She didn't sleep again. For the third night in a damned row.
The morning light came through the sheer curtains on her windows and Aymie groaned, pulling the sheets up over her head to hide from it. She was certain the sun would burn her, after her behavior Tuesday night. She played the scene over again and again in her head, tingling from head to toe with sensation at the memory of Mr. Davis's touch. His kiss. His urgency. It made her tighten ever time she thought about it. And she couldn't. Stop. Thinking about it.
And yet, there was a crippling guilt associated with it all. She felt so dirty, like a little slut who got from another man what she couldn't get from her boyfriend. God, it was sick. Derek loved her, he cherished her and treated her like a queen, and how did she repay him? By getting hot and heavy with her older neighbor up against the door of her car?
Fucking slut.
She groaned and rolled out of bed, tugging on a pair of lounge shorts and a tank top. Her hair was wild and plastered over her face so she pulled it up into a pony, made a pit stop at the bathroom, and trudged out to the kitchen to start the coffee maker. To her surprise, Rosaline was already up and waiting with two steaming mugs on the table. One for her, and one for Aymie.
"Morning sunshi - Honey, what's wrong?"
Aymie winced. Her mother could always see right through her, and she certainly wasn't giving off her usual chipper energy this morning. She pulled out a chair and took the mug from her mother, breathing in that heady, energizing scent of java.
"Nothing, ma. Just...bad sleep, I guess."
Rosaline eyed her scrupulously. "I call bullshit. Talk to me, baby. Did something happen? Did Derek do something?"
Aymie shook her head. "No, Derek didn't do anything, ma. He's perfect, just like always." She sipped her coffee and felt her mother's eyes boring into her skull, so she looked up and met them. "Can I ask you something weird?"
Rosaline nodded, stirring her coffee with a spoon.
"What constitutes cheating in a relationship?"
Her mother stilled, lofting a brow and looking up at Aymie with the look. She stared Aymie down for a long moment before looking back down. "Hmm, I think that depends on the relationship, honey. It depends on what you and your partner have decided your limits and boundaries are."
Aymie tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
"Well...sometimes when you're seeing someone, you want to be entirely exclusive just with them. No dating other people, no fooling around with other people. It's just you two." She sipped her coffee. "Other times, relationships are more open. You can date around, experiment with others, sometimes even have open sex with other people. But at the end of the day you're still with the one person."
"What about with Derek and me?" she asked, lifting her mug up to her lips.
"Well, honey, Derek and you are exclusive, right?" When Aymie nodded, she continued. "If you're exclusive, you don't fool around with anyone else. You don't touch, kiss, or fuck anybody else but him. If you want to go to extremes, you really shouldn't even be thinking impurely about anyone else."
"So...hypothetically, if I kissed someone else behind Derek's back...that would be cheating."
Rosaline lifted that brow again. "I think so, yes. Hypothetically."
Aymie's chest tightened up at that and she nodded, trying to mask what she could from her mother. "Yeah, I kind of thought that too. I guess that just...means that we share something special, that we only want to be with each other. Nobody else. Just us."
Rosaline looked at her closely before nodding her agreement. "That's right. It takes a lot of commitment to be in that type of a relationship, Aym. And the fact that you two have stuck together for two years already means it is something special." She wheeled herself over to Aymie's seat and patted her on the cheek. "Don't let him go, honey. He's a good boy. He deserves a good girl, like you. You are perfect together."
A good girl like her. Yeah, right.
Rosaline wheeled herself over to the sink, setting her mug down in it and then made her way across the room towards the bathroom down the hall.
"Let me know if you need any help, ma," Aymie called to her.
Rosaline's 'mhmm' came back and Aymie was alone with her thoughts in the kitchen. Leave it to her mother to make her feel even worse than she already did. She was a cheater. That realization made her sick to her stomach. She couldn't even believe her own behavior from the other night. Something had just...come over her. Seeing Mr. Davis walk away called her to action in a way that she had no preparation for. It was undeniable, irresistible, and before she could even think she was nearly running at him. Those moments, however brief they were, were burned into her mind and she couldn't stop thinking about them, no matter what she tried.