I rip off my headphones quickly, scrambling to pause the audiobook on my phone by clicking at the screen, but it won’t stop. I can hear the low hum of Sergio telling Catarina how perfect her pussy is, and I panic.
Oh God, if I can hear it, the gorgeous man with the dimples can probably hear it too!
I snatch the phone from the marble top of the library front desk and bang it against my other hand like I, all of a sudden, need to turn into the Hulk to turn off my audiobook. Of course, the bang does nothing other than throw off my equilibrium, dislodging the phone from its spot between my fingers and sending it into a ping-pong-like match between my hands.
I smile anxiously—read: like a lunatic—at the man who’s made patience look like a birthright, and I gasp when my lack of coordination finally outwits my persistence. The phone lurches toward the floor, and with a shattered screen and the money it will cost to fix it flashing through my mind, I do the only thing I can think of.
I grab the cord of the headphones, desperate to stop the descent.
Unfortunately, I’ve overestimated the strength of the cord entirely. The plug lets go, not only allowing my phone to smack into the stone floor with a sickening thud, but also switching the audio of my book from headphones to full speaker mode.
“Oh God, Sergio. I love your cock,” Catarina says, and for all the echoing going on in the centuries-old architecture of this fucking chasmlike place, she may as well have yelled it.
Holy audiobook orgasms. My cheeks flush pink, and my heart stops beating in an impressive showing of synchronization. I am mortified.
The man standing in front of me bites at the plump flesh of his bottom lip as his smile deepens.
“Fuck yes, you do,” Sergio says. “Your pussy loves it.”
Cool it, Sergio, you horny bastard!
I scramble for the phone on the ground, dropping to my knees without care for how hard the tile will be as they hit it and slapping at the phone like a cat with a string.
In a matter of ten seconds, I’ve morphed from a woman running the front desk at the law library into a flipping vaudeville comedy act. Add in some old-timey music and jazz hands, and I’ll be able to take this goddamn spectacle on the road.
“Oh yes. Oh yes!” Catarina shouts.
Good Lord, Catarina! Can’t you come quietly, for fuck’s sake?
If I didn’t know this was a contemporary romance audiobook, I’d be convinced Catarina was in the middle of a porno. For once in my life, I’m a little annoyed that the male and female narrators are so convincing.
I can hear the handsome man’s throat clear above me, but I don’t look up. I know the torture won’t end until I find the off button and successfully push it.
Frantic enough to try anything, I slap a flat hand over the device like a spatula, just to trap it from traveling any more, and reach over with the other to scoop it up. Almost like when you trap a spider with a cup and have to use a piece of paper to make sure it can’t get out.
I pick it up as Sergio climaxes, shouting his triumph for all of the New York Public Access Law Library to hear. “It feels so good,” he groans huskily a few seconds later.
My phone in check, I find the button with my thumb and push the pause button manically.
Unfortunately, I click it so many times, the device can’t decide what to do, switching on and off in rapid succession, alternating between silence and Sergio and Catarina’s throes of passion.
“You’re gripping me so tight!”
Silence.
“God, Sergio, I love you! I love your cock!”
Silence.
Insanely hot stranger man and I stand in opposing silence—his smile growing by the second and my stomach trying to turn itself inside out—while we wait for my phone to decide on which command to land or for Sergio and Catarina to stop waxing poetic about their orgasms and each other’s private parts.
It comes to heel eventually—I am a human with opposable thumbs after all—but not before the embarrassment has had time to really percolate. If this shit were tea, it’d be dark as hell.
No milk, no cream, no sugar, just straight-up black and bitter.
I guess if there’s any silver lining to be had, it’s that the screen on my phone, somehow, remains intact.
“Interesting,” the man says softly when Sergio’s groans and