Just Friends

Chapter 3

The morning sunlight beamed through my bedroom window and I turned over to my stomach, pulling my pillow over my head. Last night came flooding back along with a mixed set of emotions as I remember the hurt I felt walking in on Marshall and the light airy fluttering through my chest as I remembered meeting Judd. Then there's also the new job. I was a little bundle of jumbled mess in my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter as if it could reset and sort my thoughts.

A knock on my bedroom door caused me to raise my disheveled mop head of hair up from under my pillow shelter.

"Evie! Are you in there? You don't normally sleep in this late. Are you ok?" My roommate and closest girlfriend, Sam, asked through the closed door.

"Yeah. I'm getting up." My raspy morning voice cracked as I threw open and emerged from my mountain of blankets.

"Ok, great! I made cinnamon rolls so I'll get you one." Her fading footsteps followed and I rolled downstairs behind her without fixing myself whatsoever.

Sam was busying herself with plating my cinnamon roll as I slid into a chair at our little kitchen table. When she finally looked up her eyes went wide and her hands nearly dropped the my breakfast.

"Shit, Eva. You look like hell." She planted the plate in front of me and I shoveled a bite of gooey goodness into my mouth before I knew what I was doing.

"Gee, don't you know how to make a girl feel good." I mumbled through a stuffed mouth.

"Babe, what's going on?" Sam eased into the chair next to me and placed a gentle hand on the table between us.

"Honestly, I'm really fine. But you should know Marshall and I broke up last night."

Relief clouded her face before she controlled it back to something neutral for my benefit. She never liked Marshall.

"I'm sorry, honey. What happened?"

Ugh. This. This is the stuff I hate. The pity, the regurgitating of the failing moment in the relationship, the recovery time. Blah blah.

I took another bite to buy more time.

"I walked in on him with his... um, with someone else."

"What?! That asshole! Did you know the bitch he was with? You know I'll beat the shit out of her."

"No, it wasn't- I don't.....It doesn't matter. We've been done a long time."

Sam sighed and reached up to curl the end of my hair around her finger. "I know babe, but that doesn't mean it's ok that he cheated."

I shrugged my shoulders in response.

A silence fell over us as I finished off my piece of cinnamon heaven. Sam could bake. Like Betty fucking Crocker bake. I was still scraping icing from my plate with my finger when Sam spoke.

"We're going out tonight and you're getting a rebound lay."

"What? No. It hasn't even been 24 hours. Isn't there like a number of days you're supposed to wait or something? I don't know the rules here." Let's be real, I was clueless what moving on looked like as I preferred not to get into relationships in the first place.

"Hence rebound, Eva. Besides, how long has it even been since you and Marshall had sex?"

I scowled at her, but then genuinely tried to remember.

Shit, I couldn't.

Sam took my silence as my answer. "Exactly. We're getting you laid tonight. It's the last Saturday before the fall semester starts back up and I know you're off work this weekend so you don't have an excuse."