I can’t stop thinking about you and your extraordinarily talented mouth.
I smile as I send the message.
A minute later, she responds.
My mouth and I are glad to hear it.
My smile stretches. I drink my coffee, but half an hour later I send her another message on the spur of the moment.
Busy later?
I see three little dots appear as she starts to type, then they disappear.
It’s a few hours before she messages back.
What do you have in mind?
My gut kicks. Dating. We’re dating. Not just fucking, though that’s a given.
I’ll pick you up at seven?
Another surprise?
Great question. What shall we do? I look towards the windows, which frame a panoramic view of Wall Street. The sky is woolly. It’s freezing too. I can think of one surefire way to stave off coldness.
Dating, idiot. Dating.
I open up a browser and type in a few questions. Five entries down, the search engine has provided the perfect solution for me. I type a message.
Yes. Bring a bikini.
;) Have you looked outside?
Trust me.
She doesn’t reply.
I click on the link and open the booking form, then place my phone down, thoughts of Imogen and the night ahead already making the idea of an afternoon’s work damned near impossible.
Seven o’clock can’t come soon enough.
* * *
I love to swim. I was on my college team, and it’s one of the few activities I regularly make time for. There’s something about it I find meditative and calming, and I find being underwater, away from noise and other people, is also an excellent opportunity for deep thinking. I have at least three quarters of my ideas while submerged in my apartment complex’s huge swimming pool.
Usually, I wear a one-piece, a habit that’s a hangover from my college team days.
But for tonight, I’ve chosen a barely there string bikini, bright red. It felt bizarre pulling it out of the drawer given the weather—we’re in the midst of a cold snap that feels as if it’ll never end.
But his premise has intrigued me.
More than I wanted it to. I had a huge afternoon with some investors in the charity and I had to concentrate—almost impossible with my phone buzzing in my pocket and the memories of a few nights ago shifting against me.
I’m wearing the bikini beneath a black jersey dress and a floor-length trench coat, with a pair of gold stilettos. My hair is pinned into a bun high on my head, loose and casual.
The buzzer sounds and I move towards it. ‘I’ll be right down.’
‘Okay.’ Even that single word made up of two syllables, spoken through telephone cabling at a distance of forty odd floors of concrete, has the power to double the speed of my pulse.