sexting-from-the-bushes type. The two didn’t exactly “go.”

I groaned, flopping my head back on the couch. “He was a nice guy who was actually interested in me, and I asked him to lick my cherries.”

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