“Well, obviously I won’t know what I’m in the mood for until I’m in the moment, you know?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he just grabs his jacket and heads for the door with the focused determination of a man who wants this errand over with as quickly as possible.
The door closes behind him with a decisive click.
I grin at the empty room.
That’s more like it. Me in control. Him thoroughly flustered.
Nice, clear boundaries between us.
Chapter Eleven
Leo
The walk to Archie’s bedsit is exactly long enough for me to spiral through every conceivable emotion a man can feel about being sent to retrieve someone’s sex toy collection.
Embarrassment, obviously. That’s the baseline.
But there’s something else underneath it. Something I’m choosing not to examine too closely because that would require acknowledging that I’ve been thinking about Archie’s evening routine for the entire walk.
Archie. With his sharp wit and soft smile and that drawer full of?—
Stop.
By the time I reach his building and climb the four flights of death-trap stairs, I’ve almost convinced myself this is fine. Just one acquaintance retrieving another acquaintance’s extensive collection of personal pleasure devices. Happens all the time.
The bedsit is exactly as I remember it, neat as a pin and furnished with the aesthetic of someone making do with what they have.
I approach the nightstand like it’s an unexploded grenade. Which, emotionally speaking, it might as well be. I pull open the second drawer and?—
Yep. Still there. Still extensive. Still organized with a level of care that suggests someone takes their solo activities very seriously.
The purple one—the Destroyer, as Archie so helpfully named it—sits front and center. Substantial is definitely one word for it.Requires a safety briefingwould be my description.
I grab it, then immediately drop it because touching it feels weirdly intimate.
Get a grip, Leo. It’s just a…dildo.
A very large, very purple dildo that innocent-looking Archie apparently owns. And uses. Regularly, if he needs it tonight.
My brain unhelpfully supplies an image of exactly that, and I feel heat crawl up the back of my neck.
Stop it.
I pick up the Destroyer again, more firmly this time, and deposit it in the canvas bag I brought.
Then I reach for the silver one, which is sleeker, more discreet, but somehow that’s worse because now I’m imagining Archie choosing between them based on mood, and the mental image of him lying on his bed, deciding tonight feels like a silver night?—
My elbow catches the edge of the desk, and it wobbles violently. I have to put up a hand to stabilize it.
On closer inspection, the desk is missing a leg. But Archie’s made up for it by stacking large books underneath. I crouch to get a better look at the makeshift repair job.
Thinking, Fast and Slowby Daniel Kahneman.The Selfish Geneby Richard Dawkins.The Quantum Theory of Fieldsby Steven Weinberg.Gauge Theories in Particle Physicsby Aitchison and Hey.The Beginning of Infinityby David Deutsch.Superintelligenceby Nick Bostrom. A spine so cracked I can barely read it turns out to be Wittgenstein’sTractatus Logico-Philosophicus,which I’m fairly sure most philosophy graduates don’t actually finish.
What the hell?
I stare at the stack of books, my forehead furrowed.
