“In the car,” I tell her. “A buddy of mine needed help with—uh, a project, so I was there. Helping him.”
I almost tell her all the details: that it was my friend Stephen who coaches Junior Varsity basketball at Sprucevale High, but we don’t give that level of detail about our lives. We never have.
Maybe we could.
“Is it nighttime there?” she asks.
“It is,” I say. “Dark as hell, too, because I live in the middle of nowhere. You?”
“Yeah, it’s dark,” she says. “Winter, you know.”
I wonder, for the thousandth time, where Lola lives. I’m pretty sure she’s somewhere in Eastern Standard Time, maybe Central, because our schedules seem similar and she’s casually mentioned having been to New York and DC. But it could be anywhere.
“I hate how the sun goes down by five,” I say, just to say something. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around her voice, how oddly unfamiliar it is tohearher after all these months. “Where are you?”
“My apartment,” she says. “My roommate’s staying with her boyfriend tonight. So.”
“So I’ll be home in ten,” I tell her, suddenly breathless. “Seven if I break some laws.”
“I’m sure we can discuss current events or literature for ten minutes so you don’t hit a tree or a deer or something,” she says. “You ever seenThe Nutcracker?”
“I won’t hit anything, I’ve driven this road a million times,” I tell her, inching my speedometer a little higher.
“I’m being responsible.”
“I can drive just fine while you tell me what you’re wearing,” I say.
“What a creative line.”
“Now you’re a dirty talk critic? Make something up. I can’t see you, tell me you’re wearing a corset made from the finger bones of your enemies. So long as you also tell me how good it makes your tits look.”
She laughs, the sound rasping over my phone, skipping in and out. Lola sounds a little like she’s on a tin can underwater, but it’sherso I’ll put up with any amount of bad connection.
“They are fucking spectacular in this weird morbid bustier that you invented,” Lola says. “Every time I take a step it looks like they’re about to pop out completely, but somehow, they never do.”
I… fuck. I was kidding about the fingerbones of her enemies, obviously, but now I’m imagining Lola walking around an apartment in a corset like that—bending, straightening, maybe reaching for something on a high shelf and then jumping a little when she can’t quite reach—and yeah, I’m hard as fuck in the driver’s seat, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Really, though,” I say.
“Pajama shorts and a huge, comfy sweater,” she admits, then sighs. “But I’m not wearing a bra and it feels pretty good on my nipples.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Five minutes. I could practically be steering this car with my dick.
“You?” she asks, casually. “Your jeans tight yet?”
“Track pants,” I tell her. “And a performance t-shirt and my niftiest fleece vest.”
I dressed for comfort, not style, okay?
“Niftiest,” she says, her voice dipping to a new register. “Mmm.”
I take a deep breath and blow it out because her teasing me about word choice should not make my dick throb. It just shouldn’t.
It totally does, though.
“It’s got tons of pockets and the zipper goes both ways,” I tell her.
“Can you take it off yet?”
