Chapter 3 First Heat
Chapter three
First Heat
Lena
"You're glowing," Izzy announces from her perch on my counter, legs swinging like we're not both medical professionals who've seen what happens when people fall off surfaces. "And not in a pregnant way. In a 'getting dick or planning murder' way."
"Can't it be both?" I'm focused on spreading masa, but my phone sits next to the bowl like a cardiac monitor I'm afraid to check. No texts from Wrong Number since last night. Not that I'm counting. I'm absolutely counting. Twenty-two hours and seventeen minutes.
"Spill, puta. You've checked your phone twelve times since I got here."
Diagnostic criteria for best friend: too observant, zero boundaries, enables terrible decisions. Treatment plan: more wine.
"It's nothing. Just a...wrong number situation."
"A wrong number situation she says, while her pupils are dilated, and she's made enough tamales to feed a small hospital."
I stress-cook. It's healthier than my other coping mechanisms, like performing illegal surgery or sexting strangers who admit to murder. Allegedly.
My phone buzzes. My autonomic nervous system goes into overdrive—heart rate 120, palms sweating, dopamine flooding my synapses like a pharmaceutical rave. I automatically check my pulse with two fingers on my wrist—nurse habit, even when aroused. Especially when aroused.
Wrong Number: What are you doing, Angel?
Izzy sees my face. "That's him! The wrong number that has you looking like you just discovered orgasms exist."
"Shut up." But I'm already typing back, my frontal lobe waving a white flag of surrender.
Making tamales. Drinking wine. Questioning my life choices. The usual Friday night trifecta of cultural obligation and poor judgment.
Wrong Number: What kind of wine?
Malbec. Pretentious enough to make me feel sophisticated while I text a stranger who could be assembling a skin suit in his basement.
Wrong Number: I don't have a basement.
That's exactly what someone with a basement full of skin suits would say.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Reappear. My vagina is taking notes for her thesis chapter on "Digital Foreplay and the Modern Woman's Descent into Chaos."
Wrong Number: What are you wearing?
I laugh loud enough that Izzy nearly falls off the counter. "Did he just—?"
"He did."
"Are you going to—?"
"I absolutely am."
Seriously? That's your move? What are you wearing? What's next, asking for my astrological sign? My blood type? My mother's maiden name for password recovery?
Wrong Number: Answer the question, Angel.
The command hits somewhere between my chest and lower regions, which have formed an unholy alliance against my better judgment.
Scrubs. Always scrubs. It's my personality now. Scrubs and existential dread.
Wrong Number: You're lying.
He's right. I'm wearing an oversized UNM Hospital shirt that's seen better decades and shorts that could generously be called "optimistic" in their coverage. But he doesn't need those details. Yet.
Tank top and shorts. Covered in masa. Very sexy. I'm basically a tamale-making goddess of poor decisions.
Wrong Number: Take off the tank top.
My brain shorts out. Emergency protocols activate. Breathing manually initiated.
“What did he say?" Izzy's reading over my shoulder now, boundaries extinct.
"He said—"
"I can read, santa. Holy shit. Are you going to?"
That escalated quickly. We've gone from philosophy to demands for nudity in three days. What kind of timeline is this?
Wrong Number: The kind where you do what I say because you want to.
My vagina just got tenure for her thesis. My brain is requesting immediate evacuation.
Bold assumption.
Wrong Number: Accurate assumption. Take it off, Angel.
I look at Izzy. She's grinning like she just diagnosed something fatal but fascinating.
"If you don't, I will literally never forgive you."
You don't even know what I look like. I could be a bridge troll with a medical degree.
Wrong Number: I don't care what you look like. I care what you sound like when you come.
Jesus Christ on a diagnostic chart. My internal temperature just rose three degrees. Hyperthermia induced by text message. New medical journal entry.
How do you know I'll sound like anything?
Wrong Number: Because you're going to call me. And you're going to touch yourself. And I'm going to listen.
"I need more wine," I announce. "Immediately. Possibly intravenously."
Izzy's already pouring, her face a case study in vicarious thrills. "This is better than my last three relationships combined."
That's presumptuous.
Wrong Number: That's accurate. Call me.
My phone rings immediately. Unknown number. Of course.
"Answer it," Izzy whispers. "Answer it or I swear I'll tell everyone about the supply closet incident."
"That was one time—"
"Answer. The. Phone."
I do. Because my self-preservation instinct is apparently deceased, cause of death: mysterious texter with a voice that should come with a warning label.
"Angel."
One word. Two syllables. His voice is velvet dragged over broken glass—smooth on the surface, dangerous underneath, the kind of sound that makes smart women do catastrophically stupid things.
It's controlled right now, measured. I wonder what it sounds like when he loses that control.
My panties just filed for workers' compensation due to unsafe working conditions.
"Wrong Number."
"Take off your shirt."
"I have company."
"I don't care."
"You're very demanding for someone who could be a serial killer."
"I told you. I've never killed anyone who didn't deserve it."
"That's still not as reassuring as you think it is."
His laugh is low, dark, dangerous—all the diagnostic criteria for things that will ruin my life in alphabetically organized ways. The sound rumbles through the phone, and I notice his voice has dropped half an octave. Less controlled. More hungry.
"Are you taking it off?"
I look at Izzy. She's mouthing 'DO IT' like a cheerleader for poor decisions.
I pull my tank top over my head. Standing in my kitchen, in my bra, making tamales while a stranger listens to me breathe. This is it. Rock bottom with a medical degree and a side of salsa verde.
"It's off."
"Good girl."
Two words. His voice goes rougher on 'girl,' like gravel under silk. My vagina just submitted her thesis early. Summa cum laude. Full scholarship to bad decision university.
"Describe what I'm looking at."
"Black bra that cost too much. Surgical scar on my shoulder from thinking I could skateboard at thirty. Masa handprints because I'm a disaster in the kitchen. Probably flour in my hair. I'm basically a before photo for an intervention."
"You're perfect."
"You can't see me."
"I can hear you. Breathing faster. Probably biting your lip. Hand somewhere it shouldn't be."
He's wrong. My hand is firmly on the counter. The other hand, however, is tracing my collar bone, and how the hell does he know that? I check my pulse again—135 and climbing. Tachycardic from a phone call. New personal low.
"I'm forty-five," he says suddenly, and his voice changes—something vulnerable sneaking through the gravel. "You said I was too old. You're thirty-one?"
"Lucky guess?"
"Math. You've been a nurse long enough to be comfortable with trauma. Not long enough to be dead inside. Ten years, maybe. Makes you thirty-one, thirty-two."
"Thirty-one. And yes, you're too old for me."
"Probably."
"Definitely."
"Touch yourself anyway."
"My friend is literally right here."
"Tell her to leave."
I look at Izzy. She's already grabbing her purse, blowing me kisses, mouthing 'TEXT ME EVERYTHING.'
The door closes. I'm alone. With his voice. And my hand that's definitely not staying where it should.
"She's gone."
"Good. Now do what you've been thinking about since I texted you."
His voice has gone deeper still, rougher at the edges like he's fighting for control.
"Bold assumption that I've been thinking about you."
"You made forty tamales. You're stress-cooking about me."
Fuck. He's right. My grandmother's ghost is judging me in Spanish.
"Touch yourself, Angel. Let me hear you."
My hand moves without executive permission. This is mutiny. My vagina has staged a coup and installed a new government. My pulse jumps to 145—I know because I'm checking it like the medical disaster I am.
"This is the worst decision I've ever made," I breathe, fingers finding skin, finding want, finding trouble.
"No. The worst decision was texting about illegal surgery. This is the second worst."
"Third worst. Second worst was responding to you."
"What sound do you make when you come?"
"We're about to find out, aren't we?"
"Yes. We are."
My fingers know their job—medical precision applied to personal destruction. His breathing in my ear, getting rougher, less controlled. My breathing getting ragged, the tamales forgotten, my entire existence narrowed to this moment of absolute insanity.
"That's it, Angel. Let go."
"I can't—"
"You can. You will. For me."
And I do. Because apparently my body takes orders from strange men who text about murder and hell and angels. The sound I make is embarrassing, necessary, and probably illegal in several states.
"Ay, Dios, joder—" The Spanish rips out of me as I break, my grandmother's language saved for extreme moments of passion or rage.
"Beautiful," he says, his voice wrecked now, completely different from the controlled velvet of minutes ago. Raw. Affected.
"I have to go," I gasp, reality crashing back like a defibrillator to the chest.
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do. I need to... process this. Possibly drink bleach. Definitely finish these tamales."
"Text me later."
"Probably not."
"Definitely yes."
He hangs up. I stand in my kitchen, shirtless, professionally compromised, personally destroyed, and somehow already planning what to text him next.
My vagina's thesis just got published.
My brain is filing for bankruptcy.
The tamales are perfect.
I am professionally competent and personally catastrophic, and apparently, that's exactly what attracts forty-five-year-old criminals who make me come with just their voice—that voice that went from controlled velvet to desperate gravel in the span of one phone call.
Sister Margaret would need her own therapy after this confession.
Good thing I'm never telling her. Or anyone.
Except Izzy.
Who's getting a play-by-play text in approximately thirty seconds.
After I put my shirt back on.
And check my pulse one more time—still 120.
Post-orgasmic tachycardia. Another first.