Chapter 13 #2
She tried to study when she had downtime between classes, but she’d just finished the pop quiz she’d been expecting in her Scripting class, and was eager to let her mind recharge with internet nonsense.
Besides, social media was the only way she kept tabs on her friends in Baxter.
A comment here and a like there made her feel like she was still part of that circle; not that she’d been a huge part of it even when she lived there.
Working three jobs and taking care of her ailing grandmother hadn’t meshed well with having a social life.
Her life wasn’t the busiest it ever had been, even when she was eating and power-walking at the same time to get a good seat for her HTML5 class.
Still, her to-do list swelled in the back of her mind as she swept into the building, flopped her bag into a chair and started fishing out her laptop just as her cell phone buzzed in her pocket.
“Weird,” she murmured. No one ever texted her on school days. The only people she knew in California were Lenny and Tristan, and they both had her schedule.
She opened her laptop one-handed while unlocking her phone with the other. She had a new text. From Des.
It was a rabbit emoji.
She paused with her laptop booted up to the lock screen, staring at the phone in her hand and trying to parse the emoji.
When studying it didn’t reveal its secrets, she laid her phone down next to her laptop and resumed her usual pre-class ritual, pulling out her pen and a notepad, and logging into her laptop to open the lecture slideshow.
Her phone vibrated again, rattling noisily on the desk. She bit her lip, snatched it and turned it from vibrate mode to silent.
Get it? Like the rabbit vibe.
Another text popped up on screen, a few seconds later.
Her smile was wide and conspicuous. She tried her best to force herself into a neutral expression, to act natural.
The instructor entered at the front of the classroom and started to lay papers out across her desk.
At this point, Cami would be waiting attentively for class to start.
She would be spinning her pen between her fingers and going over the slides, maybe checking her notes from the previous class for any questions she needed answered.
But a few texts from Des had set her all aflutter.
Maybe orgasms were good for her attitude?
She chewed her lip as she typed.
I’m in class.
After replying, she carefully laid her phone back on the desk, face down this time, and tried to focus. It took less than thirty seconds for her willpower to snap. She turned the phone over, anticipation humming through her as her eyes landed on the new text notification.
Are you teaching a course on how sex toys can change your life?
In spite of her smile, she rolled her eyes.
I’m not sure I’m qualified for that yet.
Well, that’s no good. When are you free to study? I’ve got a here with your name on it.
At the front of the classroom, the instructor, a professional-looking woman named Jill, had gotten through the first slide of the class, and was now delving into the ethics of the geolocation API in HTML5.
In an attempt to look like she was paying attention, Cami wrote, “privacy, boo” on her notepad, then tapped out a quick response to Des.
The man may as well have been a professional distraction.
She pursed her lips while scanning through her calendar.
I have class all day Wednesday, but I’m free after three on Tuesday, as long as I get home early.
His response was immediate. Was his job so cushy he could just sit by his phone waiting for her texts? Didn’t he have some kind of prototype Hulk dildo to approve?
Early dinner at my place, then more ~review~?
A thrum of want pulsed through her at the memory of the review they’d done on Friday night.
She’d come away from it with a better understanding of the toys they sold, their place in a relationship, and her sense of self.
And they’d only played with a handful of gadgets.
She knew firsthand there were plenty more available to try out.
But at this point, he’d proven she could come.
He’d defeated that worry. Did she need him to help her conduct product review from here on out?
Maybe she did. There was a non-zero possibility that it wasn’t the sex toys that had been the key to her orgasms, but Des himself.
They’d had one incredible session of ‘review,’ and it had proved she wasn’t broken, alleviating a significant mental weight for her.
She’d never heard of a woman only being able to come with one specific person, but she wasn’t the worldliest.
There wasn’t any harm in testing out some more toys with Des, regardless. If she was doomed to never come again after they were through, she’d better stock up while she could.
She agreed to his proposal with more eagerness than the situation, perhaps, deserved.
From the handful she’d had so far, she’d verified that orgasms were, indeed, wonderful, but there was a chance she was letting that cloud her judgment.
Normal people didn’t have not-date naked toy time with guys who weren’t getting anything out of it.
She was sure she would have heard about it by now if they did.
And that was a question worth considering.
She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what Des was getting out of this arrangement.
He didn’t strike her as the kind of guy to get off on control, but she supposed that could be it.
If he was interested in seeing her in a romantic sense, surely he would have just asked her out.
She was by no means an expert in the world of dating, but it seemed the most logical conclusion.
There could be some kind of ethical issue with dating someone at one of the stores he was trying to sell to, but that sounded like a stretch.
Why should his bosses care who he dated as long as he sold toys?
She sighed, tapping the tip of her pen against the spiral of her notepad.
It didn’t matter, anyway. He would have made it clear by now if he was interested in her like that.
Even if he liked getting her off, no man wanted a relationship of no reciprocation, and if he’d wanted a turn for himself, he’d had plenty of opportunity to bring it up.
He’d gotten hard last time—the ridge in his jeans rubbing against her knee as he urged her to her second blissful orgasm.
But a boner did not a relationship make.
“Moving on from the morality of it, there are two ways to target HTML elements in CSS for styling: IDs and classes. IDs must be...”
Cami was certain this material was important, unlike Jill’s tangent about geolocation.
But for the life of her, when she tried to focus on jotting notes, she only convinced her fingers to make a bullet point before the burning desire to check her phone for new messages gripped her.
Damn Des and his godforsaken sex toys. Orgasms were going to get her kicked out of school.
She could just imagine what the scholarship committee would say.
Tomorrow it is.
What class are you in?
That wasn’t the question from a man who only wanted not-dates.
Was it? Maybe she was reading too much into it.
It didn’t even matter, because she wasn’t interested in dating him.
Why would anybody want to date a gorgeous, sexy, successful, motivated man who wasn’t threatened by introducing silicone extras into the bedroom? He was a nightmare.
She inhaled a deep breath, took a moment to come to terms with her huge raging crush on Des, then texted him.
It’s about HTML5 and CSS. The stuff wet dreams are made of.
She thought about adding the squirt emoji, but decided she couldn’t pull that off like Des could.
Sounds like it! I knew you were in school, but didn’t know you were doing computer stuff.
She smiled. ‘Computer stuff’ was about what she could expect most people to understand when it came to her program.
I’m doing my associate’s degree in computer information systems and website software.
His reply was immediate.
That sounds hard.
She caught a shrug just in time.
I find coding relaxing. It’s easy to throw on some music and get lost in it. Plus it’s helping me get a website up and running for the store.
Unlike with his previous responses, her phone went silent then for over a minute.
Sounds like a good fit for you :)
“... HTML4, where the element supported a variety of attributes for styling. In HTML5, all attributes are deprecated, and must be styled leveraging CSS. This is on your slides, but highlight it. It will be on the exam.”
“Eesh.” Cami gave her head a shake and stabbed the off button.
As cute as she found Des and his emojis, text-flirting with him wasn’t going to get her through the summer semester.
Besides, she wouldn’t see him until tomorrow afternoon.
She couldn’t spend the next twenty-four hours squealing over her phone instead of getting work done.
She could visualize the letter from the scholarship committee now: Your GPA has dropped to an unacceptable level.
We have been informed that this is due to your inability to keep from texting your not-boyfriend.
You have allowed orgasms to ruin your life, and, as such, we have been forced to revoke your scholarship for the remainder of your time at SMC. Sincerely, Scholarship People.
She couldn’t take notes when she was fretting about orgasms getting her scholarship yanked, either, so she excused herself from the lecture hall for a moment to splash water from the fountain onto her face, then returned to her seat.
She was determined not to think about Des for the rest of the day.