by JA Huss
Anyway, eating the chocolate off is the first thing you do. Just like kissing. So I’m ready for the kissing.
But… four. Four is new. Because four is all about going all the way. Like I’m talking How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too video. We’ve had several sexy encounters but we’ve never actually done it.
Oh, we’re gonna do it tonight. For sure.
So, that’s my plan. Dress up sexy, but only in the back. Go to the art gallery thingy and have a nice, long quiet chat about how I am not the Sexpert while we look at paintings and eat fancy finger-foods off silver trays, and then go back to his place and do it.
Nothing will go wrong.
I’ve got this in the bag.
OK, SNAFU in the dress department.
I didn’t properly think this through because I realized too late that backless dresses require special bras. Like those sticky things you paste on your skin to hold your girls up in proper position.
Which I do not have. So I have no bra on.
I’m checking this out in the bathroom mirror, trying to decide if it makes me more or less sexy.
I decide more. Because my girls are perky with a capital P. And he’s only gonna be looking at the back of the dress anyway.
Plus, it’s the best dress I have. And I spent forty-one dollars getting it cleaned, not to mention putting up with Svetlana’s bad attitude. I’m not changing it.
Besides, the whole point is to take off my clothes, right? So braless means one less pesky article of underwear to deal with.
At eight o’clock, right on time, my doorbell chimes. I’m walking towards it, pretty proud of the fact that I have this whole night planned to perfection, when I realize he’s never seen my apartment.
I look around and take it all in from a new perspective.
It came furnished, so everything was here when I moved in. But of course, I put my little touches on it.
Touches that happen to all be in shades of pink and white, I realize.
Andrew’s apartment is all shades of muted blue and yellow, but mine came in like three shades of gray. Which is so blah and made it look like a prison. So I had to pop it up and pink and white go perfect with drab gray. I have fuzzy pink throw pillows—Zoey and I love those—and a pink and white comforter on the bed, and a pink rug on the bathroom and kitchenette floor. The bed is super whimsical too. Because I have white mosquito netting hanging over it. It’s like a princess bed.
And then my gaze falls on the one picture I have hanging on the wall over the bed. I’m a terrible picture hanger so this one was all I had the energy for.
It’s a giant cupcake. A pink cupcake with white frosting and pink sprinkles that I bought in the mall with my babysitting money when I was sixteen.
Holy shit. I almost fucked the whole night up before it even started! That picture above that bed in this apartment is a big flashing sign that says Sexpert.
The doorbell chimes again.
“One second!” I call, then rush over to the picture, take it off the wall, and… where the fuck can I hide this thing? It’s huge!
I could shove it in the bathroom, but what if he wants to use the bathroom?
“Eden?” Andrew calls from the other side of the door. He chimes the doorbell again. “What are you doing?”
I hang the picture back up and decide he just can’t come in. That’s all there is to it.
I grab my purse and swipe the hair out of my eyes (I always forget how long my hair is because it’s usually up in a ponytail, but tonight with it down and me not wearing my glasses, I remember. Maybe I should put it in a bun, or... Oh, hell, no time) as I walk over to the door and pull it open, just enough to slip my body through and start to close it behind me.
I have to squish past him because he starts forward, thinking he’s going inside, just as I’m scooting out before he can see my place, so we’re stuck there. Kinda wedged in the partially opened door, my magnificent breasts pushed up against his rock-hard chest.
“Uh… what are you doing?” He laughs.
“I’m ready,” I say. “We can go now.”
“You’re not gonna invite me in?”
“Nope. I think we’re late for the artsy thing so we’d better get a move on.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s no set time to be there. Here,” he says, holding up a bottle of what looks like champagne. “It’s non-alcoholic, semi-effervescent, sparkling cider, made from the finest Granny Smith apples. It’s pretty terrible. Let’s have a drink!” He starts to push his way into my place.
“Oh, wow. That’s super thoughtful to bring me a gift.” I hold him back, grab the bottle, turn my back, slip it through the door, set it on the floor, and close the door behind me, making sure it clicks. When I turn to look at him he’s… “What?” I ask.
“Do you have another guy in there?”
“What? No! Of course not.”
“Then why are you hiding your place?”
I take a deep breath. OK. I’m being weird. I’m so not good at this covert shit. “It’s just… I’m not terribly sophisticated, OK? And my apartment looks like a sixteen-year-old girl lives here.”
He chews on his lip like he thinks this is super sexy or something. “Is it fucked up that I think that’s super sexy?”
I knew it!
“Yes. Yes, it is. Just... You’ll see it later. K? Promise.” Which is an empty promise, because we will be going back to his place later. Then tomorrow I will get rid of all the pink and replace it with navy blue. Yup. Navy blue.
And then, because he’s not buying this at all, and this seems to be my modus operandi when I need a distraction, I kiss him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - ANDREW
I find this girl very confusing.
But I also don’t care because when I kiss her I feel good. And it’s probably that feeling that’s causing me to do certain things I wouldn’t otherwise do.
Like avoid Pierce’s calls and texts for the last couple of days. Because the only thing that continues to be on his mind is this goddamn Sexpert thing. He’s more and more convinced by the day that it’s Myrtle. And he wants me to confirm it.
The avoidance of Pierce dominoes straight into my avoidance of Dev, who is telling me that the app is ready. But I keep blowing him off and telling him I have other important stuff to take care of. And that dominoes into my avoidance of Carrie at Justice, who keeps reaching out to ask if we’re ready with the app. Because some splinter cell of... Yeah. I don’t even really want to know if I’m being honest.
Jesus. Who would’ve thought that a crush on a girl I met on the freeway would result in my tacit abetment of criminal and possibly terrorist activity?
Meanwhile, my dick isn’t asking any such questions. It’s just noticing that her mouth tastes like salt water taffy.
“What kind of lipstick are you wearing?” I mutter out.
“It’s called Salt Water Taffy. Is it OK?”
“It’s great,” I say as we keep kissing.
My hands now find themselves sliding down her hips, tracing the fabric of the dress she’s wearing and causing the fabric of the blue, gabardine pants I’m wearing to feel tight around the crotch. To make sure I’m not getting myself worked up too far too fast, I pull my hands up to her back, but that’s not helping because now my hands are touching her actual back. As opposed to the back of her dress. Because the dress has no back. Oh, my God.
“Um,” I say on a swallow, “I like your dress.”
“Thanks,” she says and smiles. “I wasn’t sure...”
“Wasn’t sure what?”
“Nothing. Just. I wasn’t sure it was the right...fit.”
I step back and twirl her around by the fingers. She obliges by allowing my hand to turn her in a pirouette. I stop her when her rear side lands facing my front side.
“Oh. Well. No, it’s the right fit. Can I give you a compliment?”
“Please don’t. Girls hate compliments on how they look.”
Kill. Ing. Me.
“I just...” I say. “Well, to quote the great poet and, I think, knight, Sir Mix-A-Lot, ‘Baby got back.’”
She pulls her shoulder to her chin and looks back at me. “Really?”
I nod as I turn her back around to face me head on.
“And front,” I say.
She giggles and looks down at my crotch. Pulling me toward her by the lapels of my jacket, she says, “Your front’s not so bad either.”
“Thanks.” I smile, my mouth close to hers. “I work out when I can.”
And just as her mouth and mine are about to connect again, I hear, “Oh...”
Turning my head, I see our pal Cheryl.
“Oh, hi, Cheryl.”
“Andrew. Eden. Um, I was just heading to... How are you both enjoying the building?”
“It’s got its perks,” I say, grinning.
“Indeed,” she says. “Very good. I’ll let you...” And she scurries off past us.
Watching her go, I say, “Oh, shit.”
“What?” asks Eden.
“I meant to ask her if she still has my pants.”
And as Eden’s murderously sexy giggle lands in my ear, we take our leave.
“OK, so... Ansel Adams it is not.”
Like, it’s really not. I just figured, at the least, it’d be some boring, traditional gallery with a bunch of bourgeois assholes oohing and ahhing over stuff that’s not really all that great. And then I’d be the bourgeois asshole explaining how it’s not, in fact, all that great.
But this is most decidedly not that.
First of all, it’s dark. Not pitch black but certainly dusky. In the middle of the room is a giant spool of barbed wire. And half-dancing, half-slithering around it are a half-dozen naked people. They’re climbing all over each other, occasionally bumping into the barbs and retreating. Some of them are bleeding.
A low, thrumming drone hums throughout the space, plodding and tribal in its groaning bass. I can feel the vibrations in my chest.
The pieces hanging on the walls are all sculptures and for the most part are fairly macabre representations of people in perverse sexual positions. Compelling and occasionally exquisite three-dimensional grotesqueries. Some bordering on genius.
“Oh, no,” Eden mumbles over the hum.
“Oh, no, what?”
“This... I’m so sorry. This is not at all what I thought it was going to be.”
I bend my head to her and lift her chin to make sure she’s looking at me. “Are you kidding? This. Is. Amazing.”
“What? Seriously? It is?”
“Yeah. Honestly, if anything, it makes me a little jealous.”
“Why?”
“This”—I wave all around me—“is what I wanted to do. It’s kind of what I thought I would be doing. It’s like... It’s like... Marina Abramović meets Karen Finley with a touch of Andres Serrano thrown in.”
“Totally.” She looks around. “Who are they, then?”
I laugh. “Later. Come here.” I pull her over into a corner where a piece has caught my attention. “Look at this.”
She does. I can see that she’s having a hard time processing what she’s looking at. She stares hard and then goes to touch it. I pull her hand back.
“Probably shouldn’t touch the art. Unless you plan to buy it.”
“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”
“No apology necessary. It’s just one of those things. I’ve always thought it’s stupid. To my mind, the greatest compliment you can give an artist is to be so drawn to their work that you want to get closer to it. That’s what it should do. It should draw you in. Instinctually.”
“Yeah,” she says, staring at it.
I watch her looking at it and it fills me up. “What do you think?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think of it?”
“I mean, I think it’s ... incredible.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah, why do you think it’s incredible?”
“Oh, I dunno. I’m not an art critic—”
“No,” I say, putting my fingers around her lips to stop her talking. It makes her look like a sexy duck. “No, that’s bullshit. Art critics are idiots anyway. I’m not asking you to critique it. Just tell me how it makes you feel.”
I let her mouth go and she steps back to look at it. I step back with her.
“I dunno,” she says. “It’s just... Well, at first glance, it just looked like kind of a piece of stone. Just, y’know, rock.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But then I noticed that there”—she points—“there it looks like people. Like two people climbing their way out of something. Like out of the rock, maybe.”
“Like maybe they’ve been trapped and they’re struggling to get free.”
“Yeah. That’s... Yeah. And then it looks like ... are they having sex, I think?”
“Sure seems that way.”
“Yeah. But it’s so twisted together that you can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins. Like they’re intertwined, and they’re also intertwined with the rock, and like, just like all of it has become one. Or something.”
I don’t say anything. Just stare at her with a dopey grin on my face.
“What?” she asks, self-conscious. “Is that wrong? Is it stupid?”
“It’s your impression. So it’s not wrong. And since it’s your impression, I’m also inclined to say it’s not stupid.” I wink.
She grins. “What do you see?”
Nodding, I say, “Pretty much what you do.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
There’s a long beat where we just stare at each other and finally she says, “That’s cool.”
The dark. The thrumming. The gyrating, naked people. The art on the walls.
She almost leaps into me and kisses me again, her hand straining for my crotch.
“You wanna get out of here?” she asks.
I laugh. “We just got here.”
“I know, but...”
“I mean, yeah. We can get out of here. I know it’s here. I can always come back. Wanna go to your place? There’s some shitty sparkling cider for us to drink.”
“Oh.” And suddenly she doesn’t seem so eager.
“What? What is it? Seriously. What’s the deal? Do you have a dead body in your apartment?”
“No. No. Nothing like that, it’s just—”
“Mon ami! Where the fuck have you been?”
I know that voice.
Turning, I see Pierce approaching with a wisp of a girl in tunic. Not a tunic dress or a tunic-like thing. A tunic. Hair so black it blends into the background of the gallery. Skin so pale she almost looks like a floating face.
She seems fun.
“Hey, dude,” I say as he steps to us. “Sorry, I’ve been... My bad for being MIA.” He gives me a hug. I hug him back. Pulling away, I offer my hand to tunic lady. “Hi. Andrew Hawthorne.” She just stares at my hand.
“Oh, sorry,” Pierce says. “Andrew, Serilda. Serilda, Andrew. This is Serilda’s place.”
“Oh, well, congratulations. This is. Uh. It’s fucking incredible, actually.”
“Thank you,” she utters sleepily in an approximately Teutonic accent.
“Andrew used to be an artist,” says Pierce.
“Oh?” Serilda... not exactly asks. Because to say ‘asks’ means that someone might give a shit about the answer.
“Yeah. Yeah. I was.”
“And what do you do now? Used-to-be-artist?”
Most people might take issue with being scoffed at so brazenly, but I’ve been around enough artists in my life to have become inured to it. I know exactly who this chick is. So I offer the only answer that makes sense and will change the dynamic appropriately.
“I’m a billionaire.”
The hum continues in the background.
Serilda stands about an inch taller now. “Oh?” I nod. She looks at Pierce. He nods. Se
rilda follows with, “How?”
“Eh, you know, little of this, little of that. Hey, who’s the artist?”
She re-gathers her comportment of priggishness and says, “His name is unpronounceable in human language, but he is very gifted.”
“Yeah?” I say, unable to stop my smile from spreading. “Is he here?”
“He is here, and he is not here. He is everywhere, and he is nowhere.”
I have to admit, of all the things I miss about art, conversations like these are not one of them.
“Cool. Well if you talk to Insert Name Here when you’re next on Pluto, tell him I’m a fan.”
I smile. Pierce kind of laughs. Eden kind of laughs. Serilda does not. Then Pierce extends his hand to Eden and says, “I’m sorry. Pierce Chevalier. Enchanté.”
I close my eyes and sigh. “Pierce, this is Eden. She works for you. I helped her up a rock wall the other day. We all had dinner the night I got into town. She runs your social media department. You sit a floor above her.”
Pierce nods and squints at Eden as if he’s trying to place her. Then he goes ahead and kisses her hand.
“Well, I’ll surely not forget again. My apologies.” Then, “I thought Gretchen ran the social media stuff.”
“Oh,” says Eden. “She does, technically. I just do most of the actual formatting and stuff like that.”
“Are you the one handling the offsetting of the Sexpert travesty?”
Eden looks at me nervously out of the side of her eye. “Um, yes.”
“Ah, yes. Well, then I’ll certainly not forget again. I do apologize. The whole thing has had me very distracted.”
“Yes,” I say. “Also, he’s kind of a dick.”
“Are we close, And?” Pierce says, staying on his favorite topic.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah. We’re close. Any day now we should be able to pinpoint...” Now it’s my turn to glance at Eden who looks at the floor. I step in so only Pierce can hear me. “You still convinced it’s Myrtle?”
He nods. “She’s been acting very weird.”
“Yeah? Weird how?”