by Nikky Kaye
“I’m going to get something to clean us up,” he informed me. “Do. Not. Leave. You do not want me coming after you.”
I grunted into the pillow that I’d fallen headfirst into, hoping he took it as assent. That’s how I meant it, anyhow. I wouldn’t run away again. Though I wondered what would happen if and when he caught me, right now I suspected I was paralyzed below the waist.
I must have drifted off, because the warm, wet cloth between my thighs surprised me. He held it to me, tending to all my sore spots. They would likely continue to be sore for a while, but I didn’t mind.
I rolled onto my back and looked up at him as he sat naked on the bed beside me. All we wore were soft smiles. When he slowly leaned over to kiss me, it was me who twined my arms around him and pulled him down.
This time we lay together in quiet peace, our legs staggered like a log house and our breathing synchronized. My nose nuzzled against his chest in the moments when I wasn’t tilting my head back to press my lips against his throat. Or when he inched back and bent his head to catch my mouth with his.
“Is this the third first time? Or the fourth?” I asked.
“You said once was enough.” He draped his arm over my bare shoulder as it shrugged.
“I was wrong…about a lot of things.”
“Do tell.”
“Well, I don't think I hate sex anymore.”
His chest shook with barely suppressed laughter—again. “I converted you. Go me.” I slapped him playfully. “Seriously, Cass,” he sighed. “You make a lot of fucked up assumptions. For someone so smart, you can be pretty fucking stupid.”
“Is this your idea of pillow talk?”
“Just hear me out.” He ran his hand up and down my arm in a sweeping, soothing motion. “You thought that since you’d never come, you hated sex and were frigid. Right? Is that an accurate assessment?”
I nodded against his sternum. He made it sound so dumb, when it seemed so logical to me a week ago.
“You also assumed that enjoying sex made you a slut or a whore, which is why you wanted to think yourself a self-righteous born-again virgin.”
“I don’t think name calling is necessary.” There was definitely a furrow in my forehead as I rolled back out of his arms. “Are you going to remind me that the word ‘assume’ makes an ‘ass’ out of you and me?”
He raised himself up on his elbow but didn’t remove his hand from my side. “Hold on a second and listen.”
I waited.
“You also believed—at least I think maybe you did—that getting off on anything other than vanilla missionary sex made you a perverted freak.”
“I guess,” I replied grudgingly.
“Leaving your kinks aside, do you think I’m a perverted freak for enjoying that just now?”
“I already thought you were.”
“Ha ha,” he said dryly. “No, seriously.”
“Perverted, yes. Freak, no.” Then it hit me. “And I guess I’m not one either, then.” Huh. Maybe I was growing up.
“Don’t let shame and guilt run your life, Cass.” He squeezed my upper arm. “It’s a shitty way to live.”
He was right. Damn it.
“Do you? Feel shame and guilt?” I asked, curious at the answer.
“No. Wait.” He paused. “Okay, maybe I’m shameless at times. But shit, I feel guilty all the time. This week I’ve felt pretty guilty for coming on so hard and pushing you,” he admitted. “I really thought I’d pushed you too far, pushed you away. But do as I say, not as I do, right?”
I had a lot to learn about myself, and about people in general. Maybe I would get there someday, and leave shame and guilt behind. Insecurity, on the other hand, might be a life companion.
“Cass?”
“Mmmm?” The intensity of the afternoon was ebbing, leaving smooth spirits in its wake. I was starting to drift off, bobbing in the sea of afterglow and emotional resolution.
“Can I take you out?”
“Out of what?”
He pulled me close again and tucked my head under his chin. I felt his Adam’s apple shift as he swallowed. “On a date.”
“Okay,” I murmured around a graceless yawn. “Once should be enough.”
“Fuck that!” He sounded horrified.
“I’m just kidding.” My eyes drifted shut. “But you should know that I don’t put out on the first date.”
Will snorted. “We’ll see,” he mused. “I’m pretty irresistible.”
I snorted, knowing that if I agreed, he would be impossible to live with. “I’ll try my best not to mount you in the quad.”
“Too late for that.” He exhaled softly. “I give it two dates, tops, before we’re naked again. Less, if I can convince you to go on a hot tub date…” His voice trailed off, as though he was imagining it already.
“Cocky asshole.”
“Do you really want me to respond to that?” He pulled me closer to feel his cockiness stir.
“I am not that easy, Will.”
He buried his face in my hair. “Cassie, you are anything but easy.”
I fell asleep with a smile on my face, holding his hand.
THE BEGINNING
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I had never seen so many dicks in my life; and I’m including the time I accompanied my ex to his regional Bar Association conference. My mouth fell open a little and I felt hot all over.
Dicks everywhere. There were blue ones, pink, black, red, purple, sparkly—sparkly?—and teal. It was a veritable rainbow of cocks. Not one of them looked real, but I guess that was the point. If you had a real one to play with, you wouldn’t be shopping online for the silicone version.
Instinctively, I looked over my shoulder, but I knew that nobody was watching me. Okay, maybe the cat, but she was pretty involved in licking her own pussy right then. I tilted my head as I clicked on a picture. How the hell was that one supposed to work? I only had two holes down there, didn’t I?
The truth was, the panorama of toys displayed on my computer was the closest I’d been to sex in two years…I think. At the time I signed off on my divorce from The Dick, which was about six months ago, I had lost interest in keeping track of my dry spell.
“Dry spell” was a pretty apt term, since the last few times we’d attempted marital relations, we had to lube me up like a gay porno. Even after I was practically making squelching noises when I opened my legs, it was like my body was still rejecting The Dick. He slipped and slid around searching for a way in, his hard-on meeting so much resistance that he was like a bendy straw. It was not pretty. In retrospect, I would say that was the beginning of the end, but it was more like the middle of it.
The beginning of the end was probably the girlfriend. Now The Dick was living in a downtown condo with her and I still had a half-used bottle of lubricant shoved to the back of the drawer in my bedside table. Did lube expire? I wondered.
He got the girlfriend and his freedom. I got the house and a healthy alimony check. I would never repeat this out loud, but money is a better lubricant than anything else on the market. Having the luxury to sit on my ass and do whatever I wanted to do was a type of personal wealth everyone should aspire to.
The only problem was that I had zero clue of what I wanted to do. And the reason I was browsing vibrators online was that I committed myself to trying new thin
gs. At least that’s what I promised my therapist.
“Do one thing every day that scares you,” she said.
“Everything scares me,” I replied. “And you stole that from Eleanor Roosevelt.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Then start small and identify what you’re really afraid of.”
Starting small meant not feeling guilty for eating popcorn for dinner. Then I moved on to stop reflexively buying The Dick’s favorite brands of toilet paper and laundry soap. Over time, my baby steps turned into bigger strides.
Last month I moved the furniture around in the living room. Now I had a little reading area by the window instead of every seat in the room paying homage to the TV. That was a big move for me, literally—my hamstrings ached for days. But I could sit in a cushy chair and watch the world go by now, even if it was mostly going places without me.
I didn’t have a list of fears to tick off. They were more like impromptu anxiety attacks. Like trying to go for a run and thinking “Oh my god, everyone is staring at me. I think that car just slowed down to rubberneck my fat ass.” It was really hard to hide yourself on a sidewalk. But I kept going, for at least one more block before cutting through somebody’s yard. My therapist called it progress.
Progress continued in the form of repainting a few rooms in girly colors instead of taupe, then changing the pulls on my kitchen cabinets. Moving forward meant measuring twice and cutting once—albeit on the third try. But in my effort to rebuild my life, I had kind of started rebuilding my house instead.
I began an affair (not that kind, ew) with my ex-husband’s discarded power tools—the ones he bought to be able to lend out to neighbors to prove he was handy, but never actually used. He hadn’t taken them to his new love nest. I’d had a flirtation with the hammer and screwdriver before—who hasn’t? But I also tried the staple gun and the drill, then made my way up to the belt sander, the multi-head finishing tool, and the circular saw.
The saw was kind of fun. It made so much noise that I wished The Dick was still around so I had a real excuse not to hear anything he said. It didn’t matter that I had nothing that needed sawing. I went to the hardware store and bought a couple of 2x4s with the intention of making something—what, I had no idea. The lopsided bench that ended up in the corner of my yard filled me with confidence, even if I couldn’t sit on it without feeling as though I was going to slide off and splinter my ass in the process.
I said confidence, not competence.
Yes, I was making progress. But the one thing that I was still really scared of doing was…myself. I had never been big into masturbating. My idea of self-pleasure was binge-watching Netflix. Let’s be honest, I had more recent experience with drilling than with jilling.
So now I was sitting on an oversized black leather couch that I did not pick out, rainbow dicks lighting up my screen, and my laptop heating up my thighs. Frankly, it was the hottest my groin had been in a long time.
As my thighs stuck to the leather, I made a mental note to look for a new couch—maybe something shabby chic with denim stripes and mismatched pillows. The Dick would have hated that. That made me smile.
Nope. I shut the laptop and tossed it to the side. No dicks for me. Somehow it seemed less frightening to rip out my powder room. So that was what I decided to do. With renewed purpose and a critical eye, I stood up and approached my new victim.
Damn. Beige. It was so…beige. It was like a can of chicken gravy had been detonated in there. How had I never noticed how bland it was before? Maybe like my prior life, it just got obscured in the background and was just there.
I envisioned a chair rail with funky wallpaper above it and wainscoting below. Mentally, I replaced the transitional vanity with an antique-looking pedestal sink. And that bare bulb light had to go. I wanted something with crystals—no! Colored crystals. My stomach was quivering with excitement over all these ideas. Pinterest, here I come!
* * *
Three weeks later, I had a new fear to tell my therapist about. I was afraid this half-bathroom was a project I couldn’t finish.
“You have another bathroom, right?” she asked.
I snorted. “Of course.”
“So… what would happen if you just shut the door on it?”
I knew she was pulling some psychoanalytical trick on me, but I took a moment to think about it. “I guess it would be another thing that I quit. Like school, like my job, like my marriage. Another failure.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Nooo.” Yes.
“So what’s stopping you from seeing this vision through?”
My eyebrow lifted. “Fear of electrocution, for one.” Fear that my design choices sucked, fear that I was wasting my time and money, and fear that I wouldn’t find the right hand towels to complement the wallpaper…
She hummed and watched me long enough that I was starting to squirm. “Fine,” I sighed. “I need help. Is that what I’m supposed to say?”
The smirking bitch wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it over. “I know a guy.”
So now I waited for “a guy”. I was guessing he was a plumber or some kind of experienced manual laborer. I’d forgotten to ask. In a totally passive-aggressive move, I had texted the number she gave me instead of calling it and explained my situation as succinctly as a text would allow. About twenty minutes later, I got a reply.
-Sat 10am work for you?
-Y. Thx!
I sent him my address and decided to shut the door on the whole mess until he got there. It would be like a reverse reveal, or a Pinterest fail. For the first time, I was glad I had forgotten to take a “before” picture, so he couldn’t really see how badly I had screwed it up. Frankly I was more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing and lucky that I hadn’t flooded the main level of my house.
It didn’t help that even by 9am that day, I knew it was going to be a scorcher. The air felt heavy and turgid, and it would probably be oppressive by the afternoon.
As I waited for him in my newly appointed “reading/people watching bay”, I kept twisting my hair up and piling it on top of my head, leaning back against the chair to keep it off my neck. I could feel dampness forming along the bottom of the flimsy shelf bra inside my black camisole, and my thighs were sticking together a little underneath my denim skirt. Fuck, it was hot.
Then I saw a truck pull up, and “a guy” got out.
At first I couldn’t see his face since the visor of his cap was obscuring it as he moved around the front of the truck. I saw a cord in his neck twist and pop out a little as he slammed the door shut, and there was a tan under the weekend stubble on his sharp jaw. He trailed a lean, muscular arm over the hood of his pick-up as he walked, his fingers skipping over the hot metal.
That tan seemed even more pronounced against the white of the t-shirt that clung to his chest. His shirt was half-hanging out of a pair of worn jeans that hung low on his hips, like he got dressed in a hurry, or didn’t bother tucking it back in after someone had started trying to take it off him. His feet were in what I would call “ass kickers” work boots that I would bet twenty bucks were steel-toed, his steps heavy on the sidewalk.
He hadn’t yet noticed that I was sitting beside the front window like a department store display, or that I was watching him. Wait, what? Watching him? The heat must have gotten to me already. I didn’t watch men. Especially hot men. I barely watched Game of Thrones.
But then he looked up and saw me, and I suddenly I wondered if I was going into early menopause as my whole body flushed. With one hand, he dragged his cap off his dirty blond head and raised his other hand in a small wave. I leaned forward in my chair, my hair falling down and around my shoulders, and then I froze.
This “guy” was fucking hot. Yeah, I said it. I saw it. Just because I wasn’t interested in buying a Skittles-flavored dildo didn’t mean I was blind. By pretty much anyone’s definition, he was hot. Chris Hemsworth hot. Chris Evans hot. Chris Pine hot.
&nbs
p; He paused on the sidewalk, our gazes meeting through the big window. His smile faded a little, and then I realized I was still stuck like a deer in headlights. I must have looked like a red-faced lunatic.
About a year later, I forced myself to slide off the chair and waggled my fingers back at him. This time his lips parted to show his teeth when he smiled, and he disappeared toward the front steps.
OMFG. If I thought I was embarrassed over the powder room before, now I wanted to stick my head in the toilet and flush it. That was, if I still had a toilet in there. The truth was that there were only the remnants of a wax ring and a wet towel sitting there.
He didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, just rapped his knuckles a few times. He knew I was there. He knew that I knew he was there. He just didn’t know that I was having a minor anxiety attack on the other side of the door. I had to open it. I could open it. I was going to open it. Agh.
I took a deep breath and swung open the door, hoping to look casual, friendly, and cool. Well, one out of three would have to do.
“Hi.” He stretched out his hand with that smile still on his face. His bottom teeth were a little crooked. Thank god. Otherwise it would have been like looking at the sun. His imperfect beauty was still pretty damn distracting, though.
“Um, hi.” Automatically I stuck my hand out, too. His handshake was hot and dry and his fingertips a little rough as they brushed my knuckles. I think I held on too long.
“I’m Chris.”
Of course he was.
I felt a wildly inappropriate giggle begin to well up in my chest, so I dropped his hand and stepped back, motioning for him to come inside. There was an awkward moment where he tried to take off his boots and I stuttered something like “Really, don’t worry about it, the floor is already dirty.”
My entry suddenly felt very, very small, and I found myself backing away from him until I was against the wall.
He dropped his cap on the little hall table where I threw my mail and keys and shoved his own car keys deep into his pocket. Lucky keys. My thighs were definitely getting hotter now. I felt a trickle of sweat drip from under my left breast down to my navel, and hoped that there wasn’t a wet line forming on my cami under my boobs.