“Forum privacy rules, dude, and I don’t even know what we’re talking about here.”
His voice drifted, becoming quieter, but the bar indicating Twist’s microphone volume increased on her computer screen. His sultry whisper vibrated in the air around her. “Be a good girl and prove to me that you’re twenty-three. I’ll tell you exactly what I want you to do and make you feel so good.”
Colleen’s phone sitting beside her keyboard showed that it was just after two o’clock in the morning. Darkness filled the rest of her tiny apartment, save for the lamp aiming warm light at the back of her head and the glow from the massive monitor on her desk. Sitting in her office chair, her back ached from opening the store at ten that morning and carrying boxes full of gaming equipment and paraphernalia for hours while doing inventory.
Her eyes were swimming with exhaustion.
Talking with Anjali had reminded her that it had been months since she’d had a boyfriend in her life.
And she’d had a glass of wine for supper when she’d gotten back to her apartment to calm herself down before sitting down to moderate the Sherwood Forest forum. Most nights, that one glass of cheap wine was all that stood between the killer whales and her banhammer.
So, yeah. Colleen was exhausted and overwhelmed and a little tipsy at two o’clock in the dark morning.
That’s what she would tell herself later, that she’d not been in her usual frame of mind, that she’d been smashed.
Colleen said, “I’ll get my driver’s license.”
She clicked off her video camera because she didn’t want to take a chance that Twist would screencap a glimpse of her license in her hand, blow it up, and be able to see her address or something. She dragged the veil off her head, the chain lace ruffling her hair. With some scissors and a few Post-it Notes, she fashioned tiny pink bars and pressed them on her license over her real name except for the C at the beginning, her birthday except for the year, other identifying info, and her home address.
The red heart signifying that she was an organ donor was still visible, as was the name of her state at the top, part of the identifying number, and her height and weight and stuff. The weight was more of a goal, anyway, as everyone knew. The bar covering the address didn’t cover her zip code, but that was the zip for Southwestern State University. Fifty thousand students and sundry drop-outs like herself lived in the dorms and off-campus apartments in that zip code.
After a second of deliberation, she also pasted a pink box over the two codes that said Bro, indicating that her hair and eyes were brown. This wasn’t Tinder. Twist didn’t need to know anything more about Colleen than her age.
Finally, she pasted a pink bar over her eyes like she was on a true-crime TV show, and that scrap of paper would preserve her anonymity.
Hey, it was worth a shot.
She flipped the chiffon veil back over her face, straightened the slim chains, and turned her computer’s camera back on, holding the little card beside her veiled face and then zooming it closer to the camera so Twist could see.
On her darkened screen, Twist leaned in, and the light from his computer screen drew pale-blue lines over the hard slashes of his cheekbones and jaw. The dim streaks looked like a comic book sketch of a superhero, maybe Superman or Batman.
Or Iron Man. Colleen was more of a Marvel girl than a DC stan.
Twist said, “That is acceptable. Now—”
“Your turn,” Colleen said.
He paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“Pony up, buddy. You need to prove to me that you’re of age, too. I don’t know you. You might be a sixteen-year-old with a super testosterone burst during puberty that gave you a deep voice. I need to know that you’re at least twenty-one, too.”
Twist chuckled. “I haven’t been carded for donkey’s, but turnabout is fair play.”
In the faint light of wherever he was, Twist swiveled in his office chair and reached for something in the dark.
As Twist extended his arm, he reached through a beam of sunlight streaming through the air behind him that Colleen hadn’t even noticed.
Vibrant green, blue, and black tattoo ink coated his skin, and a full-sleeve tattoo from his pale wrist to the hem of his blue tee-shirt wrapped tightly around the striated bulges of his arm.
And what an arm Twist had, too. Thick, round biceps opposed heavy triceps above his elbow, while his lower arm was so defined that he must be into rock climbing. When his hand closed around something, those muscles contracted, rounding under his skin.
Whoa.
Anjali would have declared Twist to have arm porn and giggled hysterically in his presence.
“Just a moment,” Twist said. Scissors snipped through the computer speakers.
As Colleen waited in the dark, she tried to keep her wits about her but failed.
