Page 25 of A Real Goode Time

She was less than fifteen feet away, and my computer was angled so she could clearly see the paused image of the girl with her shirt off and in hand, tits bared.

She’d just watched me jerk off…and there was no way she could miss the resemblance between the girl on my computer screen and herself.

I flapped my mouth open and closed, but my brain was blank.

She looked at me—at my eyes, then down to my cock where her eyes lingered for…a very long, tense, odd, chemically combustible moment. To the phone, on the desk.

Her mouth flapped, like mine had. “Sorry, I—”

“No, I’m sorry, I—” I said it at the same time, over top of her words.

She whirled around, her face in her hands. “I’m just…I’m gonna…”

And she was gone, running up the stairs.

Shit, shit, shit.

I cleaned up, clicked out of the website, yanked up the gym shorts I slept in, and went to the stairs. I couldn’t bring myself past the threshold into the loft. What was I supposed to say?Sorry you caught me masturbating to a girl who looked a hell of a lot like you?

I just had to deal with it. No sense putting it off.

I entered the loft, went to the kitchen sink and washed my hands. Set about making coffee. Torie was making up the pull-out.

The tension in the loft was so thick and hot you could scoop it out of the air with a spoon.

I felt her behind me as I started the burr grinder; she waited until I shut the grinder off and dumped the grounds into the filter basket, poured water from the Brita into the reservoir, and started the machine.

I pivoted, put my butt against the counter, facing Torie, who was a few feet away, a hair tie in her teeth, braiding her hair. She paused, took the hair tie and slid it over her wrist, and continued braiding.

“Torie, I—”

She cut in. “Rhys, this is your home. You don’t need to apologize or explain.” She wouldn’t quite look at me. “I thought you’d be still asleep, so I was going to check and see if my clothes were dry.”

I had no idea what to say, or how to broach the elephant in the room. Of if I even should.

The coffeemaker gurgled, splurted, chuffed into the tense, awkward silence.

Her eyes met mine. “I, um…is that, like, your thing? Skinny girls with black hair in wet T-shirts?”

“No…not till yesterday.”

She blushed, her pale skin going pink over her cheeks. “Wait…were you—were you thinking about…me?”

I swallowed, not able to look right at her. “Um. Yeah. I was trying not to, thus the video.”

“Trying not to?”

I shrugged. “I guess…it felt like maybe it’d be disrespectful or something. To you. To do…that…thinking about…you.”

She shrugged, and I was starting to decipher her language of shrugs. She had a shrug that meant,I can’t be bothered to formulate a response because none is technically required but social mores say I have to at least indicate I heard you; she had a shrug that meant,I really don’t care one way or another, whatever; she had a shrug that was something likethere are a shitload of possible responses to that, so here’s a shrug, you pick what it means, I don’t care; she had a shrug that was meant asyeah, sure, why not; and then there was a shrug along the lines ofit would be rude to agree with you verbally, so I’m not agreeing with you but nor am I disagreeing.There were others with more nuanced meanings which I had yet to sort out, but those were the basic essentials as I had translated them thus far. The one she’d just given me meant something like,I have absolutely no fucking clue how to respond to that.

Her eyes lifted, and our gazes met for a split second of sexual tension and molasses-thick awkwardness. “I don’t feel disrespected.” A brief but powerful pause, her eyes meeting mine. “Flattered, if anything. I…I would never have imagined a guy as…as hot and successful as you would want to…to jerk off tome.”

“I’d like to do a hell of a lot more than jerk off,” I heard myself say, and not exactly under my breath.

Her blush turned from pink to red, and she shifted, her eyes dropping. “Rhys, I—I can’t. I can’t start anything. I have to get to my sister’s wedding.” Her eyes widened. “Shit! What time is it?”

I turned to glance at the clock on my range. “Six forty-five.” Understanding dawned. “Fuck.Your bus left fifteen minutes ago.”