Chapter 203

While Sabrina’s bedroom had a decent light-blocking curtain on its window, the fact that her glass sliding door had no curtain whatsoever meant that you were waking up to the glare of the sun coming through from her little balcony.

With a groan and a grunt you swung your feet down from the couch as you sat up, and then you quickly realized that your pants were around your ankles and your boxers were down at your knees and you were hanging loose.

“Fuck,” you mumbled, pulling everything up and wriggling around to try and get it all together.

You hit the spacebar on Sabrina’s laptop, waking it up and seeing that it was just before 7am. You doubted you were going to get back to sleep at that point, so you stood and stretched, feeling a pop in your neck from the weird position you’d slept on the couch.

Overall, you felt pretty good considering the mild hangover, but you had a lot more body mass than the girls so you had a suspicion they’d be feeling it worse than you.

You decided to get one over on Sabrina again and went to the front door, slipping on your shoes and quietly exiting the apartment. Once you were down on the street, the Saturday morning sun was bright and you wished you’d brought sunglasses, but you checked your phone and located a nearby bakery and started walking.

On your way you noticed you had a couple of texts from Gemma from the night before asking how things were going, so you quickly tapped out a reply apologizing for not responding and telling her things had gone well and that you couldn’t wait to see her later, and that you were sneaking off to a bakery to surprise the girls with coffee and pastries.

You were surprised when your phone rang and it was Gemma.

“Good morning, love,” you said as you answered.

“Good morning, love,” she replied and you could hear the smile in her voice.

“Why are you up so early?” you asked.

“Well, I didn’t have you to keep me up late,” she said. “Which, by the way, I missed a lot. But I’m technically in the middle of an early morning run with the girls. Bonding time to try and make peace with Lucy.”

“Well, that’s good of you. Enjoying it?”

“Love, there are some other forms of cardio I would much rather be doing,” Gemma teased you.

“Me too,” you chuckled.

You quickly gave Gemma the rundown on Katherine and your night out with the sisters. She was happy to hear things had gone well and chuckled when you told her about Sabrina’s late-night stealth sex.

“Can I say something that I hope you take the way I mean?” you asked her.

“Because that doesn’t sound ominous,” Gemma pointed out.

“Sorry, I don’t mean it to be,” you said. “I just- last night I felt like I got something out of it that I was missing between Sabrina and I, and I felt like our relationship got even deeper. And I really want that with you, Gemma. God, this is probably the worst timing and doing it on the phone doesn’t make sense at all, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Gemma, I don’t want this to be just a summer thing. I love-love you, and I know we’re going to need to talk about this so I want to let you know that I don’t want to have an expiration date on our relationship.”

Gemma was quiet on the other end of the line, though you could hear her softly breathe every once in a while. You were stopped outside the bakery at this point, not wanting to go in while you were still on the phone. Somewhere in the background on her end you heard a voice saying something, and then Gemma said, “No, no, I’m fine. I’m fine, it’s all good.”

There was another mumble from the other person, and you could hear Gemma walk for a moment.

“John?” she asked.

“I’m still here,” you said.

“Sorry, I- Fuck, I want that too, love. Or don’t, whatever, you know what I mean. No expiration date. But we really do need to talk about that, and what it looks like. Thank you for telling me.”

“Thank you for listening,” you said, smiling softly as you closed your eyes and focused on your thoughts of Gemma.