I wasn't looking to cheat.
Not consciously.
But something cracked that night. Maybe it was the way my boyfriend belittled me in front of everyone--again. Or maybe it was the way he looked at me. Like I mattered. Like he already knew the shape of me underneath the performance I'd been putting on for far too long.
We were all partying, the music humming low under slurred laughter and cheap liquor. My boyfriend had gone off to grab smokes, already belligerent and slurring, while I stood by the kitchen counter, alone. That's when he approached--the friend-of-a-friend with quiet confidence and dark eyes that didn't just look at me... they read me.
He asked how I was really doing. I paused before answering. That hesitation said everything I wasn't ready to admit.
Our eyes kept finding each other for the rest of the night. He didn't flirt. He studied. Watched me with the kind of patience that made me feel like I was being slowly unwrapped. And then someone pulled out E. I'd never rolled before. I said yes.
Maybe I wanted to feel something again.
My boyfriend was now passed out on the couch. Dead weight. No longer my concern.
As the high took hold, my skin turned to velvet. The room blurred, the music melted into me, and I felt weightless. When he reached for my hand--subtle, electric--it felt like gravity shifted.
We slipped away behind a door. Just us. And everything else dissolved.
He locked it behind us, and something inside me locked too. Not out of fear--anticipation. I wasn't just curious. I was starving. And he could taste it.
His eyes ran over me like he already knew what I looked like naked. And when he said it--"You don't belong to him tonight. You're mine."--I didn't flinch. That word, mine, didn't scare me. It spread through my bloodstream like heat, mixing with the buzz of the pill and the ache of being wanted.