Because Of Love

“Babe, isn’t hair day next month?” Carrie asked as they facetimed. Talia stared at the phone screen where she had it propped up against a cup on the dining table as she opened a bottle of wine.

“I needed to get the sweat washed out,” she answered absent mindedly as she screwed the wine opener into the cork.Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

“Why? You don’t exactly exercise, lucky bitch,” she hissed. Talia snorted a laugh as she pulled on the wine opener. “Or did you suddenly decide to get a gym membership?”

Talia froze, elbow up in the air, realizing then what she had let slip. For some reason, her friend could sniff out the tea in the slightest comment then the Spanish inquisition would begin. She leaned out of the camera focus for a moment and internally screamed as she mouthed ‘Oh my god, what’s wrong with you?’ She couldn’t just say ‘Yes, I did’ because they both knew Talia had an aversion to the sadists they called trainers. She had to come up with a lie, and a damn good one too, or Carrie would grab a cab to her apartment to come poke more holes until she bleed out the truth. Talia groaned silently, the last thing she wanted was for Carrie – for anyone – to know she’d screwed her boss. Too damn embarrassing!

When she moved back in front of the camera, her lips spread in the best fake smile she could muster, she said, “Cleaning. I was cleaning. There was so much dust under my bed I could have started a little garden.” She winced at the nervous sing-song sound her voice had taken. There was no better confession than that.

“Uh-huh,” Carrie responded, the hiked brow a clear testimony of her disbelief. “Isn’t that ‘I finally bought my house’ five hundred dollars wine?”

Damn damn damn! How in the world did she even remember that? Talia had bought that bottle of wine just a few months after they’d met at work and that was years ago.

Feeling caught, Talia hugged the bottle to her chest, her wide eyed expression mirrored back to her in the tiny right corner screen of her side of the call. She tried to come up with a lie, a fake story but she just couldn’t think of a single thing. Clearly, lying wasn’t one of her talents.

“Okay, fine!” she huffed, then held the bottle up so that Carrie could have a clear view of it. “Now it’s the ‘I screwed my boss, heaven save me from myself’ lamentation wine.”

Carrie’s jaw dropped as she stared at her wide eyed for what felt like forever. For a moment, Talia thought their connection had dropped and the screen froze. The sudden burst of laughter had Talia rolling her eyes as she poured a healthy helping of red dry grape into the waiting wine glass.

“It’s been a long time coming. Congratulations on joining the slut club.”

Talia leveled a withering glare on her friend but clearly the message wasn’t transmitting through the phone since she was still cackling away. She knew Carrie could see her. She’d bought that brand phone for its camera quality.

“I’m not a slut. I just lost my head for a moment.”

“Yeah, on some Italian sausage,” she hooted.

“Carrie!” she admonished as she forced the cork back into the mouth of the bottle of wine. The symbolism of the action wasn’t lost to her and she dared not comment on it just in case-

Carrie’s cackles grew louder as she pointed to Talia through the screen and said, “I would say it, but I have a feeling you’ll hang up on me if I do.”

“Don’t be juvenile,” Talia chastised, standing with the bottle in hand. She moved to the kitchen cabinet and put the bottle back in place before she returned to sit in front of her friend as her afternoon’s entertainment.

“Why are you putting the wine away?”

“Unlike you, I don’t chug expensive wine like its keg,” Talia lifted the glass to her lips and sipped the claret with precious appreciation. She loved her wine and wanted to savor the high priced indulgence. “Besides, I need a clear head to figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this new situation now.”

“So you slept with the guy, what’s the big deal? Are you looking for a relationship? Is he?”

That was the sad part. She knew he wasn’t while she had been going out of her way to stay out of his to avoid the very situation she’d found herself in a night ago. He wasn’t the relationship type, and she didn’t do casual. It just wasn’t in her. For Carrie, sex was just another activity, but for Talia it was a hell lot more. Too much of her and her emotions were involved in the act, hence the ten years celibacy.

Forgetting her intention to savor, Talia took a large sip, rolled the liquid on her tongue then swallowed before she stated matter of factly, “Don’t you know, with every guy you sleep with, a piece of their soul is left with you?”

That’s what it felt like. He’d left some of his baggage with her and all she could think about was how she had suddenly become his choice of distraction, how she had let him make her one and worse, if she’d lived up to expectation. She was suddenly feeling self-conscious, irrational insecurities mulling through her head.

She hadn’t felt this way in a very long time.

She hated it.

With a long exhalation, she took another sip of wine.

Carrie’s eyebrow shot up in a condescending way. “Excuse me?”

Talia snorted. Carrie’s opinion on that was coming loud and clear. It was no surprise, she was too potent, too dominant to be susceptible to being weighed down by such sensitive emotions. Sometimes, Talia wondered if she was an empath. She felt like Phoebe in Charmed, stuck in the basement trying to sort out, index, categories and file DeLuca’s issues one by one just so that she would get a reprieve from them.

“It felt like more like an exorcism than sex,” she confessed, her thoughts going back to the moments her mind was clear enough to really take in what was happening.