LOVEHATE

18

Mild smut warning!

My summer pretty much sucked.

It was a struggle to take my classes with a broken wrist. I managed, even though every task took longer than necessary. I got decent grades, but I was frustrated constantly by the fact that I couldn't type very well. I hated using dictation and was forced to rely on it. Yes, I was whiny about it, too.

I ended up working at the paint bar fewer hours than I wanted. I couldn't be on the floor assisting the customers with their paint projects, so I only worked the cash register during the busy hours of operation. This was about half as much as I'd planned on working.

I lied to Lil and hoped that Shawn had kept quiet to Owen. Instead of telling her how and why we ended, I just said that our mutual dislike of each other eventually ruined the sex. If I'd tried to explain that he wanted to become friends and that I couldn't handle that because I knew I would want more, she would have told me to tell Shawn that and to see if he felt the same way.

I wasn't going to take that risk. Asking someone like Shawn Mendes if he likes you and wants to maybe be your boyfriend, when he could date pretty much anyone he wanted, was like asking the earth to stop rotating.

I tried to console myself by thinking about how lucky I was to have had that time with him at all. Millions of women would give anything to fuck him. I got that pleasure many times.

And it had been good. So damn good.

After my six weeks of recovery passed, I flew home to Ottawa to get my cast removed. It felt wonderful to have my hand back. The doctor asked if I wanted to keep my pink cast and I told him to burn it. I resented my accident, which meant I resented myself for being clumsy. If I hadn't fallen and broken my wrist, I wouldn't have needed a ride home. Shawn never would have come to Ottawa, and he wouldn't have tried to become friends. I wouldn't have pushed him away out of fear of getting hurt, and we'd still have our fucked up sex arrangement. That slip on the steps had screwed me over. Or actually, it had kept me from being screwed.

The few days I spent at home weren't exactly delightful, either.

My parents harangued me mercilessly after I told them Shawn and I were no longer friends. My mother insisted that he was obviously crazy about me and that I'd done something to drive him away. She had a point; I had shoved him out of my life. He wasn't crazy about me, though. If he was, wouldn't he have said something? He was probably doing just fine without me. I'm sure other girls filled the hole I left in his sex life.

My dad had liked the idea of me knowing someone famous. My mom told me that he had started listening to Shawn's music a lot and played it over the speakers in the hardware shop, much to his employee's dismay. Apparently they could only handle hearing Mercy so many times a day.

Anthony was crushed. He thought Shawn was awesome. The few guys I'd brought home in the past had felt uncomfortable with him because of his disability. Shawn didn't care at all. He treated Tony like any other kid.

Obviously they were all overreacting. They'd just met Shawn the one time, and I'd made it plain as day that he wasn't my boyfriend. My family tended to over-dramatize everything. I'm sure his fame added to that. It's funny that I never cared about that aspect of his life. Then again, I'd worked hard to not focus on anything outside the bedroom.

I'd changed my mind about that recently. I decided that now that he was out of my life, I could learn more about his. What did I have to lose?

On the drive back to Toronto, I listened to nothing but Shawn's music. I started at the beginning of his career and listened to all his songs in chronological order.

And I actually liked what I heard. A lot. I was sure part of it was that it was a way to hear his voice. I no longer heard it in real life, so this was all I had. Each time he said 'baby' in a song, I remembered how he'd say that in my ear when we were in bed. The closer he'd get to his peak, the more frequently he'd say it, and the raspier it would sound. I regretted chastising him for using the word on me outside of sex. I should have let him.

After I got back to Toronto, I started following Shawn on social media to keep up with what he was doing. It was crazy how much I could learn about his life through Instagram and Twitter. His fans were borderline obsessive, so his comings and goings were tracked and posted about compulsively.

I had a mixed reaction to seeing pictures of him after not seeing him for six weeks. Looking at him on my phone made me miss him, but it was also strangely comforting.

I learned from one of his fan accounts that he was back in Toronto after a few weeks in LA, so I refused to go out for the remainder of the summer. I wasn't ready to run into him. I knew I'd have to face him eventually since we had mutual friends, but I could sacrifice my social life until I'd gotten over him more. I told Lil that I was staying in because of my wrist. She bugged me about it at first, but eventually just gave up.

One night in August I was feel particularly sorry for myself. Lil was out with Owen, and I sat alone in the apartment drinking rosé. I finished one bottle and poured a glass from another.

I went on Instagram and saw that Shawn had posted a picture of the Toronto skyline. I surmised exactly where he was sitting on his patio given the angle of the photo.

I literally ached to be there with him. I could picture him sitting on one of the cushioned chairs with his feet up on the teak coffee table. Maybe he had the gas fire pit turned on. If I were there, I'd be sitting on his lap, my back leaned against his chest. I knew exactly how that would feel. How he'd smell. How he'd taste when he kissed me.

Impulsively, I double tapped and then wrote a comment.

I miss you.

I knew he'd have thousands upon thousands of comments and mine would get lost in the shuffle. He didn't follow me, and god knows he couldn't be bothered to look at what was posted under his pics.

I finished my glass of wine and toddled off to my bed. As I tried to fall asleep, thoughts of sex with Shawn ran through my drunk mind.

On one of the last nights that I'd visited him at his place, we'd gone out on his patio. There were two other condos that had patios adjacent to his, but it was late at night and it was unlikely anyone was up. We'd made out in one of the chairs- probably the one he'd been sitting on tonight when he took his IG photo- and things had gotten increasingly heated. I'd ended up straddling him. He pulled my shorts off and I pulled his down, along with his boxer-briefs, so that I could touch him. Tease him. He then pulled me forward so that I could ride him.

"Out here?" I asked, my breath ragged.

"I have a condom in my pocket, so yeah. Out here. Right now."

He got the little gold packet out and opened it. I started to groan loudly as we became one, so he pulled me on for a kiss to muffle the sound.

"Shhhhh," he shushed me. "We need to try to be quiet."

If he wanted me silent, he didn't show it with his actions. On that June night we moved together, illuminated by the moonlight and the distant lights of the skyline. We climaxed to the sounds of the city, our cries ringing out in the crisp air. At that point, we'd lost control of our volume.

When we were done, he kissed me sweetly and brushed the hair back from my damp forehead.

"Fuck, baby...that was incredible."

It was. And I missed it. But mostly I missed him.