Sweet Fate

by Laurelin Paige

DYLAN: You had a date tonight, I presume. Was all of it a disaster? Or just the kissing?

  My bets were on the whole thing being terrible. A woman would give a man a second chance after a bad kiss if the rest of the night had been pleasing.

  As soon as my phone showed that the text had been received, it began to ring.

  I answered just as fast.

  “It wasn’t actually a date,” she said, skipping any formal greeting, as usual. “We bumped into each other in the apartment foyer. I had groceries, so he offered to carry them up.”

  He’d carried her groceries. That was commendable enough. Not that I was keeping a tally of his good and bad points.

  “Then, after he helped me put them away—”

  “He helped put the groceries away as well as carried them up?” More commendable than I’d credited him for.

  “There weren’t that many. A few bags worth. But, yes. And I thought I should offer to make him dinner for going to the trouble, except I didn’t want him in my apartment that long. He might get the wrong idea.”

  A woman making him dinner, alone, in her apartment—yes, he would very much get the wrong idea, if I knew men. And I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the gender.

  “So I said, ‘Hey, want to grab something at the café?’ It’s this restaurant just down the street, and I go there all the time when I don’t feel like cooking. Which is a lot.”

  “So you had dinner together. Or he tried to skip dinner all together and kissed you after the groceries?” These facts mattered, as far as I was concerned. Mattered very much.

  “We went to dinner. The kiss came later.”

  “Hmm.” I was done giving him points until I heard the whole story. “Go on.”

  “Dinner was fine enough. He sure likes to talk about himself, though. Every time I tried to bring up another subject, we somehow ended up back on his art. And get this—he wanted to know if I could hook him up with a gallery since I have ‘connections.’ His word, not mine.”

  That bastard. No points at all for him. He was negative points now. Minus fifty.

  Also, what was Audrey thinking? “He said that to you and you still let him kiss you?”

  “Well, you know. I hadn’t planned it. Actually, when he walked me to my door, I think he thought I’d let him in for more.”

  “But you didn’t, did you?” I felt like a father, waiting for an answer that might lead to punishment, and I was already revved up to dole it out.

  “I didn’t.”

  I practically sighed from relief. “Good girl,” I said. The timer went off. I put the phone down on the counter and hit speaker so I could grab the mitts and pull the casserole dish out of the oven without missing a single word of Audrey’s story.

  “I specifically turned around to face him before opening my door. I thanked him for helping me with the groceries again, and then I said good night. That’s when he kissed me.”

  I couldn’t help picturing it—Audrey, with her back against her door, trying to be polite, the self-absorbed Percy leaning in to take her mouth. The image wound me up so tight I almost dropped the baking dish.

  “Did you give him any indication you wanted to be kissed?”

  “I didn’t mean to if I did. How do you let a guy know you want to be kissed?”

  “I don’t know.” I put the food on a hot plate and retrieved the phone. “You tilt your chin up. You lick your lips. You bat your lashes.”

  “I sort of just smiled. Is that an invitation?” She was wise beyond her years, yet every now and then, her naivety surprised me.

  It was like she needed me. Needed me to guide her in these matters so that she didn’t get taken advantage of. So that she didn’t end up making a mistake she’d live to regret.

  “That is most certainly not an invitation if you didn’t mean it to be,” I lectured.

  “I didn’t mean it to be, but it’s for the best, really. Now I know I don’t want to go out with him at all.”

  “Because the kiss was terrible.” I wanted to hear her confirm this one more time.

  “Because it was beyond terrible. It was like he thought he’d win a prize if his tongue made it to my tonsils. So he tried several times.”

  “Ew.” How could anyone kiss her like that? Like they were playing tonsil hockey? She was sweet and delectable. She had to be tasted and savored. Her lips were meant to be adored.

  “Total ew. Definitely not The One.”

  I felt good about the phone call, and even better about her conclusion about Percy. Still, I thought she needed a stern reminder about a woman’s rights. “Next time a guy tries to kiss you, if you aren’t into it, you can turn your head away. You should never be expected to give a kiss just because a man wants it.”

  “Got it.”

  “Promise me you’ll respect yourself in the future.” I was asking for a vow she didn’t owe me. Hopefully she thought she owed it enough to herself to give it.

  “Yes, Daddy,” she said, causing my cock to stand at attention. “Don’t let your dinner get cold.”

  She hung up then, but dinner was still lukewarm by the time I got to it. Taking a moment to rub one out while thinking about Audrey calling me Daddy was definitely worth it.

  I received another concerning text from her the next night around the same time.

  AUDREY: Is this outfit 2 revealing for a 1st date?

  An image of Audrey in a sexy, sequined, low-cut jumpsuit accompanied the text.

  Yes. The answer was definitely yes.

  I had to count to five before I responded. There were too many things I wanted to say, and if I rushed to say it all, I feared I’d say something I didn’t mean.

  DYLAN: I suppose it depends on the sort of impression you want to give.

  There. That was diplomatic.

  AUDREY: Never mind. I don’t have a jacket that goes with it, and it’s 2 cold 2 go without

  It was mid-October now. I never thought I’d be so grateful for jumper weather.

  DYLAN: Perhaps you have a polo neck? You could pair it with jeans.

  Too obvious?

  Perhaps. Two minutes passed, and she hadn’t responded. I sent another text.

  DYLAN: Are you giving Percy another shot after all?

  I was suddenly a praying man. Please, oh, please let her answer be no.

  AUDREY: No.

  Thank God.

  Another text followed right away.

  AUDREY: Joshua.

  Who the fuck is Joshua? I sent another text asking just that. Minus the cursing, of course. I didn’t want to seem so invested in the conversation that I required expletives.

  This time, her reply came through FaceTime.

  Shit. I looked like shit. I’d hit the gym after work and hadn’t yet made it to the shower. I’d just peeled off my shirt when she’d texted, and here I was, in gloriously sweaty flesh.

  I carefully angled my phone to only see my head and answered the call.

  Her face came through the screen, clear and beautiful and innocent. “I met him this morning at the Gallery shop. He asked me out for tonight, and I had no plans, so I said why not.”

  Now that we’d involved cameras, there was no way she couldn’t see my distress. “You can’t just go on a date with a stranger! You know nothing about this guy. What if he’s planning to kidnap you and sell you into the sex trade business?”

  “I’m meeting him in a public place, and I don’t intend to go anywhere else with him,” she said reassuringly. “And I’ve told you where I’m going. If I don’t call you back by nine, you can send the police. Oh! Dylan muscles. How did I get so lucky?”

  I’d inadvertently let the phone slip to show my bare torso. “I was just getting in the shower,” I said defensively. But I liked the way she ogled me through the screen too much to correct the camera’s view.

  “Ooo. Can I join you?”

  I blinked. “Pardon me?”

  “Kidding!” Though it hadn’t sounded like she’d been kidding. “I’ll let
you get to it. But first can you tell me if this outfit is better?” She turned the phone so I could see her entire image in a full-length mirror.

  The new outfit was not at all revealing. Her pink jumper was indeed a polo neck. but it hugged her breasts and hips and flared out at her wrists in such a sweet feminine way, a way that made her appear as irresistible as she’d appeared in the low-cut jumpsuit. More so, even. I didn’t want to encourage her to woo a man in what she was wearing. No man in his right mind would refuse.

  But there was no valid reason to object.

  “You’re beautiful. Beautifully perfect,” I said, somberly. “Call me when you’re home. I’ll need to know that you’ve arrived safely.”

  “Thank you. I will. Enjoy your shower.” She blew a kiss and was gone.

  I didn’t enjoy it at all. I didn’t enjoy a single moment of the next two and a half hours, waiting for her to ring and tell me she was all right. Not just that she was all right, but that her date had been meaningless and uneventful and that absolutely no kissing had taken place.

  Then, when she did ring and tell me exactly that—that Joshua was a “snoozefest with Mommy issues”—I was so relieved that I couldn’t let her go without hearing every detail. Then every detail of her day. Then every detail of the past week.

  And thus began the new version of our friendship. Our FaceTime friendship.

  At first, her calls were much of the same, asking advice about her upcoming date, but she’d always ring again afterward to tell me how awful the night had been before going into the rest of the day’s events. Soon she began calling even when she didn’t have a date. And when we’d run out of things to say, we didn’t hang up, we just sat on the phone together, going on about our evening. Often, we’d even watch a show together.

  “I think she used to like the other guy,” she said one Tuesday, early in November. “The one who’s not her husband. That’s why he’s acting so weird about it.”

  It was late, and I’d brought my laptop to bed. Audrey was also in her bed. I had a profile view of her painting her toenails while she watched her show in a separate window on her tablet.

  I looked up from my computer, where I was simultaneously FaceTiming with Audrey and working up a spreadsheet for a new campaign, and stared at the telly. We were watching Easy on Netflix, and most of this particular episode was in subtitles. I hadn’t been paying attention, so I was faking it when I pretended I knew what was going on. “She’s going to cheat on her husband.”

  The show was an anthology type, vignettes from the lives of different characters in Chicago while they fumbled their way through love and other relationships. I’d predicted when we’d started the show that none of them would end up happy.

  She scowled. “You say that every episode. Not a one has cheated so far.”

  “It might not happen in the show, but it would happen if it were real life. Love never ends well. I know you feel differently, but I’d be remiss if I neglected to remind you I’ve learned otherwise.”

  “This show makes you miserable, doesn’t it? All the people surviving their relationships.” She looked directly at me through the screen. “Would you rather we go back to watching Gogglebox?”

  “No. Please, never again.” That show’s concept was by far the most dreadful—regular people were filmed in their own homes watching popular British TV. It was one of Audrey’s favorites, though, and while I protested about watching it, I quite delighted in watching her laugh through every episode.

  I quite delighted in watching Audrey do anything, it seemed. I certainly didn’t participate in these calls for the television viewing.

  I watched now as she stretched out her legs in front of her, her toenails displaying a bright orange hue. Though I’d thought I preferred lighter polish colors on women, I found I very much liked this shade on her, and I said so.

  We settled into a comfortable silence while she watched more of the show, and I filled in more boxes on my spreadsheets.

  “Oh my!” she suddenly exclaimed, out of nowhere.

  I didn’t bother to look up from my work. “What is it?”

  “You were right. She is cheating on her husband.” She let out a hiss of air. “And it’s...wow.”

  That got my attention.

  I looked up at the screen, and sure enough, the man who was not the woman’s husband was seducing her. In her own apartment. While her husband slept in the next room.

  I felt the familiar jumble of rage building in my chest, the righteous anger of a once scorned husband, ready to unleash in a spew of curse words and another rant on Why Love Fails.

  Except, I was too caught up in the action on the screen to go there. Not just my telly screen, but my computer screen—Audrey was mesmerized.

  She blinked several times, her hand stroking her skin at her throat. “This is really, super...wrong, of course, but also it’s…”

  The man had the woman pressed up against the window, going at her from behind. There were plenty of words that could easily be filled in where Audrey left off. Dirty, filthy, nasty, arousing.

  I chose the simplest. “It’s hot,” I said clearly. Really hot. So hot, my boxers were starting to feel uncomfortable.

  “I miss that,” Audrey said in a raw tone. “I mean, I’m really happy with my decision to take this dating thing slowly, don’t get me wrong. I have no intention of going to bed with any guy before I’m in a committed loving relationship. But…”

  The words don’t get me wrong were intriguing enough to draw me from the telly screen. No one says don’t get me wrong without following with a controversial statement.

  “But?” I was bracing now for whatever that controversial statement might be. Coming from Audrey, it could be anything.

  “But I just have to say, I’m really missing the bedroom action. It’s almost been a year since I...well, you know. You were there.”

  I was as dazzled about this confession as I was the first time she’d told me. I hadn’t slept with anyone since then either, not that I intended to confess that to her.

  “I think about it sometimes. I think about you and me and how good we were together and sometimes it seems a shame that we only have memories to replay.”

  “You think about us?” I asked cautiously. As though it didn’t matter to me in the slightest what her answer was. As though I didn’t bash the bishop nightly after we got off the phone.

  “I do. Of course I do. And I know we can’t actually do anything because we have completely different philosophies about how romance works, but... Do you know what a buddy booth is?” She was excellent at switching gears mid-topic. Sometimes it was a challenge to follow, but always a fascinating journey, and she generally made it back around to where she started. Eventually.

  “I can’t say that I do,” I said, praying this was one of those times she circled back to the beginning.

  “I’ve never been to one in person, but when I was still in Colorado getting my bachelor’s, one of my friends told me about these booths they used to have at the porn shops on Colfax. You’d go in this booth, so small it just had a bench and a TV screen. You’d put your money in and then you could pick a porn movie to watch while you, you know. Did your thing.”

  I turned off the TELLY. Nothing in the show was as good as this conversation, and I didn’t want to miss a single word.

  “But there was also a window on the side of the booth, with a curtain. If you opened it, and if the person next to you opened their curtain, you could watch each other. I mean, maybe that’s a little gross, depending on who the person is next to you, but if he was normal or if you knew him, it sounded like it could be kind of hot.”

  “I don’t think there are any such booths in London.” I didn’t know where she was going with this, but if she intended for me to point her in such a direction, I was not about to comply.

  “No, I don’t want to go to one. They probably aren’t even a thing now that the internet is the beautiful place that it is. But I thought maybe. Y
ou know. Maybe we could make our own buddy booth. Right here. Over FaceTime.”

  “Excuse me...what was that?”

  “Porn. You and me. We could both turn on a show and—how do you Brits say it? Have a bit of a wank? Our computer screens can be the buddy window. You can watch me. I can watch you. What do you say?”

  She was trying to kill me. The only reason we hadn’t ended up in bed together already, as far as I was concerned, was because she’d taken it off the table.

  And now she was dangling an opportunity to crack one off while watching her do the same?

  I was stone hard at the thought.

  She had to be pulling my leg, winding me up. Something. She couldn’t be serious. So I didn’t give an answer.

  “Dylan? Dylan. We don’t have to if you think it’s a bad idea.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Most definitely didn’t. “I was simply thinking through the possible repercussions.”

  “I really don’t think there are any. We’ve already had sex. We’re still both attracted to each other—I think—”

  “We are.”

  “—and doing it this way will keep things from getting confused. Because it’s obviously just a way to get off, and not about anything else. It’s going to be fun. You’ll see.” The view of her changed as she picked up her tablet and set it on her lap. “I’m pulling up a video I have saved. One of my favorites. You should do the same.”

  The only thing I did on my computer was enable the image of her to fill the whole screen.

  “Okay. I’m playing mine now. Are you ready?”

  I wasn’t even sure that I’d agreed to this game, but fuck if I wasn’t going to play it out. There was no risk that I could see. This wasn’t like kissing her—if I kissed her again, I was certain I’d never be able to stop.

  Erotic moaning and sounds of kissing played in the background as her video began to play. She put the tablet back on the bed next to her, and the view of her changed again. In profile, I watched as she slid her hand under the waistband of her pajama shorts.