He took another bite, finishing his first sandwich in the time it had taken me just to take two bites of mine.
“Going to a hospital so you don’t choke on the food you’ve eaten so quickly?”
“Hah, this is slow in comparison to the norm. Remember, I’m talking to you.”
After a brief pause, Phoenix took an enormous bite of his second sandwich.
“I think this is the cliché point when I turn to you and say let’s grab a drink,” he said with a smirk. “But I’m going to assume going to a bar would be like going to the office.”
“Somewhat, not as much as you’d think,” I said.
“Well, in that case, this is my proposal,” he said.
His eyes narrowed on me, and he seemed to stare deep into my soul. He even put his sandwich down. I had a strong feeling I knew what he was going to say.
“Let’s grab drinks at my place.”
There it is.
What was my immediate reaction?
Excitement.
I couldn’t even lie. Phoenix might as well have been a different person on this date compared to the last one. He was witty, funny, seductive, and charming. If anyone was being cold and distant, I was by refusing to ride his motorcycle.
The second reaction was a little bit of fear—not that he’d hurt me, but that I was allowing myself to fantasize about something happening way too soon. It was, in his words, the “second first date” and I’d only slept with guys on the first date in my late teens, when I’d gone on something of a sexual rampage, desperately seeking connection and intimacy that I did not have elsewhere; many of those times barely qualified as “dates.”
But the reaction that eventually settled in, the one that took hold, was one of “why not?”
I was moving away in a couple of months, and that had been finalized. So why not?
Phoenix was a biker, a hot guy. He probably—well, not necessarily—was not relationship material, but... physically? Why not?
He and I had an attraction to each other. We were both sober. We both knew what we were getting into. Neither of us wanted a kid right now, so there would be no confusion about what more action would involve.
So... why not?
Because you like him for more than just this and this is going to confuse the hell out of you and make you question leaving?
Because he likes you for more than just your body and you’re going to hurt him if you go down this path?
“Sure, why not?”
I sure had to hope that logic was wiser than my heart, because as soon as I said those words, even if the feeling had been “why not,” there was a nagging sense of “here’s why not, you dummy” that I couldn’t shake.
“If I may, allow me to give you a ride back to my place,” Phoenix said. “I know you didn’t let me give you one down here. But it’s all part of the experience now.”
He didn’t even try to hide that he had secondary intentions. The smirk on his face hadn’t vanished from the moment he asked his original question.
To be frank, I was going along with these intentions. I did conceal that there was a voice in me doubting the intelligence of the move, but I was hiding that from myself as much as him.
“If I may, allow me to accept your offer.”
Phoenix gave the kind of grunt that all men give when they got something to their way—a kind of satisfied grunt, just enough to make their excitement known, but not so much as to be as over the top. His just happened to be far sexier and far more arousing than most.
I knew the drill for motorcycles as well as any woman did; it wasn’t like I didn’t spend a lot of time around them. I knew the vibrations would feel good, I knew the initial rush would produce a spike of adrenaline, and I knew that there would be a split second on every turn where I would wonder if we were about to tip over. All of those things, while still pleasant and enjoyable, were not overwhelming.
But what I was starting to become curious for, what I was starting to allow myself to desire, was a chance to learn what Phoenix felt like beneath those clothes. To be sure, his taut face, rigid jawline, and blocky shoulders suggested that he did very well in taking care of himself. I didn’t think I was about to hug a pillow.
