Page 101 of Tips and Trysts

Just like that. The best. Nobody takes a cock like you.

He towels me off after, taking extra care around my arm before he lifts and seats me naked on the counter. He bandages my arm even though I’m capable of changing it myself, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like seeing the focused pinch in his brow and the way he meticulously presses the edges of the bandage to my skin.

I’m capable of changing my own bandage, but I’m not capable of making butterflies rise in my own stomach.

When he’s done, he steps into the space between my spread knees and places his hands on the counter, caging me. He didn’t even bother toweling himself off before he started tending to me, so droplets of water still linger in the ridges of his abdomen, sliding between the defined lines of his sculpted body.

“You’re drooling,” he comments, smirking.

I’m too busy tracing a roving droplet with my eyes to come up with a clever response, so instead what spills out is, “You make the feminism leave my body.”

“Don’t say that.” He leans in like he’s going to kiss me but stops short. “Feminism is, like, ninety-two percent of your body mass. Without it, all that would be left of you is the live snakes where your hair should be.”

I close the gap and kiss him. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m obsessed with you,” he admits as if he didn’t hear what I said. His eyes drift to the lock of my wet hair he’s twirling around the tips of his fingers. “Sometimes I think I have a handle on it, and then I realize it’s impossible.”

“You’re not angry at me?”

“Felix J. Worthington has the single cuntiest face I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t even be mad if you actually did blackmail him.”

My lips part, but I don’t speak. He just…believes me.

“I know you,” he clarifies. “Whatever happened, I know you did for a reason.”

“This is unconditional,” I realize aloud, and the gravity of that truth feels like another shower. I let out a soft laugh, a hybrid of relief and wonder.

“I told you I wasn’t going to change my mind.” He brings his hand to my cheek and runs the backs of his fingers over my skin. “So, are you going to make me jump through three flaming hoops first, or are you going to tell me outright who I’m going to destroy after this conversation ends?”

***

Most couples would probably snuggle on the couch together before a deep-dark trauma session, but Everett and I aren’t most couples. We’re overachievers. So, we sit at my kitchen table with a laptop between us—because no life-altering event can be recapped without data, a timeline, and visual evidence.

Exhibit A is seventeen-year-old Cora Flores, a precocious Harvard freshman, holding a piece of paper and flipping off the camera, tongue out. Her tongue is unpierced, but she does have a new stud in her nose—her first piercing.

Exhibit B is the actual paper from Exhibit A, her transcript after freshman year: a perfect grade point average in graduate-level courses.

Exhibit C is a picture of a twenty-one-year-old Cora, who earned her master’s in psychology from Harvard a few months before. She’s now a first year PhD candidate, studying under Dr. Lionel Carlin, one of Harvard’s most esteemed professors of psychology, also pictured. He’s old and stately, standing in the lounge in the psych building. On Dr. Carlin’s other side is Felix J. Worthington, twenty-eight and a second year PhD candidate. All three of them are beaming, having just received a humongousgrant from the university to embark on a multi-year study on sex workers and the differences in their brain patterns when engaging in sexual activity with clients versus partners.

Exhibit D is a forty-page preliminary findings report with early results from those studies. Researchers interviewed the subjects—eight sex workers—about their sexual encounters. The findings were clear: subjects’ brain patterns changed substantially when Researcher 1 (Flores) spoke to them instead of Researcher 2 (Worthington). The author of the preliminary findings report proposed an addendum to the methodology to study the psychological safety women feel in each other’s presence and how those findings may inform mental health funding and resources for sex workers.

Exhibit E is an email from Dr. Carlin to Felix J. Worthington where Cora Flores is copied. Dr. Carlin commends Felix on his detailed preliminary findings and proposed addendum.

Exhibit F is a grainy picture of Cora and Felix J. Worthington fucking in a bed.

Exhibit G is an email from Dr. Carlin, rebuking Cora for blackmailing Felix J. Worthington with the picture from Exhibit F. He proposes her dismissal from his lab.

Everett’s brow is tight as he studies Exhibit G, the email. “I don’t understand,” he admits. “You and Felix J. Worthington were both working with Lionel Carlin on this sex worker study…and then Felix proposed a new methodology based on the findings from the initial research—”

“No, I did,” I interject.

Everett’s brow tightens even more. “But the email from Carlin said Felix—”

“Felix lied.”

Everett’s jaw clenches immediately and his expression turns grave. He’s been relatively quiet since I started speaking, but now, he’s barely breathing. After a beat, he intakes a slow streamof air through his nostrils. Then he runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “I didn’t know—”

“Don’t worry.”

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