I can't fight

Kennedy

I slept a lousy sleep. It’s my phone that wakes me up, bleeping away on my bedside table.

I rub my eyes before I reach for it, and realise the daylight is blazing through the crack in the curtains.

“Wake up sleepyhead,” Riven says at the end of the line. “It’s almost midday.”

I check my alarm clock. He’s right.

That’s what a night pacing around your living room does for you.

“Guess I overslept.”

“Guess you did. You should’ve stayed over.”

I sigh. “I hardly think that would’ve been a good idea.”

“She loves you,” he says, just like that, and I sit bolt upright.

“What?”

“She loves you, she told me so. And she loves me, too.”

A mix of relief and nausea floods through me. “She said that? Love?”

“Uh huh, yeah. She said it. Love.”

I can’t fight the zing of nerves. “And were you… when she said it?”

“Was I fucking her?” He sighs. “No, Kennedy, I wasn’t fucking fucking her. How much of a cunt do you take me for?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I am.

“She did sleep in my bed though. But not lik