“I’d been in a long relationship myself. But out of it recently. Looking for a young lawyer to hang out with, ’cause I figured that’s what she’d want to hear.”
“So you kiss her on the balcony, under the stars. She’s short or tall.”
“She’s short. She’s pretty little.”
Another button. It drove the color to Whitney’s cheeks and the blood to her temples.
“Wow. A little petite blonde buzzing bee. Lucky you, right out of the gate.”
“There were plenty of strikeouts. I went to bars around the apartment. I’d sit there, order a beer, bring a magazine. Wonder if there was any possible way to talk to a stranger and not be creepy. I saw a girl waiting for a date who’d clearly no-showed. Thought about saying something, swooping in to save the night—but decided against compounding her and my embarrassment. Picked up a slice of pizza and went home instead. It’s a challenge, for me at least, when you take all the tools off the table.…All the ways people actually meet, and I’m stuck at happy hours with junior associates.”
“But I didn’t use the apps, either,” she said. “And it wasn’t so hard for me.”
“Terrific. Let’s go, then. Your turn.”
“No way, José. You’re making out on the balcony with your petite blonde legal beagle.”
“And it goes like it goes.”
“This is the first woman you’ve slept with besides me since college. It couldn’t have been that boring.”
“We move inside. It’s cold. We move to her room.”
“Even though the roommates are gone.”
“You remember what it’s like—fear of the walk-in. It’s there even if it’s not rational. I could tell she didn’t do this very often.”
“And so you head to her room. It smells like Zara. Dresses from Anthropologie hung up on a rolling rack in the corner of the converted third bedroom. Scarves over the lights and This Is Water on her bedside table.”
Will grinned with a swelling in his cheeks. An unbidden love for this woman.
“Two pairs of neon Nike Flyknits kicked in the corner,” Whitney went on. “The Lulu leggings with the cutouts that show off some thigh and make her feel sexy.”
“Actually, that’s what she was really wearing all night.”
“Bare legs, I thought.”
“Who knows?” he said, grinning again, the heat really humming in his cheeks now.
“Well, bring us back to reality, then.…You’re in her room. You’re drinking vodka sodas on a twin bed squeezed in next to the steam pipe.”
“She puts on The Weeknd and blushes and whispers in my ear that it’s what she masturbates to.”
“Come on.”
“With headphones, though,” he said. “The roommates.”
“And so a silencer for the vibrator?”
“I didn’t ask. Maybe she’s old-fashioned.”
“So things are getting less subtle,” she said. “Good for you two.”
“And then things go from there.”
“More, please. Clothes come off. She’s got a tight little bod and big tits and an ass that floats like it’s filled with helium. She laments the fact that Equinox hasn’t opened a location near the bridge, and so she has to work out by the office on her lunch break.”
“We were a fair match,” he said. “Nobody had a right to be too disappointed by the other.”
“But, c’mon, your hands are back on her thighs. It’s what she’s wanted since she spotted you at the event. It’s what she had in mind in the cab.”
“Right, we screw around.”
“What’s her underwear like?”
“What do you mean?”
“The women in my classes are older than me—I know what rich 38-year-olds around Union Square wear. I know what my friends wear. What about the youths?”
“She’s, like, four years younger than us.”
“So Victoria’s Secret. Hot pink. Straps and hearts. G-string.”
“Light blue something. Not much material.”
“You’re saying you wish I wore that.”
“It was all that was going through my head.”
“You wish I dressed like a stripper beneath the Céline.”
“I’ve been searching for the right way to say it for years.”
“So you get her out of the straps and hearts and strings. She thinks she’s in a Fifty Shades movie. She’s practically gonna come from the soundtrack alone. Meanwhile you’ve got your tongue in her pussy and a finger in her ass.”
“Jesus.” Will looked to the bartender again, searched the dining room for their waitress. Of course nobody was paying attention to them. Of course nobody cared. They were as inconsequential to their surroundings as they’d been their whole trip.
“And she’s totally shaved, I’d assume?”
“Whit, I dunno.”
“Oh, you don’t remember that either? You didn’t notice?”
“If I had to characterize the experience, I would say that she had gotten ready for the night with the intention of being naked with someone.”
“Completely waxed, then.”
“It reminded me of college,” Will said, smiling now. “Before I met you.”
“And so what about Will, then?” she said, plowing ahead. “What does he get out of it?”
“What he’d expected?” he said. “She kept asking if it was okay, and if she was doing it all right, and if there was anything she could do differently.”
“Hot.”
“After a little while I went back to doing what I was doing and things started driving toward maybe-sex.”
“She can’t believe how lucky she’s got. Someone who knows how to handle himself. Meanwhile, you’re certainly ready for maybe-sex. A stranger for the first time in seven years.”
“And honestly?” he said. “It was around then that I started thinking about work. It was getting late and all I could think about was what needed to get done before noon, and how much I hated every last element of that work, and how terrible I was bound to feel in the morning.”
She breathed deeply through her nose. “If nothing else about this story is true, I know that detail is.”
“And so as I’m sort of drifting to tomorrow’s to-do list, just kinda going about whatever business, she says to me, ‘You have great hands,’ and—”
Whitney burst. She laughed like she hadn’t all trip, a little squeaky wheel of delight. Her eyes asked for more. More more more.
“And the music keeps breaking,” he said, picking it up again. “Cutting in with ads for stores around where she went to college. Must’ve been
