Chapter 15 #4
Was there really a good place to wear a pair of vibrating panties? Anywhere out in the world was certainly out of the question. Wasn’t it? Yes, Ever. Of course it was. One simply doesn’t walk into a Costco wearing a ticking time bomb strapped to their clit.
You have plenty of places to wear them, like around the house or running errands, for example.
Where is the control for them?
I asked, looking through the now-empty box.
Don’t worry about that. It’s in good hands.
You have it?
Maybe.
I guess I won’t be wearing them, then.
Yes, you will.
Why do you think I’m going to listen to you?
Because you’re a good girl, Ever. A good girl who wants all her orgasms to belong to me and only me.
That’s presumptuous of you.
Am I wrong? Is there someone else I should know about?
My thoughts flickered back to the elevator and the smell of Loche’s cologne, woodsy with notes of cedar. The fire in his eyes when he looked into mine felt intimate, like he knew me inside and out, had had me before in a carnal way, and hungered for more.
Jesus. Was it getting hot in here?
That’s none of your business.
What’s his name?
I’m not seeing anyone else…yet.
If you keep teasing me, I’m going to punish you again.
Do your worst.
I’ll consider this foreplay.
I thought about Loche’s invitation to Thanksgiving dinner.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want to go, but more like I had been holding out a sliver of hope that the impossible would happen and V would quit setting off alarm bells in my head.
Here I had someone who had a real interest in me, whose face I could identify in a lineup, whose real name I knew, and all I could think about was the man who may be stringing me along until he caught sight of some other dumpster fire through her bedroom window and decided Yup, that’s her.
Kind of like Joe from You, except hopefully without all the murder.
What are you doing for Thanksgiving?
I watched as the three dots bounced up and down on the screen, stopped, disappeared, and started back up again, until, after far longer than one would need to answer that question, text appeared on my screen.
I’m going out of town. Work.
Working? On Thanksgiving? Was he in retail? Or healthcare?
Secret fight club stuff?
Something like that.
The CIA. We’ll go with him being some kind of secret agent.
It was a lot easier to swallow than a he’s just not that into you kind of scenario.
Speechless, I sat staring at the phone, unsure of what to say in response.
V was the stalker, yet I was going to come across as the stage five clinger, and I’ll be damned if I was going to pout over someone I wasn’t technically dating.
Are you okay?
His next message was sent after a few minutes of me not responding. No, V. I’m one thousand percent not okay.
I will be. Eventually. It’s getting late, and I haven’t eaten dinner yet. I’ll talk to you later.
Goodnight, little bird. I promise you, it won’t be much longer.
I wanted to slam the phone down on the table, but I only stopped myself because I couldn’t afford to buy a replacement. V had just affirmed that he was biding his time with me. At the end of the day, I would probably be one of a hundred girls he’d ditched along the way, bitter and defeated.
No, Ever. You can’t be defeated unless you don’t fight back. And how better to fight back than to appear unbothered. I flipped to my contacts on my phone, found Loche’s number, hovered over the text option, then gave in and typed a message.
Hey. Count me in for Thanksgiving.
I hadn’t expected someone as cool, calm, and collected as Loche to be babysitting his phone, or to text someone back immediately after receiving a message, but we were living in unprecedented times, and he answered me back immediately.
Sounds great, Nevermore. I’ll text you all the details later.
“Well, Vinny, I’m officially a shitty mom, ditching you on Thanksgiving.
” Like he normally did whenever I sat near his aquarium, Vinny had paddled to the side of the tank, watching me from behind the glass.
I liked to think it was because he loved me like the bio mom he never met, but I knew it was actually because he was waiting for his automatic food dispenser to feed him.
I plucked the plastic container of freeze-dried crickets, mealworms, and river shrimp from the shelf under his aquarium, twisting the lid and sprinkling a dash of the medley of unfortunate insects into Vinny’s home like some reptilian DoorDash driver.
It was a treat I gave him a couple of times each week, kind of like taking an actual human child out for ice cream, minus the screaming and stickiness.
When I reached back down to put away the container of food, I caught sight of the steno pad on the table, grabbed it, and flipped through the pages until I came to the notes V wrote.
That handwriting. Every curve, angle, and arch of each letter was so precise and so…
familiar? I studied V’s writing, struck with a strange sense that I’d seen this handwriting before.
Careful not to rip the paper, I tore the page from the pad, folded it, and tucked it inside my tote bag, sensing I may be one step closer to finding the answer to the question of V’s identity.
You can run, but you can’t hide.