Page 41 of Malliko
I groaned when the answer was screaming at me from the inside. She made me curious about what it would feel like to touch, taste, and feel her voluptuous body.
Don’t go there,I promised myself and muttered out loud, “She’ll hate you if you leave her the way Soros left Tania, and you don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Making a silent commitment to myself, I decided that the protection I had promised Clara would have to include protecting her from me as well.
CHAPTER 13
The Young Guys
Clara
It shouldn’t have surprised me, and yet it did.
As a paying member of the dating app, I was able to see what men liked my profile. The number of young men far surpassed any other age group.
Scrolling on my phone, I watched the selfies of young men with ripped bodies, often posing in front of mirrors in a gym. They were beautiful, tall, and sexy.
Several times, my thumb hovered on the accept button, but then I saw their age and stopped myself.
I couldn’t decide if I was flattered or disturbed by their interest in a woman my age. Some of these young men were still teenagers and only a few years older than my sons.
Another handsome face turned up on my screen and one more time I had to double-check that he had liked my profile. Clicking on his pictures, I felt my body react because even though he was nine years younger than me, the twenty-five-year-old on my screen looked like a younger version of Malliko.
This time, I couldn’t stop myself from accepting his request to match. Not that I would ever hook up with a twenty-five-year-old, but I was curious to see if he was the kind of guy who would ever write to me.
He won’t, I decided. Our research at work showed that men swiped right to three times as many profiles as women.
Continuing to scroll, I matched with a few men my own age and one who was five years older than me and had a picture of him doing a cartwheel. My stomach did a cartwheel of its ownwhen suddenly a message popped in from Malliko-junior who, according to his name on his profile, was Lucas.
Lucas: Hey, beautiful, thanks for matching with me. I was hoping you would.
He actually wrote to me. The confusion I felt made me go to my profile to watch my pictures again. It made no sense that someone as fit as him would be interested in a curvy woman like me. The answer came to me as a heavy brick crashing down on a fragile flower of hope.He's fake.
Doing a reverse image search, I scouted the internet expecting to find the picture stolen from some random model’s social media page. But no. I couldn’t find it and so I wrote back to the young man.
Clara:I’m a little surprised by your interest, with our age difference and all.
Lucas was quick to write me back.
Lucas:I’ve always been into women who are older than me. In my experience you are more mature, and you know what you want sexually.
It felt a little forbidden to be chatting with someone so different from what I would normally go for. Chewing on my lips, I pushed myself to be a little vulnerable and asked the question I couldn’t make sense of.
Clara: Shouldn’t you be with someone as fit as yourself? I’ve got a soft mom body and can’t live up to your good looks.
There, I said it. Closing my eyes, I felt a little stupid. Malliko and I had talked about me taking the opportunity to date people for the exploration of sex. This guy wasn’t boyfriend material.He was a sexual fantasy with the potential to come true and I’d just pushed him away with my self-sabotaging honesty.
Lucas:Ha ha… no. I’m not into gym girls. I’m into curvy milfs like you.
I stared at the screen. It had to be a joke. Straightening up a little, I couldn’t help but feel a little objectified and so I wrote.
Clara: Ah, I see. You watched too much milf porn and now you want to try it out, is that it?
In the vulnerable chaos of my mind, I had enough humor to see the ridiculous double standard of me feeling objectified when I had drooled over his tight abs.
What are you doing, Clara?I chastised myself because chatting with some young model wasn’t the plan at all. And still, I pressed to see his reply as soon as it ticked in.
Lucas:Maybe. But my attraction to mature women goes back as long as I can remember, and I’ve been with women older than you.
