Offensive Behavior

“I’m not asexual. I like women. Not you, for instance, but I’m not gay or celibate.”

“Glad we got that sorted,” she said dryly. She’d have eye-rolled, he knew it. “What did you do to this woman?”

“Sent her a dick pic.”

“Oh shit, Reid. You can’t just, oh hell.”

“In my defense, she asked for it.”

“A random woman asked for a dick pic.” Sarina’s voice went upscale again.

He winced. There were three people in his life who could make him do that. His mother, Dev’s mother and Sarina. “She’s not random. We know each other.”

“How well?”

“In the home-movie porn channel sense.”

“Dear Lord. You didn’t—”

He sighed. “No, no. No filming except for the pic I sent her. We spent the night together.”

“One night.”

“And a day and, okay, not a lot of time, but I like her, and I want to see her again and she said we had to have a cooling-off period and that she wanted me to get some furniture and send her a dick pic.”

Sarina said nothing. But he could hear her moving around. Walking across what would be the cement floor in the recepti

on area at Plus.

“You’re not saying anything.”

“I need to think about this.”

Oh, that was bad. “It’s terminal then.”

“It’s surprising. You met a woman and that woman gave you instructions, and you followed them.”

If only she knew how many instructions and how blissfully and diligently he’d followed them. “I followed instructions you gave me. That’s why I’m calling.”

“You followed them grudgingly and only when absolutely necessary and more often than not you took my advice and ignored it.”

“But I always appreciated it and I won’t do that now. Tell me what to do. We were texting, sexting, she sent me random body parts and I reciprocated. There was kind of a buildup, nothing pornographic, and then she stopped and I guess I jumped the gun and I went straight to the big finish.” He paused because Sarina was breathing funny. “You’re laughing at me.”

Sarina laughed out loud. “I’m guessing you went pornographic and she didn’t respond.”

“Radio silence.”

“Oh Reid.”

“What do I do?”

“Ball is in her court.”

“Funny hah hah.”

“I wasn’t punning.” Sarina barely got that out amidst the snorting. “You have to go with whatever she decides.”

“No, no, there has to be something I can do to fix this.”