I had my doubts that I’d ever really get there. I was after all still in my underwear. But just today I’d gone skinny-dipping. There was no telling what could happen. A girl had to have goals.
“All right, you listening? We’re going to get back to it in a few seconds and we’re gonna come and then I gotta go, but before you call me again, I want you to go out to that strip club your friend works at and watch the girls dance.”
“What?” I cried. How did I graduate from cake for breakfast to going to a strip club?
“You heard me, and before you start acting like you’re not interested, remember it’s just you and me here right now. And I do not judge you.”
I do not judge you.
The problem was not him. Not at all. It was these ghosts in my head. My mother and Hoyt and a lifetime of trying to appease the unappeasable by suppressing everything about myself.
That’s Annie, I thought. Annie is the one with ghosts.
Layla is the one giving hand jobs in the backseats of cars for a six-pack of beer.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll go out to the strip club,” I said.
“You want that?”
I thought of Joan’s perfect body and how hard I’d tried not to stare at it.
“Yeah…I do.”
Again that laugh of his did something to my blood because my whole body got hot.
“Fuck, that’d be something to see, baby. That would be something to see. Now, where’s your hand?”
“In my pussy,” I whispered, feeling brave and bold and flush, and the word came out of my mouth on a gust of air, so easy. “Where’s yours?”
“Around my cock,” he moaned.
We were silent for a moment, just the sound of our breath between us. Harsh and raw.
“Dylan,” I groaned.
“Right here. Right fucking here.”
It was fast and hard and quick and over in seconds, and I listened to him gasp and groan and wished, more than I could say, that I could see him right now.
“Layla?” he asked after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
I laughed, boneless and weak on the bed. “Yeah. I’m good. You?”
“I’m good, baby. Real good.”
“Can I ask you something…that’s not dirty?”
“As a rule I only answer dirty questions.”
“Dylan,” I laughed. “I’m serious.”
“Shoot.”
“Have you ever done this before?”
“Phone sex? Sure.” Part of me was crushed at his words, though it was ridiculous. I had no reason to care. “But this other stuff?” he continued. “Talking to a total stranger like this? Totally new.”
Ah, not so crushed anymore.
“Me too.”
“You grew up on a farm?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“Worlds away from here. Where did you grow up?”
“You changing the subject?”
“I am. My past…is…”
“Complicated?”
“Very. So where’d you grow up?”
“Outside of Jacksonville.”
“Now where do you live?”
“Does it matter?”
Because we’re never going to meet. That’s what he wasn’t saying. We were never going to meet, so this…small talk didn’t really matter.
“I guess not.”
The silence between us hummed for a second, nothing bad. Just quiet. Just space between two people. It was kind of comforting.
“Why are you going to all this effort to watch Ben?”
“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. You have any answers for me?”
“And sassy. I like this.”
I did too. I really did.
“Tell me about Ben.”
“Are you talking to him?”
“No. Not really. Today I did a little bit. He said he has no family.”
Dylan didn’t say anything, and I guess I’d been hoping that he’d tell me Ben was lying.
“Why are you having him watched?” I asked.
“He’s fucked up my life more than once. I feel better knowing where he is and what he’s doing.”
“How did he fuck up your life?”
“I’m not talking about this.”
“But—”
“Layla, we’ve got to have some rules about this thing between us. And one of them is I’m not talking about Ben.”
There was something so naked in his voice. So raw, and I was suddenly sorry to have put it there.
“Okay,” I breathed.
“What are you going to do before you call me again?”
“Go look at naked ladies.”
He laughed, sounding satisfied, and though I had no basis to even consider it—or know—he sounded happy, too. “That’s right, baby. Do that and call me when you’re there.”
“Call you?”
“Yeah.”
“Like while I’m watching?”
“Yes.”
Heat bloomed again in my stomach, between my legs. The idea was unbearably exciting. Unbearably hot.
“What are you going to be doing until then?” I asked.
“Waiting for you.”
The next day I stepped into the arctic chill that was the Flowered Manor office.
“Hey, Kevin, the lawn mower died again.”
“What?” he cried, looking up from the game of solitaire he