During their second conversation, they relived their middle- and high-school dating fiascos. Until she was snort-laughing.
“I can top that,” she said, when she caught her breath.
“Cannot,” he said. “I put my smutty love note in the wrong locker, but not just any wrong locker: the wrong locker belonging to a girl who actually had a crush on me. I defy you to top that.”
“I broke up with my boyfriend at the beginning of senior year. And the high school psychologist found me and took me aside and asked me to get back together with him because I was going to hurt his chances of getting into his first-choice college.”
“You made that up.”
“Swear to God, it’s true. I was standing next to my friend Sia at the time, and if you need corroboration, I’ll have her email you.”
“That’s … that’s—there are no words. What did you say to him?”
“I was totally flummoxed. I stammered something and slunk away.”
“Did you report him?”
“I did, but nothing happened. He’s probably still there, getting himself overly involved in seventeen-year-olds’ romantic lives.” She shuddered.
“Did you get back together with your boyfriend?”
“No. But he did get into his first-choice college. And I did email the school psychologist to point that out.”
He laughed. “You’re not scared of anything, are you?” No reason that should please her so much.
No reason at all. “I’m scared of some things.”
She was scared of making the same mistake she’d made with Henry. Of hanging on too long, trusting too much, expecting enough that she could be knocked down a notch.
“Not many, though, right?”
She was scared of the tenuousness of their connection, their voices floating through the ether, linked only by a series of cell towers. He might decide not to take her calls, not to lie awake with her at night, not to laugh at her stories or admire the things about her she loved best.
It was a good kind of fear, something like how she imagined it might feel to hang-glide in the dark.
“Not many,” she agreed.
During their third conversation, they talked about the cities they loved. Nora had lived in more—a different one every two or three years since graduating from college, partly because most schools had a last-hired/first-fired policy that had made it hard for her to sustain jobs, but also because she loved the thrill of a new place and new people. Miles had lived in the Cleveland area for almost a decade, but his work for the nonprofit had taken him all over the country.
“What’s your favorite?” he wanted to know.
“I don’t have a favorite.”
“How can you not have a favorite?”
“I just don’t. Wherever I am, that’s my favorite.”
“I’m not sure you’re for real,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said. “They stuck electrodes in your brain at that New Year’s Eve party, and I’m computer programmed to implant sense data in your head to make you think I’m a real person.”
“It’s a very convincing computer program. And whoever programmed it knew how to keep me coming back for more.”
His words sparked along her nerves, but she kept it light. “The electrodes tell us your likes and dislikes, and the program reacts rapidly to create new scenarios that are pleasing to you. It’s working?”
“It’s working,” he confirmed.
She lay back on the couch so his voice, a purr, could twine itself around her and she could luxuriate in the sensation of it.
“Do you seriously not have a favorite city?” he asked.
“They all have people in them,” she said. “I like people.”
“A favorite restaurant, then.”
She had to think about it. There were so many good ones. It wasn’t a lot easier than picking her favorite city. “Wild Ginger in Seattle.”
“Pan-Asian, technically, I think. What about you? Do you have a favorite?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Sally’s Apizza in New Haven, Connecticut. It’s this little hole in the wall that hasn’t changed in fifty years, but it has the best clam pizza on earth. I’m not exaggerating. We’ll go there sometime.”
“Did you just ask me on a date?”
“Uh-huh. I did.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m looking up flights right now.”
“You are not.”
“I am. I can meet you there in—okay, wait a second. Damn. The ticket is five hundred dollars.”
“That’s a little pricey.”
“Okay, yeah, not in the budget. But sometime. Sometime I’m taking you to Sally’s.”
She let it feel like a promise, lodged warm and snug in her chest.
During their fourth conversation, he asked her to send him some photos of herself. He sent her some of himself. He was grinning in most of them.
“You smile a lot.”
“I guess I used to,” he said.
“Are you more serious now for some reason?”
“I guess I am.”
She hesitated, on the edge of asking him why. She felt she knew him well, but not that well. Not quite.
“You smile a lot, too,” he said.
“I do.”
“Are you smiling now?”
“Yeah.”
She’d been smiling almost constantly since Owen had found her on Twitter.
“Nora?”
The way he said it made her hopeful. Wary. “What?”
“I wish you were here. Right now.” His voice was all rough edges.
Her face got hot. Her hands, too. Actually, she was hot all over. “I wish I were there, too.”
“Maybe you can act as my proxy. Since I’m not there.”
Breath huffed out of her. She wanted to do this. She wanted to lean back on the couch and slide her hand between her legs, feel the damp heat rising off her body. She wanted to squeeze her thighs together around her hand and ask him what he was wearing and tell him lies about what she was wearing; she wanted to hear his voice rumble against her ear and jaw, the vibrations running out along her nerve endings and jazzing her up.
All the words got stuck behind her tongue and wouldn’t shake loose. Instead, her heart pounded uselessly and she tasted adrenaline.
“Do you follow the advice you give your students? You told me the first time we talked that you tell them they should be in a committed relationship or marriage before they have sex.”
She tried to keep her breath under control, even as heat gathered between her legs. “Not always.”
“Oh, yeah?”
They might have been talking about the circumstances under which she believed it was prudent to carry an umbrella and wear rain boots; his voice was that steady. She wished desperately to see his face.
“I don’t see anything wrong with a little frolicking among consenting adults.”
Oh, God, she sounded like a granny. Or—a sex-ed teacher.
“Was that what we were doing at the party? Frolicking?”
He, on the other hand, had managed to make frolicking sound like a new sex technique, filthy and forbidden. Her nipples tightened. “I think that was foreplay to frolicking.”
“Yeah? If that was foreplay, the actual frolicking might kill me.”
More heat, low and dark in her belly. She leaned back on the couch and slid her palm down and rubbed it experimentally over the seam of her jeans. She was damp and hot there, and her body clenched at the contact. “Is this foreplay, too?”
“Like phone-sex foreplay?”
“Yeah.” She flattened her hand, a slow, easy back and forth, just enough friction to keep the buzz up.
“How do you distinguish foreplay from the main event in phone sex?”
She tried to keep her breathing even. “I don’t know. Good question. I guess the foreplay stops when you start touching yourself.”
“Nora?”
“Uh-huh?”
“The foreplay was over when you said the word ‘foreplay.’ At least on this end of the phone.”
“Um,” she said, because her brain was concerned with single syllables at the moment, like want and now. “Here, too.”
“I warn you, I’m not particularly good at this. Dirty talk.”
“Whatever you’re doing is working for me.” She raised her hips a little to meet the slow I’m-pretending-I’m-not-really-doing-this flirtation of her hand with the crotch of her jeans.
“What are you wearing?”
“Jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt.” Silence.
“I killed your libido,” she said.
“No. I was trying too hard to be funny, and my brain got knotted up.”
“What were you going to say, before you started thinking about trying to be funny?”
“ ‘That’s more for me to take off you, then.’ ”
He might not be good with words, but apparently it didn’t take many words, or particularly flowery ones, on his part to get her going. Possibly it was his voice, which even in wry reporting had this way of edging under her defenses.
“Here’s a better question,” she said. “What do you wish I were wearing?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know. Something skimpy I could tear off you with my teeth.”
She was having trouble breathing, the muscles tightening in a cascade down her chest and belly to pull up in a sharp ache between her legs. Her hand worked a little faster, following the lead set by her quickening breath. “Do you know that kind of underwear that looks sort of like shorts, but they’re really, really short, with lots of lace? They’re called boy shorts?”
“Yeah. You would look really hot in those.”
“Red,” she told him. “And a matching lace bra.”
“It would be a big waste, though, because if I were there I would get you out of them as soon as possible.”
“I wish you were here,” she said.
“I wish I were, too. If I were there, I’d—” His voice trailed off, low and rough, wrapping around her core and tugging.
“You don’t suck at dirty talk,” she said.
“That wasn’t dirty.”
“It was so dirty. It was full of sex stuff you didn’t say but were thinking.”
He made a sound, an aborted groan.
“The trick is to say it out loud,” she instructed. “Finish the sentence.”
“If I were there, I’d—”
But again he stopped, and she had to picture it for herself. If he were here, she’d want him to lie on top of her and fit the bulge in his jeans to the notch between her thighs, and then she’d show him the exact speed and pressure she wanted…
“Or, you know, don’t finish the sentence,” she offered. “Just keep saying that, because it’s working fine for me.”
“You said that before. What exactly does that mean, ‘It’s working fine for me’?”
“It means,” she said, “it’s making me really wet.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, but she didn’t assume it spelled doom, possibly because she could hear him breathing. Hard.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Lying on my back. Hand between my legs. Rubbing.”
A rough exhalation in her ear. “I’m standing in my kitchen,” he said, the words jagged. “I should get the hell out of here.”
“Are there a lot of windows?”
“No.”
“So … what’s the problem?”
“I’m standing in my kitchen with an epic hard-on—”
“Keep going.” She’d gone from damp to wet through her jeans.
He hesitated.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you self-conscious. You were doing great. I’ve got my hand over my jeans. The friction is amazing. Sometimes it’s better this way than under my jeans. I don’t think I could stop even if you ordered me to, it feels that good.”
He groaned in earnest. “Fuck, Nora.”
“So, you’re standing in your kitchen with an epic hard-on, and now you’re going to …” she prompted.
“I’m unbuttoning my jeans and unzipping them.”
“And?”
“I’ve got my hand on my dick, which has not been this hard since New Year’s Eve.” Her next breath came as an audible half moan.
“It’s harder now. That was a good noise.”
She made another one, not entirely voluntarily. She was rubbing her palm harder over herself, and the rush of tingly heat was rapidly getting demanding. “Miles?” she said.
“Uh-huh?”
“I’m going to come embarrassingly fast.”
There was no phonetic equivalent for the sound he made then. All the vowel sounds had been forced out of it.
“But keep talking,” she instructed.
“Uh. I—” A rush of breath at his end, and she arched her back to press harder against her hand.
“Do you use your fist? Or rub?”
“Fist. Nora—”
“Do you think you could make yourself come really soon? Like, if I tell you when I’m about to—”
“Holy fuck, Nora, the hard part is not coming right fucking now.” It was a torrent of stuttered words and breath.
“I love it when you say ‘fuck,’ ” she said, and then she lost control of the sensation. Her orgasm slammed her like something gathering up her thighs and pussy and womb and chest and brain in its throbbing, pulsing, totally possessive grip, and she heard herself yelling, “Oh, now, Miles, now, now, now, now, ohhhhhhhh.”
All she could hear at the other end of the phone was his strangled cry, but she knew, and she could picture the ropy white strands of his cum spilling over his fist, his face in ecstatic anguish.
It was a long time before either of them spoke, long enough that she had time to worry that he would be ashamed or regretful.
“It turns out that the kitchen is a very convenient place to be,” he said finally. “Paper towels, water, et cetera.”
She laughed, relief and release as fine and welcome as the orgasm had been. She felt … awake, alive, thoroughly drained of tension. “I hope you feel as good as I feel right now.”
“How do we measure that?”
“There should be some Richter-like scale for orgasms.”
“Out of ten?”
“Sure.”
“Nine. And I’m rounding down because I’m sure that if I’d been buried in you to the hilt, I would need some additional headroom on the scale. No pun intended.”
Coming had apparently relaxed him enough to make him downright gregarious in the dirty-talk department. Buried in you to the hilt. “Nine sounds about right.” Though it would be better if she could put her arms around him right now. Bury her face in his shirt. Rub against his thigh for these last few aftershocks.
Next time.
Where had that thought come from, and what was she supposed to do with it? He lived in Cleveland. She lived in Boston. There was no easy way to have a date, no easy way to make there be a next time, or at least not a next time with cuddling and shared afterglow.
“So what are you doing this weekend? While I’m retiling my kitchen?” He sounded calm and contented and not at all eager to run away from her, and that made her feel better. He could be coming up with a thousand different excuses to cut the conversation short, now that he’d gotten his rocks off.
“Grading lab reports. Cleaning my apartment. Buying new running shoes.”
“It’s a full life.”
“I’ll go out Saturday night.”
“With?”
She loved, loved, loved the edge in his voice. “Are you jealous?”
Silence again. Had she gone too far?
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I am.”
Her heart pounded and she got hot all over, even her fingers and toes and knees and ears. He was jealous. Jealous. He didn’t want her to be with someone else tomorrow night.
“I’ll probably go out with my friend Rachel.”
“Where do you go?”
“A bar, usually.”
Silence. Then, “Do you get picked up?”
“Sometimes.”
She heard him take a deep breath and she waited, but no words came from his end of the phone.
“If it helps, I’ve been on a remarkable number of really bad dates since I last saw you.”
“What made them so bad?”
They weren’t you. “Oh, all kinds of things. Conversational voids, hygiene issues, epic lack of chemistry.”
“We don’t have those problems.”
She loved the low hum of his post-sex voice, close to her ear, intimate. “The hygiene issues are easier to avoid when you’re having phone sex,” she pointed out.
“True. But the conversational voids can be really grueling. In person would be better. So much better.”
Right then, laughing with him, she made a decision. A crazy, crazy decision.
Of course, you could also question the sanity of things she’d already done. She’d picked up a random guy at a New Year’s Eve party, danced dirty with him, kissed him at midnight, and allowed herself to feel all kinds of things that better sense should have forbidden. She’d stalked him on Facebook and Twitter, tracked him down, and then stalked him once again, to the intimacy of his own phone.
She’d had phone sex with him.
Yet what she was contemplating doing next was crazier than any of those things. Stalker-lady crazy. Big-money, big-gesture crazy. No-turning-back crazy.
But she was realizing something important.
She was crazy about him.
And in a twisted sort of illogical way, that caused all the other kinds of crazy to make sense.