16
1012 Words
“With that level of dirty-talk game right out of the gate, I’ll bet you a million bucks he’d give you thirty orgasms within ten minutes if you slept with him.”
“You don’t have a million dollars, and that’s not even physically possible.”
“It is with him. Hell, I could get off a dozen times alone just by looking at him. That face! That body! Jesus, Natalie, he could melt the polar ice caps with a look, and you turned him down?”
“Calm down.”
“I will not. I’m indignant on behalf of s*x-starved women everywhere.”
“Excuse me, but the only s*x-starved person on this phone call is me.”
“My point is that he’s a once-in-a-lifetime f**k. You could be having lovely daydreams about him at eighty when you’re in your rocking chair in the nursing home, soiling your diapers. Instead, you’re out here acting like you’re constantly being showered with prime sausages like confetti.”
After a moment, I start to laugh. “Oh god. The mental image. I’m gonna have to search the web for that meme.”
“Forward it to me when you find it. Have you listened to anything I’ve said?”
“Yes. I’m an i***t. You’ve made your point.”
“I don’t think I have.”
“Am I going to need to sit down for this? I have a funny feeling I’ve got a long lecture coming.”
“Let me just paint a picture for you of how perfect this is.”
“By ‘this,’ are you referring to his p***s?”
She ignores me. “He’s gorgeous. That’s a given. He’s totally into you. He’s also leaving soon.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there can be no emotional entanglements. That’s your favorite thing, remember?”
I grudgingly admit that it’s a check in the Pro column.
“Also, it would break your tragic dry spell. It might even help you move on. Think of it like therapy.”
“Therapy?”
“For your vagina.”
“Oh my god.”
“All I’m saying is that I don’t see a downside here.”
She might if I shared the tidbit about him buying the house with cash so he could launder his money and how he equivocated at first when I asked him if I should be afraid of him.
On second thought, that would probably just make her like him even more.
According to what she told me about Stavros earlier in the conversation, it sounds like his tech job is a cover for his real gig as an arms dealer. Nobody needs that many passports or cargo planes.
“I just feel like…I don’t know anything about him. What if he’s a criminal?”
“What are you, running for public office? Who cares if he’s a criminal? You’re not marrying him, you’re just bouncing up and down on his d**k for a few days until he leaves. Don’t make everything so complicated.”
“What if he has an STD?”
Her sigh is loud and heavy. “Have you heard of this newfangled thing called a condom? It’s all the rage with the kids these days.”
“You can still get an STD with a condom.”
“Okay. I give up. Enjoy your celibacy. The rest of us will be out here having enriching s*x lives with totally inappropriate partners like normal people.”
We’re quiet for a moment, until she says, “Oh. I get it. It’s not that you think there won’t be any emotional entanglements…it’s that you think there will.”
I’m about to issue a loud and fervent denial, but take a second to consider it instead.
“He’s the first man I’ve had any kind of reaction to since David. The other guys I’ve dated have felt more like brothers. Like, they were nice and I enjoyed spending time with them, but that was it. I would’ve been just as content sitting at home with Mojo as going out with any one of them. I certainly had no desire to sleep with them. They were just…safe.
“But Kage puts my endocrine system into overdrive. He makes me feel like I’m hooked up to electrodes, getting juiced like Frankenstein’s monster. And that’s with barely knowing him.”
“You’re not gonna fall in love with him if you have s*x a time or three.”
“Are you sure? Because that’s exactly the kind of horrible thing that would happen to me.”
“Argh! Will you listen to yourself?”
“I’m just saying.”
“And I’m just saying you can’t live the rest of your life in fear of what might happen, Nat. So what if you did get all emotional over him after you had s*x? So what? He’ll go back to his life, you’ll go back to yours, and nothing will have changed except you’ll have some great memories and your v****a will be gloriously sore. Nothing can hurt you as much as you’ve already been hurt. You’ve survived the worst thing you could imagine. It’s time to start living your life again. Do you want to be having this same conversation with me twenty years from now?”
We breathe at each other for a while until I say, “No.”
She exhales heavily. “Okay, I’m going to say something now. It’s gonna hurt.”
“More than what you just said?”
“David is dead, Nat. He’s dead.”
It hangs there in all its awful finality as my chest gets tight and I struggle not to burst into tears.
Her voice gentles. “He has to be. He’d never voluntarily leave you. He loved you like crazy. He didn’t get abducted by aliens or brainwashed by a cult or anything else. He went for a hike in the mountains and had an accident. He slipped and fell off the trail. It’s the only explanation.”
- Writer
