Page 59 of Most Likely to Match
“Okay,” I say against her skin.
She drops her thumb. “We still get to fool around, though, right?” She smiles, a joke, except the crease between her brows is pure worry.
I grin back in a way I hope is charming but at this point could be the tragic face of a Melpomene mask. “Right.”
Chloe relaxes into me again and we watch the woman push her stroller around the track. Not a secret, for just right now.
12
DEAN
The vibration of my phone across the glass patio tabletop scares me from my mid-afternoon half sleep. This work week has been chill. Steady but not busy. When I told Chloe I’d probably take today off to enjoy the sun and the pool, she kissed my cheek and told me to enjoy. So this text from her isn’t a surprise.
Chlo: wyd?
I laugh. I think I’m about to get sexted.
Pool. You?
Chlo: ball game ;)
Chlo: pics?
Okay. Yeah. I’m definitely getting sexted. The thought of Chloe, probably on her couch, maybe on a sports bar patio, watching her favorite sport— a pastime that takes hours out of her day— but thinking of me? I’ve got a semi before I’veopened the photo app.
I hold the phone up, angling it to be sure to include the unbuttoned linen shirt bracketing my belly and belly hair, a feature Chloe loves to run her fingers through; the “bitchy masc tats” on my thighs; and my hand, cupping my cock through the short, wet swim trunks.
I hold the phone there, looking at myself in self-portrait mode, frozen for a moment, in shock. Chloe asked for a photo— a sexy photo— and I didn’t hesitate. In fact, I was purposeful about my framing, the light. I wanted to make it good for her.
Not because I’m still, somewhere deep down, that boy who’d fall all over himself to give her anything she wants.
But because I’m a man whowantsto give her what she wants. A man who trusts the woman he loves, who trusts himself.
I snap the picture, survey it quickly just in case I missed something unsexy like a used tissue in the background, and send it to her. I watch as the photo uploads into our chat, as it’s marked Delivered, and then Read. I wait for a text bubble to pop up, but nothing comes. The screen goes dark in my hand. I set it down on the table again, letting the heavy beat of my pulse in my throat calm, breathing through my erection, uncomfortable in cold, wet swim shorts.
But all that work is for nothing when the phone buzzes loudly against the glass again. I scramble for it, my cock harder than before, as I try to open the screen with first the facial ID, then the code.
Chloe has sent a photo back. Her bedroom in her condo is all windows, a feature of most Toronto condo layouts trying to make up for minimal square footage with great views. The TV on the wall has indeed captured a still shot of the baseball game going on a few hundred meters down the road from her condo building. The gauzy curtains are pulled across the floor-to-ceiling windows, but the day is bright enough, the sun in the right place that they may as well not even be there for the unobstructed view they afford. That would be a good enough photo as it is, the beautiful Toronto skyline on a summer day, if it wasn’t for her. She’s angled the photo just right, lying on her bed, on her side. Long bare legs tangled in white sheets, the curve of her bare ass, the pink of her skin, her toenails painted ashimmery, summery coral. I am moving before I even bother to think it through.
I close up the pool and the backyard, go inside, and quickly shower off the chlorine and summer sweat. I don’t bother to change into something nice; I won’t have much use for these clothes soon. I find a pair of shorts similar in hem length, if not color and material, and put the short-sleeved linen button-up back on. I leave it undone. I don’t like to drive, especially in downtown traffic, and normally I’d take the subway to see her, but Mom left her car and her keys and the directions to “be careful,” because I guess she’s still worried I might get roped into an underground drag racing ring. I said I’d only use it for emergencies.
This is an emergency.
The traffic isn’t that bad, considering it’s rush hour by the time I get downtown. It’s perhaps made more tolerable by the emo music I blast from my phone through the speakers and the text I get from Chloe when I ask her for the code to her building’s guest parking lot. Instead of demanding an explanation, sending a series of question marks, or calling for clarity, my Bluetooth simply dictates1992.
Technically, I’m supposed to register my license plate number with the condo concierge, but they can tow me. I didn’t time myself, but when I reach Chloe’s front door, I’m certain I’ve made this trip from suburb to city core, shower and all, in a little over an hour. Likely a world record when you take into account I was barely even speeding.
I knock, and Chloe makes me wait. I wait long enough that I shift from one side of the door to the other, that I make another fist but don’t let myself knock again. I won’t give her the satisfaction of my eagerness…yet.
“Hey.” She grins as she opens the door, only enough to show me her face and the fluffy white robe, belt left loose, held together by her hand clasped at her chest.
“Hey.” I lean against the doorframe to block her; the hallway is empty, but still.
Her hair is dark gold, recently wet, her exposed skin flushed. Shesmells fruity and floral. Fresh, glorious. So when she opens the door for me to slip in, then wanders past her small kitchen, the open-concept dining room and living room and down the short hallway with an office-slash-den to her bedroom, I follow her like a cartoon wolf seduced by the contrails of her body wash and the sway of her hips, reduced to heart-shaped eyes and a lolling tongue.
Her bedroom is humid, like she’s just gotten out of the shower. The game still plays quietly on the television, but for once, she’s found more important things to occupy her time. She opens a bedside table drawer, sets some things on the surface, her body and the open bathrobe shielding them from my view. She turns with a tub of body butter in her hand, and she lets me watch. She puts on a fucking show as she lifts her foot onto the bed to massage the lotion into her skin. Up her calves, over her knees. Her hand disappears to her inner thigh. She pays special attention to each foot. She works her way up her stomach, her hands’ movements over her breasts hidden by the robe as she stands in profile.
My own hands ache to take over, but my feet keep me planted here. Forget the view through the barely covered windows. We could be in Paris, New York, could have a hotel room overlooking the ice-blue waters of Lake Louise in Banff, an overwater bungalow in Fiji. No skyline, no view, nothing else made by Mother Nature is worth looking away from this, from her.
