G still calls me.

Less often, but he does.

He called me twice today, once from work. I could hear his keyboard clicking in the background, and he had to leave pretty quickly.

I know it's silly, but the thought of him doing math makes my thighs quiver. Oh, a man with a brain!

Then he called me from home, while he was cooking dinner. He often calls me while he's cooking dinner.

"I miss you," he told me.

I laughed. I couldn't help it.

We only knew each other (physically) for one weekend.

He dreams of that weekend, and that's what he misses.

Admittedly, so do I, but it's not a romantic thing.

~

Hand, suspended in the air beside his face, fingers curled and twitching with pleasure.

His nose, pushing back curled fingers, soft mouth against the tissue paper skin of my palm.

Those kisses, perfect and demanding and unrelenting. Like fire, igniting my blood to a raging inferno, like I have not experienced since before I was with Paul.

And a lasting inferno. That's the important part.

I was always a lustful creature, even when I was a virgin.

There's fire in me, and without it I am nothing but an empty husk.

~

He speaks, and I listen.

He asks questions, and I phrase my answers bluntly, almost cruelly.

It drives me a little bit nuts that he is almost twenty-eight, but still thinks as if he is eighteen.

He will come around, eventually. I think.

He wants to know if I'm going on dates.

He phrases the question lightly, teasingly, but he asks every time he calls.

I always tell him the same thing: I don't date much. It takes a lot for me to agree to a date in the first place, and even more to agree to a second.

He sounds worried as I'm saying this.

"Would you date me?"

I chuckle, a heavy sound, deep in my throat.

"I'd give you a chance," I allow.

My response worries him, and I silently revel in his uncertainty.

He sounds like a little boy, looking for approval from his mother.

And then in mere moments, he is talking as a mature(ish) adult, talking about his love for reffing hockey, and getting laid off, and traveling to San Diego for a conference.

What does he want from me?

~

He smelled like salt and sweat and soap.

His dusky skin reflected no light, merely an assortment of shadows hovering over me.

He smiled, a flash of white in the darkness of my tent.

Oh yes, I still dream of that weekend.

I still dream.

.

Rosie.

Before&After