Page 7 of Hard to Forgive

That was one for my personal history books. Who knew I’d find sex that hot at the Rusty Nail?

I was almost tempted to ask if he wanted to stay for another round, but I didn’t get the chance. He rolled away from me and sat up. “I should probably go,” he declared, an awkward lilt to his voice. “I have work in the morning.”

“I do too,” I agreed.

So much for a second round.

I watched as he climbed out of my bed. “Is there a bathroom?”

I could have pointed him to my en suite, but that had always been sacred ground to me. A random hookup could use the hall bathroom. There was no need for a stranger to see the amount of bath products I owned, even if I had just fucked him. I told him where it was and watched as he slipped into the hallway. Then I went about cleaning myself up.

I expected him to come back into the room to say goodbye.

Instead, I heard the front door click shut five minutes later. I walked through the apartment. His pants and shoes were gone from the living room and his shirt was gone from the front hall.

The only evidence that he’d been there at all was the wet wash cloth in the hall bathroom, the used condom in my bathroom, and the blue briefs on my bedroom floor.

It appeared I wasn’t the only one that was going commando that night after all.

3

I didn’t get homeuntil two in the morning. I knew I was going to regret this when I was tired at work, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. The man at the bar had given me a great story to tell my friends the next day. More than that, he’d given me a good time. I smiled through the world’s quickest shower, and it didn’t fade as I fell into bed.

I cared a little more when my alarm was screaming in my ear a few hours later. I managed to shut it up, only for it to start bleating at me again five minutes later. I was fighting a losing battle against time.

I forced myself out of bed and trudged to my closet. I pulled out the first shirt I could reach — a lavender button down gifted to me by Sebastian for my last birthday. I paired it with jeans and thanked my lucky stars that my office didn’t have a strict dress code. I forced myself from my bedroom and only started feeling a little more alive once my coffee pot was brewing. The smell of the coffee tickled my senses and soon, the hot liquid was clearing away the sleep cobwebs.

By the time I made it to work, I wasalmostfeeling back to normal.

I nodded at a few of my coworkers from my previous project. They would all be getting their new assignments today, too. I hoped at least one of them would be on my new team. I always hated when my team was made up of strangers. There was too much pressure to prove myself, and inevitably at least a few people in those groups knew one another, which just made me feel like an outsider.

It also meant that I often got stuck with the shitty parts of the project. On one, I was stuck testing things other people had written for the first month of the project before I was allowed to write code for any of the modules. It had been mind numbing torture. I really did not want to repeat that.

I found my way to the conference room where we were meeting that morning. There were at least twenty other people already waiting in there, sitting in chairs around the table or leaning against the wall. I spotted a friend from a project I’d worked on the year before, Conner, and made my way over to stand beside him.

“What project are you hoping to get on?” Conner asked, the moment he realized I was standing there.

“The fitness tracker would be cool,” I answered, thinking of all the projects I knew the company was developing. I barely knew about most of them, but the fitness tracker had been discussed more times than I could count. It was supposed to be a high profile project. I didn’t know much else about it.

“Yeah right,” Conner muttered, shaking his head. “You know the only people getting on that project are the old guys who have been around for decades.”

I didn’t think he was wrong. The fitness tracker was commissioned by an international corporation. It was rumored to be bringing in millions in revenue to the company, as well asbeing the kind of project that had the potential to make or break the company. There was no way the people in charge would put people on the project who had only been out of college for a few years.

“I heard that upper management wanted a younger team on that one,” a woman standing next to Conner piped up. “We’re the target demographic, but I heard they’re making some kind of star squad for it.”

That ruled me out. I was good at my job, but I doubted any of my former project managers would mark me as a star in the making. I was thorough, but so was everyone I worked with. I was good with the front end coding and had always loved art, but I barely ever got to do anything with the UI. That was always reserved for people who had been on the team for a lot longer.

“I heard they wanted to do something similar with a dating app,” Conner gossiped.

“A dating app?” I questioned. Weren’t there enough dating apps in the world? Almost everyone I knew was on at least one.

“Yeah,” Conner answered immediately. “My project manager from my last team was talking about it. He put in a bid to get on that one. It’s supposed to be focusing on an algorithm that actually matches you with your best fit instead of just another hookup app.”

“Do people even go to those apps for that?”

As far as I could tell, dating apps were good for one thing and one thing only. Very few people found the love of their life on a dating app. If anything, they just found the love of their night.

“There might be a market for it,” the woman commented, leaning in a little.

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