Junk

by Komal Kant

  “How do you feel about me?” Blair was looking at me in a way no woman had looked at me in a long time. It was the same way my ex used to look at me in the beginning, back when we were so in love we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

  “It’s written on my face, Blair, and it’s written on yours, too.”

  Everything happened in a split second.

  I pulled Blair to me, almost lifting her clean off the ground. My body was pulsing, racing with an adrenaline that only wanted one thing.

  I managed to unlock the back of my truck, still holding onto Blair. Her mouth had found my neck, kissing and sucking on it, pushing me closer to the edge of my self-control.

  Grabbing her wrists, I slammed her down in the back seat and straddled her with my legs.

  Blair gazed up at me, her dark hair fanned out on the seat around her striking features, her eyes flitting from yellow to green to brown. She was so fucking beautiful, especially in that tight, little dress. Her body was perfect, every curve, every bump, perfect against my touch.

  I was throbbing against her, wanting to feel her again, to make her moan my name.

  “Wade,” she murmured, running her fingers through my hair. “I need you.”

  That was all I needed to hear.

  Reaching over, I pulled the dress off her body in one smooth movement, which was an amazing feat considering how damn tight it was.

  Blair lay beneath me, clad only in her black bra, underwear, and heels. As impatient as I was to feel her warm body beneath me, I paused to bask in how fucking amazing she looked.

  And she was mine. In this fading moment, she was all mine. The thought hit me full force. Like a kick to my chest. I struggled to regain my coolness, but a warmth trickled into my chest the more I studied her. The lust was still there, urgent and persistent, but a new feeling was seeping into it. A feeling I was afraid to confront in this situation.

  So, I did the one thing my therapist had told me not to do. I pushed the feeling away, stuffing it down into a dark corner that was filled with my other unresolved feelings, like how my brother and I needed to stop being so hard on each other and why I’d put so many years into a relationship with a woman who’d never given a fuck about me.

  Yeah, the two hundred an hour I’d paid her had gone to such great use.

  All these thoughts were swept aside as Blair’s eager fingers pulled my jacket off and then fiddled with the buttons of my dress shirt.

  My impatience peaked.

  Not able to contain myself any longer, I undid the zipper of my stupid, fancy dress pants and pulled them down.

  Blair paused and stared at my raging hard on. With trembling fingers, she reached out and stroked the tip of it.

  A shiver shot through me.

  Losing all control, forgetting where I was, I pushed her back down, pressing my mouth to hers, pulling off her panties and casting them aside.

  “Wade,” she mumbled against my tongue, closing her eyes, digging her nails into my skin and pulling me in.

  Groaning, I spread her legs apart and ran my hands up her inner thigh. Blair arched her back, and that was when I pounded into her, pulling her hair back off her face so I could see the face that I had grown to love.

  Blair’s body moved against mine with perfect rhythm. The curves of her fell perfectly in place with me. We were two opposites in complete sync.

  How she could mean everything to me after so many years was hard to grasp. Years, not days. The one thing I couldn’t dare to voice to her. That this relationship was years in the making, not a few days.

  Yet, here we were. Entangled with each other once again, and I still couldn’t breathe the truth to her. Because I was scared. Scared the loss would be deeper than her simply leaving town. That it would be her never wanting to see me again.

  Blair had become an addiction, replacing the alcohol I always ached for. Whether she knew it or not, she had taken the place of the very thing she had brought about.

  WAKING UP NEXT TO WADE Welsecky wasn’t something I’d ever thought would feel natural to me.

  Heck, ask me a week ago and I probably would’ve called you “fake news”.

  Yet, when I woke up the next morning with Wade’s thick arm slung over my waist and his head buried in my neck, nothing could have felt more natural.

  I watched him in the silence, noticing the way the slivers of sunlight peeking through the blinds danced on his golden skin. There was a faint scar on his forehead that I’d never noticed before.

  A part of me wanted to reach out and stroke it, but I decided against it, not wanting to wake him.

  Seeing Wade so peaceful tugged at my heartstrings. It had never occurred to me that I would ever start feeling this way for someone, especially when that someone was Wade Welsecky.

  My heart beat just that little bit faster. The sheets only covered the lower half of his body, but the top half was enough to send dirty thoughts flying through my head. Goddamn, the man was gorgeous. Large arms, broad shoulders, golden skin.

  The way he’d taken me in the back of his truck was so primal and unexpected but had felt so right. To be wanted like that, the way he wanted me, was nothing like I’d experienced before.

  Maybe this wasn’t your typical relationship, but if Wade and I kept having incredible sex like that, I didn’t care.

  The abrupt ringing of my phone jarred me.

  Crap!

  In the scramble to grab it out of my purse, I managed to entangle my legs in the sheets and landed on the floor with a loud thud. Great, just great.

  “Ouch!” Rubbing my sore butt, I glanced at Wade, worried that my phone or my clumsiness had woken him up, but thankfully he was still deep asleep in the same position I’d left him in.

  Yanking my phone out of my purse, I picked up Wade’s red flannel shirt and hurried out of the room.

  That’s when I glanced down at my phone to see who was calling.

  It was Wendy Deng.

  Ugh. She was the last person I wanted to talk to after the incredible places Wade had taken me to last night. Sigh.

  Even though Wendy was a demon, she was still my boss. I needed to hold on to my job, even if it was sucking my soul.

  Gritting my teeth, I hit answer and tentatively said, “Hello?”

  “Are you still doing that thing with your grandma?” she asked right away in her usual, snippy tone.

  The nerve of this woman! How could she forget again that I was here for my grandmother’s funeral? Either she wasn’t very bright, or she was just that nasty.

  “My grandmother died, Wendy,” I responded curtly, shutting Wade’s bedroom door behind me.

  “Yes, okay, I remember now,” she said in an unapologetic tone. “Your car. That was your next, big crisis. Well, whatever. You’ll be back by Saturday, right? There’s a huge event I need you to cover.”

  For a moment, I wanted to do something completely unprofessional—I wanted to tell Wendy to stick her huge event where the sun didn’t shine—but I didn’t. Maybe Drew’s calm, yogi stuff had subliminally influenced me, or maybe I wasn’t as confident as I tried to be.

  “Yes, I’ll be back by then,” I confirmed, slipping Wade’s flannel on as I padded out into the kitchen/living room area. “Email me the details and I’ll get something prepared for it tonight.”

  “Charlotte messed up her story,” Wendy continued as though she hadn’t heard me.

  Charlotte had started working with us about a year ago, fresh out of college. She was bubbly and adorable, and the audience loved her.

  “How?” I wondered, glancing around the room and noticing Achilles asleep on the couch. He lifted his big head in greeting, but almost immediately flopped back down again when he saw that it was Wade.

  “She put on, like, five pounds. I can’t stand to look at her.”

  “Charlotte is tiny,” I said in defense of the girl who always had a kind word to say about everyone. “She looks great.”

  “Whatever,” Wendy said offhandedly
. “Just make sure you haven’t put weight on during your little vacation. Bye.” With that, she abruptly hung up on me.

  Bitch.

  Well, that had soured my morning. To be honest, anytime I had a conversation with Wendy, it soured my day. The worst part was, she reminded me of me.

  Being around such a negative person was rubbing off on me. Maybe I would never admit it out loud, but I’d judged Pine Bluffs and the people in it harshly, thinking I was superior because I was from a big city.

  That wasn’t the person I wanted to be.

  Feeling deflated, I scoured Wade’s cabinets for coffee. Coffee was my lifeline. No exaggeration. I’d noticed the shiny coffee machine on his counter and needed a hit of caffeine to feel peppy again.

  Finding a bag of organic, locally-sourced coffee beans—an unusual choice for Wade—I got everything set up and absently stared at the machine as the beans were ground. It was strange that I wouldn’t get to stand in Wade’s kitchen anymore or hear his grumpy voice or get slobbered to death by his beast of a dog.

  Would Wade even think about me once I was gone?

  This made me feel even worse than I already did. Running a hand through my mess of hair, I walked over to the fridge and pulled it open, so I could throw together a quick breakfast.

  What the-?

  My eyes were greeted with organic eggs, almond milk, kale, kombucha, and a variety of fruits and vegetables with organic labeling on them. Was Wade secretly a new-age hipster and I didn’t even know it? Maybe his mom was buying this stuff for him. Yeah, that was probably it.

  A warm body pressed itself against my back, and I leapt back from the fridge and spun around.

  Wade was grinning at me, his head tilted, and his hair just as messy as mine. “Watcha doin’, Goochee?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just trying to decide what to make for breakfast.”

  The fridge shut behind me, and Wade pushed me against it, planting a kiss on my lips that made my head spin. As his muscles rippled against my body, I was more than a little tempted to initiate round two.

  “You look sexy in my shirt,” he said, pulling away long enough to rake his eyes over my body like he wanted to take me right there in the kitchen. It looked like round two was also in his sights. “We could do pancakes, and then I could do you.”

  The seriousness in his eyes and the cheesiness of his words made me burst into laughter. It felt good to laugh away my call with Wendy.

  “You’re lucky your looks make up for your awful pick-up lines,” I told him, pulling open a cupboard in search of flour.

  “Hey, they worked on you,” he teased from behind me.

  When I pulled open the next cupboard, I struck gold. In front of me was a variety of flour ranging from coconut flour to almond flour to semolina. So strange.

  “Did I hear you talking to someone out here?” he asked, and I could hear him rummaging around in a cupboard.

  I stopped what I was doing and turned.

  “Oh.” That deflated feeling returned. “My boss called, and she’s the worst.” I heaved a sigh. “I just, I hate being there. I hate what I do.”

  “Then don’t do it anymore. Do something that makes you happy,” he said, a thoughtful expression on his face as he set two coffee cups on the counter.

  One of them said: chase your dreams, or someone else will.

  So much truth on one ceramic vessel.

  “I thought I’d found it all those years ago, but the older I get, the more I regret my choices. Everything’s just made me negative and bitter.” These were things I would never admit to my own family and friends, yet here I was confessing them to Wade. Surreal.

  “Then leave. Find something that makes you happy.”

  The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the air.

  “You make me happy.” My own words shook me. The depth of them was terrifying. I had just poured my innermost feelings to this man.

  Wade was silent, but a glow spread across his face, like I’d said exactly what he’d wanted to hear. “Then stay.” He reached out and pulled me into his arms, his touch as tender as his gaze. “Stay here with me, Blair.”

  A crescendo swelled in my chest. Wade was saying all the right things, yet there was so much that didn’t make sense.

  “How would that even work?” I questioned, biting my lip. “What would I do here?”

  “We could make it work,” he finally said, but his lack of response was the only answer I needed.

  “How?” I probed, but before Wade could answer, there was a knock on the door.

  Achilles shot off the couch and started barking at the door, warning whoever was there to get the hell away.

  “One sec.” There were conflicted lines etched across Wade’s face as he left me hanging and tried to get Achilles to calm down, so he could answer the door.

  After finally managing to wrangle the hundred-pound behemoth out of the way, Wade glanced through the peephole. “It’s your brother.”

  “What?” I asked, caught off guard.

  There was no reason for my brother to be here. Unless something bad had happened…

  Panic rose in my chest and clutched my throat.

  “Yeah.” Wade pulled open the door and there stood Drew, a weird look on his face. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before, although they were disheveled and creased now.

  “What’s wrong, Drew?” The panic grew as I hurried across the room to meet him.

  A strange energy crackled through the room. Drew’s expression was shifting sand, and I couldn’t place it.

  “Blair, I need to tell you something.” His mouth barely moved, but his eyes darted to Wade quicker than lightning.

  It was something about Wade.

  When I glanced at Wade, his normally tan face had grown ashen as he watched my brother, his body tense. He knew what was coming. He knew why my brother was here. I was the only one who didn’t know.

  “Yes?” My voice was barely a whisper. My fists were clenched, and my nails were digging into the soft flesh of my palm.

  Brace yourself, Blair.

  “I wish I’d known sooner.” He took a shaky breath, his eyes steady and sincere, no trace of deceit in them. “H-he’s married, Bee.”

  There weren’t many times I was caught off guard.

  In fact, aside from this current moment, there was only one other time I could think of. Because this moment couldn’t possibly be real. Drew had to be wrong. He was just trying to step on my toes like he always did.

  Static filled my ears. White noise. If he said something after that, I wasn’t sure what it was.

  Was I even breathing anymore? Was I still alive? Was this a nightmare?

  All these questions burned in my head as I turned to Wade who was unmoving, unspeaking, frozen in time.

  It was right then that it hit me, as I stared at Wade’s face that was brimming with all the emotions he always managed to hold back so well.

  Everything my brother had said was the truth.

  The man I was in love with had lied to me this entire time.

  He was already someone else’s.

  This was a bad dream.

  It was one where my inner consciousness was forever falling.

  The kind where you wanted to scream but had lost the ability to speak.

  Except, this wasn’t a bad dream created from my innermost secrets and fears—this was reality,

  “Are you married?” Blair asked. Darkness streaked across her face, her eyes were glossy, and her balled up fists had started to shake.

  My heart sank into a pit. My blood was burning. My skin was burning. I didn’t want to be in this body anymore. I didn’t want to be the person who came with all the baggage.

  Yet, here I was, at a point in my life where I had made all the wrong decisions and now the truth had to come out. I just wished it had happened in a different way.

  Taking a deep breath, I managed what felt like a nod. “I am.” I wanted to say more, but nothing else came out.


  There were so many things I should’ve said. For whatever reason, I needed to tell her how I felt about her. The whole truth, not just a part of it. Not just the part where I was falling for her, but the part where I hated her beyond anything she could imagine.

  “You lied to me,” she said in a whisper, like she was afraid to say the words out loud. “This whole time, you lied to me.”

  “Blair, listen to-”

  “There’s nothing left to listen to.” She took a step back from me, her features pinched and distraught. Her eyes were now brimming with tears.

  “Blair, please.” I reached for her, wanting to pull her against my chest, to tell her that there was more to it.

  “You lied to me about everything!” she sobbed, shoving me hard in the chest.

  I barely staggered, but her touch truck me deep inside, rupturing every good feeling that had ever passed into my body.

  Black tears cascaded down Blair’s face. My heart was disintegrating with every passing second. Somehow, I had to make her understand.

  “Hear me out.” The desperation leaked from my voice. “Just for a second.”

  “No, I don’t want to fucking hear you out! After what I told you, how it burns me every single day what I did, and you fuck me over like this! No, there’s nothing left to talk about!”

  She didn’t know. She had no idea.

  Blair pushed past me, storming in the direction of the front door, and before I knew what was happening, she grabbed my keys off the coffee table and ran out.

  I made a move to go after her, but a firm hand stopped me. “Let her go.”

  I’d forgotten about Drew, forgotten that he was the one who had set all this in motion.

  “Who told you?” I asked, my voice sounding distant to my ears.

  “Delilah.” His face was impenetrable stone as I turned to him. “I stayed the night at your parents’ house. She told me this morning. It was eating her up. She couldn’t lie for you anymore.”

  Delilah. My own sister.

  My sister had told Drew that I was married, and they had both ruined whatever trust Blair and I had built between each other.

  Dread seized a hold of me. I had to fix this.

  My adrenaline kicked in, pushing me into a higher gear.