Page 68 of IRL: In Real Life
Now I could see her again. That dress high on her thighs. The silver studs catching light whenever she moved. Her mouth swollen from mine. Her body settled in my lap like a test I had barely passed. The way her nipples had tightened under the denim when I looked too long and she knew I was looking.
“Fuck,” I muttered to the empty car.
My body didn’t care that we had been in public. Didn’t care that I had done the right thing, kept my hands where they could still pass for respectful, and let that woman leave without giving either one of us a reason to question our home training.
My body only knew she had been close.
Warm. Soft. Opening for me in the small ways a woman did when she trusted the moment and was still deciding what to do with the man in it.
That part was going to stay with me.
The phone lit in the console.
I looked down.
A woman from the social circle I vaguely knew had reacted to a story from earlier. Another message sat under it fromsomebody I’d gone out with twice and never followed through on a third time.
I stared at both notifications for a second and felt absolutely nothing move in me.
That was new.
Or maybe it wasn’t new. Maybe it was just inconvenient as hell.
A week ago, I might have opened one out of boredom. Might have let a little harmless back-and-forth stretch into something with no real weight behind it. That kind of thing was easy when nobody had your attention for real.
Tonight, easy had no appeal.
Not because I had turned into some saint overnight. Not because one woman kissed me and suddenly every other woman in the city lost her face. Life didn’t work like that.
But attention did, and mine had gone somewhere.
I picked up the phone, cleared both notifications locked it and tossed it back into the console untouched.
On the drive home, the city still had that holiday-weekend looseness to it. Fireworks kept breaking open over different pockets of sky, red and gold flaring between buildings before falling away again. At a light near the bridge, a group of people spilled out of a bar laughing too loud, one of them holding sparklers they had no business lighting that close to parked cars.
I barely saw any of it.
My mind stayed in that corner booth.
Her hand twisted in my shirt. Her body shifting closer when I kissed her. The way she said my name while trying to act like she still had control over the night.
That was what messed with me.
The kiss had been good. Better than good. But it was the fit of it that stayed with me, the way my body seemed to recognizehers quicker than made sense, like it had been waiting all week for the rest of me to catch up.
At home, I let myself in, dropped my keys in the tray by the door, and stood in the darkened quiet with the city throwing weak light through the windows.
Usually, the condo settled me.
Tonight, it felt too still.
I walked straight to the bedroom, stripping as I went. Tee first. Then jeans. Then briefs kicked somewhere toward the hamper because precision was nowhere near where my mind was living.
The shower helped for about two minutes.
Then hot water only made it easier to think.
Easier to picture what her skin might feel like without the dress between us. Easier to imagine those thick thighs opening under my hands instead of shifting under a table in a lounge where I had to act like my whole body wasn’t trying to get involved. Easier to imagine her in my bed, hair slightly mussed, gold still at her ears, mouth swollen from kissing, finally enough room for me to take my time.
