I am shagging a jerk, I know I am. But I am not just shagging a jerk, I am in love with a jerk. I am that cliché, girls love a bad boy. Every fibre of my being screams at me to walk, no run. All he can ever cause you is pain but I can’t, I can’t give up on him, on us.
It’s not all bad. It’s not like he’s violent far from it, he can be sweet to the point of cuteness and then catch himself, scratch his balls and go back to being a bastard. He is not abusive mentally on purpose anyway because he fucks with my head more than he fucks my pussy. We get on so well, we talk for hours and hours, we fuck for hours and hours. We also argue, a lot. He creates conflict from nothing and winds me up then apologises, melts my heart and fucks me silly. He is a roller coaster with more ups and downs than smooth coasting. It never pulls in at the station for me to get off, I am trapped on the thrill ride.
Jerk, I mean Jake and I have been involved for a while now. It’s hard to pinpoint a start as we kind of evolved. Do I start the relationship timer from when we first kissed? Or when we first fucked? Or when we first held hands one night when he walked me home? Or when we started making sure we were sat together in the pub so our legs could touch under the table and he could ride his hand up my thigh. Or when we first started messaging each other and chatting on the phone. We didn’t follow a timeline, we didn’t go from holding hands to first kiss to first date to fucking. We bounced around, back and forth. Where was our first date? I realised sadly we have never been on a proper date. He has never taken me out for a drink or for dinner, or to the cinema. If we are out, we’re with friends or we meet up at each other’s flats and fuck.
Nobody knows we are together either. Sometimes I wonder if we are together. Am I his girlfriend? We haven’t told each other we love each other. We’ve danced around it. We have feelings, we’re not just friends with benefits but we are, fundamentally. Secret benefits no one else knows about. We argue over this. I get to the point I get pissed off being his secret and not knowing where I stand then threaten to walk. He doesn’t want me to walk, he feels too much for me, but he needs time. I always agree to wait. No matter how much I want to punch him in the face when these heart to hearts start by the end of it, I’m sat on his face enjoying the blissful orgasms his magnificent tongue gives me. I am weak. He makes me weak. I hate myself.
We took a long time to get to the stage we are at, well over a year. He is a slow burn is Jake. I would look forward to nights out when I knew he’d be there expecting a snog at the end of the night or hopefully more and he’d keep his distance. Sure, there would be banter and teasing our standard behaviour. I’d be more cutting in return. He’d wonder what my problem was and blame it on my time of the month (as I say, I am shagging a jerk). He was hot and cold, and I never knew if he liked me or not. But the more hot and cold he blew, the more I liked him. The more I wanted him, the more I struggled to stop thinking about him.
At some point during that year, he told me he didn’t want to ruin our friendship but there were times he just couldn’t resist me. It was then we started messaging for a little bit until it faded away again. It felt so good being in touch with him, our flirty messages. I’d float on a cloud, allow myself to get excited and then poof, the cloud would be blown from under me and I’d fall crashing down to earth. Each time I swore this time it was over, he couldn’t get away with this. Each time he’d wave his metaphorical cock in the air and I’d go running after it.
Jake believes no one knows about us. I don’t know for certain why he is so insistent about keeping us a secret. It’s not because he’s with someone, as far as I know anyway, it’s just because he’s a twat, I think.
I say no one knows but actually, I have told someone. Tom, my best friend, knows. He has to listen to me bore on when Jake’s being a prick and gush for hours when he’s being attentive.
I have the cliched gay best friend too. I’ve never got on with girls. I can’t stand the superficial bollocks girls talk about and the bitchiness. I do have girl friends. We hang out, I feign interest in what colour lipstick they’ve bought or the new miracle moisturiser that’s going to change their life, but I don’t drink gin and attend love island viewing parties.
My cliched gay best friend Tom isn’t really a cliché either. He watches football with me while we devour a twenty-four box of Stella. When City play United, we sit on opposite ends of the room and hurl abuse at each other. It’s fun. We play together in a five aside football team, there are enough of us to make two teams and we go to the gym together. He is one of the lads and by default that makes me one too, most of the time. I know there are guys only meetups I am not invited to.
Jake, Tom and I are all part of a large group of friends and mutual acquaintances. I am closer to some more than others as these things go. We’re mostly all single and in our late twenties/early thirties. I met Tom in my first job out of Uni, without him I wouldn’t know these people. They’re all native to our area, I’m an outsider who moved here as a student and stayed. Our mixed bag group work well, we don’t tend to sit in boy-girl groups so there’s a variety of bollocks being spoken all night. I love our nights out, I love them even more when they end with Jake and me together. I hate the disappointment when they don’t.
He can be the most attentive loving boyfriend, sorry FWB, one minute, devoting all his time and attention to me. Sweet and sexy messages all day, phone calls. Good-morning and good-night texts when we’re not together, amazing sex when we are together. Sweet thoughtful gifts, cooking me romantic meals.
To the point I know I am falling head over heels for him and this is it, we are going to come out of his closet and properly be together, boyfriend and girlfriend. I imagine the future and then boom. He disappears. It is as if as soon as he falls, he yanks himself back. The sweet sexy messages replaced with a single emoji. No phone calls. No good-morning or good-night thinking of you texts. He is suddenly too busy with work or a lad’s activity to have time for me. And it physically hurts. It’s a cycle of rejection, I never know what I’ve done. I know it’s never anything I’ve done.
The arguments always go something like this:
He’ll try and excuse himself, ‘I’ve just been busy babe. I’m sorry. I think about you all day, you know I do, you’re all I think about.’
I’ll try and push him to open up, ‘But you don’t show it, you’re hot and cold. It hurts me when you disappear.’
He’ll apologise and tell me he’ll change, ‘I don’t mean to be, I’ll think more. Now I know how it makes you feel. I never want to hurt you, you mean so much to me.’
Then he will do something to make me laugh, something to turn me on, he’ll distract me with kisses in all the right places…
And the cycle begins again. He never walks and never lets me. I think we’re done, OK this is going to hurt but this time, I mean it, I’ll see this through. I never do. I would have to walk from all my friends too and I can’t do that, I won’t do that. Because I know, the moment we go out drinking together, it’s all back on. We cannot walk from each other, there’s a magnetic pull between us. I only have to be near him for my whole body to be set alight. I think he feels the same, no, I know he feels the same…I think. See, he confuses the shit out of me.
The last few months, however, have been good. Since my last threat to walk he has been model boyfriend material. We bought each other Christmas gifts and had our own Christmas the day before I went away to my parent’s house for a week.
I wanted him to come with me, he had commitments he couldn’t get out of. I understood. I missed him that week and he seemed to miss me. We talked and messaged all the time and when I came back for New Year it was like I’d been away for months. We were so happy to see each other. We sloped off to the local park in freezing cold weather and fucked before going back to join our friends for the midnight Big Ben bongs and ritual Auld Lang Syne sing-along. We ducked out of the party invite and he came back to mine. We spent the following two days in bed, and it was wonderful. I felt like this year was our year. I was on cloud nine. I had energy to spare. Tom was even happy for me and my changed man. Things were good. Things were better than good.
We had all talked of going away for New Year, but it was expensive, and all the good places were booked up, so we had agreed to go one weekend before spring.
By the time everyone was free it was mid-March. Things were still good with me and Jake, but he still insisted we didn’t tell anybody. We had a major row because I wanted to share a room with him. We had booked a huge Air BnB and the big group of us were all going and staying there.
It didn’t have a lot of character and we were going to have to sneak people in on airbeds or floor space for us all to go but we were happy with that. Jake used this as an excuse.
‘I’ll be crashing wherever or sharing with some of the lads…It isn’t a couple’s weekend,’ and myriad other feeble excuses. I got the major hump and ignored him for a few days until he came creeping and begged my forgiveness with the promise we’d go away just the two of us. He said he liked us being secret, thought it was more romantic, sexier. Kept us taboo like we were having an affair. He talked his way back into my knickers and the air was clear before we went away. I shared a room with Tom, I was still not happy about not being with Jake, but I was getting on with it.
We went by train, Jake and I sat together holding hands secretly under the train table. We grabbed a quick snog at the toilet, he surprised me. Our first night we all went out for drinks in the local pub then back at the accommodation sat around a massive table playing cards and drinking more. Jake and I grabbed conversations and flirted, had stolen moments together and at the end of the night, before he went to bed, we found a dark quiet corner and made out to the point we were both painfully frustrated. He told me he wished he could take me to bed, he’d been a dick, made a mistake, maybe we should think about telling people.
‘This is torture, Vix,’ he said.
With my heart melting and floating on a cloud we had said goodnight and reluctantly gone our separate ways.
And once again my happiness bubble was popped.
I climbed into bed where Tom was lying on his phone. I excitedly told him all about my night with a stupid grin on my face.
Tom wasn’t his usual self, he didn’t seem happy for me. He was acting weird. Distant. He told me to leave it, he was just tired and not as drunk as me. I know him better than that, so I didn’t leave it. Eventually, I dragged it out of him. When we were out, he had seen Jake with another girl from our group, Heather. He had watched her kiss his cheek and saw hands lingering too long on each other’s bums near the toilets in the pub. He had returned to the group without using the toilets, so they didn’t see him. I attempted to defend them, well Jake.
‘I know what I saw, Vix,’ Tom said sternly. He continued talking, ‘Then back here, I’ve been watching them, Jake’s had his hand on Heather’s thigh all night under that table. I pretended to drop my cards once and saw her, hand right up pushing against his crotch. His hand was even on your thigh. They were at it all night. I didn’t want to go to bed, I wasn’t sure whether to say something to him but then, I’m not meant to know. I didn’t know what to do but I was getting angrier seeing it and you were so happy, oblivious. I had to come to bed, I might have hit him if I’d have stayed down there any longer. I couldn’t sleep though, I’ve been churning it over. And then you tell me this, I’m so sorry Vix, I don’t want to be the one to hurt you and bring you crashing down. I didn’t want to tell you. I was just going to watch again tomorrow. Give them the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t know, I know what I saw.’