"You're imagining it. She's actually very nice. Emotionally unfolded, professionally dedicated, and intellectually diversified."
Nora leaned up, squinting outrage. "Loren! She's a ditz with big tits! She's phonier than Al Capone's secret vault. She's a mover, Loren; she uses her body and her sparkling eyes to manipulate men for her personal benefit."
Loren almost got mad-something she'd never seen. "That's harsh and judgmental, Nora. I'm surprised that an academician such as yourself would make such a shallow invective. It almost sounds defensive, even insecure."
Nora laughed. "She's got bigger boobs than me-big deal. I'm not insecure about it. She's more attractive than me, lots of women are, but you know what? I don't care! I could shit care less and whistle Dixie at the same time. But since you're not just my assistantyou're a good friend-I only feel it proper to warn you."
He seemed defiant now, lower lip trembling at the challenge. "Warn me?"
"She's a textbook floozie who's wheeling for you. Don't let her pull the wool over your eyes. Girls like that eat guys up and spit them out like gum when they're done with them. And she'll do it to you if you let her."
Loren glared; now his lower lip was really trembling. "That hurts my feelings, Miss Perfect. I'm glad you have such confidence in my acumen with the opposite sex." His head bowed, almost as if he were about to sob.
Oh, jeez… "Loren, I'm sorry, I only meant-"
His head jerked up in a grin and a loud clap of his hands. "Had you going, moron! Jesus Christ, I know she's a bogus, manipulating, saline-stuffed bitch. I'm just playing Poor Little Infatuated Nerd-Boy so maybe she'll feel sorry for me and give me a sympathy fuck. Believe me, I ain't looking to hold hands in the fucking park with that Paris Hilton wannabe."
Nora signed, relieved. "You're such a tool, Loren."
"Damn right, and a big, big tool at that-like a friggin' roll of cookie dough if you want to know the truth. I'll hump her so hard she'll sound like someone stomping on a squeak-doll."
"Loren!"
"Now shut up and flip over so I can put sunblock on your back. Otherwise you'll get redder than a-"
"Don't say fire truck!" she insisted.
"I was going to say scarlet bristleworm." He grabbed a tube of his own sunblock.
Sputtering, Nora flipped over on her belly. "I guess you're getting to be an expert at this."
"I'm an expert in everything," Loren claimed.
"I feel like chopped liver here."
"Why?"
.You were too busy rubbing all over Barbie, you didn't even stop to think that maybe your boss might need a back rub."
"And what's wrong with chopped liver?" he said, squirting lotion on her back.
She tensed a moment as his hands slid over some sunburned fringes, but then relief began to work in.
Loren chuckled. "I overheard Annabelle talking to a friend on her cell phone, and she referred to me as The Geek."
"Are you sure she wasn't talking about me?"
"Naw, you were Professor Dork."
"How flattering."
"And here's the best part-she's yacking away to her friend and eventually tells her that she's certain you and I are both virgins. How's that for a laugher?"
Nora smoldered and kept silent.
"What? I say something wrong?"
"No, just-"
"I'm no virgin, that's for sure. I've had sex a bunch of times, and my first one was with this foreign exchange student who stayed at my house while my brother went to Sweden. This girl was hot! She even-"
"Loren, I don't want to hear about your sex life!"
"Wow, you're really testy today," he said. "Guess Annabelle was right."
"What?"
"She also told her friend on the phone that you had permanent PMS."
Nora almost yelled, "That insufferable bitch! I'd like to mop my floor with her bleached-blond head!"
"Calm down," he urged, his finger daintily spreading the cool sunblock around her top straps. "Can I ask you a personal question?"
"No!"
"Are you a virgin?"
"No. Of… course not! And even if I were, it's none of your business. Just put the damn stuff on my back, mouth shut."
"Sony." His fingers paused. "Wait, take this off before I goo it up."
My cross, she realized. Her grandmother had given it to her eons ago at her confirmation. She rarely ever took the tiny golden cross and chain off. "You take it off, I can't reach, and I'm too lazy right now to sit up."
He carefully worked the tiny catch and slid it off. "I've been working for you over a year and never knew you were a Christian."
Nora thought about it. "In truth I guess I'm a pretty shitty Christian. My grandmother gave it to me and she was cool. I always wear it under my top."
Loren grinned behind her. "I like the dichotomy. The symbol of the man who died for our sins, and you keep it between your breasts, which are the symbols of female sexuality."
She rolled her eyes under closed lids. "Loren, my boobs aren't exactly pillows of carnality."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot. You did admit that you're a virgin."
Nora knew he was just pecking at her for fun, which normally she went along with. But now, here, the conversation filled her with dread. Throughout her adulthood, she hadn't even been "saving" herself for the right man. I couldn't GIVE it away… She didn't suppose she was downright ugly, and she was at least complex enough to realize that not all men went solely for Annabelle-types. Jesus, I can count my heavy makeout sessions on ONE hand. Then a worse possibility assaulted her.
Maybe Annabelle's right. Maybe I really am a great big case of permanent PMS. For one thing, what guy wants a woman whose career field revolves around worms? And for another, what guy wants a woman who's bitchy, unhappy, and cynical all the time?
But was that really her?
When she felt the cross slip out from between her breasts, she couldn't even remember if any man in her life had actually had his hands on them…
Now Loren was doing the backs of her thighs, multitasking the application of the lotion into a pretty good massage. Nora blanked her mind of all negativity… and felt better.
Her thoughts drifted to last night's dream: the crude sex-fantasy. It had been a gratifying dream, of course, until the end, when she'd wakened unfulfilled.
Just sex, she thought. She focused on the dream's details-the faceless night suitor with no identity. The rough, intent hands on her flesh, the urgent tongue that incited her nipples and her sex. That's what I need, she joked to herself, a man who's just a body.
A body for her.
She could almost fall back to sleep now. The Bimbo's right; Loren gives a killer massage… Now he was working her feet, firing nerves she didn't know she had.
"The feet are an erogenous zone, you know," he said.
"Your point being?"
"Clinical reflexology. As scientists, we should be intrigued by human reproductive response systems, and all their intricacies."
"Loren, please." Slippery fingers glided back and forth across her arches and insteps. "Just be quiet and keep doing it."
The sensations overwhelmed her; she felt woozy in some carnal way. Her buttocks clenched when his hands slid back up the calves, then thighs. She knew this was absurd: she was letting an innocent back rub become much more, she was stealing something from it. She tried to imagine Loren as the lover from her dream, but then some distant moral twinge disallowed it. More sensations flowed from her thighs to her groin, somehow squeezing her sex with a lewd, hot pressure, and in another mental recess, she imagined herself turning around in the sun and masturbating, or worse, brazenly inviting him into her.
The mental alarm bell clanged louder, and the fantasy dissolved with her realization of the truth. My teaching assistant is putting sunblock on me and I'm getting horny. Nora, congratulate yourself on a new low.
"That's enough, thanks," she blurted. She flipped back over quickly, assailed by an inexplicable guilt. At least if she were blushing, her sunburn would hide it. "I can do the front," she said.