LOVEHATE

14

Mild smut warning!

Early the next morning, after reluctantly I woke up, I was surprised to find Lillian in the kitchen drinking coffee.

"How come you're not at Owen's?" I asked.

"He's fishing with his dad and brother this morning. They left in the middle of the night, practically."

I made myself some coffee and sat next to her. "Cheers!"

She clinked her Hello Kitty mug against mine, which had the Dunder-Mifflin logo.

"Did you have fun with Shawn?" she asked, peering over the rim as she took a sip. "You obviously didn't stay over there, and I assume he's not here."

I shrugged.

"Don't tell me he's not as good as he used to be!"

I drank some coffee and could almost feel the caffeine entering my bloodstream. I needed it today since I had a project meeting in two hours and then work after that.

"He's still the best at what he does, but I don't know how I feel about things. We're just using each other. It's starting to feel cheap and dirty," I explained.

"I think you're both idiots," Lil said as she got up to put her mug in the sink. "And you're in denial."

She then went to her room.

I knew what she meant because she'd said this before. She had a theory that Shawn and I secretly really liked each other and that we were choosing to have this strange relationship because neither of us wanted the real thing.

I often wished she was right. But she wasn't. At least not on his end. We had nothing outside of the sex. I was adamant about keeping it that way to protect myself. Why would I open myself up to the potential of a broken heart?

~~~~~~

"I'm going to New York for a week and then LA for for three. You gonna miss me, baby?" Shawn asked a few weeks later as he watched me get dressed after one of our encounters.

I pulled up my jeans and buttoned them. "Baby?"

"Too friendly?" he asked with a grin.

"Don't complicate things," I said.

"You like it when I say it when we're fucking, though."

I put my hands on my hips and gave him a stern look. "That's different and you know it. Stop trying to push my buttons."

"But they are so damn easy to push," he drawled.

"I guess I'll find out from Lil when you're back in town," I said, sitting down on the bed to tie my Converse. I was choosing to ignore his question about whether I'd miss him.

"Give me your number and I'll just text you," he said as he reached for his phone.

I hesitated. In my head, there were rules to this arrangement. We had to keep things as impersonal as possible, because otherwise it would get messy. And I'd end up hurt.

"Jesus, Sadie. It's just exchanging numbers. Stop being so stubborn," he said when I didn't reply.

"What we're doing is already so fucked up," I said, "but at least it's pretty cut and dry. We have sex. That's it."

He sat up and stared at me for a long moment. "Friends with benefits isn't that unusual an arrangement."

I stood up. "Except we're not friends. Enemies with benefits? That's fucked up."