“Six?”
I shook my head and smiled again.
She bit her bottom lip, but under the circumstances, her demeanor actually changed very little.
Ana was a tough nut to crack. We’d met through this or that, the ways people uptown meet. She was bright, book smart, art smart, fit, and fashionable. Pretty and self conscious; a puzzle of desire and nervousness. We’d fallen into both flirting and friendship at the same time and there had been a long lull as we tried to figure out which one to pursue. In the end we picked a little from “column A” and a little from “column B.” Luckily, I’d set up my life to facilitate that sort of answer to that sort of question.
A week or so before our date, our conversation via email had turned to sex toys. I mentioned that I had reviewed them for a while and she skirted around the issue of needing some new ones. These were lovely little charged correspondences that made my days at work fly by. Passive flirtation; we weren’t talking about sex, we were talking about sex toys! As safe as talking about stereo equipment. Like so many things, there were layers of self defense and acknowledging self defense.
Eventually she decided on what to buy and it turned out that among her purchases was a remote controlled vibrator. Cliché? Perhaps. Let’s not judge. A wide variety clichés are actually tremendously hot. Romance, roses, rope, and handcuffs are all a bit clichéd but they all still work.
The flirty talk swirled and focused on said purchase and when it came time for us to go out for our monthly meet up and drink, we had both implied that said purchase might make an appearance, but honestly I was a bit dubious. Things had progressed past the point where flirtation would usually come to fruition and we hadn’t even kissed. Still I was game for a drink and a chat with a lovely friend. Anything else was gravy.
The bar was my first local haunt. I was still new to the neighborhood. She was waiting inside with her usual nervous crooked smile.
Awkward hug? Hand shake? Kiss on the cheek? We just sort of smiled at each other and sat and ordered fancy beers and sighed.
It took a while to get Ana to warm up; probably the same could’ve been said about me.
We talked and laughed and drank. There was the boy she was dating, the girl I slept with, the girl she flirted with, the girl I was dating. The whos, whats and wheres of the last few weeks. Occasional innuendo, entendre, downright crude joke.
She had that lovely combination of shy and uptight with a layer of bawdy trying to escape. Sometimes I said dirty things and watched her try to casually laugh, but there would be a slight pause, a little blush; a lovely little victory.
Too soon the cafe was closing and we had to move on. I contemplated asking her back to my place but we weren’t there yet.
The next bar was a bit more casual. Sports on televisions and laughter all around. We had another drink; her eyes started shining and her jokes got a little dirtier. My hands found excuses to brush her leg or rest on the small of her back.
When she got up to use the restroom, I took the moment to check my phone. One message, from her; strange.
“I put the remote in your jacket pocket.”
I slipped my hand in and found it, like a little car alarm remote, only with arrows up and down and an LED.
The game was afoot.
I slipped the remote back in my pocket and sipped on my beer. I looked around the bar, seeing a few familiar faces, a few more coming in. As Ana walked back towards me I thought about how to do this, what the game plan would be.
