Before Sinclair

Chapter Four: I Need a f*****g Aspirin

FOR THE NEXT week, I do as much as possible to think about the night I shared with Sinclair as little as possible. For the most part, I’m busy enough that it’s easy not to think of him too much. That next Monday, Mom took me out to sign the lease on my new apartment and finalize any extra details, and the Tuesday after that, Odin tagged along to Stella’s Furniture to pick up some things for my new apartment after he came home from school. And on that Wednesday, I moved into my new apartment while preparing to attend my new courses at Red Lake University that afternoon. And the two days after that were filled with me grasping how weird it was to suddenly live alone while juggling the assignment to interview someone on campus for my journalism course.

I only really had time to think about the night with Sinclair when I was laying in bed, preparing to go to sleep for the night. Even though I had been too busy for him to cross my mind all day, at nighttime, the thoughts of him would start. It was like he was some kind of Incubus, visiting me at night and seducing me into bed with him.

At the cost of my mental health, most likely. Because having s*x with a Sinclair was a no-no.

Stop it, Freyja, I would think to myself whenever he would reappear in my thoughts. Don’t think about him.

But it was already too late. My body was already too warm and my heart was racing in my chest. My eyes would stray over to my cell phone, and I would think about calling him, just once before I would decide otherwise.

Sofia likes him.

He’s the leader of a motorcycle gang.

He’s a dangerous person.

Those were the three thoughts that made me strong enough to not call. Instead, I would force myself to close my eyes and, eventually, I would fall asleep. But I wasn’t even safe from him in my dreams.

Maybe Sinclair Buchanan really is some kind of Incubus with how often he appears in my dreams, and how tired I’ve become since the day I decided not to sleep with him again.

Sofia comes by my apartment that Friday night. At this point, I have just come home from my classes, and am starting on the interview assignment in my journalism class while juggling deconstructing my thoughts on how classical literature and new age literature reflect and contrast each other in the form of a ten-page essay. Luckily, none of my other courses have given out assignments just yet, but I’m already feeling the pressure. Two days in and the professors at Red Lake University aren’t wasting any time putting us to work.

So, when Sofia shows up, I’m not at all pleased to see her. I’ve been going back and forth via email with a guy in my class who has agreed to let me interview him in return for him being able to interview me. Suffice it to say, I am in the mood for Sofia right now.

Still, I know that I need a break from all the work I’ve been doing, and I let her inside. Sofia is not the kind of person who stays in one place for too long, anyway. At some point, she’ll probably get a text from a guy she’s seeing or some other friend of hers requesting they go out partying and she’ll disappear.

Her eyes sweep around my apartment, curious and she makes her way to the living room, throwing herself onto the couch.

“This is a pretty nice place,” she says, stretching. “Are you thinking of throwing a party here any time soon?”

I sit on the armchair I’ve been glued to for the past twenty-four hours and give her a deadpan look before glancing pointedly at my laptop, which is perched on my coffee table.

“Does it look like I have any time for parties?”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “It’s not like I expected to big a change once you got in college, but f*****g s**t, Freyja, live a little.”

“Didn’t I live enough when I let you convince me to have s*x with Sinclair?”

I’m not sure if I’m seeing things or not, but it feels like Sofia’s body stiffens at the mention of that. She hasn’t seen me since the night at the bar. It’s nothing new for her and me to go days or weeks without contacting each other since we’re not particularly close, but this time, I couldn’t help but feel like there is more to her disappearance.

She’s probably more bothered about me and Sinclair than she’s willing to let on but she knows she has no right to be mad at me because firstly, Sinclair isn’t her man and secondly, she’s the one who told me to have s*x with him.

“How did that go?” she asks flippantly. “You couldn’t take him to your place, right? Did he take you to a motel or something?”

“No, he took me to his place.”

At this point, I’ve returned to working on my assignment and I haven’t been paying attention to Sofia but her sudden silence draws my attention back to her, and I glance up at her over the computer screen.

“What?” she asks.

“What?” I repeat.

“Where did you say he took you?”

“To his apartment?” I don’t understand her reaction, and the intensity of her stare is making me kind of uncomfortable.

“You’re lying,” she says flatly.

“And what reason do I have to lie to you?”

Sofia pauses, staring at me intently. “You’re serious?” she says. “He really took you to his place?”

I huff, tired of this conversation. “Yes, I already told you that.”

She sits up slowly, her gaze never leaving my face. She’s looking at me like I’ve committed some unforgivable crime, but I don’t know what I’ve done that would warrant such a look.

“What did you do to get him to take you back to his place?”

I raise my eyebrows. “What did I do? Nothing. He’s the one who asked me.”

“Sinclair asked you,” she scoffs. “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

“No, but considering the fact you can’t comprehend basic concepts, I’d say your mental capability is on par with someone who was born yesterday.”

Sofia glares at me, and I sigh, closing my laptop, thinking how idiotic it was for me to ever have thought I’d be able to get any work done with her here. This is one of the reasons why I don’t spend extended amounts of time with Sofia. She’s such a toxic person. I had hoped that now that I was in college and Mom was far enough away to not have to worry about me all the time, I could distance myself from her slowly.

“He just took me to his house, he didn’t get down on one knee and propose. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Sofia’s eyes narrow a little at that and she says, “Are you living under some kind of rock? Everyone knows Sinclair doesn’t like people in his home, Freyja. Even Bruiser has only been there a handful of times.”

There was some familiarity in that rumor, now that she mentioned it. I think I may have heard it in passing, as I was picking up a few things on Mom’s behalf at the grocery store and passed a group of moms clustered together, gossiping amongst themselves in the produce aisle. The people of Willow’s Creek loved drama and, as much as people feared the Iron Order, they certainly made this boring town a lot more lively. People loved gossiping about them as much as they loved staying far away from them.

From the rumors, there is not a soul in Willow’s Creek who doesn’t know that Sinclair doesn’t trust anyone but a select group of people. Why he doesn’t trust is something no one knows, but now that Sofia mentions it, someone who is so supposedly paranoid most likely wouldn’t like their home entered by someone else. Not only had I entered his home, but I had also slept in his bed.

I would have thought that was strange if I hadn’t felt the pulsating connection between us that night. If Sinclair had felt that strange electricity between us, too—even if it was just a fraction of it—it was no wonder why he had done something he would never have normally done. In that bar, in his car with his hand on my thigh, in the small space of the elevator, and all the way to his apartment, I had been aware that everything I was doing was not me.

The Freyja I know would have never gone home with someone like Sinclair. She would have been aware of how dangerous something like that was. She didn’t like to stand close to fire let alone in the center of the flames. But last night, even when the electricity between us had sparked into an explosive wildfire, I had not been willing to step away from it. In fact, I had trudged deeper into that fire and let it burn me until not even bone was left.

I shake my head, forcing thoughts of being burned by Sinclair out of my head. I had been dreaming of another night with him since our last one, and it was doing nothing to help my resolve. Thinking about him would only further weaken my already feeble determination.

“We were both horny and his place was closer than the nearest hotel,” I say, waving off her suspicious stare with a wave of my hand. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Did you sleep there, too?”

I sigh, wishing I had never brought this up in the first place. She had annoyed me with her insinuation that I didn’t have a life because I was focusing on college and not partying, but I would have just bit my f*****g tongue if I had known she was this crazy over the guy. From what I know, they only slept together that one time and she was already interrogating me like I was screwing her ex-boyfriend behind her back.

“Does that matter?”

“It does,” she says through gritted teeth.

I look her dead in the eyes. “Didn’t you say last week that you weren’t in love with Sinclair?”

There is the slightest tick in her expression, but before I can analyze it, she jumps to her feet, glaring at me.

“Oh my God, Freyja, will you just tell me if you slept there or not,” she snaps.

I turn my gaze to my ceiling, breathe in, and then focus on her. “Yes, I slept there and he drove me back in the morning. Are you happy now?”

From the sour look on her face, I conclude that no, she’s not happy.

Her expression has enough hurt in it, though, that I feel kind of bad for her. As annoying as she is, she really must like Sinclair. Even if I think it’s ridiculous to let yourself develop such deep feelings for someone as closed off as Sinclair is, it’s a known fact that people often can’t control who they develop feelings for. Love is an unpredictable thing and the heart wants whatever it wants regardless of what the mind knows is right or true.

“Sofia—”

“Just don’t,” she says sharply. Her hands go to her face and she stays like that for a while.

I watch her awkwardly, not exactly sure what I should do. I’ve never been good with dealing with people when they’re upset.

“Did he say anything else?” she asks, her voice muffled by her hands which she has yet to remove.

“He just asked me to call him again.”

“For what?”

“To have s*x, I assume.”

Her face is still covered by her hands so I can’t see her face but I think I see a little stiffness in her shoulders. It’s quiet for a time as she processes my words, and when her hands finally fall back to her sides, she looks a lot calmer. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m glad she’s calm; the last thing I need is her breaking out into hysterics in my apartment. It’s quiet here and the people in this apartment complex mind their business pretty well…until you give them a reason not to.

“You’re meeting him again, right?”

I give her a look that I hope conveys how crazy I think she is and shake my head.

“What happened between me and him was a one-time thing,” I say. “It was great. We both had fun. And now we’re moving o—”

“You should f**k him again.”

My mouth opens and closes but in that long silence that stretches the span of at least twenty seconds, nothing ever comes out. She was just upset about me going to his house and sleeping in his bed, and now she’s asking me to have s*x with him again. Was she okay? Did she f*****g hit her head on the way over here?

Sofia lets out a chuckle that sounds a little grudging. “You must be better in bed than I thought if he wants to meet you again.” She meets my eyes and crosses her arms. “Imagine it like this, someone with Sinclair Buchanan’s personality meets a woman at a bar and has a…particularly nice night with her. They tell her to call, but she never does. What do you think a person like that would do?”

My eyebrows furrow. It’s not exactly my job to analyze personalities for a living, but I do write fantasy for fun, so I know about character consistencies. It’s easy to understand where she’s going with this…

“Exactly,” she continues like I’ve answered her. “A person like Sinclair would only want that woman more if she doesn’t contact him. He’ll go out of his way to find you, and the more you say you’re not interested, the more interested he’ll become. At that rate, he might even end up…genuinely liking you.” Sofia’s lips tightened.

“And to prevent that, you want me to have s*x with him until his desire for me has run its course.”

“Basically, yeah.” She shrugs.

I breathe in and out through my nose heavily, the beginnings of a headache dancing around the edges of my brain.

And even though I don’t cuss often, I mutter, “I need a f*****g aspirin.”

“It’s not like you won’t have a good time,” she protests. “It’s Sinclair, for f**k’s sake. It’s not like I’m asking you to f**k someone you have no s****l chemistry wi—”

“Do you not understand the meaning of a one night stand?” I cut her off, glaring at her. “Feelings can develop between people who have s*x for long periods of ti—”

Sofia rolls her eyes. “Oh, please,” she interrupts. “Sinclair doesn’t develop feelings. On the love front, he’s an impenetrable fortress.”

“If you know that, then why are you so hell-bent on dating him?”

Sofia seems to have no answer to that question and chooses to just not respond.

“Just think about it,” she finally says after a few moments of us staring each other down. “You don’t want Sinclair liking you any more than I do, right? Think of it as a way to keep him disinterested. Once he’s gotten you out of his system, your relationship will taper off and things will go back to how they were before.”

Her phone chimes and she goes to pick up her coat and purse that she had slung across my couch when she walked in.

“I’ll text you,” she mutters noncommittally.

I don’t allow myself to relax until long after my door has slammed shut and her footsteps have descended the stairs of my apartment building.

I lean my head back against the armchair and stare blankly at my ceiling. I had already promised myself that I would see Sinclair again. I had been repeatedly telling myself all week that it was a bad idea. And then there was that sinking feeling teetering around in my stomach…

I didn’t know what it meant, but it made me sure I should avoid Sinclair.

So why, when I'm trying to avoid him with all of my fraying resolve, did it seem like the universe, fate, or whatever, pushing me to do the exact opposite of what I think is best.