Defeated, exhausted, and mildly horrified that I blew my cover on a mystery shop because I was arguing with Josh about which one of us was the bigger transgressor of Anterdec fraternization policies, I change into my flannel granny pajamas the second I walk in the apartment, stripping naked and leaving my clothes in a fabric puddle right by the front door.

There is a glorious freedom in walking around your own home naked, without anyone else in the house to see you or hit on you.

I make my way to the bedroom, pull out the well-worn pink flannel PJs with tiny yellow ducks all over them, and slip my feet into fuzzy fleece slippers.

By the time Andrew comes home, it’s after eleven o’clock and I am in bed, under the covers with a heated lavender rice sock buried near my feet and a half-eaten pile of Cheeto-marshmallow treats on a plate beside me.

Earbuds in, episode after episode of Shameless making me feel infinitely better about my screwed-up day.

He walks into the bedroom, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt, talking about something I can’t quite understand because until three seconds ago, I didn’t realize he was even speaking.

Frantically, I grope for the pause button, Cheeto pieces spilling between my breasts as they roll into the V of my pajama top.

“Wait – what?” I yank out an earbud. “Sorry. What did you say?”

He’s in the walk-in closet, his voice muffled. “I said, I got a very interesting call today from Inviajaa Industries.”

I wince. That’s the parent company of the medi-spa.

“Yeah? Um, can we talk about it later? I’m about to find out whether Frank will really stay dry this time and be a good father.”

He appears, completely naked, wearing nothing but a wry smile. “Spoiler: he never, ever does.”

“You don’t know that! The series isn’t over!” Yes, I’m stalling. Wouldn’t you? Plus, naked Andrew is a sight to behold. Let me pause for a moment and take in the majesty of his long, muscled body, peppered with hair in all the right places, strong thighs flexed as the day’s need for social convention falls away like his clothing. His waist is tight, hips carved by all those workouts with Vince, and his shoulders stretch wide, rolling muscle resting against bone as if ready for whatever challenge life throws his way.

Like my tongue.

“Amanda.” The way he stands, arms crossed over his chest, thighs tight, face amused, makes it clear he expects me to cough up an explanation. Which is kind of hard when my ears are ringing, my mouth fills with drool, and the last year disappears. In this exact moment, a remarkable sense of gratitude fills me. Without a doubt, Andrew is the hottest man I have ever dated, sharp and sweet, cunning and built.

He’s mine. Really mine.

That deserves a moment of silence and deep meditation, but instead, I jump to my own defense, squirrelly and nonplussed.

“You don’t know about Frank! Unless you’ve watched ahead.”

“I cheated and read the Wikipedia listings for the entire series.” His tongue rolls in his cheek, one eyebrow raised as if we’re playing poker and he’s upped the ante.

“What? Why would you do that? Why ruin the surprise?”

“It doesn’t ruin anything. And you’re deflecting.”

“When you stand there all naked and alluring, it’s hard to pay attention to whatever you’re saying.”

He smirks, looking down at his own rock-hard body as if it’s an afterthought. “Nice try. How was your day at the medi-spa?”

“Medi-spa? What medi-spa?”

Playing innocent works, right? Sometimes. Maybe. Kinda.

He frowns.

Okay. Not this time.

“You blew your cover. You never blow your cover, Amanda. What happened?”

“Josh said something about working for Anterdec.”

“Why was Josh there? He hates mystery shopping.”

“They had some services there he wanted to try. Plus, he’s working on expanding his penis – er, his skills. Expanding his skills so he’ll be in a better position to be promoted.”

“He’s really pulling his weight.”

“More than you could ever imagine,” I say tightly.

Andrew’s eyes narrow, taking me in. “You look comfortable.”

“I look like a slob.” We’ve been together just long enough that I let him see me like this. In those first few months after I moved in, I’d wake up and go to the bathroom before his alarm went off, brushing my teeth and washing up. Sex was an every morning event back then.

Still is.

One morning he caught me. We kissed. The dragon living in my mouth didn’t kill him. Ever since, we’ve chipped away at the domestic relaxation that all those women’s magazines say takes place naturally. Dirty socks on the floor. Period sex. Strange noises from body parts. You know.

Cheetos crumbs in bed after you blow your cover and potentially sabotage a major corporate division’s investments.

“You look beautiful.” He’s sizing me up. Not my beauty.

My mood.

You know what he’s doing. Every guy does it. They’re evolutionarily primed to be hunters, right? He’s scanning the African grasslands for prey.

Note to self: are my grasslands neatly trimmed? When did the Serengeti last have fresh water in the watering hole?

All guys do it. I’ve never lived with a guy before, so I have no basis for comparison, but I don’t need any. Andrew is feeling me out. Sex or no sex?

Deal or no deal?

He climbs into bed, pulling back the covers and sliding those muscular legs between the sheets, propped up by pillows. We both keep books on our nightstands, but hardly ever read for pleasure these days.

The day’s flurry of non-stop weirdness infects my imagination.

I pull back the covers and take a good long look at his naked penis. Like every other penis I’ve ever seen, it’s flesh-toned. It has veins. It’s various shades of skin, depending on the part. There are testicles inside a scrotum. One ball rests on his upper thigh, slightly uneven compared to the other.

Suddenly my different-size breasts don’t feel so lonely.

A shadow covers the light behind me, and then the heat of Andrew’s chest radiates to my shoulder.

“Excuse me,” he says, his voice soft and amused. “Enjoying the view?” I take in the contoured edge of his strong thighs, muscles swelling as the tendons stand out in contrast with the carved, hard lines of his legs. His waist is tight, hips textured with the little indents that make touching him so pleasing. He’s tall and stretched out, sitting up slightly, a feast for the eyes.

“I’m looking at your penis.”

“I noticed. Like what you see?”

I say nothing, concentrating. As the whole of his nude body comes into focus, I feel an intense sense of connectivity, like separate bolts of electricity all joining together to form a large fireball of synergy, blood heating up, the sense of separation between my body and his fading.

Seconds tick by. He shifts slightly, the angle changing.

I would have given him a C3 until he moved. Now I might have to say C4.

“Amanda?”

“Yes?”

“While you’re welcome to look at my naked body anytime – on demand, in fact – I’m curious. Why the sudden attention?”

“I’m rating your penis.”

“Rating?”

“Yes.”

“On a scale? You want to know how much it weighs?”

“Not weighing. Rating.”

“I heard you.” His amusement deepens. “What’s the rating scale?”

“C1 to C10.”

“You’re seeing ten now.” His penis perks up at the mention of its name, and the foreskin stretches to about a C2. I make an involuntary sound of horror. Josh and his stupid, stupid body modification fetish have invaded my bedroom.

And yet I can’t help myself.

“No, no. It’s a rating system to determine where your foreskin rests on the continuum.”

“There is a foreskin continuum?”

“Yes.”

“I’m circumcised.”

“I noticed.” You and every other guy I know, I don’t add. Circumcision rates for guys born in the 1980s in the U.S. were around sixty to sixty-five percent. When you have a mom like Pam, you find your mind searching for data to fill in concepts. Until Josh mentioned tugging I’d never thought about it.

Now I can’t stop thinking about penises.

Andrew’s, in particular.

“And you learned about this foreskin continuum where?”

“At the medi-spa mystery shop today.”

“The medi-spa does circumcisions?”

“God, no. The opposite.”

He crosses his legs, penis hanging out above where his thighs meet, like a compliant lap dog. “What is the opposite of a circumcision?”

“They restore your foreskin.”

His penis visibly shrinks at my words.

“Wow,” I marvel aloud. “You just totally went from a C2 to a C4 right before my eyes.” I poke the turtleneck. Three pokes and he’s back to C2. Hmmm. It’s like coefficients of linear expansion in seventh-grade science class, but instead of watching how heat expands metal rods, I get to watch how my touch expands...a different rod.

“Let me get this straight. You’re not looking at my merchandise because you want to have sex with me. You’re checking it out to grade it?” His arms go slack, resting next to his ribs and hips, palms turned up. Thick veins run the corridor from shoulder socket to wrist bones, rolling muscles making his arms like flesh hills of Ireland. On and on they curve and flow, leading to the tributaries of fingers at the ends.

Said fingers move to point to his rod.

“I never said I didn’t want sex.”

He perks up, belly curling in slightly, all those core muscles acting in a chain of movement that forces my palm to flatten against his navel.

Just because. Displays of beauty like this cannot go untouched.

“Do you miss your foreskin?” I ask, inexplicably sad for a moment, taking in the whole of him.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you miss it?”

“How can I miss something I’ve never had?”

I peer closer. He shifts slightly.

And then --

“Hey! Stop that!” I admonish.

“Stop what?”

“Growing! I can’t figure out which C you are if you keep letting it do that.”

“I don’t really have much choice when you sit that close to it. I can feel your warm breath tickling the tip. It’s suggestive. Promising.” A vocal sound of encouragement punctuates his words.

I blow lightly, like trying to fog a mirror on purpose.

From C4 to C1 in seconds.

“Andrew! This is serious.”

“I’m always serious when it comes to my penis. If you don’t want it to grow, quit doing that.”

I back away.

“You don’t have to stop unless you want to!” he quickly adds. “But what the hell is this foreskin restoration business?”

“Josh is a tugger.”

“Tugger?”

“Google it sometime. We went to the medi-spa today to evaluate some of the services, to see if we should add them to the O Spa chain. Josh said tuggers are trying to restore their foreskins, and it got me thinking about yours.”

“Uh...thanks?”

“If you stretch it,” I explain, reaching down for emphasis, “and do it for long enough, you can basically re-create your foreskin.”

“If you keep doing that, you’ll re-create my lunch break.”

I halt. “Lunch break?”

He gives me a half-sheepish grin. “It’s been two days since we last had sex. I caught you bending over to grab some blank paper at the copier and you were off to a meeting, so...”

“You masturbate in your office?”

“God, no.” He’s scandalized by the suggestion.

“Good.”

“I would never do it in my office!”

“Okay. I heard you.”

“I do it in my office bathroom.”

“Wait a minute. Hold on. I spent my day being chased by paparazzi, listening to Josh talk endlessly about his penis project, pictures of my uneven breasts and nose job made their way online, Perez Hilton thinks I want you to get Scrotox for the wedding ceremony -- ”

His hand goes up. “Scrotox?” I look down.

C5.

I nod, too wound up to stop. “They’re accusing me of being scrotoxic! Can you believe that?”

“If I knew what ‘scrotoxic’ meant, I’d -- ” He studies me carefully. “I’d fully agree with however you feel about it.”

“And I come home to find out you whack off to thoughts of me bending over at the copy machine – and you do it in your office bathroom?”

“Sometimes in my storage closet.”

“I don’t even know you!”

“Yes, you do.” He moves my hand so that I begin stroking him. “With or without a foreskin, that’s nice.” He stops. “Do you really want me to restore my foreskin?”

“Are you willing to put a ring clamp on what’s left and stretch it over the glans?”

“No. And in case I’m not being clear enough, hell no.”

“Wear a g-string with an elephant trunk covering your penis, attached to a harness on your knee, so the cone that protects your glans doesn’t accidentally fall out of your pant leg?”

Speechless. I’ve left him speechless. Andrew grabs the sheet and covers his lower half, tucking the edges under his ass.

“On a scale of C1 to C10, how important is this to you?” That’s his negotiating voice. The one he brings out when he’s already decided the answer is no. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“I never joke about your penis.”

“You also never lie.”

He reaches for the top button of my pajama shirt, brushing little orange crumbs off to the side. Those strong, smooth fingers release the first button, then the second, a small smile tickling his lips.

I look down. “What are you doing?”

“Unbuttoning your top.”

“I can see that. But we’re in the middle of a conversation, and this is very distracting.”

“Good.” He continues.

“Why?”

“Because you have too many clothes on.”

“I’m wearing pajamas. In bed. You know, where you’re supposed to wear pajamas?”

“Not in my bed. You’re a C10.”

I sputter. “I’m what?”

“C1 to C10 is the scale, right? And C10 means full coverage. Under my interpretation of your scale, I need to get you from C10 to C1.”

“I’m not a penis!”

“No. You’re even better. A naked woman in my bed.” Wiggling his foot, he finds my feet. “And one who already warmed up her toes. No icicles between my thighs tonight.”

“You told me it’s fine to put my cold feet there when I crawl into bed.”

He continues unbuttoning my top until both sides slide open.

“There is an enormous difference between ‘fine’ and ‘pleasurable.’”

I look between his legs. “There most certainly is.”

Before I can say another word, he’s on top of me, hands holding my wrists above my head, mouth kissing mine, licking a sudden trail to my breast and dipping to each nipple for a taste.

“Tugger, huh?” he whispers, blowing lightly on my wet areola, making my nipple tighten. “Hey, if a guy wants to restore his foreskin, more power to him. No judgment from me. We all have to be happy with our bodies. But I have no interest in changing anything about my junk.”

“Your junk is fine.”

“Mmmm, not good enough.” He bites my nipple, just hard enough to send electricity down between my legs, making me moan.

“It’s more than fine!” I gasp.

“How much more? On a scale from 1 to 10.”

“Eleven!”

“That’s my girl.” Pulling back, he sits up, reaching for the waistband of my oversized flannel pajama pants, stripping them off me with ease. Then he stops, reaches for the lamp, and turns it on a brighter setting.

“What are you doing?”

He stares openly at my breasts for longer than I’m accustomed to. There’s a decidedly evaluative quality to his attentions.

Finally, he says, “Perez and TMZ are wrong. They’re not that uneven.”

For that, he gets a pillow in the face.

I scramble up to the headboard, shouting, “You did see the news!”

“Your breasts and nose are trending on Facebook. Our PR division sent me a report.”

“My breasts and nose have their own report? That’s insane!”

“You underestimate the importance of your breasts in the world.”

“Did the gossip sites mention anything else?”

“They called Marie your grandmother.”

I groan. It’s a combination of realizing Andrew knows everything, so there’s no hope of hiding any of what happened today from him, and also that thing he’s doing to me with his thumb.

“And the elephant trunk they photoshopped on my package was hilarious.”

“How can you laugh about this?”

“What else am I supposed to do? Put you under house arrest? Keep you confined to a compound?”

“That’s starting to look increasingly appealing. Just make sure my sister wives are nice.”

He does a double take. “Is – is that an option?”

I shove him off the bed. Just as he pitches backward, though, he grabs me by the waist and we roll off together, landing with a soft thump, all our naked parts rubbing against each other in a maddeningly delightful way.

“You’re such an ass,” I say, pelting him with my fists.

He squeezes mine. “Mmmm, ass.”

“Andrew! I’m serious!”

“So am I. I’m always serious about admiring your ass.” His kiss stops me from yelling at him. Something has to. We’re on the floor now, half the bedspread stretched at an odd angle, our bodies pinning it to the ground while Andrew cups my face with both his hands, fingers buried in my hair, his kiss wet and wild and taking me out of my head and into my skin.

Where I belong.

We’re breathing hard, shifting out of the head space where we talk to communicate. More than anything else, what I need now is him – naked, open, raw, and real. My day fell apart in a seemingly endless chain of misunderstandings and mistakes that snowballed, leading to being used yet again as a tool for someone else’s gain.

In his arms, I’m treasured. No one exploits me. I’m not critiqued and mocked, measured and judged, found wanting or made fun of.

And I certainly am not used to make money.

All of those accumulated ego assaults wash away like I’m being bathed in the holy water of his attentions, cleansed by kisses and touches, each one making us purer and purer. Returning to baseline with his chest against mine, his warm hands grab my hips and ass with the hands of a man who knows what he possesses. I find myself in a very rare place.

“I don’t want to think,” I tell him. “I don’t want to worry or plan. I don’t want to track every little detail and emotion in every person I see. I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t want to think five steps ahead, or focus on the future and plan backwards. I just want to let it all go and be with you. Really be with you, fully present. I just need to be here. Now. And only now. With you.”

Handsome, listening eyes meet mine, perceptive and warm. Instead of saying whatever he thinks I want to hear, he kisses me harder.

I’m on my back, the valley between my breasts nice and wide, chest rising and falling hard as I come down to normal after that. My heart feels like it’s drag racing in my chest and my belly curls in, pushing my ribs to full expansion as my body radiates with a singularity that has never happened before.

He sits up on one arm, looks at my breasts, then meets my eyes.

“They’re uneven. So is Mona Lisa’s smile. Both are beautiful works of art.”

And then he kisses each breast lightly on the nipple before I try to smother him with my pillow.