Shannon:Has no one told you that telling a woman to calm down is like trying to baptize a cat?
Will:If cats weren’t assholes, it wouldn’t be that difficult
Will:And if you’ll calm your tits, I’ll tell you something
Shannon:Spare me the suspense.
Will:I had a double major. Art history and finance.
Shannon:Is that so? Did you always want to be Charlotte York from Sex and the City when you grew up?
Will:Do you ever take a break from ripping assholes?
Shannon:Nope. I have bullshit to call and standards to enforce.
Will:Now tell me something else
Shannon:I once dated a guy who always carried a tin of sardines with him. He kept them in his shirt pocket and ate them before meals. Like an appetizer
Will:Nope. Not weird at all
Shannon:I have a track record with the weird and weirder
Will:I’m not weird.
Shannon:You are the weirdest
Will:Mmm I think you are. In a hot way.
Shannon:Fuck you
Will:You have no idea how much I’d love to
Shannon:Yeah? Maybe you should call me. Tell me.
*
Fourteen months ago
The rational partof me knew this game of insult-foreplay Shannon and I were playing was getting out of hand when it transcended secret weekends and snark-filled texts. The irrational part of me—the one that served at the pleasure of my cock—couldn’t get enough. It started with wanting to hear her hurl obscenities at me rather than reading them over text messages, and it turned into me detailing how I’d fuck her if I was there.
Short answer: thoroughly.
Another time, I caught her while she was reviewing financial statements, and in some very strange, very desperate turn of events, my pathetic ass demanded she tell me about them. She did…in the sexiest voice conceivable. Thank God I wasn’t sharing a bunk with anyone that night because I came like a geyser when she started talking about cash flow and asset ratios.
Soon, it turned into talking her through an orgasm that I ached to taste plus odd details about our days, or her critique of Judd Apatow films or my reminders to lock her doors. I learned she ate brunch with my sister most Saturdays after they visited the farmers’ market, and she only watched reruns because she found it too time-consuming to keep up with new programs. She was handling an exclusive remodeling project for a musician, or as she preferred to call it,herclassified mission.
She heard about my near-religious reverence for fish tacos and college football. She knew Itechnicallylived with my parents in Coronado, in the cozy blue bungalow they bought almost forty years ago when the only things on the island were the Hotel Del and the naval amphibious base.
We still gave each other atonof shitallthe time but…I missed her when we didn’t connect.
*
Will:True story– my brother had drinks with your sister today
Will:In Italy
Shannon:Run that by me again
