Boss Me

by Claire Adams

  He looked at me, giving me an interesting expression.

  “Actually,” he said, “that is kind of how it happened. I went to bed one night after a really great day with her. I thought more and more about it, and about how much fun I had with her, and… one thought led to another. I slept on it, and when I woke up, I realized that she wasn’t just an awesome girl. I knew she was more than that.”

  I bit my lip. I wondered if that’s how I had been feeling about Hannah…

  “Did something happen with you and the roommate?” he asked, reading my mind.

  “…I don’t… We’ve been sleeping together.”

  He sat up straighter in his chair.

  “And, it’s been… great… more than great. She’s the best pussy I’ve ever had.”

  “Come on, Sawyer, do have you to be so damn vulgar?” Dave asked.

  “I’m just saying! She may be the best sex I’ve ever had. I only want to have her again and again… I’ve been horny a lot, but this doesn’t feel like that. It’s maddening. I’m worried I may have become obsessed with her delicious wet walls.”

  “Uh, okay—” said Dave. “First, let me be the first to say, congratulations on… ‘hammering those walls.’ Way to go, tiger?”

  “It wasn’t easy, but the reward was worth it,” I joked.

  “But,” he continued. “I don’t think you’d be asking me what you are unless you had a reason to be asking. You asked me how I knew I was in love. You have to explain to me why you want to know anything about love.”

  “…Because I’ve never been in love, Dave. I don’t know what it’s like. I know nothing about it. You seem to have a lot of answers, so I turned to you. No offense, buddy, but it seems like maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do.”

  “Now, hold on,” said Dave, readjusting himself in his seat. He put his sandwich down. “I wasn’t sure how serious you were being. You always fuck with me about being married. You’re aware that I might be reluctant to engage you on that subject.”

  “I am aware,” I laughed.

  “Look,” said Dave. “I know this is going to sound cliché and corny, but there’s a reason it’s a stereotypical statement: when you’re in love, you know it. How you react to it is entirely up to you. Some go their whole lives pretending that they aren’t in love. But it’s something you just know.”

  Well… how DO you feel about her? I wondered to myself.

  “You think you really like her, huh?” Dave asked me.

  “I think I might be falling for her,” I blurted out.

  Dave no longer held back his vomit-inducing smile. He beamed and laughed at me, and I hated every second of it. I didn’t even know what I was saying.

  “Wh- when I say ‘falling for her,’ I don’t mean it… like—”

  “Sawyer’s in love!” teased Dave. “Wow, I am so glad you weren’t responsible with her! You managed to turn casual sex into a passionate romance!”

  “No, I did NOT,” I grunted. I put my head down on the table.

  “Yes, you did!” he said. “Oh, my… of course! You wanted this to happen!”

  Dave was too joyous for my liking. At that moment, I wanted to hit him more than I ever wanted to hit Jared.

  “It makes sense!” he continued. “That’s why you stuck around for so long. You don’t stick around when a girl tells you she’s not going to sleep with you!”

  “She wanted to sleep with me—”

  “But, you were willing to wait for an entire month just to screw this one girl?”

  Maybe it was his tone, or maybe it was the order of the words he used, but at that moment, I was less willing to ‘pretend’ like I hadn’t been thinking about it.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about her,” I said. “I do care about her… I do. Yeah. I care about her a lot.”

  Dave was nodding, encouraging me more.

  “I kept trying to sleep with her because there was nothing else for me to do,” I went on. “I stayed with her because she was letting me stay with her.”

  “But, you wanted to stay with her,” said Dave. “You could leave anytime you want, but you choose to stay with her. And don’t give me any of that ‘convenience’ crap. You’ve got something for this one, Sawyer. My advice to you? Dump all the girls you have on the back burner, go somewhere special with her, and have a real talk about your feelings. You know chicks dig that shit.”

  I laughed, shoving the rest of my sandwich down my gullet.

  “Maybe you’re falling for this girl, maybe you aren’t,” said Dave, standing up from the table. “But don’t screw this up. You owe it to yourself to at least consider the possibility of giving your heart to someone. You might find you like it more than what you used to like.”

  Hannah has always been different… And you’ve LOVED that about her…

  “Thanks for the advice, Dave,” I said. “I’ll see you back out there.”

  Dave exited the break room, leaving me by myself.

  I pulled out my phone, noticing that I had a text message:

  I had a great time last night…

  The phone number that the text belonged to was a local number that I hadn’t saved as a contact in my phone. That same number had texted me the day before as well, simply saying: “Hey.”

  Since I was one of those people who didn’t respond to one-word text messages, I just ignored it and didn’t give it much thought. But, seeing this new text made me start to question who the number belonged to.

  “I was with Hannah last night,” I mumbled to myself. I texted the unknown number back:

  “I think you have the wrong number.”

  I only had to wait thirty seconds for a response.

  “Nooo, I want more Sawyer baby,” the text read.

  Puzzled, I replied with, “Who is this?”

  “U don’t remember me?? :(”, the unknown number’s text read.

  I felt like I should have responded again, but I didn’t know what to say. I considered calling the number to try and hear a person’s voice, but I didn’t. Instead, I went back to work and forgot about the strange text conversation. Until later…

  I drove home in the Camaro, listening to a jazz track that Hannah had showed me over the weekend. I received another text from the unknown local number:

  “We met at Bauman’s, remember???”

  I had gone to Bauman’s to look for girls before… But, I was hurting my brain trying to figure out who this mystery person was. There was no way I was with this girl the previous night. I hadn’t been with anyone but Hannah for a long time now.

  I gave in to curiosity and called the number.

  It rang for nearly an entire minute before it simply cut off and hung up on me. I tried calling again and got the same routine.

  I thought that this person, whoever they were, would have the common courtesy to answer if they really wanted to get in touch with me. I was speculating about the true nature of this texter. I didn’t want to be paranoid, but something felt off.

  “Can’t talk right now, baby. At work… wanna meet up later?”

  I had too much on my mind to make room for whatever it was I was dealing with.

  “I haven’t been to Bauman’s in months,” I texted, which was the truth. “You have the wrong number. Bye.”

  As I drove home, Dave’s words helped guide my train of thought. I wasn’t going to outright ask Hannah how she felt about me, but I knew that there were clever ways to have serious conversations with her without making them feel like serious conversations. I just had to figure out what those clever ways were.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hannah

  There was wine being drunk and spaghetti being eaten on our couch Tuesday night. Sawyer and I came across the beginning of Bridget Jones’ Diary on TV, so we decided to watch it together. I had seen it a few times before (it was somewhat of a guilty pleasure) and I was curious to see how he would handle a girly-romantic comedy.

  I learned quickly that he was not
enjoying the movie nearly as much as I was. It also didn’t help that we were drinking red wine, his least favorite alcoholic beverage to drink. I never got tired of wine, but I could easily get sick of drinking beer and harder liquor. I thought it was sweet how he never stopped watching the movie or sipping his wine. He surpassed many of the men that came before him when it came to effort.

  I wasn’t sure how many glasses of wine I had in my system by the time the movie ended, but I did feel slightly dizzy.

  “What did you think of the movie?” I asked him.

  “Eh… not for me,” he said, smiling. “I get why you chicks you like it, though.”

  “Who are you calling a ‘chick?’” I asked. “I’m not poultry.”

  “You are drunk though,” he laughed, finishing his only glass of wine.

  “Sorry you didn’t like the wine…”

  “I don’t dislike wine,” he corrected. “It’s just not my favorite. I’ll drink the hell out of a white wine though, if you’ve got it.”

  He collected our dishes and glasses and went into the kitchen to clean up. Doing work in the kitchen was also something I wasn’t used to guys doing.

  “It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?” I said, looking at Bridget Jones’ credits. “In the movie, the cheating ex gets his ass kicked by the other guy.” I was embarrassed by my observation, but the wine was busy aiding me in trying to get my point across.

  “So, who am I in the movie? Colin Firth?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure, I think,” I said, giggling as I took another sip.

  “Fun fact: Renee Zellweger was nominated for an Oscar for that movie,” he informed me.

  “No, she wasn’t,” I dismissed. I opened my phone and looked it up, quickly discovering that Sawyer’s fun fact was actually factual.

  “I’m right; you don’t have to look it up,” he said.

  “Just checking my sources!” I exclaimed.

  “So, who’s going to play you in your movie?” he asked. “Renee Zellweger’s probably too old to play you.”

  “I should have a movie made about my life. It’s crazy enough to warrant it!”

  “We should just play ourselves,” he said as he returned to the couch. “We can have lots of good sex scenes, too. Better than anything in a movie.”

  “Mmm, you’ve got that right,” I said. I leaned my tipsy head over and rested on his shoulder. He eventually leaned his own head into mine.

  A new movie began to play on TV, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  “Have you ever beaten anyone else up other than Jared?” I asked him.

  “I’ve been in scuffles before,” he replied. “Nothing like that, though.”

  “Do you have any old flames from the past that you like to… revisit?”

  “‘Old flames?’ Boy, you do watch too many romantic comedies.”

  “Just answer the question!”

  “Girls from the past text me all the time,” he said, trailing off. He seemed to have something on his mind, but I couldn’t tell what.

  “Have you… been with any of them since you started sleeping with me?”

  Our eyes met, and I instantly looked away.

  “It’s okay if you have,” I quickly added. “We’re not together; I know that.”

  “I haven’t been with anyone else since I started living with you,” he said. “What about you?”

  “What about me?” I said. “I don’t have ‘old flames.’ I either have quiet, little-too-normal breakups, or evidently, I get guys like Jared…”

  “You mean psychos,” he said smirking.

  “Well…” I wanted to steer the conversation away from Jared. “I was able to resist you. You said I would lose the bet, but I won.”

  “You may have won the bet, but I still won you in the end,” he said winking. “You said if you didn’t have a point to prove, you would have given in before.”

  I didn’t think I had worded it quite like that, but I didn’t deny it. I had wanted him during several points of the bet.

  “I wasn’t confident about you or your abilities at first,” I said. “I thought you were all talk. You seemed like one of those guys who are all talk.”

  “Not all guys are the same,” he said.

  “Not all girls are the same,” I retorted.

  “You’ve got that right,” he said, smiling. He looked down at me, kissed my nose, and looked back at the TV. I knew I was blushing redder than the wine.

  “I’ve got an interesting question for you,” he said.

  “Uh oh,” I went.

  He chuckled. “What are some… sexual fantasies that you have?”

  After all our sex-based discussions, I didn’t think there was much he could say or ask to catch me off-guard. I grew even more embarrassed and stuck to foolishly giggling like a lush.

  “Do you mean… what do I think about?” I asked.

  “I mean fantasies,” he said. “Thoughts, ideas… things you’ve imagined doing but haven’t done yet. You know… fantasies!”

  “Well… I have to think. I don’t keep myself up all night fantasizing.”

  “I don’t either; now quit stalling, little lady.”

  “…I kind of want to have sex in a public place,” I muttered.

  “Oh, really…?”

  “Don’t get any funny ideas, boy,” I remarked. “It works as a fantasy because it’s perfect as a fantasy. No one catches you in your imagination. Is there any public place you can have sex where we wouldn’t get caught?”

  He shrugged. “There’s always changing rooms in clothing stores.”

  “Everyone changing around us would hear us. You know how loud I can get.”

  “Hell yeah, I do,” he said, leaning in to kiss my ear. It felt nice.

  “We can’t do it in a car,” I said.

  “Why not?” he asked, disappointed.

  “Where are we going to park where there’s no chance of getting caught? People drive around! Can you imagine if the cops caught us having sex? After you already got arrested?”

  “Part of what makes sex in public so hot is exactly that though,” he said. “The thrill and possibility that someone might catch you. It’s dangerous. For some, that’s an aphrodisiac. Don’t you like excitement?”

  I tried imagining a scenario where he and I got caught having sex in a changing room. It still seemed horrific to me.

  But then, I imagined being in the changing room. Only he would have to keep his hand over my mouth to silence my moans. I would have to bite down on his tan skin in order to tame my screams. The size of the room would be cramped, but that meant that we would have to be pushed up against the walls.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” he asked playfully, reading my mind.

  “It does seem like fun,” I admitted. “But…”

  “Ah, come on, I almost had you,” he said.

  “I’m just not the kind of person who can take a risk like that and fully enjoy it. I know I would be worrying the entire time about getting caught.”

  He sat lost in thought for a few minutes. I wondered if he was still thinking about my fantasy, regardless of how vague my details had been.

  “Glad to see you’re still earning it,” I said. “You’re still trying, and I think that’s so… awesome.”

  He smiled. “I’ll sit through all of Bridget Jones’ sequels if it means I still get to have sex with you and your amazing body.”

  I laughed, downing the remainder of my wine. I climbed onto his lap, facing him. This was one of my favorite ways to address him in any context.

  “What’s one of your fantasies?” I asked him.

  He thought for a few seconds. “Sex in the shower.”

  I was surprised. “That’s it? We can do that!”

  “Not how I want to,” he said. “I’ve had sex in the shower before; I’m a little… picky, I guess.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  “Well… in terms of practicality, it already doesn’t work. I’d have
to wear a condom, since you’re not on the pill, and… keeping a severely wet condom on my wet cock trying to stay in your gloriously wet pussy would be like climbing up a water slide in the rain.”

  I burst out laughing. He joined in, apparently amused by his analogy.

  “You know what I mean, though,” he continued. “In my fantasy, our wet bodies are uninhibited and free. There’s nothing in the way. We feel the water dripping down each other’s bodies…”

  I closed my eyes briefly, thinking while he described it.

  “And I have you bent over,” he said. “Sometimes against the wall, sometimes just bent over in front of me.”

  “Naughty…” I said quietly.

  “And, I get to feel that glorious entryway of yours,” he said. “I miss out every time I get to be in you and not really feel you get wetter and tighter for me.”

  I had considered getting on birth control solely for the experience of raw sex with Sawyer. However, my experiences while being on the pill were never entirely pleasant. I hadn’t found one that totally agreed with me, and after a while, I had stopped trying. Since I wasn’t sure how long Sawyer was going to be with me, I didn’t think experimenting with birth control would be a good use of my time. But I did sometimes wonder what sex with him would feel like without a latex barrier between us.

  “Hey, that’s why they call it a fantasy, right?” he concluded.

  “Yeah…”

  We kissed for a few moments. After our lips parted, he stood up and slid his shirt off, walking back towards the bedrooms.

  “Speaking of which, I’m gonna go get a quick shower,” he said. “Come into my room later, if you’d like!”

  In a matter of minutes, I heard Sawyer turn the shower on and close the shower curtain. I thought of him in there, surely naked, surely thinking about our last discussion.

  I didn’t even consider another option; I removed my own clothes, leaving them on the living room floor. I walked to the bathroom in the nude. I weakly knocked on the door and let myself in.

  I saw his outline through the curtain, realizing that he hadn’t heard me. I closed the door timidly behind me and stood beside the shower, thinking of the best way to signal my entrance.