How could I complain? I was breaking my own rule.
Nesta and I made lots of rules when we opened up. She wrote them down in the back of her daybook, and we kept those pages pinned to the corkboard by her computer:
-Don't bring dates home
-Don't fall in love
-Don't rave about how great the sex was
-Don't come to bed smelling like another girl
The list went on, but I was hung up on that last point. All night, I'd been tossing and turning in my sweat-soaked sheets. TV was boring. I went to bed with a book, but the book was boring too. Brought out my vibe. Didn't do a damn thing. The room felt different when I was alone in it, when I knew Nesta was fucking someone else.
Waiting was killer. Lying alone in our bed, I waited to hear her key in the door, waited for the hinges to creak, for her to unzip those big boots and kick them off in the hallway. Even the sound of her breath, the shallow guilt as she tiptoed to the bathroom, flicked on the light, closed the door—it was all there, right in my ear. The squeal of the shower. I heard every step in the process like an echo as I waited for her Nesta to come home.
I felt feverish, searching for a cool spot on my hot pillow. My head was burning up, and buzzing like a bee hive. I bucked against Nesta's side of the bed, smelling her hair, her perfume, her body. It was all there in the sheets.
Where the hell was she? Fuck, it was... nine-forty-five? How was it only nine-forty-five? Felt like three in the morning. I covered my eyes and rolled onto my stomach, growling. My breath saturated the pillow, and I rolled again—onto Nesta's side of the bed this time. I wasn't going to preserve it anymore. When she got home, she was just going to have to deal with messy covers.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked, in my mind. But that was a stupid question, because it wasn't really late. "I've been worried sick." Or maybe, "Who was she?" Or, "How was she?"
No, I couldn't ask that question. It was in the rulebook. We weren't supposed to ask about sexual performance.
I rolled back onto my side of the bed. More and more, I was starting to think it took a special type of person to survive an open relationship, and maybe I wasn't that special. Did everybody feel this jealous?
When I finally heard Nesta's key in the door, it came as a surprise. Maybe I'd given up hope or something, because I sat straight up in bed, on high alert, like the figure coming through the front door might not be Nesta at all.
She unzipped her boots, kicked them off in the hall. I couldn't see her until she tiptoed past the bedroom door, and even then she was only a shadow. The shower would come next...
No.
Something inside me was adamant about this. I whipped off the covers and stomped across the room in basketball shorts and a T-shirt. Nesta shrieked when I grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the bathroom. She shrieked like she didn't know it was me, like I was some faceless attacker in the night.
I pulled her tight to my body and held her there, like we were dancing. Her breath hit my chin in hot little bursts as I pinned her to the bed.
"I haven't showered yet," she said in a whisper.
That day, for the first time, I didn't care. My lust for Nesta superseded any jealousy. I was so hot for her I didn't even know where to start.
Pressing my body tight to hers, I kissed her hard. She was too shocked to react, and I had to pry her teeth apart with my tongue, dig inside her perfect mouth.
Her perfect mouth tasted like pussy.
The sweet tang, the aftertaste that stuck at the back of my throat—it was pussy, unmistakeable. And I shouldn't have been surprised, because I knew what she'd been up to, but knowing and tasting are different things entirely. That girl, that other girl, whoever she was, had found her way inside my mouth. She was a stranger to me, but her pussy was on my tongue. I could taste it.
