ELEVEN Landmine
JEROME
Yet when we arrive at our new location for the next part of our date, I admit that she doesn’t seem thrilled with our destination.
“The library?”
“The library. Also, I’ve had a service brought here courtesy of your lovely house manager.”
Just as I arranged with Maxine, a meal is here waiting even though it’s only around four thirty in the afternoon. My grandmoms—God rest her soul—would’ve called this an early bird special.
Setting her glass of wine down, I set about cracking open the main course, which are crab legs and lobster tails. With only one operable hand, doing so herself would likely be a massive undertaking. Everything is fine until I fork some of the clumped meat and offer to feed it to her myself.
In my films, food was sometimes utilized as an aphrodisiac, particularly when accompanied by wine or champagne. That’s how I intended this to come across to her now, as a romantic gesture.
Evidently, it’s not.
“What are you doing?” Her question lashes out of her so harshly that she might as well have used a bullwhip.
“Uh...” My customary coolness slips a bit. “Serving you your food.”
“No.” She jumps to her feet so briskly that she rattles the table. Her wine—the merlot I carefully transported from the basement—tips sideways, spilling all over the table and down to the carpeted floor. “You are not. That’s not what serving is. What you’re doing is handfeeding me like a goddamn invalid when I’m not one, and I don’t appreciate the condescension.”
This jettisons out of her at a deadly hiss, and an icy rage flashes in her eyes, making the dove-gray appear hard as granite. I raise my hands in surrender, half rising out of my own chair.
“I’m sorry. Sincerely, Sadie. I apologize. I meant no disrespect.”
She maintains her defensive stance. “I won’t put up with any of that bullshit. If I need or want help, I’ll fucking ask for it.”
“I understand.” I keep my tone mild. Placid. I go out of my way to avoid contentious subjects with my clients. But sometimes it’s impossible to avoid them until it’s too late.
Like a landmine.
And I sure trampled all over this one.
I keep her in my sights, needing to figure out how to de-escalate things. She’s still furious enough to blowtorch me again based on how tense she is, and I’ve clearly misjudged her sensitivity level on this big time.
That’s on me.
Yet despite what some might consider an overreaction, she doesn’t strike me as the type to rail against the world with no reason. Up until now, what I’ve mostly seen out of her is an emotionlessness that’s unusual for most women, or at least the women I’ve known and worked with.
But then it hits me... What if this is a defense mechanism? What if having someone baby her against her will reminds her of events she’d rather forget?
Like how she received those burns, maybe.
It takes a long time before she acquiesces to take her seat again, and the silence between us is cringey. Still, the only thing I know to do is to remain quiet. I don’t even address the wine staining the floor. I need to not draw attention to the proof that I misjudged her desires to such an extreme.
Neither of us are eating. I’ve lost my appetite, and it seems the same is true of her. It’s a shame to waste such an expensive meal, but I’ve made my bed and there’s nothing to do now but lay in it.
The seconds tick on like hours, and while what I did was an accident, I’m not sure what course to take to put us back on track. I could wrap the date early, but that would mean sacrificing any remaining chance I might have—miniscule as it might be—in becoming her final choice.
Since I’m unwilling to go with the nuclear option, I proceed with my original plans in the hopes that something between us can be salvaged. I peer around at our surroundings. Like the windows, the bookshelves lining the walls stretch from floor to ceiling with comfy two-seat sofas and overstuffed chairs positioned in the middle of the room.
“Your library is impressive,” I comment.
Other than shooting me a fleeting glance, she doesn’t respond.
“I love to read,” I admit. “In school, I was always the boy hidden off to the side with a choose-your-own-adventure book. I’d even sneak them into the classes I didn’t like as much so I could continue with the story.” I stand, traversing over to the plush furniture. “I know it’s a risk, but I was hoping that reading might be something we have in common.”
Not sure what else to say, I thumb through the stack of books I left here last night. I can’t concentrate enough to do more than scan some of the pages, though. Sadie seems unmoved by my confession, so I’m trying to come up with another route out of this.
Since I haven’t exactly been batting a thousand with her, the last thing I anticipate is her joining me by the sofas. Nor do I expect her to sit next to me. Yet that’s what she does.
Once seated, she gazes around the library as if it’s foreign to her. Her focus travels from the pair of freestanding stacks beside us and over to the wall where a rolling ladder is attached to the shelving.
The nerdy kid inside me who used to spend all his weekends getting lost in historical fiction that described that very thing adores the minute detail.
Natural light filters in from the windows on one side, and a sizable fireplace has been stationed on the wall opposite, making the entire space feel safe and homey. The books probably number in the thousands. I could easily live within these walls and never once get bored.
“Haven’t been in here in forever,” she mutters with an audible exhale, one that makes the hair above her forehead flutter around her face. “Years.”
“Why?” I venture, bracing myself for another storm. It doesn’t materialize, though.
“Time. My coursework required all my attention until last May, and there were...” She glances at the motionless left hand hanging at her side. “Other considerations. So, all my reading was spoken for. There weren’t enough minutes in the day to do it. Certainly not for pleasure.”
“Too bad. Reading for pleasure is how I relax,” I confess, nearly whispering it. “What’s your degree in?”
“Degrees. I hold both a bachelor’s and master’s in data science.” Although she just corrected me, she executes a half-shrug with her right shoulder as if those degrees mean nothing. Then she turns to give me a onceover. “You seem pretty relaxed most of the time.”
What she doesn’t know is that I cultivate that part of my personality, express that part of me more often intentionally. I learned a long time ago that losing my shit doesn’t help when everyone else around me is doing it, too. So, I make a point of maintaining whatever outward composure I can.
Still, I answer her truthfully. “I try.”
I leave my answer hanging there in the void wondering if she’ll push. If she’ll demand to know more.
“What do you like to read?” she asks me instead.
“I’ve dabbled with everything but prefer fiction.”
She turns her back on me, her index finger toying with the cover of the hardback book I laid between us. A military thriller. “Anything... smutty?”
I toss her a smirk. The sci-fi magnificence of Octavia Butler made for some enlightening reading during my teen years, but I no longer consume stories for titillation purposes. That’s due to one simple reason.
“Smut used to be my day job.” And it kinda still is.
“Does that mean no?”
“I’ve read a few stories with explicit scenes in them.” Before she passed, I once picked up one of my grandmom’s paperbacks with a couple from the bygone days on the cover. To say that a certain spicy passage had been a shock to my developing twelve-year-old system would be an understatement.
And to acknowledge that my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother was actively reading that sort of thing rather than cookie recipes? It’s a wonder it didn’t scar me for life.
Leaving the thriller to Sadie, I turn to the end table beside me and procure the next in the pile, a fantasy novel with neon colors and a dragon on the cover.
“What else do you have over there?” she asks me, and I hand the other three to her. Yet those don’t suit Sadie either, apparently, so she gets up and peruses the shelves. She returns with a paperback that has a huge gemstone taking up half the cover.
I don’t want to pry, but I’m dying to know what she chose. So, I pretend to read while clandestinely watching her through my periphery.
Sadie raises her knees and props the book in her lap, a position I realize is necessary since she can’t grip the spine and flip the pages at the same time with only one workable hand. My eyes might be centered on the words in front of me, but in reality, this woman has captured all my bandwidth.
She consumes maybe half a dozen pages before altering the seating arrangement by leaning her back up against my torso. My instinct is to relocate the arm I’ve draped over the back of the sofa to her shoulders, but she hasn’t invited me to. So, I maintain my pretense, breathing in her sweet citrus scent. Eventually, I escape into my own story.
We’re there together, content and occupied. By the time I glance at the time again, two hours have passed. Sadie shifts, and this change in how she’s crouched against my torso allows me for the first time to read over her shoulder.
When I glimpse at the page, it’s like being reintroduced to my grandmother’s old paperbacks.
“‘He had her up on all fours panting like a bitch in heat as his clenched fist plumbed the depths of her back channel?’” I quote out loud. “Damn, woman.”
She snatches her novel out of sight and casts me an aggravated scowl. Yet there’s something about the sheer ferocity of that look that strikes me as funny. Or maybe it’s this entire situation. This woman has hired three sex workers to come here and show her a good time, yet she’s pissed that I’m calling her out on reading some seriously hardcore smut.
Even I haven’t tried fisting someone.
Although there is a segment of porn that specializes in showing that. It’s the kind of act that requires a fuck-ton of trust in your partner as well as a commitment to wearing an ever-widening width of butt plug. And while I’d never judge anyone who has that form of ass-play as their kink, visualizing Sadie in that role is a stretch.
No pun intended.
Or maybe it is.
“The fact that you’re a motherfucking snoop wasn’t in your profile, Jerome Oakley. You should remedy that,” she snarls.
But the insult tips me over the edge, and all I can do is laugh.
“I am a motherfucking snoop at times,” I manage through my mirth. “But I gotta say, this is showing me aspects of your desires that I never imagined.”
“Why? Are you saying I’m not allowed to have my own specific tastes?” she challenges.
“Not at all. Yet you do come across as a little...” Got to tread cautiously here. “Businesslike.”
She’s knitted her brows so severely that a deep pair of lines are carving into her lovely forehead.
“You mean stuffy.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“But that’s what you meant.” Again, I raise my hands in surrender even if I can’t quite keep my smile off my face. Her right hand has formed into a fist and a rosiness has suffused her complexion. “You don’t know me well enough to make such an assertion. I might have the dirtiest mind of anyone you’ve ever met.”
“You might,” I concede. “But whether you do or not, it’s fun to watch you blush.”
That’s no lie. And by pointing it out, the color of her face heats from that delicate pink and approaches something closer to a canned beet. Sadie might talk a good game, but the uncontrollable response she’s having is yelling foul.
My guess is that she yearns to be less vanilla than she truly is. Or that she’s goading herself into attempting something outside her comfort zone. That would track.
Who else would pit a prostitute, a porn star, and a pole dancer against each other to see who’s most compatible?
But it’s time to turn this bus around.
Stifling any additional chuckles, I level with her. “Honestly, Sadie, I’m just glad to hear that you’re a reader at all.” Particularly when she seemed so reluctant at first. “It’s great to know that we share the same hobby, the one that’s the most important to me.”
Her eyebrows unknit, her features smoothing out as she appraises me. “I remember that from your profile, but I thought you might be buttering any potential client’s bread a little.”
She thought I was lying?
“Not sure how to take that.”
She sets her book down. “I thought it might be filler. Like how people will type in that they love long walks on the beach or candlelit dinners because they think it’s what a possible date would want to hear. They add it. Even when it’s not the case.”
Ah. “Especially when it’s not the case.”
Her look is wry.
“Exactly. I joined other dating sites previous to this, and what was there...” She shudders.
“I bet.”
I haven’t personally enrolled in any dating sites, but I’ve heard stories. Sadie might think it’s rough out there, but she has no idea how promptly a woman will swipe left on those of us with works in the adult film industry on our résumés. And that’s whether it’s in the past tense or the present.
“I used to consider myself a bookworm, you know,” she says, shocking the hell out of me. Good to know my instincts weren’t as far off base as I was afraid of. “Getting back into reading for shits and giggles today has been nice. Thank you.”
She leans in for what I think will be a hug but is a kiss, instead. It starts as this soft meeting of the lips that I figure will be short—it’s not like this date has gone off without a hitch—yet Sadie doesn’t pull back. She nips at my bottom lip with enough pressure to have me stiffening my spine, then gentles the bite with her tongue.
I’m not sure which I like more.
All my blood launches itself south. My body’s certain of what’s about to transpire even if my mind isn’t.
“Jerome...” She intones right into my ear. Warm damp softness flicks against the shell of it, and even though I’ve had tons of sex, I shiver.
“Yeah?”
“Did you keep track of that blindfold?”
I did. It’s stuffed into my back pocket. I yank the fabric out and offer it to her, not missing how blown her pupils are.
It seems I may not have torpedoed my prospects with her after all.