♫ There goes my head again
You're too close to keep my common sense
Uh oh can't handle the suspense it's killing me ♪
(Sam DeRosa—321)

Dazed from her goodbyes with Michael, Coralie returned home and lounged on the couch, staring at the ceiling. What was she going to do? Chester and his hypnotic ways wouldn't leave her mind, Ryan's scolding echoed in her brain on repeat, and Michael's potential move to New York City troubled her.

At some point—she'd lost track of how long she'd been laying there—the door banged open, and Delilah waltzed in. Coralie craned her neck to see her carrying a few shopping bags, which she promptly threw to the side as she hurried to the sofa.

"Spill," she said, shoving Coralie's legs out of the way, forcing her to sit up. "I'm in a better mood now, so I wanna hear it. Everything you've been up to. Resume it all for me."

Coralie scoffed as she straightened up and sighted the bags—most of them from luxury stores. Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton—all places she went to when frustrated and needing to blow off steam. "Right, you spent Daddy's money, yeah?"

"Shut up." Delilah snapped at her and scrunched her perfectly tamed eyebrows as she scowled. "You have no room to speak whatsoever, Miss cheater and adulterer. But do bring me up to speed with all your nastiness. I need some entertainment."

What felt like hours later, and after popping a bag of popcorn and concocting some super strong mimosas, Delilah readjusted her slumped seating position and sighed. Coralie had detailed everything—repeating herself several times and witnessing Delilah's reactions up close and personal as she squealed, smacked her, and widened her eyes in shock.

"Fuck, man." Delilah swished the rest of her second mimosa and guzzled it down. "So to resume, once more, you're dating an angel who may move here, cheating on him with a pushy dick, and cheating on him with a poetry-spitting sex god." She giggled. "I'm totally repeating myself, huh? Yeah," she nudged Coralie as she stood up, "because you never listen to me."

Coralie tried to kick her as she backed away from the sofa. "Because you yell at me instead of being calm and helping me! You have no sympathy for my plight, but you're no better!"

"I am, because I figured my shit out, and before anyone got hurt," said Delilah, tossing her hair as she wandered into the kitchen. She reappeared with a bag of pretzels and her mimosa refilled. "You still have a lot to work on. And not only have you added Chester to the mix, like you told me before, but now you've slept with him! Crap!" She fell onto the couch, took a sip, dropped the pretzel bag to the floor... and grabbed Coralie's wrist. "But... okay, before I continue scolding you, I have to ask. How was it? With Chester? You've never had sex with him sober before. Meaning you've never been able to tell me how it was."

Coralie—still working on her first dose of liquored orange juice, her nerves too on edge for early drinking—cringed. "I know. And it was..." She blew out her cheeks, that heated at the recollection of their steamy, hot as heck sex. "I wish I could tell you it sucked, and it opened my eyes and I'll never do it with him again, but... it was good. Fucking good. Not tender like with Michael, or passionate like with Ryan, but... delicious. Kind of violent, you know? Like we were hungry for each other, like we had no choice but to devour one another to scratch our itch."

"Jeez." Delilah pretended to slurp up drool and popped a pretzel into her mouth. Her coral-colored gloss had faded after all her drinks, but a few traces lingered in the corners of her lips. "The way you talk about it sounds like straight-up porn."

"It felt like porn." Coralie rolled her shoulders, sensing stiffness from how she'd been sitting upright. "And he claimed he wasn't done with me, had more to show me."

"Okay." Delilah dragged one leg up onto the sofa and turned to her. "Serious time. If you're not done experimenting with sex and stuff, you need to cut Michael loose. And before he moves here. Having to choose between him and Ryan was hard enough, but now Chester's an option? This is too much."

"Chester... can't be an option." Coralie swiped a stray strand of hair from her face. "He's unfaithful and still parties all the time and can't commit. He made that obvious several times since we've reunited—that his behavior hasn't changed. I think that's why his ex broke up with him, but he won't discuss it."

Delilah narrowed her chocolate gaze, keeping the rim of her glass near her mouth. "I'll come back to that part in a second. But I have to share my opinion with you. You still want it, right? You think it'll help you pick?"

"It's a start." Coralie hadn't described the situation to her other best friend, Bella, and hadn't spoken to her in a while. But she needed someone's point of view, and Delilah was the only one privy to all the information.

"Right, well..." Delilah brought her other leg up and crossed it with the other in front of her. "If we look long-term... let's be real, Michael is the best for you. He's decent, honorable, family-oriented, kind-hearted, blah blah blah. But the poor boy is clueless. You've strung him every which way and he still worships the ground you walk on, and it's not fair."

"I know." Coralie plopped a piece of popcorn onto her tongue but grimaced at its gooey softness. It had been out for too long and lost its appealing crunch.

Delilah raised her cup and snickered at her. "You know, yet you're still doing this. I hate to side with Ryan for anything, but you should have broken up with Michael a while ago. Like, the instant you met with Ryan at the bar and made the hasty decision to give him another chance."

Coralie snorted into her cup, which splashed a few drizzles of juice onto her cheeks. "You told me to meet with him! Fuck, you're so contradictory, Delilah!"

"No." Delilah pointed at her, frowning. "I told you to meet with him, but not to rekindle your affair based on his flimsy apologies and assurances that he'd always meant to choose you! He reported to his wife after you asked for a smidgen more attention, but then groveled at your feet with a few mojitos and you welcomed him back with open arms? That was you thinking with your vagina."

With a wrinkle of her nostrils, Coralie threw a pretzel at Delilah, but she caught it. "I wasn't—"

"—You were. You've been doing a lot of that lately, and far be it from me to judge, but vagina-thinking is reserved for us single gals, you know?" Delilah heaved the pretzel back at Coralie, but it bounced off the armrest and fell to the ground. "When you're in a relationship, your heart should take precedence. Or at least be in agreement with your desires. Your desires... are all over the place, honey."

"Fine." Huffing, Coralie slammed her fists onto the cushions. "So what do you suggest oh wise one?"

Smirking at the nickname, Delilah fidgeted until she was comfortable enough to arch her spine and sit up tall. "You free Michael from his misery. Or his future misery, I should say. Let him down. You've got way too much going on, and the longer you play this out, the fewer shots you'll get to liberate him before you massacre his heart. Or, and this one's daring," she pouted her lips, "tell him the truth. Yeah!" She waved at Coralie, who had opened her mouth to protest. "I know I initially told you not to. But there are more parties involved now. And without being aware if Michael will be open to your apology, you won't know if he's even an option. You can't choose him and later risk him finding out what you did behind his back."

Seeing the logic in Delilah's words, Coralie shriveled into a ball, rocking back and forth as she wedged her glass between her knees. Her anxiety amplified, and her blood curdled as she envisioned herself telling Michael that they needed to end things.

And right after he informed me he wanted to move closer to me, too.

"This sucks."

"You only have yourself and your sex-drive to blame. And Ryan." Delilah choked. "And Chester. Ugh, fuck that guy, barging in and using his persuasion methods against you. To reel you in, or something, I'm not sure. He's acting really weird, I tell ya." She downed half her glass and batted her lashes. Her eyes were glazed, meaning she was already tipsy—and it wasn't even noon yet. "Look, Michael can't handle the true you. The one who makes out in alleys and lies about working overtime to have sex with an old flame. He's good, he's caring, and that shit won't fly with him. So if you're still considering him, you might have to come clean. You need to decide, Cora."

A wave of dizziness overcame Coralie. She ceased her rocking and set her feet to the ground to balance herself. Was it the champagne? The bubbles? Or the brewing guilt in her gut rendering her nauseous in shame?

"Chester... he did sort of use his ways with words against me, huh? Seducing me into going to coffee with him, then the bar, then cornering me in that alley to touch me—" she shuddered, "—dammit, I shouldn't be thinking of that. He's a manipulator, yeah? Wooing his way into my pants?"

Delilah raised a finger as she got up. "Hang on. I can prove that, actually." She disappeared into the kitchen, then into the bedrooms. Coralie heard her slurring something under her breath as she opened drawers and slammed them shut, before stumbling into the living room carrying a thick but small leather-bound book. It resembled an ancient journal, woven together by string, written in quill ink under the light of a candle. "This. Read it. You'll understand what he's been doing to you."

"This?" Coralie accepted the book as Delilah handed it to her. She flipped it to read its title—EXPLICIT, by C.Chase—and froze. "Whoa. You want me to read his novel? And," she glowered at Delilah, "how do you have it?"

Delilah flipped her off, then played with the strings of her sweat-pants that she'd changed into after her first mimosa. "I didn't know it was him until you brought him up and specified that he'd written something with that title. It's like an encyclopedia for sexy poetry. A bible for those of us wishing to seduce with words." She laughed. "I am terrible with pick-up lines and speaking pretty, but it was a great read. Insightful and horny, and I suspect a few of those poems might... be about you. And they might make you think a little. Remember how I said I'd get back to that part? This is what I meant." She gestured at the book. "Chester's polyamorous and shit, sure... but when it comes to you? It's a different story. There's always been more to the way he was with you. Unfaithful... absolutely, but not if he's dating you. I'm willing to bet on that."

Hesitant to open the tome to the first page, Coralie swallowed. A bitter orange juice and fizzy champagne taste settled on her tongue. "What makes you say that?"

"Just..." Delilah massaged her temples and expelled a heavy breath. "Read it. You'll see. Ryan's a douchebag, Michael is my favorite... but don't discount Chester yet. I can't stand him most days, but he may surprise you."

Delilah sauntered into the kitchen and drunkenly hummed to a tune as she busied about cooking baked fish and French fries.

Coralie snatched a nearby blanket and tossed it over herself as she nestled against the couch pillows. She breathed in, out, then opened the book.

She had no inkling what Delilah meant to accomplish by getting her to view Chester's poems. But after a few pages, Coralie's insides flopped upside down, and those knife-toothed butterflies reanimated in her belly. She heard his sultry-sounding voice reverberating in her brain, in her bones, jarring down to her toes, sparking electricity in her fingers. His phrases, his alliterations were phenomenal, and each poem aroused her, attracted her. Each sentence elicited excruciating tingles in her lower lips, and a growing urge to touch herself as she imagined him reciting his poetry to her. It was hot, it was explicit—as the title implied—and it was difficult to read without losing her self-control.

Halfway through, to her dismay, she found the sections Delilah had mentioned—those that might have referred to Coralie.

She never knew, never understood
That gorgeous girl I carried out of bars
Never knew, and never would
How I loved her from afar.

Her neck spasmed as she repeated the verse aloud, reviving its words as if the scene were playing before her. Chester, heaving her out of a nightclub while shoving curls off her forehead, kissing her, cradling her, telling her she'd be all right. Those memories returned with a ferocious vivacity that, if she hadn't already been laying down, would have weakened her to her knees.

"I loved her from afar," she mumbled, unable to remove her gaze from the calligraphy, from the beautifully designed page artwork. "He... had feelings for me? If that's even me he's referring to."

She struggled to envision it. Chester, the eternally single but never celibate, sexy alcoholic who picked up chicks and dudes with a wink and a drink... might have been in love with her back in the day? Back when she had no idea who she was or what she wanted, no clue how to hold her liquor, and few recollections of her disgusting, drunken deeds?

How?

Whatever his reasons for hiding such facts, and whether these poems were about her or not, Coralie was inspired to scribble a few rhymes of her own. She hastened to her room and grabbed her laptop, and after getting cozy on the couch again, she typed up a storm of lyrics she couldn't wait to send to Nikita. With Chester's Explicit book beside her, she smiled. Maybe her insane situation would serve a purpose, after all. A professional one.

♥♥♥