I smiled at the phone. It was a beautiful thing to say. It made me feel cherished, special, like a lady.
“Oh please!” Lizzy Bendit screamed in my head. She was already overriding my sappy reaction and drafting a sassy response to his text.
“Flattery will earn you a blow job, big boy,” she said. “Text it! Text it!”
I stopped myself, thumbs poised above my phone, mentally putting duct tape over her mouth, and typed quickly before she could rip it off.
Thank u.
My pleasure. Ciao for now. Talk tomorrow. Have a lovely day.
U too.
I floated through the rest of the day. That is, until I remembered I had final exams.
* * *
Years of struggle, heartache and purposeless wandering had eventually led me to college. I’d worked my ass off, and now in just three and a half years, I was going to graduate early, mid-year, with my degree in business. To say I was excited would be an understatement. But while visions of mortar boards, black robes and spirals of parchment tied with red ribbon were dancing in my head, it was Thomas’s face—and the memory of his hands on my skin—that was dominating my thoughts.
Which made it a little hard to study.
I spent the rest of the weekend trying to cram information into my brain, thankful I’d had the foresight to take some time off at the club. Just a handful of exams stood between me and my degree, between me and Thomas. I was starting to think of him as a graduation present. There was no way I was going to blow this.
But it took hours to get my brain to cooperate. I took a shower, ordered lunch in, put on a pair of flannel pajamas, and hit the books. By Sunday evening my head was pounding and I was wishing Thomas were there, his strong hands massaging the knots out of my neck. That’s when he texted me.
Hello darling.
Was just thinking of u.
Oh? Do tell.
Wish u were here 2 rub my neck n buy me that dinner. Studying all day. Head hurts, hungry.
Allow the good Doctor to help. First go take two aspirin.
I walked to the kitchen, and dutifully followed his instructions, throwing back two pills with a glass of water.
Done.
Okay now open a bottle of wine and allow me to buy you dinner. What do you want?
Really?
Really.
Chinese. Orange chicken, fried rice, egg rolls. :) :) :)
A lady with a healthy appetite. I like that.
Studying makes me hungry. So does being horny.
LOL
I laughed out loud. The mental picture of him, my Professor, bookish and proper, texting in his tweed blazer, LOL, was just too much. I felt my shoulders relax and I rubbed at my neck idly as my eyes lingered on his text.
I can do nothing right now for the horny, I’m afraid.
Ur feeding me, that’s sweet. Sasha says if women can’t fill one hole, we fill another.
LOL. Genuinely.
Only this man would text that his LOL was genuine.
Good. I’d hate to think you were faking it.
Never.
Okay so that’s dinner. Where’s the flowers? Poetry?
I watched my phone as three gray dots rippled across the bottom of the text window. He was typing. He was typing for quite a while, actually. I pulled a bottle of Riesling from my wine rack, scraped the foil from the neck, popped the cork, filled my glass and took a sip. He was still typing. I was on my second glass when my phone buzzed and his text popped up on the screen.
There once was a lassie named Jane.
Who studied till she was in pain.
She wished she were dead,
and pounded her head,
till words did fall out of her brain.
I laughed so hard I nearly spit wine back into my glass.
LOL. Genuinely. I typed.
Glad you liked it. :)
I did, but do limericks really count as courting poetry?
Good point. Hang on.
More gray dots rippled across my screen. I took the phone with me into the living room and settled onto the couch with my wine. I turned on the television, and tried to distract myself with a home decorating show, glancing at my phone every few seconds to see if he’d replied yet. Minutes later, my phone buzzed.
Thy form’s possessed of beauty fairest.
Tell me, lover, what doth thou wearest?
I grinned at the phone, shook my head, and set my wine glass on the coffee table.
Did you just sext me in iambic pentameter?
Tried to. Not a perfect verse.
U r adorkable.
;) Let me try again.
My doorbell rang, and I left my phone on the couch to go answer it, glancing through the peephole before opening to my favorite delivery guy from Chen’s Chinese.
“Here you go!” he said. “All paid for, plus tip. Enjoy!”
“Thanks, Pat,” I said, waving at his back as he bounded down the stairs.
I returned to the coffee table and dove into the bag, forking a heaping portion of fried rice into my mouth, just as my phone buzzed again.
To court thy mind in metered verse,
Some would find a task perverse.