Things were falling apart.
They were doing it in an orderly fashion, following the goddamn story arc like they were supposed to, but in no way was the conclusion coming together like I’d planned.
First, I’d thought if I fucked Reed that my need to want to fuck him would go away.
But I had fucked him.
And I still wanted to fuck him. Again. And again. And again. Although, I doubt it could still be considered just fucking when I liked him as much as I did. I was starting to agree with him, for fuck’s sake.
As a means to combat these very uncomfortable feelings, I’d had the brilliant plan to play a little game of show-and-tell with no verbal telling whatsoever. I’d just shown him how well-versed I was in the act of masturbation in the name of proving to him that sex really could be just sex. I’d thought it would make me feel better. I would be victorious. And I wouldn’t want to cuddle and gab like a couple of lovesick fools after sliding down his body like a fire pole.
So, I had diddled and I’d strummed and I’d finger-fucked myself in front of him. Unfortunately, the instant the waves of my climax had subsided, my plan went up in forest fire-sized flames. I’d put on a good face, put my clothes back on, and headed home, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d looked—fucking enraptured as he watched my exhibition with hooded, heated eyes. The way his breath had caught as my hips swayed and my fingers slid down past my belly. Mostly, the way his electric gaze hadn’t objectified me but took me in, savored, appreciated. I’d never felt the way Reed made me feel—not even close.
And now, I was still thinking about him while doing laundry in the basement of my apartment complex.
I was starting to see a theme.
I couldn’t fuck or finger-bang him out of my head. Not to mention, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around his words: “That was our most emotional experience yet.”
I tossed a purple bra into the designated “colors” basket and leaned a hip against the washer. My gaze might have been scanning down the rows of washers and dryers, but my mind was fixated on trying to dissect his words.
Our most emotional experience yet?
I mean…we hadn’t had sex. Hell, he’d stayed completely dressed and just watched my little show from his desk chair.
At your command, my mind reminded me. I told it to shut up.
I might as well have been alone in my apartment. It was merely a one-woman show that just so happened to have an audience…Right?
Once my laundry was successfully separated, I poured detergent into the washer and filled it with a load of whites. I slid my laundry card into the machine, adjusted the settings, and hit the start button.
I focused my mind on the simple task of filling three more washers with my dirty clothes. This was why it was brilliant to do laundry at midnight. No one else was down here, and I could hog four washers at one time without getting the stink-eye from the other tenants in my building.
I stacked my empty baskets and set them on the ground, and just as the sounds of whooshing waterfalls filled the room, Reed seeped back into my brain.
Goddammit.
That was it. I refused to beat my head against the wall trying to understand what the fuck he meant. I slid my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and angrily typed out a text. My finger hit send a minute later.
Me: Our most emotional experience yet? I call bullshit. The only emotion I felt was happiness, and that was because I was literally pleasuring myself to climax.
I didn’t even have time to put my phone back into my pocket. The screen lit up with a notification of his response a mere minute later. I leaned against the washers and crossed my feet at the ankles. I had a feeling I might as well settle in for the circle of crazy conservation I had just unleashed on myself.
Reed: 24 hours. I’m impressed.
My face scrunched up on its own accord. Impressed? What in the hell was that supposed to mean? And did he always have to talk in existential riddles? I wasn’t even good at the Sunday morning crossword in the New York Times. Riddles weren’t my thing. And Reed’s Riddles might as well have been a mental Rubik’s Cube.
Side note: I really suck at Rubik’s Cubes, too.
Me: Huh?
Reed: I thought it would take you at least 36 hours before you graced me with your opinion.
I rolled my eyes. I did that a lot when it came to him. If I weren’t careful, he would push my already bad eyes to blindness.
Me: That wasn’t our most emotional experience. There was no “our” in that experience. It was just me. Getting myself off.
Reed: In front of me.
I started to type out a sarcastic retort, but the bubbles started to move across the screen and then another text came through.
Reed: You were bared, exposed, so beautifully vulnerable…
Reed: In. Front. Of. Me.
Well, fuck. When he put it like that…
Reed: Last night WAS the most intimate moment we’ve shared together.
Me: No, it wasn’t.
The instant I sent the reply I felt doubt creep into my throat, sitting there like a rock, and there was no amount of swallowing that could make it vanish.
Reed: You trusted me, LoLo. You trusted me to watch you in a very intimate and vulnerable moment, and you did this, trusting that I would watch you without judgment.
And do you want to know what I saw?
Say no. Say no. Say no.
Me: What?
Obviously, I had zero willpower when it came to him.
Reed: I saw a devastatingly beautiful woman pleasuring herself. And even though, on the surface, it might have just seemed like sex, it wasn’t. That insanely gorgeous woman shared a very emotional and intimate moment with me. The kind of moment I bet she’s never shared with anyone.
Reed: Thank you, Lola.
Did he just thank me? For masturbating in front of him?
And more importantly, was he right? Was last night more than just sex?
I replayed the night in my head. The way I’d taken a deep breath and calmed my nerves before I’d found the courage to lose myself to the music, to the moment. The way my heart beat like a hummingbird’s wing inside my chest as I removed my clothes. The way I had felt like my stomach was about to fall to the floor as I started to touch myself while he watched…
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Last night wasn’t just sex.
Goddammit, why is the conclusion always that he’s fucking right?
I opened the message box and started to type out a response.
Me: You’re right.
Delete.
Me: I still hate you.
Liar. Delete.
Me: I think I’m falling for you.
Holy hell. Delete. Delete. Delete.
My Converse tapped across the tile floor in synchronized steps. Back and forth, I paced inside the laundry room. I had no idea how to respond to him. The last six words I had typed—and then deleted—had freaked me out. They made me feel a bit too vulnerable, too exposed, just too much.
Kind of like how you felt last night…
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I glanced at the washers and noted there were only five minutes left until they were finished. Instead of pacing a hole into the tile, I decided to sit outside the laundry room, in the little seating area for tenants to hang out and watch TV.
I plopped my ass down in a leather chair, and with the remote in hand, I started scrolling through the channels. Once Phoebe and Rachel filled the screen, I tried to turn my racing thoughts off and enjoy an episode of Friends.
But my brain had signed up for a marathon and had no intentions of slowing down. Not even to laugh at Chandler’s frequent sarcastic quips or Monica’s OCD. A few minutes later, my phone was back in my hand and my gaze fixated on the text conversation with Reed.
“Oh, I didn’t even see you there.”
The unfamiliar voice had my eyes moving upward until they reached the face of a guy I had never met in my life. He sat down in the chair beside mine, and right off the bat, introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Jon.”
I just nodded and offered a halfhearted smile. Normally, I would’ve done the polite thing of introducing myself, but I wasn’t in the mood. Small talk with some random guy outside the laundry room of my building felt as appealing as writing a column that told the world I, Lola Sexton, thought Reed Luca’s existential outlook on sex, dating, and relationships was pretty fucking spot-on.
“I’m from out of town,” he said with a smile. “Wyoming.”
“Cool.” Why was he still talking?
“I’m staying with a friend,” he continued on. “I was the designated driver for the night, and everyone else is upstairs passed out.”
Either Jon wasn’t too good at reading social cues, or he didn’t care.
He slid his phone out of his pocket and appeared to have found something to busy himself with that didn’t include talking my unwilling ear off.
I internally sighed in relief.
“Tonight is my last night here.” He glanced up from his phone. “I just really want to find something fun to do.”
Obviously, I had jumped the gun. This guy’s words washed the relief right out to sea.
“Well, Jon, there’s really nothing fun to do on a Monday night.” I humored him with a response.
“I just want to make my last night in San Francisco memorable.”
Memorable?
Instantly, I had the urge to giggle, but I stayed strong, swallowing it down and forcing a neutral expression on my face.
He tapped and swiped his fingers across the screen of his phone, and I offered up a silent prayer that he’d managed to occupy himself with Candy Crush or Pokémon Go.
“I’ve been swiping right on everything on Tinder,” he admitted out loud and then looked at my phone and back up at me. “Are you on Tinder?”
Sweet baby kittens. He wasn’t trying to catch Pikachu; he was looking for a Tinder-bone.
The absurdity of the situation caught up with me, and it was a domino effect after that. One snort turned into two, and then the laughter burst from my lungs, on a mission to fill this guy’s ears with the soundtrack of my amusement.
With staccato gulps, track one merged into track two, and my album of laughs reached showstopping sound levels. I legitimately couldn’t stop. No longer little giggles, I was full-on clutching my stomach with howling laughs.
Every time I thought about his words, I laughed harder. And as tears streamed down my cheeks, Jon just sat there, helplessly witnessing my possession of hilarity.
“Why is that funny?” he asked, a self-conscious smile cresting his lips.
Shit. Instantly realizing my laughter had gone on for far too long, I started to feel like a certified asshole. As my guffaws weaned and slowed, awkwardness started to set in. I didn’t have a clue how to answer his question and maintain his dignity at the same time.
I looked at Jon and Jon looked at me, and I did the only thing that came to mind. I reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for that, Johnny boy. Thanks for making my night memorable.”
Johnny boy? Holy hell. I’d just made the situation worse.
My flight response kicked in, and the need to extract myself from the room was too strong to ignore. I hopped up off the chair, bypassed the elevator, and all but sprinted toward the stairs. Once I was safely inside my apartment, I leaned my back against the door, and my head hit the wood with a quiet thud. I savored the sweet relief of silence, but it only lasted briefly.
My fucking laundry was still downstairs.
Son of a bitch. I could not go back down there.
But sweet baby Jesus, it was literally laundry day. Unless I wanted to start wearing period panties from high school—let’s not deny that we all have them—I needed to get my awkward ass back downstairs.
I paced the living room, and Louie looked on from his fish bowl.
“Now what do I do, dude? I can’t go back down there.”
Blup. Blup. Yeah, he gave zero fucks about my laundry debacle.
I needed a disguise.
Sunglasses and a baseball cap? Not discreet enough.
The penguin costume from three Halloweens ago? Yeah. I’m sure that wouldn’t be weird at all—leaving Johnny boy high and dry and coming back down in a giant black-and-white footie-d suit.
While I was trying to figure out if I needed to revisit the sunglasses and hat idea, my phone vibrated in my hand, and I glanced down to find another text from Reed.
Reed: Shall I assume you need another 24 hours?
I needed a ninja. That’s what I fucking needed. I’d left a breadcrumb trail of awkward from the basement, up the stairs, and into my apartment, and I didn’t have a clue how to avoid it.
Me: I was in the middle of doing laundry. That’s why I hadn’t responded yet.
Reed: Liar.
Pfffft. That was fresh coming from the king of lies.
Me: Like you should talk.
Reed: There’s a time and place for playful lies, LoLo. I would never lie to you about something like this.
Well, shit. When he put it like that, I felt kind of bad about my disappearance from our text conversation. Instead of beating around the bush, I settled for point-blank honesty.
Me: I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say.
Reed: Are you still doing laundry?
Me: Well, I should be, but I can’t go back downstairs right now.
Reed: Why not?
Me: I just had a really weird conversation with some random guy while I was waiting for the washers to finish. He told me, “I’ve been swiping right on everything on Tinder.” And then followed that up with. “Are you on Tinder?” I started laughing like a lunatic, and well, it was just a lot of awkward, and now I can’t go back down there.
Reed: LOL. Well…at least he was being honest about his intentions. He deserves some credit for that.
He had a point.
He always has a fucking point. God, he’s an asshole.
Jon was looking for a one-night stand, and he wasn’t putting up pretenses to find it. He wanted sex. And he’d made it very apparent that was all he wanted. Albeit, it was really fucking strange and turned me into a crazy person, but there was definitely something to applaud in his upfront approach.
Me: Are you busy?
Reed: Nope. Would you like me to come over and serve as a buffer if Tinder guy is still downstairs so you can finish laundry?
Oh, boy. It was the best idea I’d heard all day. I probably shouldn’t have been smiling so goddamn much about it, though. I was a few centimeters away from splitting my cheeks open.
Me: YES. PLEASE.
Reed: All right, Roller Skates. Give me 30 and I’ll be there.
Me: THANK YOU!!!
Reed never failed to surprise or amaze me.
And I could no longer deny I was a fan.
The surprises.
The amazement.
Reed.
Huge. Fan.
“Banana?” Reed grinned and held up one of my tank tops that showcased a picture of my favorite yellow fruit.
“I really like bananas.” I shrugged, and from my perch on the dryer, continued to swing my legs back and forth. “And like you should talk, Reed ate waffles.”
“For your information, yesterday Reed ate French fries.”
I giggled and opened the pack of Twizzlers I had snagged from the vending machine. After peeling one away from the bunch, I took a bite and continued to watch lazily as Reed folded my clothes one-by-one as he took them out of the dryer.
“I guess I’m not just a buffer, huh?” he teased.
“Nope,” I said through a mouthful of strawberry goodness. “I really need to invite you over to do laundry more often.”
He chuckled softly and put the last of my freshly folded laundry into my basket.
“What time is it?”
My eyes trailed to the screen of my phone near my hip. “Two a.m.,” I answered, and when I looked up, Reed had relocated to across the room. I tilted my head to the side as I watched him shut the door to the laundry room. The click of the lock reverberated inside the otherwise silent room.
“What are you doing?”
Nothing but heart-pounding, silent anticipation filled the room as he strode back toward me. His eyes searched mine as his hands gripped my thighs, spreading them apart, and he moved his body between my legs.
My thoughts wandered from innocent curiosity to something that bordered on erotic and obscene. Oh, hell, who was I kidding? My head flying back as he sank inside me, sweaty, heated breaths, and a dirty gif of my fingernails scratching the smooth skin of his back—erotic and obscene was the only language my mind spoke at the moment.
“What are you thinking about, Roller Skates?”
“What are you thinking about?” I tossed back.
He smirked and put his lips to my ear. “About how tomorrow, my shirt is going to need to say Reed ate Lola.”
A weird noise escaped my throat—equal parts gasp and moan. My body both loved and felt shocked by his forwardness.
He kissed one side of my face and then the other. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“Something along those lines,” I whispered.
He brushed his lips against mine, teasing, caressing, just gently enough to spur goose bumps on my skin. “Is that so?”
Done dancing around the fact that I wanted exactly what he wanted, I pressed my mouth to his and slid my tongue past his lips. He responded with fervor, kissing me deep and gripping my ass with his hands. He was already hard and ready and pressed right against where I ached and throbbed for him.
My breathing grew needy and ragged when the kiss went on for too long and started to serve as some sort of delicious torture, building my desire to feel him. All of him. I gripped the edge of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head. His jeans were unbuttoned and unzipped, and his cock was in my hands moments later.
I stared down at what he looked like while I stroked my hand up and down the length of him. I was mesmerized by his size…his feel—soft like velvet and hard as stone—but I wanted his taste. My thumb slid over the tip of his cock, and I brought it to my mouth, sliding it past my lips until the sweet yet salty taste of Reed tickled my taste buds.
A husky groan fell from his lips, his chest vibrating, and my thighs clenched in response.
He pulled me off of the dryer, fingertips clenching into the skin of my hips, and set my ass down on the folding table in the middle of the room.
I watched in anticipation, breathing shaky, as he unbuttoned my jeans. Easing the way, l lifted my hips as he slowly slid them and my panties down my body. His hands gripped my thighs again, and he spread my legs, baring me completely to his heated gaze.
His groan of approval made my heart beat faster as he gently slid his index finger inside of me and found me wet with need. “You’re so beautiful, LoLo.”
“So are you,” I whispered, and I meant it.
I’d never met a more beautiful man than Reed—and I wasn’t just talking about his outward appearance. His soul drew me in. The world wasn’t the same through his eyes, and judgment was something best left to God. Every experience was worthy of at least one try, and he’d never met a stranger. He was beautiful. Everything about him.
“I want you,” I whispered.
“I want you, too.” He pulled a condom out of his back pocket and slid it down the length of him, his lips teasing mine.
I felt drunk trying to concentrate on everything at once.
“Watch, Lo. Watch me slide inside you.”
Defiance wasn’t even an option. Slowly, inch by inch, he pushed himself inside me, and I didn’t stop staring, couldn’t stop watching, even when he was pushed to the hilt.
His hand slid up my neck until his fingers reached my chin, lifting my gaze to his. Our eyes stayed locked as Reed moved in and out, bleeding himself into me with every stroke. He wasn’t hurried or harsh, and the intimate connection far superseded our physical joining. There was a current from him that flowed into me, and when it came back out the other side, mine had joined it to form an us.
I could feel everything—his long fingers gripping my thighs, the warmth of his breath brushing across my skin, the way my heart pounded inside my chest. My thighs clenched as I struggled to find air, but I was rooted there, stuck in his blue gaze.
This was the most intimate encounter I had ever experienced in my life. Every time we’d come together had been something, but now, finally free of my own persecutions and judgments, my own avoidance and denial, this felt real.
“This isn’t just sex, is it?” I asked on a whisper before editing my question into a statement. “This isn’t just some random fuck in a public place.”
He shook his head. “Never. Not with you.”
As he thrust inside of me with an intensity that matched his words, it was all I could do to wrap my legs around his waist and bury my face in his neck.
“This is everything,” I whispered into his skin, a rush of emotion clogging my throat and my pores and fighting to escape.
His eyes met mine again, and his hands came to my jaw. I softly pressed my lips to his.
“I don’t hate you,” I said against his mouth, and he smiled against my lips.
One soft piece of hair felt cold against the back of my ear as he tucked it there. “I know.”
Our eyes stayed locked, and I searched his endless gaze. To the bottom of his ocean and back, inside those depths of blue, I found only trust and tenderness and affection. A great deal of affection.
Maybe even the same thing I figured lingered under the surface of my own eyes—love.
Something had changed between us.
And I didn’t want to go back.
Around him, I felt good and strong and like everything someone had once suggested about me was wrong, was right.
For the first time in my thirty-two years, Reed made me feel like a woman.