Mae watched his face as he lowered his head, running his finger across the screen of the phone.Thom pressed a button, and the room filled with the sounds of a bass guitar, a croak of a frog, then a man's baritone.The voice was smooth as silk, and the saxophone came in accompanying the singer.Thom pressed mute on the phone, and as the man on the speaker stopped singing, Thom began to fill in the words a cappella.She blinked as she listened.
The man on the song was singing the same thing as the man on the couch.
The man on the couch was singing the same words as the man on the song.
The man on the song was Thom.
Thom was on the couch.
Thom was on the couch singing.
Thom was a great singer.
Mae moved down the couch.The more he sang, the closer she got until she was sitting directly next to him, watching his mouth as the words came out without effort.Mae wanted to touch the man with the pretty mouth words.
“Wow, you have such an amazing voice...do you want to make out?”She blurted out.
“Excuse me?”Thom was smiling as he pressed the unmute button on the song.
“Let's make out,” Mae said, “me and you.”
“Okay, but for the historical record, you're the initiator of this and not me,” he said, looking her in the eyes.He didn't need to say anything more as the woman straddled his lap and unhooked the buckles to the bib of her overalls, allowing the bib to fall around her waist.
Mae leaned into Thom, tentatively kissing him, and Thom kissed her back.He paused, waiting to see what she'd do next. She kissed him again, this time adding a bit of tongue as his hands went to her waist.Mae deepened the kiss, allowing their tongues to begin a gentle scrimmage match, and she shifted, feeling Thom's growing interest in the current situation.Her mouth tasted sweet and his mind began to wander to places it shouldn’t, asking silently if the rest of her was equally pleasing to his palate.
“Yes,” she told him.“I am consenting and this is a yes.I want this between us, and my answer is yes.”
She kissed him again, pressing her breasts to his chest, and Thom was losing the battle with the pretty train-driving woman.In his arms, she felt right.However, every gift needs consideration of where to place the treasure in the home.The question he often asked himself when adding a thoughtful item to his life, centered around the idea should the gift being on display or out of the purview of prying eyes?
“Is it a yes for you too, Thom?”she asked, moving suggestively against him.
“No,” he said, softly kissing her.
Mae stopped.She thought perhaps she had misheard him with her good ear, or maybe in his bad ear he didn't hear her consent to have hot, nasty sex with the man, starting on the couch and working their way down the hall to his bedroom.
“Thom, did you say no?I mean, what do you need to escalate this, slather me in peanut butter?”she asked as his forehead crinkled.
He stared at her in confusion.
“What?Do you want to run a mini train engine over my titties?”She asked as his eyebrows shot up as if he were considering the suggestion.“Thom?Seriously?”
“I'm confused!You suggested it, not me,” he said.“Is that a thing?Is that your thing?I mean I have some mini engines around here somewhere.Seriously, if that's how you like to party, we could eventually build bridges and tolls with little cutouts for the Magic Mountains Passovers.What?You started it!”
They both laughed as he leaned forward, resting his head on her chest.Taking a breather, he leaned back, his hands still around her waist, going no further.He wanted, no, he needed her to understand.
“Our first time together should be intentional,” he said.“I don't want you to get on your train tomorrow and look back on our night as a situation that just kind of happened.A passing thought of ‘I was on the job and spent the evening talking to a dude about Miles, Alton, and the 9:04 train line.I deserve more than that.If you want me, intimacy between us needs to be intentional.”
“Thom, I am intentionally trying to make some magic happen between us.Oh God, am I the one hearing fairies?”Mae asked shaking her head.“I don’t even know what that means for real.”
“No, my dear, you aren't hearing fairies.I simply want you, more than you truly know, but I want us to be planned,” he said.
She ran her finger over the small, deformed remnant of his ear.For the oddest reason, Mae leaned forward and kissed it, making Thom look her in the eye with a longing, years in the making.“What does the fairy thing mean, anyway?”
Thom took a pause, inhaling the subtle scent on her skin.He could sniff out lavender and maybe a citrus base in a lotion.She smelled like home and he liked it.He liked her vibe and he enjoyed the energy she generated between them.
“A fairy hunter is like a butterfly collector,” he explained.“In their head, they’ve made plans of what will happen in their world once they have the fairy captured, but for the fairy, it becomes a cage.The collector doesn’t truly love the fairy, it is an object, a means to an end.An item to look at and say, I love this thing, yet they will never understand it.Then, like the butterfly, it is pinned to a board, no longer able to fly.”
“The woman, you said she was a fairy hunter,” Mae said.“You turned her down.You turned her down and said you wanted me, but you’re turning me down as well.”
