“I had a feeling that your underwear might not be as exciting as it should be after so much time, so I thought I’d buy you something that’ll put hairs on the chest of anyone lucky enough to get a look at you.”
“Are you serious?”
I tear the tissue, and inside is something made of gorgeous black lace. I want to pull it out so that I can see it in all of its glory, but a restaurant isn’t an appropriate place.
“I’m always totally serious about lingerie! And even more serious about sex.”
“Well, I don’t know who’s going to get to appreciate this, but whoever it is will be told that they owe it all to you.”
“You still have to pick your next candidate?”
“I do, and I have no idea what I’m going to get with any of them. I thought they’d have revealed their dates and kinks by now, but they’re holding all their cards close to their chests.”
“You know what we should do?” Dawn says, reaching into her purse and pulling out a small notepad with a pen attached. “We should write down what we think for each of the men left. Whoever gets closest has to buy the other dinner.”
“I feel bad doing that.”
“It’s a game, Kyla. This just adds some fun.”
Shaking my head, I raise my eyebrows, and Dawn flicks open the pad. “One of them has to be into group sex,” she says. “Seriously. It seems like all dudes are into running a train with their buddies.”
“A train? Ewwww…that sounds so gross.”
“I’d lay back and get run over by the Ink Factor train and say thank you after.” She laughs so hard that the servers glance over at us from where they’re congregating at the bar. The service in here isn’t anything to write home about today, that’s for sure.
“You seriously think one of them will want that?” The idea sets my lady parts squeezing but my mind scrambling. If that was on one of those itty-bitty pieces of paper, would I agree?
“If they don’t, they’re tamer than I ever would have imagined.”
“Okay, who are you putting for that?”
“Noah. He’s the most out there. I reckon he’d be all over that. And one of them must have put anal.”
“Oh God. No. I don’t think so.”
“There isn’t a man in this restaurant that hasn’t jerked off to anal porn.”
“I don’t think I want that.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Dawn says, wiggling her perfect eyebrows.
“What else?” I ask, wishing we’d never started this game.
“How about spanking or bondage?”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure who?”
“Fisting?”
“For fuck’s sake, Dawn. Are you trying to terrify the fuck out of me?”
This time when she laughs, she doubles over, clutching the pad to her belly. “For a woman involved in a filthy sex game with seven men, you sure are a prude.”
“It isn’t prudish to wince at the idea of a huge hand being stuffed where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“If a baby’s head can come out, a man’s fist can go up.”
“Come on. Please. Don’t do this to me. There are still four pieces of paper in that bowl, and I’m going to be shitting a brick every time I have to pick one out.”
Holding her hand up, she dries her eyes with a napkin. “Maybe they’ll all be into things like massage and whispering sweet nothings in your ear. Maybe it’ll be softly-softly hearts and flowers.”
The truth is, I wouldn’t want that either. I don’t think I could take too much romance from any of them. Romance will hook into the tender flesh of my heart and pull. It’ll leave me feeling like I’ve been run over by a train, and not in a good way.
“I don’t think I can guess,” I say in the end.
Dawn slides the pad back into her bag. “Just enjoy it, sweetie,” she says, reaching out to squeeze my arm. “Enjoy every minute of creating memories that will make you blush in your old age.”
“They definitely will.”
When lunch is done, I walk Dawn back to her office building, and we hug goodbye. On my journey home, I pass my favorite stationery store, and I can’t resist heading in to see if they have anything new. On the center table, there’s a display of new journals, and one jumps out at me. With a matt black cover and the words DO EPIC SHIT on the front, it seems made for me at this moment.
I haven’t written a diary for years, but it feels like time. I’m doing epic shit that I don’t want to forget. I’m finding things out about myself that I don’t want to drift away when the experiences are done. Putting pen to paper can be hard, but this won’t be a serious monologue. It’ll be a genuinely funny recollection of a time in my life when I went outside the box.