One Good Thing Read Free Page B

felt like) pinched and stung.
    Drew tilted his hips, moving back and forth. Gradually, I opened for him, and it wasn’t quite so uncomfortable. But just as I was beginning to like the friction, he stilled, breathing hard.
    I blinked up at the ceiling, noticing a spiderweb in the corner—I’d have to get a broom to get it down. I moved my lower body a little bit and moaned. I didn’t even sound convincing to myself, but I think Drew was too focused on his own orgasm to notice.
    His forehead fell against my shoulder, his chest rising and falling. “You’re still on the pill, right?”
    “Yeah,” I said; my voice was oddly tight.
    He laid against me for a few moments more. Then he dropped a kiss on my mouth before he withdrew. “That was nice,” he said, pulling on his boxers.
    Nice
—that sounded lackluster. Good weather was nice. Watching an interesting movie was nice. Sex was either more or less. “Very nice,” I agreed, reaching down to collect my own clothes. Except the best word to describe it would have been “underwhelming.”
    But I was being selfish. We were together, which was what really mattered. Every couple probably had boring sex sometimes. It was no big deal.
    I glanced at the clock on the living room wall. Fifteen minutes had passed—it would still be half an hour before the food arrived.
    I leaned against Drew’s side, smelling his familiar spicy aftershave. It was nice just to have him here, really. I should have been happy about that, not hung up on an unreached climax. I kissed the underside of his jaw.
    “Did you check the job openings?” he asked, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
    “There was a job in the Analytics Department, and it didn’t require experience.”
    The official job title on the listing was clerical support specialist—which I was pretty sure was just SLQ’s way of making a low-level job seem prestigious. From the description it sounded like mostly data entry, plus a few miscellaneous tasks, like sending out mail.
    But it would be a lot better than working at a fast-food place, which was where I was seriously starting to worry I would end up.
    “I can give your name to human resources.”
    “Okay,” I said. I pressed my face against his neck; it had the smooth, just-shaved feeling that I liked. “I ended up renting four movies,” I said with a smile. My habit was to pick out more than one and then let him decide. When I was by myself I usually stood in the aisle staring at the selection until another library patron jostled me out of the way.
    His chuckle trembled against my skin. “Great. Let’s see them.”
    *
    Less than two weeks later I started the job at SLQ. I’d gone in for an interview, dressed in slacks and a button-down business jacket, possible answers and possible questions running through my mind, and hadn’t been interviewed. Instead they’d sat me down and talked to me about what I’d be doing and when I could start. I guess if Drew/Drew’s father gave someone’s name to human resources, they were pretty much in. If I felt bad for the nepotism, which I did, I assuaged my guilt by telling myself I was overqualified for the job—it didn’t even require a college degree.
    But that was depressing in its own way. I’d spent four years in college and I was overqualified for a job I’d only managed to get because my boyfriend’s father owned a third of the company.
    At least I had a paycheck now.
    The first couple of days went well; the guy who was leaving the position stuck around to train me. He was friendly and patient and I caught on quickly enough, feeling competent and adult. I brightened up my cubicle with little touches. On my desk, I set out a framed picture of my mom and sister and a glass vase with a carnation I’d picked out from the floral department of the grocery store. I stuck a calendar of Berthe Morisot paintings on the cubicle wall.
    A picture of Drew was nowhere to be found though—I’d thought about putting one out,