Messy by Choice

Mess 9 (Lenox)

I knew I was fucked when I woke up the next day with zero change in the fluctuations of my heart when I thought of Ally. A night's sleep always set straight my state of emotions to show me how I really felt. If I were angry the night before I'd always wake up the next day less upset. Same with a crush. I never liked a girl much the next morning, and I for sure never started realizing how much I liked and missed a girl after multiple nights not seeing her. And our bathroom fuck was devastating my productivity at work. Monday I couldn't get a single fucking thing done in the morning and ached so hard by lunchtime I had to relive myself twice in the bathroom to the imagine of Ally moaning my name. I have a feeling my insecurity around my regrettable full name is going to now also become a fetish of mine. This girl has to be a siren or some curse those Greek gods would descend upon humanity. Maybe Ally escaped from Pandora's box.

Especially with how she ended things after that last date. She didn't hover or do that few extra prolonged seconds of awkwardness where one of us is trying to figure out if the other wants a kiss goodnight or something. No, she called me out for waiting and hoping for one before leaving as soon as she could. Like the way she would leave me hard and horny and disappointed she could also leave me disappointed over an expected goodnight kiss. She was a master manipulator.

And I had let her take my mother's ring. I was stupid to do it, but I thought if my dare didn't work, I'd be able to prod her into letting me see her again to get it back. She could keep it for all I care as long as I could keep seeing her.

Ally had agreed to the time and place, so I really didn't have to be so nervous, but Pete had been right. She's a slippery one. I feel like I'm constantly just one wrong word away from being permanently dropped out of her life.

What kind of masochist am I to like this high-stake mental torment? Oh wait, maybe my job has beat me into that. Because Ally was starting to make me go crazy too. And at the end of the capitalist work week, that was circulated with endless reports and litigation reviews and a court fight that broke out between a dog walker and the husband of the woman he'd been sleeping with, I needed to see her before I broke out into as much of a psychotic break as that poor husband had.

'Ready?' I text Ally twenty minutes before 7 on our agreed upon time. Which is exactly how long it'll take for me to get to her place.

'As I'll ever be.' She texts back with an upside-down smile emoji.

'Love the enthusiasm,' I reply and head out, stopping to fix my hair and check myself over. I even spritzed a cologne my gay brother sent me onto my nice bomber jacket he helped me pick out a year ago. A major part of me thinks Ally would try hard to find a way to make fun of me with that information if I disclosed it though.

Ally is outside her house. In a cozy knitted sweater and jeans. No white shirt or red anything. I wonder how she'll turn this casual outfit into another new kink of mine.

She tries to get in my car but looks down at the handle in confusion. I get out to help her.

"So now you need a gentleman's help," I tease while opening it.

She glares back at me. "No. It's just that these are made with door handles that are designed to make poor people like me feel inferior for not knowing how to use them."

I laugh and close her in, before getting back in myself.

"I would've come to get you at the front door," I tell her as I turn on her seat warmer.

"No," she says seriously, sitting on her hands for the heat. "You wouldn't have escaped alive."

I ask her what she means with my eyebrows drawn but see past her shoulder a group of girls in various stages of undress screaming something from their covered porch. I think one of them is wearing a witch's hat and the other holds a broom.

Ally doesn't let me linger to figure out what's going on and puts my car in drive for me. "You have approximately ten seconds to escape."

I don't want to risk losing her, so I take off. Her roommates chase behind us with wine glasses and slippers as someone boos us leaving.

"Did they want to meet me?" I ask, checking my rear-view mirror as if they could start tailing us on that broom.

"Or eat you," she says, applying some ChapStick using the passenger mirror.

"But shouldn't I have said hi to them? Isn't it important for girls to get the approval of their friends?"

"Well, yeah," Ally says, recapping her ChapStick. "For like serious stuff but not something like this."

I shut down for a beat. All I come up with in my sudden disappointment is, "Huh."