AMOS
I was surprised to find her notebook on my desk on Monday morning.
It meant she had come back for it during the weekend and had probably come across my drawings.
I opened it up and laughed as I read the pages she’d sketched as a follow-up to mine.
Judging by the reaction from one of the characters, she wasn’t too pleased.
I didn’t know why I found the whole thing so amusing.
I wasn’t sure why I enjoyed teasing Lena so much.
Because you like her, a voice inside of me said.
Whenever I thought about the possibility of us together, it was immediately followed up by shame and guilt. Why couldn’t I seem to keep the thought of her away? Why couldn’t I just be happy to be with Olivia?
Why couldn’t I commit to my girlfriend, and why did I always seem to find myself thinking about the one woman who had pushed me away years ago?
Part of the problem was that I believed in kindred spirits.
I felt like Lena and I had many things in common. It wasn’t just work, and it wasn’t just that we knew, loved, and navigated the same world.
She and I both enjoyed being alone. It didn’t scare us or define who we were.
What had attracted me to Olivia in the beginning was the opposite. She was bubbly and cheerful, a caring friend who still called the girls from her sorority her sisters and meant it. She was a respectful daughter who loved her parents.
She was everything I was not.
When she’d entered my life, she’d felt warm like a ray of sunshine, but now I felt as if her light was blinding me, forcing her happy-go-lucky attitude to shine on every dark corner of my soul.
As I read Lena’s pages again, I knew I was lying to myself.
I knew that as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I wanted her.
Which meant there was only one thing to do.
I had to break up with Olivia.
I picked up a pencil and started drawing in the notebook again.
LENA
I avoided going by Amos’ desk that day, but at some point during the afternoon, my notebook was back on my desk, and it made me smile.
However frustrated I felt about him messing with my things, now I was kind of looking forward to sparring with him in comic form.
Also, I was dying to see how he would continue the story.
I sat down and was entirely too excited as I read through the four pages he’d sketched. I finished the panels I was supposed to complete for the day for Switch, and when I was done, I picked up my notebook again.
My Tinder match—Amos’ lookalike—texted me with the time and place he could meet me. I felt a pang of excitement, followed by a hollow feeling of sadness, because after all, I was going out with him on the basis that he looked like the person I was currently crushing on.
I couldn’t deny that I did feel a bit pathetic, but I tried to shrug it off as I sketched a few more vignettes in my notebook, smiling as I went along.
That was another thing that was incredibly weird about Amos: if he didn’t piss me off, he made me smile.
The man knew how to elicit strong emotions from me.
I left the notebook on my desk, hoping my colleague would come get it and pick up where I’d left off.
I turned my computer off right at five, which was really early for me, and went home to get ready for my date.
Having a date on a Monday night might sound insane to most, but it’s a proven strategy and it works every single time.
If you’re not having a good time and the guy is a bore, you can say you need to get home to get ready for work the next day: I have to pitch a new comic in the morning and need to get home! If the date isn’t bad and you go to his house for…dessert, you can sneak out as soon as you’re done, since it’s a Monday night and you have a long week ahead of you.
I had tested it over and over.
Monday dates worked. Plus, it also meant that the guy was interested enough and didn’t want to wait until the weekend to meet you.
Amos’ lookalike, whose name was Henry, was charming and had a great smile.
I got bored when he started bragging about working at Nike, as if that made him more special than the other five hundred thousand people Nike employed in Portland. Still, I decided to go along with it and be patient, because I really liked how he looked and the way he talked. He kept his hand on the small of my back the entire time, and he listened to me as if he really wanted to get to know me.
Too bad I didn’t feel the same.
After a couple of drinks at the first bar, we decided we liked each other enough to go to another bar. We started making out before they even brought us our first beer, as if we were the only two people in the entire place.
I decided I liked how he moved his tongue enough to find out how he moved other parts of his body, and we ended up drunkenly stumbling through his front door.
He lived in a cute, cottage-style house on Edison, by St. John’s Bridge. As much as I was impressed the guy had his shit together, in my head I was trying to calculate how much the Uber ride back to my apartment was going to cost.
Romance was definitely not my middle name.
However, Henry’s lips were divine, and I was up for discovering how good he was with the appendage between his legs.
He started undressing me slowly, his touch feather-like across my skin, and all of a sudden, I was imagining someone else’s hands.
You have it so bad, I told myself.
Henry pulled off my top, and then my bra. He cupped one of my breasts with his hand and I let out a sigh, imagining Amos’ hands touching me.
My drunken state helped. It was dark in Henry’s house, and despite the fact that his hair was short instead of long and unruly like Amos’, he fit the part quite well.
Until he spoke.
“You like that, huh? You’re so fucking sexy, Lena,” my Tinder lover whispered in my ear, breaking the enchantment I had been so focused on creating.
I kissed him to shut him up, wrapping my tongue around his eagerly, one hand cradling the back of his neck as the other fumbled with the belt of his jeans.
He helped me, unbuckling his pants and pushing his jeans down before going for mine. His hands reached inside my underwear, but his fingers were too forceful, as if he was trying to make me feel something just by rubbing his fingers all around.
His touch was all wrong.
He moved a finger in and out but completely bypassed my clitoris.
Amateur.
I immediately imagined a cartoon clitoris in my head, and it was sighing at Henry’s blatant neglect. He kept moving one finger in and out of me as if that alone was going to bring me over the brink of pleasure. Okay, this was the part I honestly and truly hated about hooking up—the part where you’re stuck with someone and you kind of have to soldier on, hoping he’ll finish fast and you’ll be able to get home soon.
I still wanted to have sex, but at that point, my expectations were low.
Very low.
Speaking of low, Henry pushed my jeans down and knelt in front of me to help me take them off. He hooked his fingers in my underwear and shoved them down to my ankles. He placed wet kisses right below my navel, and for a few seconds, my clit throbbed with anticipation at the thought of him parting my lips with his tongue.
Instead, he freed me from the rest of my clothes, stood up, and placed a kiss on my lips.
The cartoon clitoris in my head started weeping.
Henry laced his fingers with mine and led me to the bedroom.
I sighed, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.
AMOS
I went by her cubicle the next day. She wasn’t there. I considered leaving the notebook right then, but I wanted to give it to her in person this time, wanted to see how she’d react.
I walked by the lunch room and overheard her chatting with Violet.
They were both busy looking at her phone.
“So, how was last night? Was he as cute in person as he was online?”
She went out on a date. Jealousy sparked in my blood like a lightning bolt.
It’s none of your business, I told myself. She is not yours. You still have a girlfriend, dumb prick.
Lena made an incomprehensible noise.
“No…well, I take that back. He’s not despicable, but he wasn’t memorable, either. In fact, he was quite forgettable. He made my clitoris cry,” she said in a serious tone.
Violet laughed. “What do you mean? What did he do?”
“Let’s put it this way: he was a good kisser, but a lousy lover at best.”
“Oh, pity,” Violet replied.
“I know. My love life is messy like a Tove Lo song.”
“Your life is messy because you make it so,” Violet teased Lena.
“Oh well, it’s not like I have to see him again. Actually, it was good, because I got an idea and I need your help to convince Marty.”
“Errr, sure, I’ll see what I can do.”
“I want to pitch him some sort of informative comic to publish on our site.”
“Informative how?”
“Like sex-ed informative, kind of like those articles Teen Vogue publishes these days about knowing your clitoris and figuring out anal sex, that kind of stuff. I almost have the name down—it’s either Doris the Clitoris or Iris the Clitoris. I’m trying to figure out which one is better and sounds less like an old maid’s name.”
Violet was snort-laughing and from where I was standing, I could see her removing her glasses and wiping her tears away.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Violet replied, “it’s a great idea, but I’m not sure Marty will ever go for it.”
“Why not? He’s always looking for more ways to draw traffic to the site. I’m sure he talks about that kind of stuff in his sleep—and besides,” Lena said in a hushed tone, “I bet my ass one or two people around here could learn something from it.”
“You’re probably right about that.”
I entered the breakroom, and Violet spotted me right away.
“Hi, Amos,” she said, immediately glancing at Lena.
Lena turned around and stared at me. The blank look on her face turned into a smile as I handed her the notebook. I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen her smile like that before—maybe that night on campus, when we were dancing.
“Ahhh, we’re not tiptoeing around it anymore, are we now?”
“Guess not,” I replied, my smile as big as hers.
“I’ll get it back to you as soon as possible,” she said, waving the notebook in the air.
“Can’t wait,” I replied, biting my bottom lip. “By the way, I like Iris the Clitoris, and you’re right, that would increase traffic exponentially, but we would have to put an age restriction on it.”
Her smile got bigger, reaching her eyes.
“Noted,” she replied in an alluring tone.