The Gay Delusion

9: The Guilt Delusion

Thanks to all who voted and commented last chapter! I haven't laughed as hard as I have in a while as I did at some of your comments, they really meant a lot :P Hope you enjoy this one! :) Love, River. (Dedicated to -abstractminds, because I have never seen someone have such funny reactions to a chapter :P)

9: The Guilt Delusion

Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. Shit again.

They all quite accurately summarised how I felt about turning up to work on Monday and ever laying eyes on Griffin Davis again. How was I ever going to face him again? I felt like I had the words LYING, CHEATING WHORE stamped across my forehead, emblazoned on my face like a sign that screamed out to the universe.

So granted, I hadn't actually cheated on anyone because I wasn't technically in a relationship, but at the same time, Griffin had no right to kiss me that night when as far as he knew, I most certainly was. I hated cheaters. And in theory, I was sort of one now. The hypothetical guilt was killing me.

Actually, maybe screw that. I knew I was deluding myself into thinking I was guilty, when honestly, guilt was somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, a feeling that hadn't been accessed in so many years that I had forgotten what it felt like. I knew myself. I would know if I was feeling guilty, and this wasn't it.

Even so, I had desperately tried to push it out of my mind and control my thoughts (Occlumency seriously needed to be a real thing), though I had replayed The Kiss in my mind more times than I could count over the course of the rest of the weekend after the party, sleep-deprived and still dreaming about it when I did manage to drift off. Every single little moment of The Kiss was ingrained in my memory, where it was probably etched forever. I would probably think about it on my deathbed, an eighty or ninety-year-old me with fluffy white and cloudlike hair, delirious and dreaming about The Kiss given to me by the most beautiful boy I had ever laid eyes on.

It was capitalised, in my mind, like a bloody proper noun.

The Kiss. The Kiss. The Kiss.

Even kisses with Lewis hadn't been that incredible, and Lewis had a magic mouth. Lewis' bee-stung and lovely lips had made me feel warm and familiar like our friendship, but Griffin's had made me feel like my whole world was spinning in the most exhilarating way, like I was high on something. He had given me fireworks. I hadn't felt fireworks like that in years.

Looks like my avoidance plan is going to have to make a comeback, I thought with a sigh as I got the lift up to the twenty-third floor on Monday morning, clutching my bag closely to my side and tapping my feet as I kept my eyes raised upward to the ceiling. My breath was held the entire way, praying silently that our paths wouldn't cross and that my notoriously bad luck would, for once in my life, leave me alone.

I didn't know what feelings would be stirred up, or how I would even react if I saw him. How were you supposed to react when you looked at someone who had smacked their lips onto yours completely out of the blue?

Mercifully though, Griffin wasn't in staff briefing that morning. And as the three and a half hours before lunch rolled by, I didn't spot him in the office at all either, so there had ended up being no one to avoid. I hoped that meant he was ill or something, because it was safe to say I was desperate not to lay eyes on him for the next few weeks so all of this could blow over and I could get on with my life.

'So did you end up getting in the sack with Jason?' I asked Emilie at half-past twelve, using my tongue to get the last few grains of rice off my plastic spoon. We really were a bunch of old ladies when we gossiped away every lunchtime, but it gave me a strange sense of having formed close friendships.