The Fling by Rebekah Weatherspoon Read Free Book Online Page B

fantasy—it was fulfilled. She got exactly what she wanted. She got her one night and it was perfect. Oksana was perfect. And it ended exactly as it should have, maybe just not when. Annie realized it was the kiss. The texts were one thing. Flirting never hurt anyone, but the kiss must have suggested to Oksana that Annie wanted to continue some sort of relationship between them, outside of their workouts. Annie had asked for one night and Oksana had delivered. She played along, but Oksana wasn’t attached. She wasn’t making cases for why one more time together wouldn’t hurt. Annie’s whole plan had gone exactly as planned with extras thrown in. So why the hell was she crying?
    Two years ago, Jeff forgot her birthday completely. He usually forgot until the day of, never asking what Annie wanted or what she’d like to do, but still he managed to pull something together that always made her smile. For her twenty-seventh birthday, he’d forgotten altogether. Megan and Feather saved the day, taking her out for dinner and a movie.
    When she got back to her place, Jeff was sound asleep in her bed. He never said a word about it, and Annie never cried about that particular birthday.
    Oksana, in an epic feat of responsibility, politely closed the door to any more flirting and innuendo, any more public make-out sessions, and Annie was pushed to a desperate breathing episode in the parking lot of her office, complete with those thick orphanage tears. Luckily, her early crew had already arrived. She had another hour of insanity before her executive producer strolled through the parking lot and witnessed her wiping her face like her cat had just died. She didn’t need that.
    She had crossed a line with Oksana at some point, and Oksana had tried to put it right.
    Why was this making me so upset, she wondered as she pathetically scrubbed her face.
    Annie knew why, but she couldn’t conceptualize what her heart was telling her. She really did have some sort of feelings for Oksana, but in the sobering sun of this Hollywood morning, Annie couldn’t nail down exactly what those feelings were or where they had come from. But she had to. Annie hated uncertainty. The black-and-white nature of her relationship with Jeff was one of the main reasons she loved him so much. He loved her with no theatrics and she loved him with no demands.
    Maybe Annie needed a friend who wasn’t involved with the wedding, wasn’t part of the hometown group of friends, someone who had no stake in Jeff. Or maybe it was something more. She knew plenty of people who weren’t involved in the wedding and plenty more people who absolutely couldn’t care less if she was attracted to women and still engaged to a guy. But Oksana had been the one she’d come clean to and the one she’d slept with. Annie had never been honest with anyone the way she had been honest with Oksana. That had to count for something.
    Or maybe Annie really was gay. God, what did that even mean? She wasn’t gay. Jeff or not, she loved guys. Penis was a good thing, but Oksana…
    Their time together had been unusually comforting. There were a few moments where Annie was nervous, but all her nerves revolved around making Oksana happy, getting Oksana off, not maximizing every minute of her freebie for the sake of walking faithfully back to Jeff. And the kiss they’d shared? She’d never kissed Jeff like that. There’d never been that sort of heat. Did she really have romantic feelings for Oksana, or did the experience of being with another woman awaken something in Annie that she’d honestly been ignoring?
    What did that mean for her and Jeff?
    He’d been her one and only adult relationship, and maybe sixty years ago when suffering in silence or suicide—okay, now she was getting bleak—were more suitable options than divorce, she would have pushed all these emotions down with a stiff upper lip, but…
    Annie refused to give the next thought more steam. She couldn’t.
    She shook her