So You Used to Be Human - Book 3 (Original Version)

Chapter 12: A World of Hurt

"At least you know how I feel Bob. I usually have to cut your feelings out of you."

***

Look your ex-girlfriend in the eye, five minutes after you were fucking your other ex-girlfriend in the bathroom, and just try to pretend that everything is normal.  You do that and you've got to be the most dangerous and devious bastard walking the earth.

Either that or you're me.

"What took you so long?"

I made a point of looking Jaime in the eye as I slid into the the booth, my heart pounding a hole in my chest and I could feel the rapid bloodflow making me jittery, making me edgy.  Deep breaths, I told myself. Smile, but not too much and most of all focus.

"I think somebody was having sex in the women's bathroom.  They were very loud.  Very distracting."

Was that too much information? Was I smiling too much? I should stop smiling this much, I look like a bloody idiot and dammit she was going to find out.  I was actually surprised she hadn't heard us.

We had been very loud.  At some point it had turned into a cross between make-up sex and "I hate you sex" and it had gotten intense.  Like really intense.  The teeth had come out at that point and thank god the cuts stop bleeding quickly.

Jaime glanced over at the bathroom and smiled ruefully, probably trying to imagine the logistics of having sex in a bathroom stall and then wondering about the why of it all.  That kind of raw raunchy sex was something that would never have happened with Jaime.

"I heard the waitresses whispering something like that," Jaime nodded and shook her head. "Wow.  Did you see who it was?"

"Nope. But I could hear everything. I was just glad it when it was over."

How the hell did I manage to even look her in the face? Oh well, that part was easy: I had become an expert on lying to Jaime in the last six months of our relationship as I had sunken deeper and deeper into my drug use and then things had just gotten fucked up.  So yeah, I have a history of lying straight to her face and Jaime either allowed me to or really had no clue I was lying to her.  I hoped to god she really didn't have a clue because at that point, me fucking Beatrice felt worse than any of the betrayals I had made over the course of our relationship, and I had made quite a few.

I have no idea how that could be, after all, I had done some seriously fucked up things to earn her hatred of me for a long, long time, but that feeling in my chest beside my rapidly thumping heart, that hollowed out emptiness that made me want to simultaneously scream and vomit, that told me the exact truth: if Jaime knew, there would be no talking, no nothing, no chance to ever make it up to her.

"Did you order yet?" I asked then and looked desperately around for a waitress, unable to look at Jaime anymore.  I wondered briefly if she could smell the soap on me from when I had washed up after finishing with Beatrice.  The smell of sex had been overwhelmingly strong and I had felt like it had rubbed its way into my skin, inundating my nostrils with our combined scents that just screamed out to the world that "yes, sex has been had and damn it was good!"

Jaime gestured to the table where two cups of coffee sat alone with six mugs of steaming hot water.

"I was going to drink some coffee, but I decided to wait for you.  It smells really fucking strong and all kinds of alarms are going off in my head right now, but you know what? I've never realized just how good waffles could smell until now!"

"Have you just been sitting here smelling everything?"

"It's blowing my fucking mind.  I just want to taste everything right now.  It's like I never actually smelled anything before, you know?  Is this what the world smells like all the time?"