Given my ghost town of an email inbox, that didn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. I regularly submitted pieces to the biggest music news sites, but I’d only heard back a few times, all rejections. I hadn’t gotten paid for a piece since my first, seven months ago. So I still needed a real job, one that left me with enough mental energy at the end of the day to work on my dream job.
Recently, it felt more like a pipe dream job. Nothing really inspired me anymore, and my playlists and blog posts were increasingly lackluster. New York was generally a good place for music, but I’d lived there for eight years and it was honestly getting a bit old. Or maybe I was uninspiring and getting a bit old. Either way, the venues blurred together, the shows all sounded the same, and with the boring side jobs that I had to work in order to make ends meet, I just never seemed to have enough time or resources to push out new, unique content at the rate that I needed to.
My trip to San Francisco the month before had been a nice change of scenery, and it seemed to have helped a bit. I’d finished the playlist that I’d been working on (one of my better ones), visited some cool record stores, discovered a local band that played psychedelic covers of pop songs, and gotten some ideas for additional playlists. I stretched the experience out into a five-part blog post. It’d been a really productive trip.
The only bad part of the trip had been him.
The night of the wedding, I’d taken the next shuttle back to the hotel. It had mortified me to no end that I’d been practically begging him to fuck me, and that he’d chosen to leave me there, dripping wet and aching, to talk to his mother. What did that say about him? What did that say about me?
Good thing that he hadn’t finished the job, and that I hadn’t come. Orgasm usually meant attachment for me, and with Ian, I did not want that. He was everything that I’d rejected from my previous life, and there was definitely no future for us. So despite his skilled tongue and his sweet note, I’d completely ghosted him.
But Cassie and Jessa seemed to know that something had happened between us. When we met for drinks on the Sunday night after the wedding, they told me that they specifically had not invited him, even though they had all been climbing together earlier in the day. I was annoyed and vaguely jealous that they’d all gone without me. Not that I hadn’t been invited.
“So...what exactly happened between you two?” Cassie asked. It was just me and the girls, Cassie, Jessa, and Lisa.
“Well,” I began, taking a sip of my cocktail, “we kinda hooked up. Kinda. I was tipsy and thirsty, and he was...convenient.”
Lisa giggled. “And hot,” she added, unhelpfully.
I frowned at her, then continued, “But luckily, his mom called and he started talking to her instead of having sex with me.” I sat back and smirked, eagerly anticipating their outrage.
They stared. “He...picked up the phone instead of putting his dick in you?” Jessa asked, incredulous.
“His mom?” added Lisa, mouth gaping.
“I know, right? Who does that?” I took another sip of my cocktail, triumphantly vindicated.
Cassie studied my face, a small wrinkle on her brow. “You know, we’ve worked together for the past couple of years, and he doesn’t really take time off.” She paused. “But he did recently, because his mom has cancer.”
I nearly spat out my drink. Instead, I gulped it down, the alcohol burning my throat. “Oh.” Giant snakes of guilt writhed in my stomach.
Jessa and Lisa exchanged glances. “It’s still kinda weird that he did that,” Jessa offered, trying to make me feel better. “He could’ve just called her back later. He missed his chance with you.”
Lisa put her arm around me. “Besides, you have a rule right? No Asian guys.”
I plastered on a smile, though the frenzied squirming in my stomach continued. “Yep. No Asian guys!” I raised my glass. They clinked their glasses with mine and we all took a drink. We didn’t talk about Ian or guys anymore after that.
◆◆◆
I briskly walked the familiar route back to my apartment in Queens, only half-heartedly glancing at the rock climbers in the gym that I always passed. But a flash of bare, golden skin caught my eye, and I briefly stopped to look.
Fuck. There, on one of the walls nearest to the front, was Ian.
And he was ripped.
I’d felt the hard planes of his muscles crushed against me at Cassie’s wedding, but I had no idea that he possessed the abs and pecs of an underwear model, all sculpted curves and lines of definition. His shirtless back flexed with pure muscle, bare skin glistening with sweat. The grace and power with which he climbed, the calm precision of his movements on the wall...it was captivating.
He leapt (actually leapt!) from one big green hold to another, catching it easily and pulling himself up and over in one fluid motion. He balanced on the hold on one foot, carefully sliding his hands up along his side and over his head to touch a tiny green speck at the top of the wall. Then he jumped, easily ten feet, down to the mat below. A pretty, olive-skinned brunette wearing only tights and a sports bra gave him a high five. I scowled at her fit, athletic body, the honeyed glow of her skin. The stunning
