Making Up Read Online Free

down on me. That it isn’t my
pussy or that I’m gross or anything. She just can’t bring herself
to.”
    “ I kind of
get it. Like me with a guy.”
    “ Yeah. Weird thing is, I don’t. I never realized
before.”
    I was a bit
surprised, just nodded. “So what
now?”
    “ I stop
trying to fuck Holly, obviously.” She
seemed tired, quite bitter. “You caught me, well done. Now I’m
yours again.”
    I suddenly
thought of the detail she’d been omitting. With Erica you have to be very careful you’re thinking
about the actual question, not the question she wants you to think
about. “How often were you seeing her?”
    “Why are you obsessed with the details?”
    “How many times?”
    “ A
few.” She sat there. “Ten. Maybe
more.”
    “ More?” I counted weeks since
Holly, four, maybe five. I wasn’t sure right now. “Ten or
more?”
    “More.”
    “So twice a week?”
    “ Usually
three,” Erica said, defensive again. “I
see her at least that often anyway.”
    “Not for sex.”
    She shrugged again.
    “And you won’t see her again?”
    “Not like that.”
    I looked at
her, felt worried. Erica was looking like
a girl who’d just been dumped. “Your choice or hers?”
    “ Hers. I called her today. One last chance kind of
thing.”
    “Shit, Erica.”
    “ I thought I
had to. So when I talked to you I knew
how things were.”
    “If you were talking to me, surely…”
    “Maybe.”
    “But no?”
    “ No.” She sat up a little. “Is that all? I’m tired and
I’ve had a shitty day.”
    “Mine hasn’t been that great.”
    “ So talking
this to death won’t help, will it. I’m
going to bed. Come and join me if you feel like it.”
    And somehow
she’d made any ill feeling I might still have be about me, not
her. If I wasn’t so pissed off I’d love
her all the more.
    I sat there
for a while with the vodka, then slept on the couch. It was a deliberate, and she noticed. Although
it didn’t hurt as much as if she’d been sleeping with Gareth, it
still hurt. I wasn’t sure why, and that worried me a little, as if
one day it suddenly might.
     
    *
     
    Erica woke me
up and handed me a cup of coffee. The
waking me up meant she’d carefully been quiet until then. Erica was
a morning person and I wasn’t, just another one of those
things.
    “ Hey,” she
said, and kissed me, “I’ll be home tonight. I’ll see you then.”
    Not early tonight and not talk to you then,
but it was a start.
    I took the
day off and went down to Holly’s work at lunchtime, and sat around
outside waiting for her to appear. Holly
never bothered taking her lunch, always went to a café somewhere
nearby. I hadn’t seen her since the night we’d slept together, and
I didn’t know if she was avoiding me, but it seemed like the time
had come to talk.
    She saw me and came over and said, “Hi.”
    “Can we talk?”
    “I don’t think I have anything to say to
you.”
    “ Please,
Holly. I thought we were
friends.”
    She shrugged
in exactly the same way Erica did, with the same expression on her
face. It was odd how similar they
were.
    “Please,” I said.
    “ Shit,” she
said. “Sorry I slept with your woman. Are
we done now?”
    She sounded annoyed, but wasn’t actually
walking away.
    “ Could we sit
down and talk?” I said.
    “What’s the point?”
    “ Do you
understand what’s been happening? What
Erica’s doing?”
    She looked at me for a moment, but deny she
did.
    “So talk to me.”
    “ I told her I
didn’t want to see her any more. See her
like that. The other week.” Holly glanced over her shoulder, “Look,
we’re right outside my work. Could we do this later?”
    “Lunch?”
    She
sighed. “Sure, lets have lunch. Somewhere
a long way away from here.”
    We walked
without speaking and she took me several blocks to a tiny
café. Tiny enough nowhere was out of
earshot of the coffee machine.
    “Look,” Holly said, “I know this has been
rough on you, but it has on me too.”
    “I was