She waited and a few seconds passed. Finally her phone beeped again.
Dick pic, Ian captioned the photo.
It was a photo of the wildly unsexy face of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon.
I am so wet right now, she wrote back.
Good. Mission accomplished. Sleep well.
You, too, she replied, and then thought of one more thing she needed to tell him.
She took a deep breath, summoned her courage and wrote back the answer to a question he’d asked her four hours ago at dinner.
Yes.
Yes, what? Ian wrote back.
Yes, I want to be your girlfriend.
Another long pause followed. Flash caught herself holding her breath.
When the reply came it was nothing but smiley face emojis.
Ian, you’re thirty-six years old. Act like it.
He replied with a single frowning face. She laughed so hard she almost cried.
She started writing to tell him that she was sorry and he was allowed to use emojis if he wanted to, but the phone rang before she could finish typing out her message.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Ian said as soon as she answered.
“I’m regretting this already.”
“Are not.”
“Why are you calling me? It’s one in the morning?”
“Do I need a reason to call my girlfriend?”
“Yes, at one in the morning you do.”
“I have a reason.”
“What?”
He laughed on the other end of the line and it was the sort of laugh to make a girl’s toes curl up in the Doctor Who knee socks she wore to bed.
“So...what are you wearing?”
Flash answered absolutely truthfully this time.
“A smile.”
8
IAN DRAGGED HIMSELF out of bed at ten the next morning. Usually he never slept that late. He couldn’t. But usually he didn’t remodel an entire bathroom in one day and then fuck his new girlfriend three times in one evening and then stay up until two in the morning to have phone sex with her. A man needed his eight hours of sleep after such an eventful day. He rose from bed and pulled on yesterday’s jeans and a white T-shirt with the words Asher Construction in strong black letters across the back.
He was halfway down the stairs to the kitchen when he heard the sounds of movement downstairs.