he whispered I love you to his girlfriend while his cock was down my throat

let me be clear that I genuinely did not know.

we'd been hooking up for about a month before someone told me. a girl in my seminar who knew him mentioned it casually, like she assumed I already knew, and I had to smile and nod and sit with that for the rest of class.

I mostly felt stupid. not ashamed, just stupid. I should probably ask these things upfront but the problem with him and me is that we don't really talk. we see each other and within ten minutes something is coming off and someone is being pushed toward a surface. conversation has never been the point.

so I brought it up. after we fucked obviously because that's just how we work. he confirmed it. three years, long distance, apparently serious. he looked genuinely bad about it and I found myself feeling bad that he felt bad which is a strange place to land.

I told him he should call her.

he did. sat on the edge of the bed with his phone while I was still on the floor where we'd ended up and I watched him dial and thought about leaving and then didn't.

I'm not sure exactly when I started. somewhere around the point where she was telling him about her week and he was making all the right noises back and I thought well. I put my hands on his knees and lowered my head and took him in my mouth and he went completely still.

just teasing at first. slow and easy, not really committing. listening to her voice come through the phone, small and tinny, talking about something I couldn't follow.

then he started getting hard in my mouth.

and I started getting interested.

I went properly at it. deeper, one hand working the base, the other gripping his thigh, and above me he kept the conversation going in this completely steady voice that I found so specifically irritating and so hot simultaneously that I went harder just because of it. gagged once, came back up, went back down, kept going.

she said something sweet. the kind of thing that has a lot of feeling in it. something about missing him, about how nobody there is like him.

he looked down at me.

his hand moved to the back of my head.

I know what that means with him. I let him.

I was fully choking, eyes watering, mascara doing whatever it was doing, when he said into the phone in the warmest voice I have ever heard from him:

"I love you too."

and came down my throat.

he hung up. looked down at me. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked back up at him and neither of us said anything for a moment.

I grabbed my stuff and left and on the walk back to my place I genuinely could not tell you how I felt about any of it.

I still can't.