His grin only widens in response before he walks out of the door.
I swear I hate him.
But I’m thankful that he’s not asking questions. How does one say, hey, I want to get tested for STDs because I had a bunch of dicks in me without at least one person feeling uncomfortable? Doesn’t really come out right, no matter how you word it.
I will forever be thankful for Francesca forcing Rocco and his friends to use condoms, aside from the first time Rocco assaulted me. She said we would be worthless if they gave us diseases. But it was useless anyway—they certainly didn’t use condoms when they forced us to perform oral. I think it just made Francesca feel like she was being responsible.
According to Rio, there was an incident long before I arrived, where one of the guys gave all the girls syphilis. Since then, Francesca has been diligent about them getting tested if they wanted to partake in our ‘lessons,’ but I wouldn’t trust any of them to actually keep their dicks clean.
Xavier used condoms, too, but there was one occurrence when the condom broke. I bite my lip, anxiety flaring just thinking about that minuscule chance that I got knocked up anyway, despite that I have the IUD. It’s improbable, but not impossible.
My heart drops, picturing the disgusted look on Zade’s face when finding out that I’m pregnant with another man’s baby.
I know him well enough by now that I’m confident he wouldn’t actually give me that look, but that image plagues me anyway.
I wouldn’t blame him if he did. That disgust is what I feel every time I stare in the mirror. Which is why I tend to avoid it at all costs.
I’m getting a pregnancy test, and if I did get that unlucky, I’m throwing myself off the building next.
I’ve been out of the house for a total of two hours and forty-seven minutes, and I’m fucking exhausted. I'm still riddled with anxiety, nauseated by the possibility that I’m as filthy as I feel.
“You look like you need ice cream,” Zade announces, his palm flat on the steering wheel as he makes a left turn. It’s… hot. Watching Zade drive is foreplay.
Even
worse, he’s wearing a leather jacket over his hoodie today, and I still haven’t been able to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.
I blink, the loss of blood making me a little woozy. I told the doctor to test me for every STD known to man—especially herpes since that’s one of the scarier and mostly silent ones—and I lost count of how many tubes of blood she drew. She stared at the barcode on my wrist almost the entire time, and after the gauze stemmed the bleeding, she slapped a Band-Aid with smiley faces on my arm. I laughed, then cried when the pregnancy test came back negative.
“Ice cream?” I echo dumbly.
“Do you like ice cream?”
“I—well, yes,” I stutter, my brain slow to catch up with the randomness.
“What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Mint chocolate,” I answer, watching him make another turn. He’s heading in the opposite direction of Parsons now, and I think he’s aiming for Lick n’ Crunch a few blocks away—a mom-and-pop shop that sells the best soft-serve ice cream in Seattle.
The thought of getting ice cream with Zade is so normal and mundane that it feels like the most exciting thing to happen since sliced bread. And watching Zade lick an ice cream cone will probably be just as weird as it will be hot.
“So toothpaste?”
I sigh. “Et tu, Brute? It’s not toothpaste. They taste nothing alike.”
A grin tips up one side of Zade’s mouth, and his eyes glitter as he pulls into the parking lot. The bastard of a man is just trying to get a rise out of me.
“It’s toothpaste,” he reaffirms, though I’m not sure if he actually believes that. He looks too damn mischievous, but I can't help arguing anyway.
I unbuckle and swivel toward him, my eyes thinning.
“Mint is a delicacy, and you’re just a simpleton incapable of appreciating it.”
He laughs outright, putting the car in park. Mint is definitely not a delicacy—quite the opposite, actually—but I’m sticking with it.
“Are you saying I need to refine my food palette?”
“Obviously,” I answer dryly.