“You can’t handle the bunny slope?” a kid with a snowboard said, pushing past. Twelve or thirteen, Mike guessed, a light sprinkling of pimples on the part of the face not covered by goggles or helmet. His voice dripped with condescension.
“What?” Laura joked back, not letting him get to her. Mike admired that. “I own the bunny slope. Watch out! Bunny slope today, Chuck E. Cheese climbing structure tomorrow. I will dominate!” The kid shook his head and glided off, one foot hooked into the snowboard bindings, the other pushing himself to the ski lift.
“Double black diamond for me!” he shouted back.
“You can have it!” Laura responded, then looked at Mike. Without thinking, he reached down to kiss her, their goggles clanking against each other, pain shooting through his brow and ears.
“Ow!” she said, giggling. Both pulled their respective goggles up over their helmets and the kiss was awkward. Heartfelt, but awkward.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“For joining my world.”
“Well, then, thank you,” she replied.
“For what?”
“For rocking mine.”
Josie
The text simply read: You ever been on a plane before?
Darla.
Yes. You haven’t? she texted back.
Josie could easily imagine that Darla hadn’t, because it wasn’t like Aunt Kathy was a platinum club member of any frequent-flyer club. Living in a trailer in a tiny town in Ohio on the Pennsylvania border hadn’t given her niece Darla a life of luxury.
When the hell would I? Between my champagne and lobster buffets when I worked midnights at the gas station and my caviar dreams when I slept in the trailer with the pipes all frozen? Darla texted back.
That was about what Josie expected.
What’s up with planes? The guys ask you to go somewhere special? Josie responded, ignoring the sarcasm. Darla was in a permanent, loving threesome relationship with Joe Ross and Trevor Connor, members of the band Random Acts of Crazy. She worked now as the operations assistant for Good Things Come in Threes, where Josie was the…hell, they didn’t have a name for what Josie did.
She ran the place.
A dating service for women who want two men and want the triad to work out forever was one hell of an anomaly in today’s world, but then again, Josie was, too. Assembling a family of her own out of good friends who were all living a little (or a lot) off the beaten path was about all she could manage, aside from the incredibly normal boyfriend she’d stumbled into finding eight months ago, at her best friend’s birth.
How did she snag normal? Thinking about Alex came as easily as breathing or masturbating. You just did.
Aren’t you working right now? Josie asked. She needed to get her mind off Alex and masturbating, because she was going to get that hot, tingly flush that would dog her for hours, making her clit scream for attention and driving her to rub one off in a bathroom if she didn’t divert now.
Yep. New lead! A chick named Callie. That makes six new signups from women and three from men this week, Darla replied.
You coming home for dinner? Josie asked. Mundane details. Ask about mundane details and make the rising swell inside her go away. Was this what it was like for guys who thought about baseball statistics to keep from prematurely ejaculating during sex?
She would have to ask Alex later.
And…there she was, back at thinking about Alex. That tight, inviting body. The smattering of dark hairs over a chest with muscles that swelled, his cobra back hot and chiseled. How his muscles curved in at the hips, making her drool just to imagine him. His fevered breath hissing her name as he thrust into her…
Damn it.
She was at an office supply store, picking out a printer stand, the most mundane task on the planet short of choosing curtain rods. Who gets horny in an office supply store? Maybe Steve Carell. Who knows. But for Josie, just the fact that thinking about Alex could get her into this kind of throbbing state was a huge warning bell and source of tremendous joy.
Both. Warning and joy. Because Josie was that fucked up on the inside.
Nope. Back to planes. Help? Darla texted.
Didn’t Trevor and Joe give you advice? Josie responded.
No, the guys didn’t. Just asking. What do I need to know? Darla replied. Something about that sentence did not make sense, but Josie didn’t feel like prying when she had a big old red clit like a button that, if pressed, would scream out something other than, “Yeah, we got that.”
Don’t joke about bombs, Josie texted back.
Haha, Darla replied. A chill shot through Josie, helping to quell her need for Alex, for an electronic vibrator, for her own hand. If Darla made a joke in front of a TSA agent, she’d get the cavity search of her life. Though, Josie assumed, Trevor and Joe had probably done quite well in that area…
THAT killed off her arousal lickety-split. Whew.
No—seriously, Darla, don’t you make a single fucking joke about a bomb, she typed back, slamming her fingertips against the phone as if Darla would realize her emphasis. This was serious stuff.
Like I look like a bomber, Josie. What am I going to do? Eat a can of beans and sit on the pilot’s head? That’s about the only bomb I can manage, Darla said with a smiley face.
No one looks like a bomber, you idiot, Josie replied. That’s the point.
Especially me, was Darla’s response. You could take her out of small-town Ohio and put her in classes at Harvard, and have her in a long-term relationship with two guys in Ivy League law schools, but sometimes Josie wondered about Darla’s provincialism. Being blond and curvy didn’t mean anything when a TSA agent was concerned about abnormal behavior.
And while Darla was no terrorist, she cornered the market on abnormal.
So help me motherfucking God, if I have to come bail you out of federal prison and explain that shit to Aunt Kathy because you couldn’t shut down the short circuit between your funny bone and your mouth, I will make you sponge bath my mother when she is too old to care for herself, Josie answered in two texts.
Silence.
More silence.
And then: Point received.
Whew.
Any more advice that doesn’t mean I need to go poke my eyes out with a hot car cigarette lighter after reading it? Darla added.
Josie thought for a moment, imagining Darla at a TSA checkpoint.
And then: Yes. Don’t wear an underwire bra.
WHAT? Darla texted. WHAT does my bra have to do with flying? I’m not going to stab someone to death with my underwire.
The thought made Josie giggle, and she looked down at her own modest chest. I read it somewhere, Josie answered. Research it for yourself.