His Pretty Ruin

I made a mistake at my brother's party.

The kind that walks into your kitchen while you're nursing a drink and feeling sorry for yourself, makes you laugh for the first time in weeks, and then tells you something you should have left alone. I didn't leave it alone. I followed it to my bedroom instead, and what happened there rewired my brain so thoroughly that I started having good flashbacks in grocery stores.

Francis is my brother's best friend. He's calm and steady and way too good at knowing what I want before I do. He's also the reason I can't walk straight the next morning, and the reason I called out of work, and the reason I bought something online that arrived in discreet packaging and got more use than anything I've ever owned.

We agreed it was a one-time thing. We agreed to stop. I meant it. I meant it through the phone calls I shouldn't have made, and the months I spent trying to replace him, and the four men who proved that some things can't be replicated.

I meant every word of it, right up until he showed up at my door and I realized I hadn't meant a single one.