Okay

.46.

I've already downed a beer, cracking open my second as I lean back against the kitchen counter in Vee's apartment. She's got a massive bookshelf lined with vinyls and I watch her as she careful puts on a new record.

I'm thrown off when Sinatra fills the air.

"Jazz huh?" I ask her, staring down into the neck of my bottle.

She shrugs her shoulders, "It helps me relax. My papa only listened to jazz".

She doesn't elaborate and I don't ask her to. We fall into silence as Sinatra's smooth voice fills the space around us. Vee slips her boots off, discarding them in the middle of the room as she sinks into her couch. I can't get myself to venture farther in, I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing here.

"So Drew from 1004, do you always stand awkwardly in the kitchen of houses you visit?" Vee teases, not turning around to look at me.

Heat rushes to my face and I force myself to leave the counter where I've been perched.

"Sorry." I mumble.

As I round the end of the couch she pats the space beside her. I sit, enough distance that we're not touching but close enough that I probably haven't made it clear there's another woman in my bed right now.

"I'm..." I start to say as Vee says "we cou-.."

I apologize again.

She smiles, drinking her beer but I can't manage to get anymore words out of my mouth at the moment. Instead I stare out the identical windows to her balcony. God if I jumped, I'd risk having ten other people see my body as it flew past their window. What if Vee was home, sitting just like we are now. The thought makes me feel sick to my stomach.

"We could always skip the talking part." Vee suggests. "It doesn't seem to come too easily for us."

A sad smile tugs at my face as she draws my focus from the balcony. "Sorry, I'm usually better at holding a conversation."

She shifts on the couch, inching slightly closer to me as she discards her beer on the coffee table in front of her.

Her hand lands on mine, sliding closer to the beer that's clutched in my grasp. I know where this is going. My eyes fixated on her fingers as they pull the beer from out of my hand.

"So what do you say?" She asks quietly, her voice seductive and low.

Her eyes are locked on mine and I watch her lean toward me. It'd be so easy to kiss her right now. To pull her close and forget all the shit that's going on in my head. I'd be distracted from her stupid balcony, from all the guilt I feel, from all the fear that accompanies being with Birdie.

But as Vee starts to close the distance between us, dark curls fill my mind and brilliant hazel eyes and a breath taking smile and I stand so abruptly from the couch I nearly knock Vee to the floor.

And once again I'm apologizing. "I can't. Not because I wouldn't. Obviously I would, I mean we have, but I can't."

What the hell am I saying?

Vee looks at me, eyebrows pinched together in confusion, maybe a little hurt or embarrassed, I'm not exactly sure.

"Birdie." I blurt like that explains everything. "She's-shes at my apartment."

I'm such an asshole.

Vee's eyebrows raise as she sucks in a breath and plucks her beer off the table. "She's your girlfriend?"

"No." I blurt it because that word seems wrong attached to Birdie and I, I don't deserve it. "I don't know."

I watch her carefully, trying to figure out what she's thinking, how she's feeling. But she just leans back into the couch and laughs.