The Romantic Interest

CL: Confession. I’m a writer. I’m working on a novel.

June: Ooh. What’s it about?

CL: A tall, middle-aged dad with a salt-and-pepper beard who

June: Oh, so it’s you.

She laughed out loud, alone in her kitchen. A real snort, the kind she had once been told was not very ladylike.

The house was hers until Sunday. By Wednesday Dani had stopped hearing the quiet, which was the whole point of Wednesdays. The backpack was gone to its father’s for the long stretch, the dishwasher had finished its sermon, and the floor-through held nothing but the hum of the fridge and the radiator’s opinions. On her laptop, a kombucha company in Gowanus wanted its logo to feel “fermented but approachable.” Her coffee had gone cold an hour ago. She drank it anyway.

She’d matched with him on Monday, scrolling the app in bed with the lamp off, half out of hope and half out of spite. Her inbox there was what it always was: men telling her what they wanted to do to her before they’d learned to spell her name. His profile had one photo, a tall man on a stoop somewhere in Brooklyn, salt-and-pepper beard, a paperback folded open in one hand, not even looking at the camera. Under it, a single line. Words first. His first message didn’t mention her body at all.

June, he’d written. Like the month, or like the Carter? It was her mother’s middle name, the one thing on her profile she hadn’t expected anyone to notice, and she’d lain there in the dark grinning at her phone like a teenager. Like the Carter, she wrote back, if Johnny’s taking requests. Two days later they were still talking, and she’d caught herself reaching for her phone between every client call.

CL: It’s fiction.

June: Mm-hm. Any juicy bits?

CL: That’s the problem.

CL: I can write a man walking into a room and you’ll know what he had for breakfast. I get two people into bed and it reads like furniture assembly.

June: Insert tab A.

CL: Into slot B, ensuring firm contact.

June: Allen key not included.

She pushed the laptop’s lid down to a narrow slice of light. Fermented could wait.

June: Show me one.

CL: You’ll laugh.

June: I’m already laughing. Show me.

CL: “He took her in his strong arms and their bodies became one as the waves crashed.”

June: There were waves?

CL: There are always waves. I’m told it’s a rule.

June: Where are they, a beach?

CL: A one-bedroom in Ditmas Park.

June: Then those are the neighbors.

He sent back a single crying-laughing face, and then, a minute later, as if he had been deciding whether to:

CL: It’s easier in a text. Put it in a novel and everything turns into a bodice.

June: Ripping?

CL: Heaving, then ripping, then a great deal of throbbing. At one point someone’s manhood “stood proud.”

June: Stop.

CL: It’s in there. I’m looking at it. It’s standing very proud.

CL: I’m going to delete it and salt the earth.

She was laughing so hard she had to put the phone down. A man who would show a stranger his worst sentence on purpose, and make it funnier than it had any right to be. She hadn’t known she’d been missing that until it was right there in her hand.

June: Confession for confession. I’ve been reading romantasy.

CL: Oh?

June: Some of it is so hot. But every so often the prince turns out to also be a dragon and I stop being turned on and start doing math.

CL: Wingspan.

CL: Where the tail goes.

June: EXACTLY.

CL: And the parts that work?

June: The talking. Always the talking.

She could see him typing. Stopping. Typing again.

CL: Then I’m in trouble. The talking is the part I’m worst at.

June: In the book.

CL: In the book.

June: So how would you say it? Not Clint. Not the book.

June: You. To me.

She sent it and her stomach dropped. He was typing for a long time.

CL: Directly?

June: mmhmm

CL: I’d tell you to put your coffee down. You’re going to want both hands free for the next part.

She looked at the mug in her hand. She put it down.

She had done it without thinking. Such a small thing, a mug on a counter, and her pulse had jumped as if he had touched her. She stood very still and noticed that. All day, every day, she was the one who decided: the client’s teal, the dinner, the bedtime, the lock on the door at night. Nobody had told her what to do in years. Oh, she had missed it.

June: How did you know I had coffee.

CL: It’s three o’clock on a Wednesday and you work from home. You have coffee. It’s cold. You’re drinking it anyway.

June: That’s research?

CL: Strictly research.

June: Purely academic.

CL: Peer reviewed.

Neither of them believed it for a second. It was a door they both knew was unlocked, and they kept saying research anyway.

CL: Here’s my real problem. In the book, her body is where I fall apart. Every word I have is either a doctor or a pirate. Her breasts. Her heaving bosom.

June: And to me? How would you say it to me?

CL: Depends how close I was.

CL: Across a room I’d say nothing. I’d just look, long enough for you to notice where.

CL: Close enough to touch, I’d call them your tits, and I’d say it slowly, so you’d know I’d been thinking about them since about the second message.

She stopped laughing. Under her shirt, without asking her permission, her nipples had gone tight against the cotton.

June: Since the second message?

CL: Since the cold coffee.

June: Is that one for the book?

The dots came and went. Came and went again. She found she was holding her breath, which was absurd, and kept holding it anyway.

CL: No.

CL: That one’s for me.

It was the first time either of them had stepped all the way out from behind the curtain, and it was him who did it.

She didn’t answer. She let it sit there on the screen and let herself feel it, the way you hold a sip of something good in your mouth before you swallow. Outside, a bus sighed at the corner. Somewhere upstairs a neighbor’s floor creaked. She put the phone face-down on the counter and picked it straight back up.

The silence went on exactly as long as she needed it to, and not a second longer.

CL: Clint, meanwhile, is having a much worse time.

June: Oh no.

CL: In the book it’s his “length.” His “shaft.” Once, God help me, his “member,” like he’s in a credit union.

June: Founding member?

CL: Excellent rates.

She laughed.

Member. Manhood. Nobody in the history of the world had ever been turned on by either word. But the thing under the word. She let herself think it, all of it, before she could decide whether she was brave enough to type it. Cock. Hard cock. Aching cock. The thick, throbbing, purple-headed weight of it in her hand, silky-smooth skin stretched over heat, the way it jumps the first time you close your fingers around it, as if it has been waiting. The way a man’s breath catches when you do. It had been a long time since she’d felt wanted like that, and longer since she’d let herself admit, even in her own head, how much she missed it.

She typed something. Deleted it. And then, before she could talk herself out of it, typed the truth.

June: I like cock.

It sat there on the screen, three words she could not take back. Her thumbs moved fast.

June: As a word, I mean. It’s better than member.

CL: As a word, yeah. It’s much better than member.

CL: That’s the whole problem, though.

CL: I can tell you my cock is aching in my jeans.

CL: But I write “Clint’s member strained against the fabric of his pants” and it feels phony.

She read the first line three times before she let herself get to the second.

June: Is it?

CL: Is what.

June: Aching.

CL: That’s the beauty of a text. You’ll never know.

June: Then write it like a text. Make it do something. Start with what she sees.

CL: She could see how hard he was through his jeans.

June: Closer.

CL: She watched it press against the denim. He watched her watch.

June: Oh. He lets her look.

CL: He lets her look as long as she wants.

She caught herself smiling at the phone like an idiot.

CL: Hang on.

CL: I’m putting that in.

June: In the book?

CL: Page 212. Clint just let a woman look at him. First time in two hundred pages he’s let anyone do anything.

Her laptop chimed under its half-closed lid. Slack. The kombucha people. Quick q, can the green feel more… alive? She typed Absolutely, will explore! with one thumb, the way you’d sign for a package in the middle of an earthquake, and went back to the phone.

June: Touch.

CL: She put her hand on him through the fabric and felt it jump.

June: It jumped again when she squeezed.

CL: He said her name like it hurt.

June: She undid his belt.

CL: She took her time with the button. He let her.

June: The zipper was the loudest thing in the room.

CL: She reached inside and found him.

June: What does it feel like? To her.

CL: You tell me. You’re the one with the hands.

She looked at her own hand on the butcher block as if it belonged to someone braver.

June: Heavy. Hot. The skin softer than it has any right to be, over something that hard.

CL: Silk over iron.

CL: No. Too pretty. Hang on.

CL: Soft skin, hard underneath, and hotter than she expected. She kept her hand there just to feel it.

June: Yes. That.

He sent the next one and she read it with her bottom lip caught in her teeth.

CL: She drew him out into the light and wrapped her fingers all the way around him.

June: She stroked him once. Slow. All the way down and all the way up.

CL: He pushed up into her fist without meaning to.

June: She liked that he couldn’t help it.

CL: She liked it so much she did it again.

June: There was a bead of wet at the tip. She spread it with her thumb.

She sent that and had to look at the ceiling for a second. Her own breathing sounded very loud in the empty kitchen. She did, he did. That was all it was. Plain little sentences, nothing a duke would say, and she felt every one of them low in her belly.

The phone buzzed against the wood, and it wasn’t him.

Sunday 6 still good for drop-off?

Her ex. Of all the afternoons, of all the minutes in them. She stared at his name sitting right on top of a thread in which she had just spread a bead of wet with her thumb, and laughed so hard she had to hold on to the counter.

Yep 👍 she sent him, and swiped back.

The phone buzzed again. This time it was.

CL: She sank to her knees.

June: Not yet.

June: She makes him wait for it.

CL: God. Okay.

CL: She kept her hand where it was and kissed his neck instead, slow, just under the beard. He stopped breathing.

June: She stroked him while she did it, slower than he wanted. Every time he pushed into her hand, she stopped.

CL: He learned fast.

June: Then she sank to her knees. Her idea, not his.

CL: His jeans still open around his hips. He didn’t dare move.

June: She licked him once, base to tip, and watched his face while she did it.

CL: Then she took him in her mouth, slow, and he forgot every word he’d ever known.

June: She slid down until he was pushing against the back of her throat.

CL: His hand went into her hair. He didn’t pull. He didn’t push. He let her decide.

June: She decided.

Nothing came back for almost a minute. She stood there with her thighs pressed together and her pulse going hard and stupid in her throat.

CL: I just wrote four pages.

June: Of Clint?

CL: Of her. She’s finally doing something besides being looked at.

June: Does she have a name yet?

CL: Not yet. She’s earning it.

June: And not only as a word.

CL: I know.

June: For the book.

CL: Of course.

He went quiet.

CL: I’m going to need a minute.

June: Research is hard.

CL: It is, yes.

June: Grow up.

CL: You started it.

It was a while before either of them sent anything that wasn’t a joke. When he did, it came carefully, the way you’d set a glass down on a table you weren’t sure was level.

CL: This is where I always lose him.

June: Where?

CL: The end. When Clint finishes. I’ve written it nine ways and every one of them is either a fire hose or a sneeze.

June: 😂

CL: I don’t know where it goes. I don’t know what the words should look like on the page without it reading like a nature documentary.

CL: And I don’t want it to be only his. I want it to be shared.

June: It is shared.

CL: Is it?

She knew what he was asking. He was asking without asking, and leaving it to her.

So she let herself picture it. The places. Hot in her mouth, when she wanted the taste of him, swallowing and not letting go until he was shaking and too sensitive and laughing and saying her name. Or watching instead: her hand working him while he spilled over her fingers, the stuttering pulse of it, and then leaning down to lick him clean, slowly, while he shuddered and couldn’t look away. The warm splash of him across her breasts, her belly, her skin, and the way a man looks at you when you’ve let him.

She didn’t tell him any of that. Not yet.

June: It comes down to agreement.

June: Sometimes said out loud. Sometimes not. It depends how it feels between them in the moment. How it’s offered. How it’s taken.

He started a reply three times.

CL: I could spend all afternoon finding out the answers to these. With you.

June: Then keep asking.

CL: Tell me if I’m getting it wrong.

June: You’re not getting it wrong.

CL: On the page I am. Every time I get him there it reads like I’m narrating a plumbing emergency.

June: On the page, maybe. Not here. Nothing you’ve said to me today has read wrong.

She meant it. She scrolled up, just to see, through the whole long afternoon of it: the waves, the bodice, the coffee, the plain little sentences they’d built together. Not one of his lines had made her wince. Every one of them had landed exactly where he’d aimed it.

CL: Then help me with where.

CL: For the book.

June: Sometimes she wants to taste him. All of it. She doesn’t let go until he’s done.

CL: And other times?

June: Sometimes she wants to watch.

CL: And?

June: Sometimes she wants to feel it on her skin.

The little bubble sat there, typing, for a long time. She’d told him more than she meant to, and less than she’d pictured, and she stood there in her kitchen waiting to find out which of the two he’d heard.

CL: How does he know which?

June: He asks her once. Properly. Or he reads her. She’ll show him.

June: And then he takes what he wants.

She sent it and felt her face go hot all the way down her neck.

CL: He wants it all.

June: That’s the part she likes best. That he wants it. That he doesn’t apologize for wanting it.

CL: In two hundred pages Clint has never once taken what he wanted.

June: Then he’s overdue.

June: Then show me.

June: For the book.

She’d typed show, not tell. He would know the difference.

CL: She’s on her knees. His jeans are open. He’s so hard it looks like it hurts.

June: mmm. Does it?

CL: It does.

CL: She takes him in her hand first. Wraps her fingers all the way around him and strokes, slow, root to tip, and watches what it does to his face.

June: slower

CL: Slower. She lets him feel her breath on him before anything else.

June: and she’s looking up at him the whole time

CL: She’s looking up at him the whole time. Then her mouth. Hot and wet. Just the head at first. Her tongue pressing in underneath, circling, probing, tasting him.

June: mmmm

It was his, every word of it was his, and none of it was phony. Her mouth had gone wet. That was the part she hadn’t expected: not the heat between her legs, which had been there all afternoon, but her mouth, watering, as if her body had decided on its own what it wanted and was already halfway there.

CL: she takes him deeper. slides down until hes pressing at the back of her throat and she holds him there

June: and she hums

CL: and she hums around him and he feels it all the way up his spine. his hand goes into her hair. not pulling. just holding on

June: mmm. she likes him holding on

CL: she starts to move. slow and then not slow. her hand following her mouth, everything wet, her tongue flat against the underside of him every time she slides back up

The gaps between his messages were getting longer, the messages shorter, the capitals gone, and she could picture exactly what it was doing to him, across the park, in a one-bedroom with a beach for neighbors. She could feel how wet she was through her leggings, and she had to lean her hip against the counter because her knees had stopped being reliable. She could almost feel him: the weight of him on her tongue, the heat, the hard slick length of him sliding through her lips. She wanted it so badly her jaw ached with it.

June: she wants to taste him

CL: she can. the first salt of him on her tongue and she makes a sound like shes been starving and she doesnt slow down

CL: he tells her hes close. she doesnt stop. she wants it

June: mmm all of it

CL: all of it. he cums hard, pulsing on her tongue, and she takes it, swallows, doesnt let go. keeps her mouth on him slow now, gentle, licking him through every shudder, until hes shaking and laughing and saying her name and she still doesnt let go. she stays there with him until hes done. until theres nothing left. and then she looks up at him and smiles with her mouth still wet

She read it once, fast. Then again, slowly. Her whole body was humming, alive in places she had forgotten could feel anything from a distance. She hadn’t been touched. Nobody had laid a finger on her. And she felt him anyway, everywhere: in her mouth, in her throat, in the slick ache between her legs, in her hands, which were shaking.

His side of the thread stayed quiet for a long time.

CL: I had to stop.

CL: I’m sitting here so hard it hurts, and I haven’t touched myself once.

June: Why not?

CL: Because I don’t want to waste it.

June: I like that.

CL: That wasn’t Clint.

June: I know.

When he came back again, it came in a rush.

CL: I have to go write. My head is full of it. Pages of it. I need to get it all down before any of it gets away.

June: Good.

June: I have a few things to take care of myself.

CL: I’m going to want to know about hers, too. You know that.

June: Tomorrow.

She put the phone face-down on the butcher block and left it there, and stood in the gold light with her palms flat on the wood and her heart going like she’d run up the stoop.

She didn’t make it to the bedroom. She didn’t try. She pushed her leggings down to her thighs right there at the counter and slid her hand between her legs, and she was so wet it made her laugh, a short shaky sound in the empty kitchen. All afternoon. He had done that to her with sentences. She circled her clit with two fingers, slow, as slow as he’d written it, and her hips started moving before she’d asked them to.

She thought about him across the park. The man from the profile, the salt-and-pepper beard, leaning back from his laptop with his jeans open and his cock aching and his hands kept off it on purpose, because he didn’t want to waste it. She thought about what he’d want to spend it on instead. His mouth. That beard rough against the insides of her thighs, his tongue flat and patient on her clit, and between strokes of it his voice, in the plain little sentences he’d written all afternoon, telling her not yet, telling her when. She slid two fingers inside herself and pressed the heel of her hand hard against her clit and made it his hand. His fingers. His weight pinning her to the butcher block. His voice low in her ear, wanting all of it.

After that she stopped thinking in sentences. There was only the slick heat of her own hand and the ache climbing in her belly, tighter, higher, her breath breaking into short gasps, her free hand gripping the edge of the counter, her knees going. Then she was cumming, hard, in long pulsing waves that bent her forward over the wood until her forehead nearly touched it, and a sound came out of her she had never once made for anyone. Waves. Fine. He could have his waves.

She rode it all the way down, slower, slower, until it ebbed, until she was shaking and laughing and wet to the wrist, alone in a sunlit kitchen with a cold cup of coffee and a phone lying face-down on the counter.

She did not get one single thing done on the kombucha logo that afternoon. The green, as far as she was concerned, had never felt more alive.