My Monster And Me (My Monster 2)

Chapter Four: I Hate This Precious Pain

Chapter Four: I Hate This Precious Pain

"You okay, SG?" asks Kathleen after the morning lecture ends and before I manage to gather my stuff and leave. "You look out of it."

I feel like bragging a little, so I do. "I had amazing sex last night."

Mari and Prisha both perk up at my words. It's the first time I mentioned even having a sex life. "New guy?" Mari asks.

I shrug. That's all the talking they'll get out of me.

I can't stop thinking about last night. I barely got any sleep, my whole body is sore and I'm finding it hard to concentrate. My only thought is that tonight it will happen again and the hours tick by too slowly, way too slowly. I'm going to die of impatience, I swear.

It feels great.

Sometimes, I want to bitch about Shawn's behaviour and confront him for being a coward and not making any sense at all. Then I remember that this is Shawn Henderson we're dealing with here.

When Shawn wants something he's not 100% sure he can have, he creates a ridiculous 'game' with rules by which he lives. The conclusion is supposed to be him 'winning' what he wants. Take high school, for example. Apparently, Shawn had a crush on me and knew that I hated his guts. So his 'game' was to make a list of all the girls he slept with, and he'd 'win' if the 20th and final girl on that list would be me.

Pretty stupid, huh?

It happened. I was the 20th girl but Shawn didn't 'win'. He lost, we both lost. If he'd have just gotten to the point instead of doing everything like an ass, maybe I wouldn't've fallen for that jerk Landon. Shawn and I dated after my first, traumatic break up with Landon, and the lack of closure from my previous relationship pretty much ruined everything for us.

Yeah, it's complicated as fuck. Man, I hate that it is.

But I don't know what he's aiming for with this particular game which leads me to suspect that there's something else going on with him. It feels like there's a bigger reason, but what the hell could it be? Shawn changed a lot since high school. Sometimes I can see, underneath the surface, a shadow looming over this heart. Maybe it's just the stress of college and the imminent doom of 'adult life' that's drawing closer and closer with every passing day. Shawn doesn't have a clear idea about what he wants to do with his life — not like me. He's running the rat race without any knowledge of the destination ahead. There're these nights when he wakes up screaming, but he tells me that he can't remember his nightmares.

Except that one time, beginning of Sophomore year, when we had our first 'mistake'.

Throughout Freshmen year of college nothing happened between us. Right after graduation, when I was still crushed about my dad and about Landon, we had a few instances, which I initiated, that only went as far as second base. I rolled with it, at the time I was a mess and I couldn't blame Shawn for not wanting to get in there.

I also wanted to just have meaningless sex with random people. I had an image of myself I wanted to fulfil.

The tension was there between us, always present, even though we decided not to act upon it. We were always together, sticking with each other -- like family. What we feel and what we decide don't always go hand in hand.

I gave up on Shawn. I'm not the sort of girl who lingers. He was my best friend, I settled for that.

The night it happened I was studying in Shawn's room. A pipe had exploded in an apartment upstairs causing the wall in my bedroom to swell with water. It smelled like an obese construction worker's armpits in August and for a few weeks I was either sleeping in the living room or in Shawn's bed until the wall got fixed.