Page 33 of Past Present Future

Rowan: would this be… a sexy picture

Neil: Perhaps.

When the image comes through, the laugh that slips out does little to dull my excitement.

It’s a Microsoft Word screenshot, a snippet of the book she’s been working on for the past couple years. The one about the two lawyers, Hannah and Hayden.

He reached for the hem of her dress, inching it up her thigh.

“Slowly,” Hannah begged, a thread of desperation in her voice. “I want to savor this.”

I love it, I type back. You look extremely hot.

Rowan: in my pajamas and messy hair, no makeup?

This time she does send a photo. She’s lying on her bed, her wild dark hair splayed across the pillow. Her lashes at half-mast. The pout of her lower lip. The arch of her neck. And—Jesus. The T-shirt she’s wearing dips just low enough to show a bit of cleavage. It instantly becomes my new favorite picture of her.

God, yes. Absolutely fucking stunning, all the time. Your face. Your body. Everything.

I hope she knows I’m being truthful here, that I have to hold myself back from adding “and your personality,” which while true, somehow doesn’t seem like it fits the moment.

Rowan: what you can’t see is that I’m not wearing underwear

A groan slips out as I run my hand along the front of my jeans, already aching for her.

Neil: What purpose does that serve, exactly?

Rowan: haha are you teasing me? I think you know.

Of course I’m teasing her. Sparring with her is never not my favorite thing to do.

But we’ve never done this kind of teasing before, and she might be able to tell that it doesn’t feel fully natural to me yet.

That doesn’t mean I’m not eager to experiment.

On the last day of school, I type, when we were about to break into the library to drop off your overdue books, and we somehow started talking about sex and you brought up masturbation. You were going on about double standards and I was just trying not to spontaneously combust. And I’d be the first human this ever happened to, and that would be very embarrassing.

Rowan: you wanted me.

Neil: So badly. And you have to believe me that I didn’t think about you in *that* particular way all the time, but sometimes…

I like that you did, she writes back, and all the blood in me rushes south. this perfect gentleman in your suits, secretly horny for the girl you supposedly couldn’t stand

Before I can send anything back, another message appears.

what would you do if you were here right now?

My jeans are already unzipped, my hand reaching inside my boxers. I’ve been hard since the photo she sent, and there’s at least one sad timeline in which this is over much too quickly. That’s not the route I want to take.

With my other hand, I tap my fingers against the phone, debating how to translate the images in my head into coherent words.

Push you up against the door and kiss as much of you as I could.

I’ve read a handful of her romance novels and certainly had enough fantasies to get creative, but I’m unsure where the boundaries are. If we can truly say anything at all and if that’s the beauty of this.

Maybe this is our chance to rewrite what happened when she was in New York.

I’d grab your hips so I could get closer to you and kiss you in that place you like, right in that dip of your shoulder against your neck. Then I’d drag you over to the bed.

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