Page 30 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About
They both climbed into bed and Josh used the remote control on his nightstand to turn on the television anchored to the wall. He navigated the menu and pulled up his favorite television show to sleep to. Xena: Warrior Princess .
“Aren’t we going to sleep?” Sadie asked.
“Yes, I like to fall asleep with the TV on,” he said. He had been slightly dishonest there. It wasn’t so much a like as a need , one he discussed with his therapist. “My parents fought a lot when I was a kid, and I always drowned it out with television.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“Money. They struggled with their mortgage. My dad worked in sales, so things were sort of feast or famine. Mostly famine. They cursed at each other a lot, so that’s where that other idiosyncrasy of mine comes from.”
Thanks to him, they had no more money worries, but they had divorced nonetheless.
And despite the lovely and soporific soundscape of nighttime on the farm, with its tree frogs and crickets and rustling leaves, he still needed television to sleep.
As a kid it had been whatever was on late at night, namely syndicated reruns of Xena .
They still did the trick. His therapist assured him that coping mechanisms could be hard to let go of, and as they went, this one was quite harmless.
“Everyone always assumes kids are resilient,” Sadie mused. Knowing her relationship with Pea Blossom, he figured she was applying this skeptical sentiment to herself.
“I’m pretty resilient,” he said, smiling. “I just talk like whatever the opposite of a sailor is and I fall asleep to Xena .”
“Does it have to be Xena ?”
Josh rose to his elbows and looked for the derision that was sure to be all over her face.
There was none. Only curiosity.
“I’m not kidding,” she said in response to his body language. “She’s too awesome. It’s too queer. I’ll get too invested, and never sleep.”
“Fair enough. Let’s see what else we’ve got,” he offered, and flipped to a streaming platform. He began reading names of shows that seemed un- Xena -like. “ Murder, She Wrote . Upstairs, Downstairs. ”
“We could try Murder, She Wrote . A bland old people show will send me right to sleep.”
He didn’t agree with Sadie’s assessment, but he picked a random episode from the sixth season, hoping by then the show was in some kind of a slump that would render the plot and dialogue banal.
He turned out the light and the television illuminated the room with its comforting blue flicker. Sadie breathed softly beside him.
The show pulled him right in. Before long, he had his suspect and was frustrated along with Jessica that she was not taken more seriously by those around her.
He even delighted as he watched her lay a trap.
By the end of the episode, Josh was beaming as Jessica delivered a monologue explaining how she knew who it had been the whole time, the person who Josh himself never suspected.
“Wow,” came Sadie’s small voice beside him. “Don’t fuck with Jessica Fletcher.”
“You’re awake?”
“I don’t have a TV in LA,” she explained. “Not because I think I’m above it, but because it mesmerizes me and keeps me from getting work done.”
“You do like to have a lot of control over your environment, don’t you?” The sex and the late hour certainly loosened his tongue.
Sadie’s gentle chuckle indicated he hadn’t offended her with that observation. “We can’t all be easy breezy like you, Josh.”
“I can’t speak to the larger world, but whatever it would take to make you feel easy breezy around me, you let me know.”
“If I ever figure it out, I will. Until then, you’re getting tied up.”
His hands needed her hips again; they needed to map every rise and fall and fold of her. How could he ever go back? More than that, how could he deny her anything she wanted? “As you wish.”
Sadie paused. “Is it white noise you need? I see you have a ceiling fan. How about that turned up high?”
“You’d be okay with that?”
“Ceiling fans are my favorite. I don’t like air-conditioning.”
Something, the sex or the nighttime, had relaxed her, and she was opening up, letting him know things she loved.
Each discovery added shadings and depth to the portrait he had of her in his mind, changing it from something angular and sharp to something rounder and smudgier.
And that portrait kept taking up more space.
He wanted to keep working on it. Until he knew more about her than anyone else on earth.
Josh switched off the television and turned up the ceiling fan.
The strong breeze kissed his forehead and softly rearranged his hair.
He lay on his back and put his hands above his head, instantly calling to mind the silken cuffs on his wrists not long ago.
He wasn’t especially adventurous with sex, and if he was honest, he was a little intimidated by all the toys purchased for his failed attempt at dating.
Sadie had made it easy, though. The trust that he invested in her yielded some wonderful dividends.
She needed to be in control to be comfortable, that much was clear, but how fun it was to be controlled.
It was gratifying to be what she needed.
Sex was always a negotiation in some ways, but it was rare that someone was as honest about their demands as Sadie.
And nothing made him come harder than the feeling of someone coming around his own cock first. Thinking of the tight embrace of her pussy, the sound she made, the smell of her, sweat mingled with whatever made her smell like a dang cupcake, and he was hard again.
He turned his head in the darkness, the fan whispering into his ear, and he heard her breathing, the slow rasp of someone who was asleep.
But he couldn’t sleep, not without the comforting rhythms of television dialogue.
So he lay there wide-awake, dreaming up other scenarios.
One where Sadie was sitting on his face.
Another where he turned the tables and tied her up.
If he wasn’t going to sleep, he could certainly spend the whole night envisioning what they could do together, hoping she would rouse at some point and make one of those reveries a reality.