Page 12 of Fun Together
I settle into the cushions as I expand the image, adding a nice pair of forearms with a sprinkling of hair. This fantasy man is pretty tall, probably at least six feet, and when I reach up to touch his shoulders, I discover that they are wide and strong. I move my hands up to his neck and can feel his pulse beneath my fingertips.
“Can I touch you?” he asks. Nice voice. The kind of voice you’d want giving you directions on Google maps, or to reading you a bedtime story. It’s warm, a little raspy, and vaguely familiar.
Since things are getting good now, I place the vibrator against me and put it on the lowest setting.
“Yes,” I whisper, adding a background to the fantasy. Looks like I’ve placed us in . . . a barn? There’s hay beneath us, but it isn’t itchy at all. It’s soft as linen, smelling of lavender and sunshine. I look down to see I’m wearing a purple plaid dress with ruffled sleeves.
He lifts the hem of my dress and runs his hand up my calf to the back of my thigh. His palms are rough and calloused, and I like the sensation of them brushing up against my soft skin. My skin is always soft here in this fantasy land. I wake up every morning glowing, radiant, and velvety smooth.
“You’re so soft,” he says. “But I bet you never even have to moisturize.”
“I do wear lotion,” I tell him. “But it’s from our magical goats with magical goat milk that leaves your skin glowing for years on end.”
He moves his hand up higher. “Can I touch you here?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, moving the vibrator up a level.
His fingers are deft, and I imagine he is one of those men who can effortlessly hop a fence or chop wood blindfolded. “I could touch you for hours,” he whispers into my ear.
I hear a rooster crow in the distance. “We have to leave soon,” I say. “No one can catch us up here.”
“A man can dream,” he says, adjusting the pressure of his fingers and leaning down to kiss my neck.
“I’m so close,” I moan.
“You can do this, you’ve got it,” he encourages.
I come with a gasp as I finally look to see the face of this fantasy wild west man I’ve created.
And there are Eli’s pretty, smiling eyes looking down at me.
5
Faye
My alarm wakesme up at 9:30, and in those first few moments of being awake I feel that deep sense of regret that can only be felt when you’re half asleep and questioning the life choices you made the night before. The wine, the fun list, the accidental Eli fantasy.
Oh, and telling Andrew that of course ten o’clock on a Saturday morning is a perfectly fine time to swing by.
I force myself to sit up, and then force myself to change clothes and put on a little makeup before he arrives. I’m nervous about seeing him again, and what memories might stir up because of it.
Andrew and I met our junior year in an Intro to Statistics class.
It was the first day of spring semester and I was uncharacteristically late—thanks to covering someone’s shift at my hostess job the night before. I barely woke up in time to throw on a pair of sweatpants and rush out the door.
I spotted a single seat available on the front row of the auditorium, which I hated because I preferred to sit in the middle with a full wall of students surrounding me. After wrangling out of my puffy winter coat while questioning my sanity for signing up for an eight a.m. class, I wedged myself in between a pale, dark-haired guy with glasses and a middle-aged woman knitting a chunky green scarf.
I took out my notebook and wrote the date at the top of the page.
“Do you need to borrow a pencil?”
It was the glasses guy.
“I’m sorry?”
He nodded toward the ballpoint pen poised in my hand and held his own pencil up in the air. It was a fancy silver mechanical one that probably cost more than I made in tips the night before. “Pretty brave to use a pen in this class.”
“Why do you say that?” I wasn’t too concerned because the first day of class was always general stuff, and I was lucky I had anything to write with at all. Did he think we were going to be diving into equations right away?
