Page 49 of Unrealistic Expectations

They’d first RSVP’d yes to the event because it seemed like a way to convince the social media world that they were in a real relationship. But now that they were in a real relationship, they didn’t need to prove that they were in one. Sort of counterintuitive, but it worked for her.

“Because it’ll be fun to see people we haven’t seen for years,” Galvin said. He seemed excited about going, which was weird.

“We both see the people we like to see from college, already.” Jessica had kept up with her friends from school, and Galvin was colleagues with a number of their classmates. She really didn’t see the point in making small talk with a bunch of virtual strangers. Plus, once anyone found out she was a therapist, she was going to be listening to a lot of gnarly problems she didn’t want to know about.

Because of that last thing, she put a stack of cards for a therapy referral service in her bag. She was all booked up with patients at the moment, and she wouldn’t want to see anyone she knew in a personal capacity professionally.

“I’m not going to let anyone corner you and demand your opinion on whether or not they should divorce their cheating husband.” Galvin straightened his tie and turned away from the mirror in his bedroom.

“Honestly, if anyone asks, I’ll just give them Alex’s number, anyway.”

She’d been staying at his place most nights of the week. It was moving too fast, they’d only been sleeping together a few weeks, but she couldn’t stand being away from him. His presence made her feel giddy and light and she was addicted to waking up in his arms. She was also addicted to fucking him, but she knew that would fade. She was truly worried about how much she craved the sound of his voice at the end of the day.

It was so different from anything she’d ever experienced before. She’d come to the realization that her relationship with Luke had only lasted as long as it did because he was so busy. She’d actually found him very annoying a lot of the time. She’d convinced herself that it was normal to feel that kind of contempt when you were with someone long-term, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Galvin did annoying things—his neatness was so compulsive that he lined up her shoes in the entryway so that they pointed in the same direction as his shoes. Every time she passed them on the way to the bathroom from the living room, she knocked them off-kilter just so. She supposed that she was annoying, too.

But she wouldn’t have moved the shoes when she was with Luke. She would have seethed for years about it and eventually purchased a shoe rack so the shoes could go in the closet, and it wouldn’t bother him to see them out of alignment.

With Galvin, she could have fun with the petty annoyances that came up. Like his apparent excitement about going to their college reunion. It was times like this that she wished that she could believably seduce someone out of doing something. Galvin might have thought she was pretty the night that they’d run into each other, but fucking hadn’t been in the air. Jessica just didn’t exude that kind of energy—on purpose. She’d never wanted a line of slavering perverts following her wherever she went, like her mother had. But it would be really convenient to whip Galvin into a sex-crazed frenzy long enough for him to forget going to the reunion.

“Is this about seeing Luke?” Galvin asked.

Jessica hadn’t even allowed herself to think about that. Of course, part of it was about Galvin. Jessica still wasn’t clear on exactly why Galvin hated Luke, and she’d been so preoccupied with the book going well and the waiting for the other shoe to drop when that reporter published her article that she hadn’t really dwelled on Luke and Galvin’s blood feud.

“Is Luke why you want to go? I don’t think he’ll show up at this thing. He doesn’t do much outside of work.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Even though she hadn’t thought about Luke, the idea of seeing him still made her feel raw on the inside. Him walking out the door had stripped something away from her—the idea that she could still make good choices and had some semblance of control over her life.

If she saw him, and it was painful, she’d have to think a lot more about whether she was truly over him. And whether her current relationship with Galvin was just a Band-Aid.

“Why would I want to see Luke?” Galvin sauntered over to her sitting on the bed in his bathrobe. She was slow-walking their departure, and she hadn’t gotten dressed yet. “Are you going to wear that?” He pointed to the little black dress that she’d hung on the front of his closet.

Getting desperate, she pulled open one side of his bathrobe so that he could see the black lace bra she wore underneath. “I was kind of hoping that I could convince you not to go, and I wouldn’t have to.”

His face went a little slack, but the side of his mouth slid up. She started breathing a little faster when his gaze dipped to her breast. He walked until his knees hit the side of the bed, and then he braced his hands on either side of her hips. She breathed the freshly showered scent of him in and lifted her face so that she could nuzzle the side of his neck. Maybe she could seduce him to get her way. It wasn’t ethical, but it was more than fair. They would both have a good night if they stayed home. They would both have a better night.

“You’re being a very bad girl,” he drawled. She was getting to him.

She raised her hand and cupped the side of his face. He hadn’t shaved for a second time today, and the stubble felt rough across her palm. She wanted it to redden the skin of her belly and breasts and between her thighs. Now that she was touching him, it wasn’t about getting him to forget going to the stupid college reunion. It was about the drugged feeling she had whenever he touched her. It was about the way she burned to be with him, even though they’d had sex the night before and this morning. It was about how she didn’t want to burst the little bubble they’d made for themselves in the weeks since their relationship had become real.

He obliged her and kissed her, but it wasn’t the kind of kiss that was going to lead to his very fine shirt being torn off and thrown on the floor. It was sexy, but slow.

“Please...”

She didn’t have any qualms about begging him for what she wanted when it came to sex because she knew that he wasn’t going to hold her needs against her. There was a lightness to their relationship that worked in concert with the intensity. She knew so much about relationship dynamics and longitudinal studies about what made relationships satisfying that she’d forgotten that there was a certain element of magic to it.

She’d been so caught up in trying to help her clients with unhealthy relationship patterns getting to something that simply wasn’t toxic, that she’d forgotten why they all chased the high of being really into someone. There truly was nothing like it.

But then he stopped kissing her and rested his forehead against hers. “Why don’t you want to go, really?”

She took a deep breath. “Now that it’s real between us, I don’t want anyone to say anything to you that will make you doubt us. We’re not a marketing ploy anymore.”

“Oh.” He drew back and stood, crossing his arms over his chest. She shouldn’t have said that. “You’re ashamed to be seen with me?”

“No, it’s not that.” She didn’t know how to explain her reticence in a way that he wouldn’t take offense to. They really hadn’t had to work hard at communicating with their words yet, so she didn’t know where all the land mines were. But she could only do the best she could. If they were going to make a go of this relationship—and she really wanted to—she was going to have to figure out how to communicate with him eventually. So much between them felt really easy, and he was worth the effort.

“I never talked about my relationship with Luke when I was doing press before the book came out for a reason.”

“Because he’s a douchebag, and I’m thinking that you don’t want to talk about our relationship because you think that I’m a douchebag but in a different way.” He looked frustrated and upset. She wanted to make him feel better, but she knew that impulse wasn’t necessarily healthy if it came at the cost of her own boundaries.

---