“Like your ex-husband,” Pearl went on, bringing me back to the here and now, standing in front of a Vajankle. “How long were you with him?”
“Fifteen years,” I replied automatically. We’d met filming a movie calledTreasures in Heavenwhen I was seventeen and had gotten married on my eighteenth birthday. “Fourteen of them married,” I added.
Pearl dropped her hands from my face and did a wide-eyed nod, like she was asking me to connect the dots.
Which I did.
“I know, I know,” I groaned—quietly, still conscious that an employee must have been milling around somewhere. “I guess it’s no surprise he wound up cheating on me.”
Cheating with a limber twenty-something named Olivia who—according to her social media bios—was a “seeker looking for her next adventure.”
A next adventure she’d apparently found inside Michael’s designer briefs.
“That is not your fault, so don’t allow that negativity inside your headspace.Hesounds like he vibrates at a very low frequency,” Pearl added disapprovingly. And then her face brightened. And brightened some more. She reminded me of a lavender-haired Grinch whose heart was currently growing three sizes. “That’s it, Winnie! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”
“Think of what?” I asked, confused.
“Vibrating,” she said with the tones of a sex shop prophet, and then grabbed my arm and dragged me to a set of shelves framed with tinsel and wound with Christmas lights. Every single product on the display was holiday-themed, from the white fur handcuffs to the butt plug with a bell on the end. Pearl grabbed a box with the triumph of someone grabbing the last dress at a sample sale and then pushed it into my hands.
The Peppermint Stick, the box read. It showed a cylinder that looked like a big candy cane, with a tapered end and a sticker that said the charging cord was included.
“And this just in case,” Pearl added, placing a small bottle of peppermint-flavored lube next to the box.
The vibrator looked so small, compared to a Jacuzzi at least. “Do you think this will help?” I asked, wanting to hope but also remembering how wikiHow had betrayed me last night.
Pearl did a shuffle thing with her feet, and I realized she was dancing. “Help?You’ll be riding that Peppermint Stick into the sunset! Until the battery is dead, at least. One time, I composed an entire series of erotic villanelles while straddling a vibrator,” she confided, now looping her arm through mine and shuffling me toward the cash register, where a pierced college student hadappeared out of nowhere. “It won me my first-ever poetry grant. Vibration is good for the arts.”
I have to pee.
I was lying on my new bed in the Edelweiss Inn—I’d finally moved into a different (and non-Kallum-occupied) room earlier today—with the Peppermint Stick buzzing between my legs. I’d let the vibrator charge while I showered, changed, and had a check-in call with Gretchen where I assured her I’d be back in the proverbial sleigh tomorrow. And then I’d cracked open my laptop and watched more of Kallum expertly working this bridesmaid into a frenzy. Big hands on her breasts. Long fingers working into the slick opening of her sex.
I had a crush on the man’s hands.
Like a hand perv.
It was the image of his fingers pushing into the unnamed bridesmaid that led me to finally reach for my mostly charged vibrator, turning it on the lowest possible setting and carefully touching the tip to my left flap. Like I was expecting it to shock me like a car battery when it made contact.
When it didn’t, I gradually moved it to my vagina and slowly inserted it inside. I was already slippery from watching Kallum on my laptop screen, and the toy wasn’t very thick, certainly not as thick as two of Kallum’s fingers would be together...
I had to stop it with the hand thing. It was bad enough watching a coworker’s sex tape, even if he’d officially licensed it, but I felt confident I could mentally compartmentalize the sex tape from real life. After all, it’s not like I was going to see himin a rumpled tuxedo going down on a bridesmaid while we were together in Vermont.
But I would see his hands literally all the time. I wouldfeelthem, during takes, during intimacy coordination meetings, and every time I thought about it, his hands on me, my heart kicked in my chest, like it was jumping to send more bloodeverywhere.
Funnily enough, moving the vibrator in and out didn’t do much for me, but when I held the toy inside and pressed it against my front walls, pleasure ran through me like a train, making my toes curl. I did it again and turned up the speed of the vibrator—accidentally turning it up fast enough to make me squeak—until I found a speed that felt good. Like really good. Really, really good.
Except...
Except it was kind of hovering atReally Goodand not jumping to, say,Holy Shit. OrOh My God, I’m Going to Scream.
In fact, it also sort of felt like I needed to pee. Was that a normal feeling? Should I just push through it like it was a long road trip and I wanted to make it a few more exits before I stopped at a gas station Subway? Should I take five and then circle back with a fresh outlook and an empty bladder?
Rap, rap.
A knock at the door made me freeze where I was, bathrobe gaping open and legs bent like a frog’s. Thebzzzzbetween my legs suddenly seemed unnaturally loud, and oh my God, what if the person on the other side of the door could hear it? What if they knew???
I tried to turn the toy off—succeeded only in hitting a jet engine speed that made my teeth chatter—and then finally pulled it out and managed to fumble with the button enough that it stopped humming.
Rap.“Hey, uh, Winnie?” came a deep Grammy-nominated voice. “It’s me, Kallum.”
