Angie, a live-in-the-now singer-songwriter on the cusp of fame, sweeps Mike, a proper Mama's boy and a structural engineer by day, off his feet the moment they shake hands.
They can't deny the chemistry between them, so they start with a boom. What'...
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▪️Friday, November 27th, 2017▪️
▪️Chicago, IL▪️
The start to our morning is innocent: breakfast, then showers. Separate showers, because we want to get clean. But when Mike comes out without a towel, beads of water glistening on his bare everything, I decide innocent is a waste of a morning. Mike agrees because next thing—I'm the dessert he has to taste one more time. Then we christen the couch. Exhausted and naked, we can't stop kissing.
"I need to be at least six feet away from you, or this will happen again," Mike says when he comes up for air. "And dressed. We can't fucking keep doing this."
"I know," I whine through my sore lips.
Mike holds me at arm's length, and I cease trying to weasel my way back to him. "We need to stop."
"We do; we do; we do. I don't need a UTI."
"A what-tea-eye?"
"UTI—urinary tract infection. From too much of"—I wave my hands around our cooling bodies—"this. Haven't you heard about them?"
"No? I've never had this much in less than a damn day. Do men get them too?"
"You tell me."
"No clue. Not me. But thinking about it is helping." Mike looks down. I see what he means. "What other horrible things can happen because of too much sex? Lay it on me."
"Plague? Smite?"
"Smite's a great video game."
"A video game? I meant God would smite us."
"That does make more sense. We need to avoid that. God and I are on good terms. I propose an oath."
"That might be an overkill."
"A pinky promise?" Mike lifts his pinky into the air.
"I can go along with that."
I follow suit and extend my pinky his way. As we cross them, I flinch because the dull ache peers through the endorphins of being around Mike. He draws my hand closer to his face and examines it.
"Your pinky and ring fingers are crooked," he says.
"Yep." I jerk my hand away.
Mike catches it and kisses first the deformed digits and then the rest.
"You want to tell me, or should I pretend I haven't noticed?" He doesn't look up.
All the conversations we've had so far were barely first date material. What happened to my hand and the impact it had on my life is definitely not first date material. I can't even call what we're doing a date. We skipped forward and missed steps that would normally lead me to wake up next to a guy, even though with Mike being in this moment, on this couch feels like the best decision of my life. I was ready to bare my body. That doesn't mean I'm ready to bare my soul.
