Play by the Rules

by Frey Ortega

  I was almost embarrassed when I realized that my desire to be ready for any eventuality—including the eventuality of my losing my virginity—far outweighed my feelings of impropriety. There was, as stated, a new razor—four blades, even, with a fine grip and that menthol strip that I still didn’t know the use for—and an enema, for the butt.

  So definitely not a douche, then. Good to know.

  All the preparation had me frazzled, but I was making good time. The apartment was cleaned up. The only thing left was making sure I readied the food—which didn’t need to be done until like, maybe an hour before he got here—and then there was the grooming, which would probably take a majority of my time.

  Yeah, I would have surprised him and made a recipe that could take hours, simmering away to make something perfect, but I figured something that only took about an hour would work, too. I didn’t want to put in that much of an effort…that would be frustrating, especially if he ended up not liking what I cooked.

  Okay, maybe I was going to do something to impress him. Maybe. I was at least certainly going to try, and if it ended up with either of us getting garlic breath, did that really matter? I’d already done other things to his body.

  This was no time to psych myself out.

  I took a deep breath, and calmed myself down once more. I needed to stay focused. By the time I finished cleaning up, it was already about three in the afternoon.

  T minus four hours until Kaminski arrived.

  My apartment was as clean as I could get it, and the dust cloud that had settled over a majority of my things had finally been wiped away.

  There was nothing to be scared of.

  I had all the time in the world.

  Well, not really, but I had all the time I needed, at the very least.

  Every few minutes, Joe sent me a message—and I had to reply. It was actually pretty cute to receive a few words of encouragement every so often, even if the speaker of those words clearly had a bias.

  I showered, cleaned myself up, and made sure to pull all the stops when it came to my own hygiene. I shaved, I followed the instructions for an enema, and I cussed at myself for eating a heavy breakfast. Then again, I hadn’t expected to be in this situation today, of all days.

  But it was okay. It was exciting. And though I was complaining about it, knowing that I was inviting Joe into my world was a big step for me in more ways than one.

  By the time I’d finished cleaning myself up, two hours had passed. I made sure to scrub every crevice of my body and make sure I smelled as good as I could, including all the necessary ways to make myself as clean as possible on the inside as much as the outside. One did not simply do anal sex out of nowhere, after all, there was a preparation involved to make sure things didn’t go…brown, so to speak.

  And that was putting it politely.

  I started preparing the food. With sauce, the more it simmered away, the better it was going to become, and so the sooner I started on it, the more delicious it would be. It wasn’t true for all foods and sauces, but for the particular one I had in mind, this was a good idea.

  I also made sure to avoid overly fragrant things that would ruin how I smelled, like too much garlic or cilantro, and even onion. Just little dabs of it was going to be good in sauce, I thought. I was already primped and polished, I didn’t want to ruin that by smothering on a strong scent over my cologne.

  Maybe butter. Butter smelled good everywhere.

  Would Joe like it if I smelled like butter?

  Why did that matter?

  Fuck, I was being an idiot. Though, that shouldn’t have surprised me. I needed something—anything—to get my mind off of any potential anxiety.

  The cooking was helping a lot in that regard, and I hadn’t realized I had gotten into it until I heard the sound of notifications on my desktop. As soon as I sauntered over toward it, I saw the time. Thirty minutes until the designated time.

  I did a last check around the house. I made sure everything was in place. I saw a message from my friends, and then my phone lit up with its own message. It was Joe.

  Hey, I’ll be heading over there in a little while. I made sure to leave early. Can’t wait to see you.

  I heaved a little sigh of relief. I know I wasn’t supposed to be testing people—and I definitely wasn’t—but I was glad that he wanted to be on time. Even if he was like, five to thirty minutes late, I wouldn’t have minded. I was stringent about being punctual but I didn’t expect him to be that way. This wasn’t our first date, technically.

  Well, it was just our second date, so I guess maybe he was trying to make a good impression. It was well-appreciated either way, especially since I told him how important my time was to me.

  Now, the only thing left for me to do was actually get through this date.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joe had a way about him that really made me feel at ease as soon as he was around. The strange thing about it was that whenever we would just talk over messages, I could obsess over every little minute detail and beat myself up for my poor choice of words, but when he was right in front of me, it was like having the immediate feedback of him not being upset at me screwing up my words made me somehow talk better.

  Maybe that was just human nature. Who knew?

  We exchanged pleasantries as he entered the room, even giving me a little kiss on the cheek—how forward of him, considering it was just our second date—and after a few initial minutes of awkwardness, we sat down in front of the television while we cradled bowls of pasta like it was just a comfortable night in.

  Nevermind that I was so clean inside and out, there was basically a red carpet leading out from my butt to Joe.

  It was silent as we ate, taking peeks at one another and smiling. It was clear Joe wanted to break the ice, but I was still nursing my bowl of food. I was eating so little just to make sure I didn’t accidentally make my stomach start working and end any plans of sex tonight.

  Even though we were supposed to be strictly no-sexual-contact.

  God, he looked cute. He was wearing a checkered blue shirt that looked so…straight. He just seemed comfortable, in his jeans and in his button-up. I mean, I was comfortable too. We were basically just hanging out, after all, but he looked really good. Especially with the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and I could see the white undershirt he had underneath with just the tiniest peak at the skin underneath. It somehow felt very boy-next-door, even though he was a giant who loomed over everyone else.

  Some terrible action movie played, and I wasn’t so concerned with that so much as I was trying hard not to seem too worried or pressed about Joe being in my inner sanctum, so to speak.

  When he finished his food, he set the bowl down on the coffee table in front of him and then took a sip of his drink. He brought one arm up and put it around my shoulders to draw me close to his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world. Honestly? It only made me feel even more nervous.

  My heart jackhammered in my chest.

  “Relax,” Joe said, almost as though he commanded it in that deep, resonant timbre of his voice. “We’re keeping it PG-13, remember?”

  I looked up at him as calmly as I could, and smiled. I hoped I didn’t end up looking constipated from the knots twisting inside my stomach. “How do you know I’m not relaxed?” I asked, trying to be coy.

  He looked down at me and raised his eyebrow, but smiled.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re right, you’re right,” I muttered. “Stupid question.”

  “I mean, when are you ever relaxed around me?” Joe asked. “It’s not that you’re star-struck. I think your default setting is just to be tense and overwhelmed.”

  He was right. I didn’t want him to be, but he was.

  “You know, I talked to my mom about you,” Joe said.

  I blinked. “Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Yeah. I told her about how I met this cute guy who was actually interesting, but for some rea
son, this guy just seemed to be caught up in his own head all the time.”

  He was right. I bristled at his words because I didn’t want to think about all my faults, but I knew he was right.

  “And what did she say?” I asked.

  Joe looked down at me. And he wasn’t just looking—he was actually looking into my eyes intently, and as always I couldn’t quite meet his eyes, but not for a lack of trying. “She told me that if you were someone I could see myself with, I shouldn’t let you go,” he said. “No matter how weird or how big your damage might be.”

  “Your mother hasn’t met me,” I said softly. “I could be a terrible person and she wouldn’t know.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of mother’s intuition?” Joe asked, smiling down at me.

  “Well, I’ve heard of it. But I don’t think it applies to this situation,” I replied. For one, my mother wasn’t exactly going to win mother-of-the-year awards anytime soon. She’d raised all of her children up to be independent, yes, but only because we’d been co-dependent on each other for a long time. Maybe that was why I still felt sore about the loss of my sister—not that she was dead—but she was my best friend.

  Joe tilted his head. “Why wouldn’t it apply?”

  I struggled to find an answer. “Because,” I started, struggling to find the right words.

  Then I sighed. “Because sometimes I feel as though we’re rushing into this. How can you tell someone you’ve only had two dates with that you’re going to pursue them, that you’re already thinking of a future with them?”

  “Well, haven’t you ever heard of stories where a person sees their other half, and knows immediately that the person in front of them is who they want to spend the rest of their life with?” Joe asked me. Suddenly the action movie didn’t seem so interesting anymore. Not that it ever was.

  “Yes,” I answered. “In romance novels and movies, and sometimes in television shows.”

  “It happens in real life too. Not always, but it does. I’ve read the stories,” Joe said. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel something too. It might not be the way I do, but I know you feel something, beyond all that overthinking of yours. If we always adhered to logical ways of thinking, romance would be dead. Liking someone, love—they’re both just pure, unadulterated, volatile emotions, often with no logic or reason.”

  In some small way, that made no sense to me at all. How was I going to move forward with this if I didn’t use my brain, if I didn’t use my logic and my reasoning to weigh whether this was going to be better for me in the long run? But in a bigger way, it made all the sense in the world to me. Liking someone was good for one’s heart, for one’s soul, if one were to argue the existence of it, and sometimes it was completely illogical. Well, most of the time it was completely illogical. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Attraction was a baser urge that defied conventional explanation.

  Seeing it in that light actually made things clearer for me.

  If attraction defied logical explanation and rational thinking, that meant that Joe couldn’t explain why he was drawn to me. That was why he fumbled with his words. That was why he was trying so hard to make me feel so comfortable.

  But at the same time, I couldn’t be certain about his intentions. I couldn’t be certain about him. And it was that uncertainty, that not-knowing, that scared me. I’d been conditioned to believe that most people lied, and some people could lie to your face without breaking a sweat. What if I was truly looking at him, and I was being led by what I wanted rather than what was actually real?

  And even though it was a subconscious thing, I actually felt my defenses lower. My walls started to come down. It was scary. It was downright frightening—but it was exhilarating in as much the same way. Hearing what he’d said, listening to him, recounting the words my friends had all been telling me, something inside told me if I didn’t take a chance at this very moment, I wouldn’t be able to know for sure. I would be spending my time just waiting, wondering, thinking about what was and wasn’t.

  After all, my initial reaction to Joe had been physical, but maybe his was…emotional. Not everyone has an immediate emotional reaction to someone else, but if I thought about it that way, wasn’t the way he just knew and could tell how I was feeling kind of evidence, or proof, that he was connected to me in some way? Was I just looking at this the way I wanted to see it?

  He always made me feel at ease. He knew when I was nervous. He knew I had a tendency to overthink. It was almost like he had a telepathic bond with me. It was either I was incredibly easy to read, or he just…knew. The same way that I knew, by listening to him, that he liked me. Maybe it was more than that.

  Maybe he actually loved me, no matter how impossible that sounded.

  I looked at him. I really looked at him at that moment, and I looked into the deep browns of his eyes, down to the curve of his jaw peppered with stubble. I looked at how his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed, looking almost pensive and…was he nervous? That somehow made me feel better.

  It felt like I could see him clearly for the first time. His eyes were glimmering with mirth and good humor, and his lips were quirked upward in a cocky smile that tried to hide the tiniest little tremor of nervousness that rocked its way up through him, ending at the hand that was currently braced around my shoulder.

  He was as nervous as I was, and that somehow made me feel...good, actually. He was nervous around me. Was he thinking the same things I was? Did he think I wouldn’t like him?

  I cast away my apprehensions, and for some reason, it was so much easier now that I had those words stuck in my head.

  Attraction—love, lust, whatever it was—defied conventional, logical explanation. That instantaneous connection wasn’t something that could be explored online. You could talk to someone over the span of an entire week via instant messaging and never truly get to know them until you met face-to-face.

  Maybe it worked for others. But it didn’t for me. And that was okay.

  Because there was a small part of me that was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, I actually had this man, right in front of me. Joachim Kaminski.

  Sometimes, even talking face-to-face wasn’t a guarantee of a connection. If relationships were one of the only paradigms in the world that defied reason and was centered on emotions, then there was certainly no logical explanation, no way for me to justify why I wanted to be with Joe—and vice versa—other than “I want to be with him, so I am.”

  I was hesitant to believe that it could both be true and illogical. I had always been cautioned to think with my head and not always my heart, because if I let my emotions get the better of me, I would have made terrible decisions.

  And yet, I was also a drama queen and prone to overreacting. It was two sides of a very terrible coin, but it added up to a strange, standoffish human being…who could finally see the man beside him for who he actually was.

  Joe was just a guy, sitting beside another guy, asking that man to love him.

  Well, to take a chance and try, anyway.

  Still, there was this alarm blaring inside me, going off like a siren and coursing through my head. Things shouldn’t be progressing this fast. But how fast should things be progressing, anyway? What constituted how quickly we liked one another? Was there some sort of rubric?

  But there was an even bigger part of me that fought against the thought. It was chiding me, telling me that it was too early, too fast, too much to believe. This was just a passing feeling between the both of us.

  Needless to say, that big part of me was hesitation and paranoia personified. The voices of my grandparents and my parents, and even my siblings, kept echoing in my head. You can’t trust someone so implicitly if you don’t know them. Don’t put so much stock into someone’s trustworthiness at face value. Even long-time friends can betray you.

  But even with those words echoing in my head, I was also hearing little snips and jabs my mother would have thrown my way. You’re
overthinking this. You’re going to ruin it, just like you overthink every little project of yours. You’re an editor, and you can write so well, but you meticulously look over every little detail and control everything. You play it too safe. You’re going to end up alone if you keep overthinking everything.

  It was all adding up to be overwhelming, in a way that didn’t quite sit well with me.

  “What are you thinking about?” Joe suddenly asked, smiling at me.

  “Why do you think I’m thinking about something?” I asked. Again, I was immediately on the defensive.

  Again, he looked at me with a raised eyebrow. And again, I sighed and rolled my eyes.

  “You’re right, but it’s stupid,” I finally said after a few moments. “I don’t know that I should tell you.”

  Joe shrugged. “Hey, if you’re not ready to share, it’s okay. This is what, maybe our third, or fourth interaction? Aside from texting every day, I mean.”

  “Are you counting how many times we see each other face-to-face?” I asked.

  Again, Joe shrugged, and then he threw one of those arresting, lopsided smiles at me. “So, are you gonna tell me?”

  I looked up at him, and he was looking down at me. At this point, I was pretty sure the movie was at the back of our minds.

  “I guess I’m just wondering when the other shoe will drop,” I muttered softly. “You’re always saying the right thing. You’re doing all the right things. You’re respecting my boundaries, and you’re even saying all the perfect things, but for some reason, and I don’t know what it is, it’s like all these sirens are blaring in my head and telling me this is happening all too quickly. This shouldn’t be happening at all. I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  Joe blinked, and slowly retracted his arm so that his hands were placed primly on his lap.

  “Oh boy,” he said. “Is being a relaxed, calm, rational adult with a penchant for romance and romantic gestures a bad thing, now?”

  I chuckled. “No, it’s not,” I replied.