Isabel and I met for dinner at her brother’s restaurant in Old City after she returned from visiting Jimmy in Chicago. I waited at the bar, flirting mindlessly with the cute bartender, until Isabel finally arrived. An achingly beautiful redhead from Costa Rica, Isabel and I had met outside a club on Delaware Avenue, both trying desperately to shake a creepy guy who alternated his attention between me and her. We shared a cab only to discover we lived in the same apartment building, although not for much longer, as Isabel was planning to move to Chicago to be with Jimmy; it was true love, after all.
She was wearing a cropped blazer, snug white tee shirt, and dark denim blue jeans, her deep red hair loose around her shoulders. Classy as always, I thought, although I still felt pretty in my ruffled mini skirt and black tee. We turned heads as we were led to our table, the redhead and the blonde, a dirty joke in motion.
Isabel’s brother sent a bottle of wine to the table and we ordered the specials and chatted as we waited. Isabel was glowing like a woman who was either deeply in love or having great sex; of course, she was lucky enough to have both. She was particularly golden as she regaled me with stories of her week with Jimmy.
“He picked me up from the airport and I wanted him right there, by the baggage carousel.” We laughed. She continued, in her soft accent:
“We stood there hugging for like, twelve minutes. And he was hard and it turned me on so much. Just the feeling of him near my crotch was enough, gosh, we had to get out of there. And we controlled ourselves pretty well until we made it back to his apartment. As soon as we were inside, it was like, boom. Explosive. Clothes were torn off; we barely made it to the bed.”
I smiled behind my wine glass. Jimmy was a lover with simple tastes, a missionary-in-the-bedroom-only kind of guy. Adorable. Blonde. Canadian. As ordinary as Isabel was exotic. But Jimmy was sweet and kind and gentle and absolutely head-over-heels for her. Even the most vanilla sex was thrilling for them.
Isabel ran her fingers through her hair, clearly enjoying the memory. “His hands are so amazing, Maidie. He touches me in the most erotic places: my thighs, the small of my back, my stomach. It was just so good to be touched by him and to touch him again. It was the hungriest sex we’ve ever had, even though I only just saw him a few weeks before. Feeling his body on top of me…wow. I wanted to stay like that forever.”
I crossed my legs and squeezed my thighs together. The vaguest notion of good sex was making me squirm. It had been a while, a month, in fact, and as Isabel began again I made a mental list of possibly booty calls I could make tonight.
“Jimmy’s such a cuddler though, Mae. All about touching and holding afterwards; honestly I think he enjoys that more than the actual sex. It’s just nice. I can feel his love, you know,” and she blushed and we laughed over the sentimentality of the last comment.
“I’m jealous,” I told her, forking a carrot.
“And what about Nick?”
Nick. Yes. I’d nearly forgotten about him. He was the only guy I’ve dated since being out here that I genuinely liked. But we lost contact sometime after Valentine’s Day when we bumped into each other at a bar, he with some friends and me on a date; we hadn’t been exclusively but I think he was hurt by it. After that we had barely spoken. But the mention of his name stirred my interest. He was so cute, tall and well-built, dark hair, good looking in a generic kind of way but with something else about him, a ruggedness, a quiet sexiness that turned me on. Like the guys who worked in the lumber yards back home in Oregon. Nick would be a good lay, I decided, if I could only ignore the fact that I cared about him as well.