Tell Me What To Do
RECOMMENDED TRACK: Flying Fingers – Just Give Me A Reason
At 12:48 p.m., I paced a block away from Emma’s apartment.
When she sent me away that morning, I dragged myself back to Sig House, without even the energy to try and punch my frustrations out at the gym. The only person awake at the house had been Jacob. Planning everyone’s cleaning duties after the party the night before, of course.
He took one look at me, quirked an eyebrow in sympathy, and made a quick scratch across his notepad.
I almost told him to make me scrub the toilets instead.
But I went upstairs and fell into bed instead, grasping my pillow and groaning into it. I threw on my headphones and listened to sad old Russian music—most of it’s sad to begin with—like maybe if I made myself miserable enough it would circle back around to acceptance.
Of course Emma wanted to think about it first, she was a thinker. She would still come to the right answer, would end this. That was that. It had been a nice extended dream. I had floated along for ten days of warmth I had not expected to feel—not at Crownbridge, certainly, and maybe not ever.
And, like my time in America, it had been temporary. It was always meant to end, I told myself. Of course it was.
It did not help. I had tried not to make anything I would miss, but I missed her already.
When the misery did not turn into acceptance, I shoved myself out of bed and took a shower. A long one, but no one came to pound on the door and demand I stop hogging the hot water. Not even Calloway.
Brothers, they can be assholes. But in the end, they are still brothers.
When I got out of the shower at about twelve, I was certain I would not even go back to her apartment. What was the point? It was over. Hearing her end it would just hurt more. If I stayed away, maybe I could pretend it was nothing, like everything else I had done with my life so far.
But I kept thinking of Emma’s red-rimmed eyes when she opened her door. I had done that. The least I owed her was the chance to tell me off. If it hurt, I deserved it.
So at 12:57 p.m., I pulled myself up her stairs and leaned against her wall, staring at the clock on my phone as it ticked slowly, so, so slowly to one p.m. when I could finally knock.
She opened the door quickly, too quickly, and I could tell she’d been tugging at her ear because it was bright red, just the left one, always.
“Hi,” I said. Great start.
“Hi,” she replied, then stepped aside to let me in.
I took a breath and walked inside. She had not said anything yet, but she reached for the sleeve of my shirt and tugged me to the couch, where we sat. I mussed my hair with one hand. “Emma, I…” I what? I had no idea what to say.
Emma shook her head and tugged my sleeve again, which is when I realized she was clinging to it, the fabric tight between her fingers. “Just…tell me what happened,” she said.
She sounded calm. I guess the time had helped her. But it told me nothing about what she was thinking.
So I did as she asked, explained it all. Well, most of it. My concerns when she had stopped responding to texts. Calloway being an asshole. The way I’d gone into “God of Party” mode on autopilot.
But there was no universe in which I was brave enough to talk about my future in Moscow with her, not that day. I left it out.
She listened, and although her grip on my sleeve eventually loosened, her face was sympathetic. Always sympathetic. It occurred to me that she was going to forgive me—but also that it might not matter if she did. She might forgive me and still be done with me.
That was somehow even worse than if she just hated me.
When I was done, she breathed in deeply, tucked her hair behind her ear, and pulled out her phone. “I’m sorry I didn’t text you back,” she said. Of course she would apologize when I was the asshole here. “I just…had a really lousy day on Friday, and my phone was dead on Saturday. That wasn’t fair to you.”
“Friday? What happened Friday?” I frowned.
She had already been pulling something up on her phone, which she handed me. I watched myself say something meaningless to get someone off my back while a drunk girl fawned over my arm. Misha is still Misha. “Ah. This upset you.”
She nodded, then corrected herself. “Well, ‘upset’ might be a strong word for it,” she amended. “It unsettled me, I guess. I had planned to talk to you about it, especially after—” She stopped, biting her lip.
“After what?”
“After, well…that was actually the second thing that happened Friday,” she said, leaning over me to tap on her phone again. “A girl came up to me after class earlier that day. She showed me this.”
I looked at it. A dumb photo from the Thursday party, the same girl I’d had trouble shaking. “She was drunk. Every time I nudged her away she fell back onto me,” I said, but I was confused because she had been in the video. That’s when I saw the text and realized the image was not what had bothered Emma.
Is the party god back?? i heard the girlfriend thing was just a bet 👀
I felt something ugly in my chest, and I think I actually glared at her. I would not have thought it possible before that moment. “You believed this chush—this garbage? Who showed this to you?”
“I didn’t believe it!” She shook her head vehemently. “Not really. It just…I felt embarrassed,” she admitted. “And then the other thing on top of it, it just added up. I should have just talked to you then,” she said, hugging herself. “Her name was Dina,” she added. “The girl who showed me the post.”
It took a second for the name to register, which I blame on the fact that I was busy being relieved that Emma had not actually thought I was that big an asshole. “If Dina showed this to you, she probably was the one who made it up in the first place,” I said with a grunt as the memory came back. “Comms major. Very proud. I…we were together twice,” I rubbed the back of my neck. I never expected anything like that to matter. “I heard she made a big deal about it. Maybe she sees you as beating her high score,” I said dryly.
Emma’s face fell.
“That’s not how I see it,” I said, holding my hands up defensively. “Not with you. It just might explain her.”
“Maybe you’re right.” She sighed, shifting in her seat. “I just wish I’d said something. I thought I was…well, doing what I did today. Taking a minute to breathe,” she said, then paused. “And I…I didn’t want to be too needy. Too pushy,” she admitted.
I snorted. “You are only pushy with your opinions about movies,” I said, earning a ghost of a smile.
“Either way, I waited longer than I should have. I guess it all just reminded me that this is still so…undefined,” she said, gesturing to me and then back to herself.
The rest of my anger dissipated and I shook my head. “No, you’re right. You talked about fair. This was not fair to you, this vagueness. Maybe not to either of us.” I laughed without humor.
Emma paled. “What do you mean was?”
I straightened, feeling a pesky little seed of hope plant itself. “I mean…I kissed another girl,” I blurted. “Even if it was a dare, I thought you would not…you still want to try?”
“Yes! I mean…” She fidgeted with the sleeve of her sweater. “Yes, I want to try. We’re here, we’re talking it through. So…if we both still want this…“
“Yes,” I said, surprised by my own vehemence but not trying to soften it. “I still want this, Emma. I still want you. Tell me what to do.” I reached out for her hand, and she let me grasp it. It felt like mooring, something holding me steady for the first time in two days.
Her cheeks turned that shade of pink that had quickly become one of my favorite colors, but she smiled for real and it felt like a crack in a wall of ice. “First, don’t interrupt me.”
She was smiling. She was teasing me. Like everything was going to be fine.
I nodded, making a show of pressing my lips together and sealing them shut.
“Second, let’s figure it out,” she continued. “Figure us out. What we want. Then where we’re going with this for now, together.”
…It cannot be that easy. Can it?
But I followed her into the light. “…Can I talk now?”
She gave a little laugh, tiny, but it sounded like a bell to my ears. Not the end-of-round bell in a boxing match. A pretty little bell, like the start of a song. “Yeah. Please,” she said, gesturing for me to speak. “Tell me what you’re thinking. What you want.”
“I want…” I squeezed her hand, trying to decide what to say. How much to say. “I want as much as you will give me for as long as you will have me,” I said finally, burying a sliver of guilt as I brought the tips of her fingers to my lips. “I want to match your pace. Faster? Slower? Tell me.”
Her face turned bashful, the look that means she’s shy about asking something but will ask anyway. “Can we…make it official?” She held my hand in both of hers, tracing my thumb with her own. “Boyfriend and girlfriend? God, it sounds childish,” she said with a nervous giggle.
“Yes,” I replied immediately. “I mean, yes, boyfriend and girlfriend. It does not sound childish. It sounds…good.” A smile was spreading across my face and I pulled her closer, onto my lap. “But we can use Russian instead, if you think it sounds better. Paren i devushka.”
“Paren,” she repeated, flicking her tongue around the r. “Devushka.”
“Perfect,” I breathed. “May I kiss moya devushka?”
“Pozhaluysta,” she said. Please.
“Ohh…you’ve been practicing,” I hummed, tugging her to me. “Good girl.” I couldn’t resist saying as she settled on my lap like she belonged there, then kissed me.
The moment her lips touched mine, fears melted into the distance, even the ones still hidden in a closet in my mind. I put my arms around her and poured all of that energy into the press of our mouths.
She pulled away for a moment to breathe, then leaned back in for another, escalating it with a simple parting of her lips. I wasted no time, exploring her mouth like a maze I needed to know every path in.
When we broke apart for air, she ground down on my lap, and the heat of her against me felt perfect. “You feel so good,” I murmured against her ear and relishing in the way she shivered and pressed down against me. I slid my hand up the back of her sweater and luxuriated in the feeling of her soft skin against my hand.
“Nuh-uh,” she said, leaning in to plant a series of kisses along my neck. “You do.”
“Why not both?” I grumbled, pressing up against her and letting out a little groan as she slid her lips just below my ear and sucked at my skin, gentle but firm. “Mmm…are you leaving a mark, koroleva?”
She paused. “Sorry.”
“Do not dare say you are sorry,” I told her, squeezing her thigh and then tilting my head back for her. “Go ahead.” She pounced playfully, and I huffed a breath that was a gasp hidden under a laugh. “Bed?”
“No,” she said, pulling back from me enough to pull her sweater off over her head. “Here.”
Who was I to argue?
We scrambled out of our clothes as best we could without separating. She must have been as eager as I was, because she didn’t even let me stroke her more than a few times before she was sliding down onto my cock. We both hummed in satisfaction once she had taken me fully, a strange mix of tension and relief at the same time. “Use me, moya koroleva,” I rumbled in her ear. “I am all yours.”
She began to ride me, every bit the queen I called her. This was not what I had meant about going by her pace, but I was certainly not about to stop her, settling my thumb for her to grind against with every move. It was slow and sweet and when she came, it was with a strangled cry that was new and desperate and immediately made the list of my favorite Emma sounds.
“Moya,” I grunted—mine—holding her tight as she wriggled and twitched. I began to thrust into her faster, chasing my own release. That dirty little fantasy, the one that followed me into her bed every time, of leaving her with something that would defy modern birth control entirely, played in my head. “Let me fill you,” I said, pressing my face into her shoulder. “All the way up, I’ll—” I broke off with a feral growl as I did just that.
We sat entwined in one another, sweaty, sticky, utterly content once more. When I could breathe again, I kissed her temple. “You okay?”
She nodded with a dreamy little hum. “We’re ‘kay.”
I loved those moments after, when she was boneless in my arms like a sleepy kitten. And somehow, she had seen fit to keep sharing those moments with me, at least for now. I’d take it. I’d take whatever she would give me.
Bonus Content:
Sigma House Chores List
Author’s Note
B-Side Track: Jason Mraz – I Won’t Give Up
I mentioned before that I like dark romance, and I do. I also enjoy well-written misunderstanding arcs, and even the occasional breakup arc.
But in this case, I just couldn’t fathom Emma dragging this out. She has her flaws, but she’s very emotionally mature, and frankly I thought it would be nice to show how mature adults resolve problems through communication. Yes, this is a pretty quick, tidy version of it, but still.
Don’t worry, the next book I have planned involves much messier people.
FUN FACT:
Yes, of course Emma has been studying a little more Russian when she can. It’s self-study, though, so her progress is slow, which frankly annoys her. But she’s got an ambitious school schedule, a job, and a hot boyfriend (still!), so she doesn’t have a lot of free time.
Are you guys enjoying the bonus content? Because I have to tell you, every time I get the chance to jot down interactions between the Sigs I was having an absolute ball.