And I have tools, plenty of tools to work against this man, against all these men.
Three minutes later she spots the tail, a dark blue Olds.
The Sweater by Tara Alton
I had a sexy dream about her – my crush – a writer from a cool local magazine, but I wasn’t sure because it was a girl on girl type thing. I’d only had one experience with a woman so far, and I was left wavering, not sure which way to go. And yet I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all week, especially since I’d seen her at the Laundromat.
In my dreams, I was at my favourite coffee shop with a cappuccino and a molasses cookie. I was reading her most recent article when she came over and sat beside me. She spotted my sample case where I keep the jewellery I made, and she opened it.
Inside, she found a pair of my dangle earrings and held them up to my ears. Because of my thick tousled hair, she couldn’t see them so she brushed my hair off my shoulders. Her fingers lightly touched my skin. An electric sizzle passed between us.
Next came a choker. She leaned in close to fasten it around my neck, her breath on my ear. I felt like I was melting inside from the warmth of her mouth.
To go with the choker, she selected a pendant on a long chain. It joined the choker, but she couldn’t get the pendant to lie right on my shirt so she slid it inside my cleavage. The chain slithered down my skin. My breath caught short. The pendant nestled between my breasts. Slowly, she hooked a finger inside my shirt and peered inside to see her work. Her breathing changed. My bra felt tight. I was getting flushed all over.
I looked around us. No one was watching. She completely unbuttoned me. My bra was exposed for the world to see.
Gently, she unbuttoned my cuffs and with her hands under my shirt, she pushed my blouse off me.
More necklaces joined the pendant. She paused. A whole cluster of pendants were in my cleavage. She dipped a finger inside them, swirled them around. Then she unhooked my bra. It fell away. I was bare-breasted. She cupped my breasts in her hands, rolling my nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. They got painfully hard.
She took a sip of coffee and placed her steaming mouth on my nipple. I nearly fell off the chair with the pleasure of it. Coming up for air, I saw a twinkle in her eye as she took another sip of coffee and took a big bite of my molasses cookie. Crumbs fell into my lap. Like a lap dancer she slid in between my legs and started biting off the crumbs near my special place.
I awoke with a jolt. My body was sweated through and the sheets were in an awkward ball between my legs. There was a deep, troubling throbbing down there. I had to do something. I freed myself, went into the bathroom and put a cold washcloth on it. The shock made me cry out.
“Are you OK?” my roommate called out.
“I stubbed my toe,” I lied.
In the morning, Paula was having a cup of Chai Tea and a whole wheat bagel when I found her in the kitchen. She gave me a knowing look.
“I know that girls have needs,” Paula said, in her best friend voice that sounded very similar to a mother’s voice sometimes.
“It was nothing like that,” I lied again.
I paused.
“But since we’re talking about it,” I said, “sometimes I’m afraid of it. What’s inside me. Really letting go. I was with this guy once. He got me really excited. I said things.”
“What things?” she asked.
“I can’t say,” I said.
“Come on. You can tell me.”
I shook my head.
“Hey, I told you about the time I had sex with that guy and we couldn’t find the dildo after. It turned out it was still up my butt,” she said. “So you can tell me.”
“Fuck me like a dog,” I said.
She laughed.
“He said I was a freak and never called me again,” I said.
“Then he’s the freak,” she said.
I smiled. I liked Paula. She was the neatest girl I’d ever met, although she was a dead head, a Grateful Dead fan, and she loved hippy stuff. When we first met, she asked me to go with her to pick out some stickers for her car. I thought since she was a vegetarian like me, she wanted animal stickers, but she wanted Grateful Dead-type stuff. She asked my opinion between a skull with roses or a skull with dice for eyes. I told her I liked the roses. At least they were flowers.
We met when she was working upstairs at the tattoo parlour as a receptionist. She came downstairs to the bead shop, where I worked, asking for a ride home, because she had ridden her bicycle to work and it was raining. I always thought she was riding a bike because she was healthy, but it turned out her licence had been suspended for drunk driving.
Now we were roommates. With the tattoo parlour behind her, she worked at the Safe Sex Store, selling condoms.
I decided to tell her about my crush. I knew I had to do something about it. My career and my love life depended on it. By meeting the woman of my dreams, I could maybe get a mention in her art column. One year after graduating my jewellery career wasn’t going anywhere fast, but I needed a kick in the pants from Paula to do this. She was the best motivator I knew.
“Guess who I saw at the Laundromat?” I asked.
Paula raised an eyebrow at me.
“Melanie,” I said.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“She is a staff writer for the Metro Weekly.”
“Isn’t she the one whose column you read every week?”
“Yeah.”
I’d also read almost everything else she’d written from her first movie reviews to her restaurant reviews when she first came out. Now she wrote about gallery openings, art shows and artist profiles. I loved the personal tidbits interspersed throughout her articles. I would love for her to come racing into the bead shop to interview me, out of breath, holding a falafel sandwich and a diet coke, a little hole in her red canvas tennis shoes.
“What about it?” she asked.
“A write-up from her could do me a lot of good,” I said.
“So meet her.”
“There is a catch. I think she’s hot.”
“No, you don’t. You’re being trendy again.”
“I’m not.”
“Look what happened with Kit,” Paula said, getting up to make some more honey butter.
I squeezed my right arm, where my tattoo was. Kit was the tattoo artist from upstairs. She did the brown-eyed Susans on my arm. They were my favourite flowers in the fields behind our house when I was growing up, and I was tired of seeing the parade of roses and lilies coming out of Kit’s studio. I wanted something different.
She was the woman I had the experience with. It happened after hours. During the tattoo she kept telling me to breathe because I kept holding my breath. “You’ve got fantastic skin,” she said. “Yellow just loves you.”
When she was done with the tattoo I felt a little dizzy, but I was happy with what she’d done. She took me into her office and got me a soda.
“I feel high,” I said.
“That’s your endorphins,” she said.
She patted the sofa next to her. I joined her.
“You know what would be lovely on you?” she asked, and motioned me to stand. “Take off your pants.”
“I’m a little shy.”
“I see everything all the time. I’m like a doctor.”
I took them off. She started sketching more flowers on my thighs. In the quickest of moments, she pulled aside my panties and gave me a quick kiss on the clit.
“Did you mind that?”
I thought hard. It felt good, really, really good.
“No.”
Without any decorum she pulled me back onto the sofa, climbed on top and ate me out.
No kissing. No foreplay. She was at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And she was good.