Page 54 of Sleepover

“But imagine it’s me. I mean, my lube. Like, imagine your hand is my pussy and the slippery stuff is me, wanting you really bad. I’ve got plenty of it here for you, by the way.”

“Oh. Oh, wow.”

“Are you lying on your back?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He’s already breathless, which makes me feel pretty damn good about my talking-off technique.

“So then I guess I’m riding you. Sinking down on you, pulling back almost all the way off so you can feel me all along your length. Then hard and fast. Which is better?”

“They’re both good. God, you’re getting me there so fast.”

“Go for it.”

“I am.”

“Do you want me to lie down on you so we can kiss? Or sit up so you can watch me jiggle?”

“Jesus, Elle, where’d you get that imagination?” His voice is wound to the breaking point, which makes my pussy thrum.

I don’t tell him I’m not usually this bold, that he makes me want to say and do crazy stuff like this. It feels too clingy, too relationship-y. Not the right vibe for two people who have agreed that all of this is just foreplay for a single main event. I just say, “Which one, stud?”

“Jiggle,” he says, but the word dissolves in his mouth into a groan and then my name, in a short, harsh cry.

“Okay, then,” I say, laughing. “I know how to get you off fast at Trevor’s wedding.”

He doesn’t say anything for what feels like several minutes. Then he says, “I made a mess. I’ll be right back. Washcloth time.”

When he comes back from cleaning up and picks up his phone, he says, “You want to cuddle? Have a cigarette?”

I laugh.

“Nah, I’m serious. We can hang up. Or we can, you know, hang out.”

“Hang out, I guess,” I say. I’m surprised that he asked it, and surprised how much I want to.

We chat for a while about nothing in particular. How he got started with furniture making (he learned a lot of stuff from his dad, who was a general contractor, but then he took woodworking in high school and realized he wanted to build furniture, not be a GC), his relationship with his brother (they beat the snot out of each other as kids and still give each other a hard time, but they love each other). When I started writing (for my elementary school newsletter), how it feels to be an only child (I used to love getting all the attention, but now that I’m grown, I feel like I missed out on an experience—plus, I worry about not having anyone to help me take care of my parents when they get old. I tell him about my parents, who live in the foothills of the Cascades but have been talking about moving closer to Seattle to be nearer to me and Madden. My mom’s a therapist and my dad’s a mutual fund manager).

“They’re pretty good parents.”

“Are they happy together?”

“They’re still married.”

I think they are happy together. They’re cute together, anyway, finishing each other’s sentences, my dad the type to still open doors and pull out chairs for my mom. I guess you never know, though, do you?

As if he can read my mind, he asks, “How did you meet Trevor?”

“It’s a sad story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“I think I can take it,” he says dryly.

I’d temporarily forgotten that he has a whole new dimension on sad; nothing I can tell him can possibly touch the grief he’s experienced.

“A dog got hit by a car, and its owner, a teenaged kid, found it, and didn’t know what to do—he was distraught, standing over the body, crying, his hands shaking so bad he couldn’t even text his mom. Trevor was walking from one direction and I was walking from the other, and we stopped to help. I had a blanket in my car a block away, and we wrapped the dog up and carried it back to the teenager’s house, where his mom was. The whole thing was awful. But then Trevor said we should go out for a drink, so we did. And he was so great about the whole thing—stopping, being totally in control about the emergency situation, super calm—and then afterward, so sweet to me. I fell hard for him. I didn’t know until a little bit later that he’d just gotten viciously dumped, and that he was rebounding and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I draw a deep breath. I’m tucked into bed, warm and comfortable and bonelessly relaxed, but the memory still has all its old resonances—the sadness of the dog’s death and the bright promise of meeting someone wonderful, only now it’s all overwritten with Trevor’s betrayal. “Maybe a dead dog isn’t an auspicious meeting? I should have known.”

Sawyer snorts.

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