You’ve really studiedit.
Two to three times a week, he says. Sometimes oftener.
She falls back on the bed and howls.
He comes over, stretching along the bottom of the bed at her feet. I can’t be alone in finding that picture irresistible, he says. Trust me—in bunk beds and bathrooms across the land, in camp cabins, school libraries, juvenile detention facilities, Young Adults are rubbing themselves raw to that toothy smile of yours.
She lifts her head. Is my smile toothy?
That’s your takeaway here?
She props herself on her elbows. Do people in real life know what a depraved horndog you are?
Alas, he sighs. Passing few.
Because God forbid you reveal your true self to someone, right?
Hey. He flicks the bottom of her foot. Be nice.
You wouldn’t know it to look at you, she says. You look so normal.
Tone it down with the compliments, okay? You’re making me blush.
It’s true, though. It always throws her when they run into each other out in the world. When he’s clothed, ironed and spectacled, dropping Jill at the town pool, holding a drink at a party. Seeing him that way, who would believe he’s such a filthy-minded, dirty-mouthed sex fiend? Ardent, endlessly inventive, so wholly, utterly intent on…
She shouldn’t be thinking about his sex fiendishness.
Or sex, period.
She’s stopping. Right now.
Stopping thinking aboutit.
Your turn, he says.
What’s that?
He’s inspecting her toes. Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.
Well, the choice is obvious. And impossible.
Though what if she did? What if she unloaded the biggie on him?
A few months after we started sleeping together, I fell seriously, ridiculously in love with you.
Preferably sexual, he adds.
I was completely infatuated. Then I started writing, to try to channelit.
She won’t tell him, of course. But imagine his reaction.
It would Blow. His. Mind.
Even more than the crypto thing.
Don’t worry, I forced myself to fall back out again.
But for about six months?
