Andi turned away from me, twisting onto her side. Her breath came in the great gasps of someone who, until just recently, had been very vocal. As I’d hoped, for reasons unrelated to our recent activities, we were the only two at home. Somewhere twisted in the sheets lay her discarded panties, and my head rested on her thigh. My jaw ached, a consequence of exercising muscles atrophied through long disuse. The enormous script of her indecipherable tattoo filled my field of vision. Again, I tried and failed to remember what message she had found it advisable to transmit in Sanskrit to her ass’s western hemisphere. It seemed like the sort of question you can only ask once.
Abruptly, she shifted, jostling my head to the mattress. Annoyed, I looked up at her. She returned the look. “So, you probably still aren’t going to fuck me.”
No, I probably still wasn’t. Whatever unconscious orders my intuitive self had nocturnally issued to my cock remained in effect. To all appearances, my cock seemed content never to fuck again. It remained serenely, blissfully uncooperative.
Possibly this was for the best.
Although Andi kept a bottle of name-brand personal lubricant within easy reach on her nightstand, she showed no sign of owning any type of prophylaxis. I still had a residual condom or two left over from times past, in halcyon days when I believed that sex was a thing likely to happen to me, but I hadn’t brought any with me to Dayton. Before I’d arrived, it just hadn’t seemed like it was going to be that kind of trip. “Well,” I said, “Usually things don’t go this far on a first date.” Her face closed off, a symptom of some silent tantrum thrown behind it. I gestured. “Maybe if you went down on me for a bit, that might help.”
Silently, she sat up and crawled over me to the foot of the bed. I watched her with a residue of detached curiosity left over from last night. She passed over my unclothed body, moving past my hips and thighs, pausing to stretch her arms beneath the tangled comforter. I sucked in my breath, waiting. She sat upright with one hand holding her panties, either the ones from earlier or some other lost and rediscovered undergarment. Small drifts of clothes spotted the room. Here, the concepts of “clean” and “dirty” operated as a spectrum rather than a binary. As a general rule, I didn’t judge, but I desperately wanted this particular undergarment to be clean. She began dressing.
“No, I don’t really feel like it.”
Had I been genuinely surprised, my aching jaw might have dropped open, but I felt relief more than anything. I could go home. To all appearances, I had done my duty. It seemed like Andi had gotten off, and she didn’t strike me as someone to simulate orgasm in order to spare my feelings. She shrugged herself into a hoodie and sweatpants and walked out of the room. In a trance of dispassionate efficiency, I dressed. I followed her into the hallway. Everything still smelled like mangoes.
My car was still parked where I left it beneath a stand of trees. Overnight it had collected a fine coating of natural debris, clogging the crack between the hood and windshield. Andi put her arms around me as I went to put my key in the lock.
“Thanks for driving up,” she said. She kissed me and stepped back, smiling at me as though we’d had a great time. I supposed that maybe she had.
“Oh,” I said. “Sure. You’re welcome.” This is the polite thing to say. Somewhere between her bedroom and the street, she’d found a knit cap and worn it. It looked cute on her. I didn’t mention it.
I drove home.