“I should’ve specified,” I say, choking on my embarrassment. “Top drawer. The iPad is in the top drawer.”
Silence, acute and awkward. Jamie withdraws my iPad, opens the red leather case, and props the device on his knees. I tap in my code, bring up Netflix, select a comedy special, and the introduction begins.
Jamie is restless. “Elyse,” he says, turning to look at me.
Emotion bubbles up inside me—thick, hot, potent. I shake my head, biting my lip hard enough that I taste blood. “Not—not yet, Jamie. Please. Not yet.”
He looks at me, staring at my face. He sees the emotion I’m desperately fighting back. “Elyse, you don’t have to…” He struggles for words. “You can let it out. I’m here.”
“That’s part of it,” I whisper. “That you’re here.”
He fiddles with the corner of the iPad case. “But you don’t want me to leave.”
I shake my head. “I’m more afraid of being alone than I am of being around you.”
“Why are you afraid to be around me in the first place?” he asks.
I just shake my head. Putting it into words is impossible in my current emotional state. Jamie sighs, clearly frustrated and wanting to talk about…everything, but I’m just not ready. I can’t.
The comic is onstage, setting up a joke about a priest. I focus on him, and even though he’s very funny, I can’t seem to laugh.
Jamie lets the silence linger and hang, but he’s not laughing either.
“Mr. Nubbins, Mr. Tippy Tickles, and Thundera,” I blurt.
He glances at me, confused. “Huh? What are you talking about?”
I blush, gesture at the drawer he’d mistakenly opened. “That’s, um. The…the names of the—things—in the drawer.”
Jamie holds a straight face for a moment, and then snickers. Snorts. “Uh…wow. Okay.”
I cover my face with both hands, giggling hysterically. “I don’t know why I said that.”
He’s trying gamely to suppress his laughter. “Mister…Tippy Tickles?”
I hide my face in my hands. “Cora and I got drunk here one night and gave them all stupid names, and I’ve just always thought of them by those dumb names.” I tip my head back and steady my breathing. “I seriously have no idea why I told you that. I must be delirious.”
“But…Mr. Tippy Tickles?”
“That’s the…” I hesitate over the name. “The clit stimulator.”
“Ah, because it tickles your—um…”
“Yeah.”
“And Mr. Nubbins is pretty obvious,” he says. “But…Thundera?”
My blush deepens, until I’m certain my face is literally scarlet. “The wand. The big thing. It plugs in, because it’s so powerful it requires an actual outlet. It’s…um…it feels kind of like being hit by a thunderbolt.”
He seems vaguely uncomfortable with this, somehow. “I see.”
As weird and bizarrely personal as it is, I welcome the conversation, because it’s a distraction. I frown at him inquisitively. “What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Does the thought of me using sex toys weird you out, Jamie?”
He frowns back. “No.”
