Since I had nobody waiting for me at home, I figured an extra day or two at the San Jose office would help me catch up on matters there, so I flew out after Tuesday night’s class. Four whole workdays there would do a lot of good as far as reassuring the staff (and clients) that I hadn’t abandoned them for the glamor of the big city.
I had complete confidence in my crew, but there were just some things that needed to be handled by the boss, after all.
Settling in behind my old desk on Wednesday morning felt nice and familiar. The same old view, the same old coffee from the break room (we had a coffee service from a local roaster, and it was actually pretty damned good). The same old staff, with the same old questions…
The day was productive and I got a lot done, but at the end of the day I was at a loss as far as what to do for dinner, or the rest of my evening, for that matter.
Michael was out of town, so visiting with him wasn’t an option. He’d dragged Jassie on a road trip, planning on spending two weeks driving up the coast all the way to Victoria, off the coast of British Columbia. There had been some talk of Jassie’s best friend and her father going along, but that hadn’t worked out for whatever reason, so it was just the two of them.
Eventually I found myself sitting alone at a pho restaurant near the condo, enjoying my rare beef and noodle soup. Emmy, Angela and I had set ourselves a rule that we wouldn’t look at our phones while we ate dinner, and just being alone wasn’t a good reason to exempt myself from the restriction. The phone did buzz repeatedly in my pocket, but with texts, not an actual call, so I wasn’t worried about it being any sort of emergency.
I checked my messages when I was done with dinner and back in my car. It was a bunch of really cute pics of Emmy and Angela on the couch in our bedroom there in New York, accompanied by a caption that simply said, “Wish you were here with us”.
I texted back with a “So do I”.
I rushed back to the condo, and the moment I got in I sent another text. “Facetime me”, I wrote.
A few moments later the phone rang with the distinctive tone indicating that it was in fact a video call. I answered it to see Emmy’s smiling face.
“We miss you, but as you can see, we are enjoying ourselves here,” she said.
“I can see that,” I agreed. “You two look freaking adorable.”
It was true, they did look cute as hell. The two were leaning back against the sides of the classically styled sofa, their legs intertwined. I couldn't really see what Emmy was wearing, but Angela had on a pair of pajama shorts and a little cotton camisole top that was just slightly too small, showing off her great boobs.
Angela held up the book she had in her hands for the camera and said, “I was just reading my favorite book to Emmy before we went to bed.”
“What book is that?” I asked, unable to read the cover on the little screen.
“Cien Años De Soledad,” she replied. “It’s by a Colombian writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature. One of the greatest writers ever, in my opinion,” she said, growing animated.
“Um, Garcia Marquez, right?” I asked. “My literature teacher in high school talked about him a lot.”
“Have you read this?” she asked, holding the book up.
“No,” I admitted.
“Then I will have to read it to you, when we get back to Los Angeles. But I will read it to you in English.”
“I’d be a whole lot more likely to understand it in English,” I said with a chuckle. “You’re reading to Emmy in Spanish?”
“I like it,” Emmy chimed in. “I do not understand every word, but the sound of the language- it is a kind of music.”
Angela smiled at that and rubbed her instep along Emmy’s bare thigh in pleasure.
“So you two have been having a good time?” I asked.
“We have been spending so much money!” Angela exclaimed in mock distress. “I know you said it was O.K., but I still…”
“No, don’t worry about it,” I replied. “The townhouse needed art, and I’m happy you guys have talked Luisa into helping you find just the right pieces. I like everything you guys have gotten so far,” I said. I didn’t bother telling her that I’d done a bit of research into a couple of the pieces they’d bought and expected that they’d actually probably yield great returns if we ever sold them, so the whole exercise was probably a decent investment strategy.
“Luisa has been excellent,” Emmy confirmed. “She has a real eye for what would work well in this house.”
“Well, she does live there, and she is an artist, so I’d imagine she would,” I said.
“That is true,” Emmy agreed with a laugh. “She is also a very hard negotiator and understands the market value of the pieces we have been looking at.”
“Mia has been going with you guys, too, right?” I asked.
“Yes, she takes her duties very seriously,” Emmy replied. “And Wally, too. He has insisted on being here at the house whenever we have had the pieces delivered and hung.”
“I can’t say I think that’s a bad thing,” I replied.
“Lee, everybody here is just amazing. I’m not sure I would want to live here full-time, but even being here for a few weeks, this house feels like home to me now,” Angela said.
“You have that modeling gig coming up, right?” I asked, settling in to my lonely bed there in San Jose. I knew she did, but just wanted to keep the conversation going.
“Yes, the day after tomorrow,” Angela said. “I’m very excited- this will be my first time working with a truly top photographer. He shoots magazine covers, and works with supermodels all day long.”
“Well, you’re hotter than any of those girls, babe. Don’t forget that,” I said. “Gisele, Adriana, Gigi… You leave them in the dust.”
This earned me a big, happy smile and an air kiss. “You’re just saying that,” she protested.
“It’s one hundred per cent true. I wouldn’t trade you for any of them- or even all of them combined.”
“Leah is right, ma chère. You are as beautiful as any woman alive,” Emmy said, and I could see her hand stroke Angela’s leg.
This proved to be too much for Angela. She set her book face-down to keep the page, then leaned forward and onto Emmy, who had to move the phone aside. This had the advantage of giving me my first full view of both of them since the video call started.
Angela took Emmy’s face in her hands and lavished a storm of kisses on her, putting a halt to the conversation for a while. After a few scorching hot minutes of watching the two kiss, Angela slid down a bit and rested her head on Emmy’s chest, cupping one of Emmy’s breasts through the thin fabric of my Stanford T shirt.
“I am so happy,” Angela murmured. “This is my best life.”
Although I wished I could have been there, I was happy for the two of them to have time to work on their relationship with each other. They were going to be pregnant and then raising our daughters together. The better their bond, the happier the full household would be. I saw no negatives to them being close.
I drifted off to sleep thinking about two little girls, one with midnight black skin and green eyes, the other with pale skin and blue eyes, running around the house. They would call Angela ‘Mamá’ and Emmy ‘Maman’, but would love both women as their mothers. Angela would tend to Emmy, Jr’s skinned knee, kissing it to make it better, and Emmy would teach Angela, Jr to sing. Of course, I’d teach them both how to drive when it was time, and warn their boyfriends (or girlfriends) to not keep my precious daughters out too late…
I was up early the next morning, as usual. The condo building had a gym, but it wasn’t great. I thought about going for a run, but ultimately decided a visit to The Pit was the answer. I’d kept up my membership, but hadn’t stopped by my old gym even once in all the Bay Area trips I’d made in the last year, even though I’d dutifully packed my fighting gear every single time.
I got to the gym only a few minutes after they opened, pleased to be greeted by familiar faces as I walked in.
“Leah!” said Ruben Da Silva, holding his fist out for a bump. “How’s it going, lindinha?”
“Good, Ruben, real good,” I replied.
“You look good- real lean. I like that,” he said, eyeing me up and down. “You been training.”
“I have been, just a little,” I said as we walked into the gym.
“Hey, get suited up and let’s spar,” he said. “I got no classes until eight.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I wanna see what you been learnin’ down there in LA.”
When I emerged from the locker room I saw that Ruben had kicked a couple of guys out of the back ring, my favorite. He had his grappling gloves and headgear on and was rolling his shoulders to get ready.
I put my headgear on, unused to it since Jody and I never used it, then slipped on my old, comfy gloves.
Stepping into the ring, I looked around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear, and said, “Mostly I’ve been working on, um, ‘outside the ring’ techniques, but doing a lot of wrestling, too. Since it’s open gym time, I’m assuming…”
“UFC rules,” he confirmed, bouncing on his toes. “I don’t want anybody to learn any dirty tricks by watchin’ us.”
“We’re on the same page,” I agreed. I limbered up for a moment, then we touched gloves and stepped back. I sized up his stance, waited for my moment when his weight was on his off leg, and dove right in.
Ruben and I had worked almost entirely on striking, so he was completely unprepared when I dove low to shoot him in an outside sweep. Of course, he was a lot more, well, compact than me, so getting low on him was always going to be a challenge. He sprawled his inside leg to avoid the sweep, so I used my momentum to stand up and lift him into a hip toss, and just like that, he was on the mat.
I stood up and helped him back to his feet, a big smile on his face.
“That was awesome!” he said, holding up his hands for a double high-five. “I never thought you would go in for the jiu jitsu move like that!”
“I doubt it’ll work twice,” I said, stepping back and taking my stance.
“Naw, now I’m gonna take your grappling game seriously,” he agreed, this time taking a lower guard than before.
I lunged in and he took the bait, expecting another take-down. Instead, I brought myself down into a back leg sweep. Of course he reacted in time, jumping to avoid having his legs taken out. In the air, though, he had no power, so my sudden shoulder check sent him on his ass again. He countered with a back roll, but I was on him before he could finish the move. Upside-down with all your weight on the back of your head is never going to be a position of strength, and he tapped out the moment it became obvious he wasn’t going to get out of it.
“Holy shit, you been learnin’ some moves!” Ruben said as he got to his feet again. “And you so aggressive now, too. You go straight in. Nobody gonna expect that.”
We kept going for over an hour, not even bothering with any striking at all, just pure wrestling. Of course, once the novelty wore off and Ruben was prepared, he made life a whole lot harder for me. At times we would stop and he’d fine-tune my position or technique, but generally he had tons of praise for whoever I was working with, telling me that now with my new ground game I was becoming a real threat.
“It’s too bad you’re so big,” he said. “No weight class for you to compete in. I’d love to see you in the ring.”
When Ruben had to get ready to teach his first class of the day, I ditched the headgear and gloves to do weights for a while.
I guess I was lost in my own thoughts, because when a familiar voice said, “Wrestling with me would be a whole lot more fun,” I was taken by surprise. Apparently Ashley had been watching Ruben and I for quite a while without me noticing.
“Hey, Ash,” I said, wiping the back of my neck with my towel. “You work out here now?”
“Since school started,” she said. “What you said about self-defense got me thinking, and yeah, you’re totally right. I kinda miss running with music, though.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“I’m glad you’re taking your own safety seriously,” I said, meaning it.
“Aww! You do care about me!” Ashley replied. “So, like, you in town for a while? Wanna get dinner some night? Maybe, um, tonight?”
“Ash,” I said. “You know I’m never going to give you what you want, right?”
“Whatever. I’m over that,” she said dismissively. “I mean, I’d totally be down for a hookup, but, like, that’s not what I’m talking about. I just meant maybe we could have dinner and talk, or just hang out, or something. That’s all.”
“Alright,” I conceded. “Seven at that Thai place? You know the one.”
“It’s a date!” she said, upbeat.
“No, it isn’t,” I replied, deadpan.
The Thai place was just as cheap and cheerful as I remembered it, but it had been repainted since my last visit. The new paint job was just as amateurish as the old one, so I can’t say it was an improvement, but still…
Ashley was already at one of the small tables when I came in, so I seated myself opposite her. “Been here long?” I asked.
“No, I just got here a few minutes ago,” she said as the waitress handed us menus and asked what we wanted to drink.
“A Coke for me,” I replied.
“Me, too,” Ashley said, flipping open the menu.
After the waitress left, Ashley noticed I’d left my menu on the table. “Not gonna eat?” she asked.
“No, I just know what I want already,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Curry fried rice with chicken,” I replied. “You have no idea how many times I had that for dinner when I was going to school here.”
“I’ve only eaten here a few times,” Ashley said. “Mostly it’s the commons for me.”
“Even when I was a freshman, I barely ever ate in the dining halls,” I said. “But then, I only lived in the dorms for one term.”
“You lived off-campus from the start? Lucky!” Ashley said. “I can’t afford that. Hell, I can’t afford to eat at places like this very often, either, you know? My scholarship isn’t enough to pay for anything but tuition and books, and my parents can only help so much.”
“Are you working at all?” I asked. Honestly, I did like Ashley, when she wasn’t trying to get in my pants, and it really was starting to seem as if she’d gotten over that.
“I’ve got a part-time job at the chem lab stockroom,” she said. “It helps, but not much. Things like even going to the movies require budget planning.”
“That’s tough,” I said.
Changing the subject, Ashley asked me if I still had my Aston Martin, and did I drive crazy down in LA like I did up in the South Bay?
“Yeah, I still have the Aston, but I hardly ever drive it anymore,” I replied, thinking about that pretty Madagascar Orange Vantage. “My daily driver is a BMW now.”
“That baby blue one?”
“No, that one stays here. I only drive that when I’m in town,” I said. “No, Emmy bought me an M6 coupe for my birthday last year. That’s what I mostly drive.”
“Must be nice,” Ashley said. “Not as nice as an Aston Martin, though.”
“I have a new car that’s really nice- nicer than the Aston,” I said. Thinking about it for a moment, I said, “Well, you’ve seen it. Remember my friend James’ Porsche? He sold it to me.”
“The blue and orange one? The one people couldn’t stop eye-fucking everywhere he parked it?” Ashley asked.
“Well, it's not blue and orange anymore, but yeah, that one.”
“You gotta take me for a ride in it some day,” Ashley begged, grabbing my hand in both of hers. “I absolutely will put out if you do!”
I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head. Ashley looked back over her shoulder and saw the waitress standing there, covering her mouth to hide her laughter.
Recovering quickly, Ashley said to the waitress, “Well, you’d put out too, if you ever saw this car.”
This was too much for the girl, and she she really did break out laughing at that, which got Ashley and me laughing as well.
After we ordered, Ashley demanded the details, so I gave her a rough outline of the weekend in the Arizona desert, culminating with the Athertons selling me their car.
“So this girl, this Mandy?” Ashley asked when I’d finished.
“Maddie,” I corrected.
“Maddie. She was already into racing, but you two just, like, swooped in and upgraded her car and fully sponsored her just because you felt like it?” Ashley asked.
“Yeah, pretty much,” I admitted. “She’s a good driver, and maybe could turn pro when she gets a bit older. It’d be good to say that we helped give her the chance. To be honest, though, it’s really her mom that’s making her racing possible.”
Ashley looked thoughtfully at me for a long moment, but then ultimately decided to not say whatever it was that had been on her mind.
We talked about school, her roommate, and her varsity track team schedule while we ate. It was easy, relatively meaningless conversation, and completely free of any potential booby traps.
After I paid for dinner, Ashley asked if we could go for a drive. I could tell there had been something she’d wanted to talk about, so I agreed, hoping it wasn’t any more of her shenanigans.
In the car, I took us west into the Santa Cruz mountains to get us out of town.
“Leah,” Ashley finally said. “A year ago about this time, when we first met, all I could think about was jumping your bones.”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“I was a horny little bitch,” Ashley admitted. “I wanted you to throw me down and girl-fuck me senseless. Sorta still do, to be honest.”
“Only sorta?” I asked. “What changed?”
“Well, besides the fact that you’re like some sort of hot as fuck Amazonian goddess with amazing cars, expensive, tailored clothes and a fifty-thousand dollar watch and all that, a big part of it was that you weren’t shy about being a lesbian, and I was, um, bi-curious, I guess. I thought that maybe you could introduce me to the Sapphic pleasures, you know? And yeah, I know, a straight girl hooking up just to try it out is maybe the oldest lesbian cliché ever, but, you know, I really was completely wet for you. You were the first woman I’d ever seen that I just really wanted to bang,” Ashley said, looking out the window, away from me.
“But?” I asked.
“Well, you said I should find somebody else to try the girl-girl thing on, and so I did. Another one of the girls on the track team, we roomed together at a meet in Phoenix, and you know, we got kinda hands-on. We’ve hooked up a few times since then, but I’m… I guess I’m not really into it all that much, you know?”
“Some are, some aren’t,” I said. “I had a boyfriend before I met Emmy, and I thought I was happy with him. Sex with him was good- at least, I thought so. But then Emmy and I got together, and it was all so much better than I ever thought it could be. I don’t regret my time with Chris, but if I’d understood my sexuality better, I would have been with girls from the start. I just… prefer women. The way they smell, their soft, smooth skin, the way they feel in my arms. Guys are fine, I like men alright, I’m just not that interested in going to bed with any of them anymore.”
“I guess it’s like that,” Ashley said. “Sex with Jaz is just, well, like you said. It’s alright, but not great. She’s way more into me than I’m into her, and she knows it, too. For me it’s just kind of a booty call thing, that’s all, and I keep trying to tell her that, but she’s…”
“There’s an old joke,” I said. “What does a lesbian bring to her second date? A U-Haul.”
“Oh, Jesus,” groaned Ashley. “She’s talked about us rooming together next year.”
“Don’t do it,” I urged. “That can’t possibly end well.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, but I don’t know how to tell her. And Christ, I can’t even imagine me bringing her home. ‘Hey Mom and Dad, I want you to meet my black girlfriend Jasmine. Oh, and by the way, she’s from Maryland’. That would be the most fun family get-together EVER.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that, even as I sympathized. “Your parents seemed nice enough when I met them at the steak house,” I said. “They must have had some inkling I’m gay, and that didn’t seem to be an issue.”
“No, they’re O.K.,” Ashley conceded. “You know Dad still talks about you and your bar? I think you impressed the shit outta him, and somehow, me being friends with you makes me that little bit, um, cooler, I guess.”
“Maybe he sees you less as his little girl and more as your own person?” I asked, trying to put a positive spin on it.
“Yeah, maybe,” Ashley grudgingly admitted. “And I think if I brought you home and said, ‘Mom, Dad, Leah and I are lovers’, their reaction would be… well, not so bad, know what I mean?”
Thinking about what she’d just said, Ashley rushed to defend her parents. “I don’t mean to say that my parents are racist and they wouldn’t like Jaz but they would like you,” she said. “I mean, you’re established, accomplished, and successful. They look at you and see someone respectable. You carry yourself- I mean, just fucking look at you. Who wouldn’t want their kid to wind up with someone like you? You’re every parent’s dream for their kid. But Jaz, she’s an inner-city Baltimore girl on scholarship, barely maintaining minimum GPA to stay in the program. She’s nice, and kind, but I don’t know what her prospects really are, you know? She definitely is not the kind of person my parents want me to marry.”
“I guess I get that,” I said.
Ashley broke the silence after a while with an unexpected question. “So, like, what do you want from me?”
“What?” I asked, surprised by the question, and unsure what she actually meant.
“I mean, when we first met, you asked me out for lunch. You flirted with me, and when I turned it back on you, you shut me down. I practically threw myself at you-”
“No ‘practically’. You totally threw yourself at me,” I interrupted.
“Yeah, I totally did,” Ashley admitted. “I wanted you to fuck my brains out right there in your car. In fact, I still do, to be honest. I waxed before meeting you tonight, just in case. But you shut me down hard. I would literally do anything you want, but you’ve turned me down over and over.”
“At least you’re not pulling your panties off in the car this time,” I said, half-jokingly.
“Can’t,” Ashley replied, and I could hear the grin in her voice. “Commando. Wanna see?” she asked, and pulled her skirt up to her hips.
Being human, I couldn’t help but glance over. It was dark in the car, but by the light of the infotainment system I could see that yes, in fact, she was very smooth down there.
I sighed and said, “Ash, still not gonna happen.”
“I get that,” Ashley replied, making no move to cover back up. “I’m just putting it out there, making my position clear, that’s all.”
“It’s pretty clear,” I replied.
“So, like I was saying, if you don’t want me as your totally willing little sex toy, what do you want from me?”
I didn’t answer right away, since this was actually a very good question, and not one that I’d really given any thought to.
“I have lovers,” I said eventually. “I don’t need any more. What I do want is friends, I guess. When everybody graduated last year, almost all the friends I had in the Bay Area moved on, to Seattle for med school, Chicago for law school, or like me, to Los Angeles for the fame and fortune,” I said with a wry laugh. “I have my employees here, but they aren’t friends, just people I’m friendly with who have to put up with me because I’m their boss.”
I took a few moments to put my thoughts together, pulling over into a large turnout on the right that had great views of the Santa Clara Valley’s lights down below.
I got out of the car to take in the view, and Ashley followed my example. I glanced over at her and saw that she was still wearing her little skirt up around her hips like a belt. She caught my glance and said, “It’s a nice, warm night.” She reached behind and undid her skirt’s zipper, dropping it to her feet. She picked it up and casually tossed it onto the passenger seat. Seeing that I was watching, she pulled her summer top up and over her head and tossed it on top of her skirt, leaving her wearing nothing but her sandals.
Standing and stretching in the warm early summer night air, Ashley said, “You were starting to tell me what you wanted, Leah.”
“Yeah, I was,” I agreed. The night was fairly bright, a nearly full moon shining down through an almost cloudless night sky lighting up everything in silvery blue.
Ashley stepped to the edge of the graveled turnout, ostensibly to admire the view, but she wasn’t fooling anybody. She was doing it to give me as clear a view as possible, so I took the time to look, I mean really look, at her nude body.
Ashley was a distance runner, and so was lean to the point of being a bit, well… maybe boyish would be the right word. Narrow hips, small boobs, slender but muscular legs. She was pretty in an athletic way, but not anywhere near the category of either of my two wives back in New York. Still, if I were completely honest with myself, if I weren’t committed to Emmy and Angela, I’d probably take Ashley up on her offer.
Leaning back against the car, I said, “Ashley, when I saw you running that first day, I wanted to catch up with you just because of my competitive nature, that’s all. Then as I got close and realized you had no idea I was behind you and had been for a while, I wanted to tell you that running with earbuds was a terrible idea. But then we got to talking, and I enjoyed having someone I could run with who could really make me work for it.”
“Yeah, you scared the shit outta me when you all of a sudden were right there,” Ashley admitted. “You made your point pretty clear,” Ashley replied, still facing away, looking out over the city.
“Then you asked me if I wanted to get lunch, and-”
“No, you asked me,” Ashley interrupted.
“You’re misremembering,” I said. “You asked me, and I suggested we get burgers.”
Ashley turned to face me, her hands on her hips. “No, you asked me, and that’s when I thought maybe you were into me.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t going to argue about it, since it didn’t matter much after all.
Ashley walked right up to me and poked me in the chest. “No, you asked me for lunch, and I thought maybe, it was like a first date or something. Like I said, you were this smoking hot, giant Amazon goddess and you looked at me like I was worth your time, then you asked me out. You came to pick me up like an hour later or something, and I spent almost all that time in the shower, shaving smooth enough to eat off of, and maybe getting myself warmed up a little bit, if you know what I mean.” It was funny for Ashley to use a euphemism like that, and I couldn't help but chuckle.
“Well, it’s true!” she said. “Then you showed up, and your freaking car! And your watch… Leah, you are every bi-curious girl’s fantasy come to life!”
Unable to stop it, I really did laugh out loud at that. Sure, what she’d said had been funny, but the fact that Ashley was still completely naked, in the moonlight, in a gravel parking area with the entire Santa Clara Valley’s lights down below, indignantly recounting her version of events from a year before… It was just too much.
“Hey! It’s not funny!” Ashley said, poking my chest again.
“Yes, it is,” I managed to wheeze. This caused Ashley to stop poking me, at least, and step back, her hands on her hips again.
After a few moments, her expression softened, and her posture eased. “Yeah, I guess it is,” she admitted. With that, she turned back and walked back to look at the view. “Anyhow, I thought I was gonna get laid, and you said no. You told me you were married to the hottest woman in the world, and wasn’t gonna cheat on her. I guess I took that as, I dunno, a challenge, maybe. Then it was a sort of game, you know? But when we drove with your friend and his crazy Porsche, you just acted like we were friends, and you seemed to like having me there, even though I really didn’t do anything…” she said, thinking back.
It was about this moment that a car passed on the road behind us, but neither of us even looked back. I was watching Ashley, and she was apparently oblivious of the fact she was still bare-assed naked on a bright moonlit night.
Ashley turned back around to face me, her hands on her hips again. “You totally friend-zoned me, but, like… it was O.K. I mean, I had fun that day, getting out and seeing parts of the state I’d never, ever get to see otherwise, and just hanging with you and your friend like, um, real adults, I guess.”
“Yeah, that drive was fun,” I agreed, idly wondering if she was ever going to get dressed. Not that I minded her being naked- we’d gone past the point where she was trying to seduce me in her clumsy way, and now it seemed she was subconsciously using her nudity as a metaphor. Baring her soul as she bared her skin, or something like that.
“So I guess I’m O.K. with just being a friend, Leah. If we aren’t going to be fuck-buddies, being just plain old buddies is good, too. I think I’ve made it very clear I think you’re hot A F, but I also think you’re the coolest person, hot or not, that I’ve ever met, and I want you to- I want to keep spending time with you, even if it’s only every now and then, when you’re in town or something.”
“With clothes on?” I asked, teasing.
“Maybe sometimes,” Ashley replied. “But not right now. I’m kinda liking this,” she said, raising her arms and twirling around. “It’s… liberating. You should try it.”
“And people say that I’m the exhibitionist,” I said under my breath, but Ashley caught it.
“Wait- you’re an exhibitionist?”
“No, I’m really not,” I said with a sigh. “It’s just that almost all my friends have seen me naked at one point or another through a series of comic episodes.”
“Comic episodes?” Ashley asked, leaning against the car next to me.
“Well, for example, Emmy twisted my arm to get me to pose for a classical nude painting in New York,” I said. “The light was good on the back top-floor deck of our townhouse, and nobody could see, so that’s where I posed, for, like, three hours. While I was posing, our driver went and picked up my head of security and Emmy’s new bodyguard and brought them to the house. He had no idea where we were, so they wandered around the house until they all walked out onto the deck, and there I was, even more naked than you are right now- I didn’t even have on a pair of sandals.”
“Wow… I would have died of embarrassment,” Ashley said. “What did you do?”
“What could I do? I acted like it was no big deal, and said hello and glad to meet them, and told them I’d be done posing in another hour or so, so they all went back inside.”
“That’s bad-ass,” Ashley breathed. “Like a boss.”
We were both silent for a while, lost in our own thoughts, but finally Ashley said, “Your gym outfit shows off how built you are, but- I mean, I really would like to see you with no clothes on at all.”
“I thought we were past that,” I said, laughing.
“No, never,” Ashley said with a grin. “Come on, take it off!” she urged, grabbing the hem of my T.
Laughing, I slapped her hands away. “Down, girl! Down!”
“Spoilsport!” she said, sticking out her lower lip in a pout.