Page 41 of Sunny Side Up

nineteen

There’s no thrill quite like a midday sext session in a restaurant.

It’s just your average Saturday, you’re minding your own business, responding to texts while your dining companions are distracted with the menu, and whoosh : The heat gets turned up out of nowhere and you feel like you’re about to explode in public.

I was with Brooke and Noor when it began. I had a date planned with Dennis that evening, and I wanted to get their take, in person, where I could read their faces and push them for honesty, about the excruciating physical slowness with which Dennis and I were tracking.

Ted and I, meanwhile, had begun to cool off on the emotional front.

After that tense conversation about Zack, I could feel myself pulling away; and I could sense in him that he wasn’t going to push the matter.

Our phone calls returned to strictly professional.

He wasn’t much of a texter. After his initial I’ll-pick-you-up-at-seven courtship, our “dates” had evolved into more of a spontaneous-drinks thing that would usually happen after meetings if neither of us had plans.

That said… we’d hooked up plenty since our fight, or whatever you’d call it.

Neither of us could help it. We’d walk into meetings, both seemingly resolved to keep it casual.

Then a spark would ignite somewhere in the middle: Our hands would touch as I passed him sketches across the table; I’d watch his eyes lock on me while I presented our financial projections; his vetiver and amber smell would fly past my nose and knock me out.

Oh god, and seeing him at his desk, in his suit, with that view behind him…

as soon as we were sure that we were alone, guaranteed to be uninterrupted, that no one could see or hear us, it was on.

(Which one time meant after hours, right there at his desk, in his suit, with that view behind him…)

It was complicated, for sure, and getting more so. I felt myself in a constant tug-of-war between feeling guilty and feeling like, No, you know what, screw that, we’re all adults here . Neither relationship was defined.

I was also getting more and more paranoid about Ted and Dennis reading Sunny Side Up .

They both knew about it; Dennis kept calling it my Reddit (as in, “Sorry I don’t read your Reddit; I’ve got the real thing right here in person, what could be better?

”). (“Unless it’s in the Wall Street Journal , he probably doesn’t read it,” Ted’s assistant James had told Avery.)

Even still: I had begun to chill with the personal dating content on Sunny Side Up .

(I’d decided to archive the more detailed/incriminating posts, especially since Ellie had started becoming one of my most involved cheerleaders.) It was becoming more and more apparent that what SSU readers cared about most was content that made them feel seen and empowered, that made them feel welcome and related to, that made them laugh, and that made online shopping and getting dressed—in a world seemingly determined to exclude anyone who wasn’t model perfect—a little bit easier, a lot more fun.

A vocal few who’d been especially invested in my hunt for a wedding date or my dating life would send me the occasional private message on Substack or over Instagram to check in.

My replies had been getting more and more vague in that respect.

But as far as SSU ’s general audience: They were all just happy to be part of it.

Especially the Sunny Side Up subscribers-only Group Chat on Slack, which had become the lifeblood of the operation.

… Which meant that the sexting session was purely for me. Well, and Brooke and Noor, but that was to be expected.

Dennis was coming over for dinner that evening, and for whatever reason—call it spring fever—around 2 p.m., our texts began to hint at the evening’s, uh, appetizer course.

Noor, Brooke, and I had met for an impromptu lunch at our favorite sushi spot, DOMODOMO on West Houston. We’d been texting, then realized we were all within a two-block radius of one another, running various errands, so you know, when in SoHo.

We started with work updates: Noor was going to be on the TODAY show tomorrow morning, cooking live for a special segment; Brooke’s roster of private clients had gotten so full that she was no longer accepting anyone else.

Then we launched into life updates: Noor was dating a new guy she really liked and was exploring an unexpected flirtation with a woman she’d met at Pilates.

Meanwhile, Brooke’s hookup-turned-boyfriend Luis—the med student—was proving an excellent distraction from the fact that the ex-nanny was moving in with the ex-husband.

When it was my turn to share with the class, I told them I’d invited Dennis over for dinner, hoping he’d finally stay the night this time. My friends whooped with excitement.

I was excited, too. Like, really excited.

I couldn’t stop picturing what he’d do to me, what I’d do to him.

His arms holding me, his hands touching me, my naked skin against his enormous, bearlike chest. Those blue eyes watching me, wanting me.

That beard. What that beard would feel like between my thighs…

suddenly, I couldn’t hold off until dinner.

I excused myself from the table and went to the bathroom.

I was done going slow, I decided. It was time to treat Dennis a little more like the man who’d told me on the West Side Highway that he’d wanted me from the first moment he saw me.

I slid my top down in the stall and, after a few attempts, got lucky with a pretty impressive picture: I’d framed the shot so that the only part of my face he could make out was my chin, with a focus on my heavily glossed bottom lip, all the way down to my cleavage.

My nipples were dark and prominent behind the veil of my sapphire mesh bra.

I included a message that I couldn’t wait to see him that night.

There was silence for about sixty seconds. My heart was racing. It picked up speed as I saw the dots of a message in progress floating, then disappearing. Bubbling, then disappearing. Shit. I just freaked him out. Why did I do that?!

Before I could flush my phone down the toilet, he replied.

He told me he had never wanted to be a piece of mesh so badly in his life. I giggled and loved that he knew what that fabric was.

As I sat there, grinning, I got another text. A photo. The outline of his thick, enormous dick, his hand holding it over his boxers.

I responded with a picture of my left hand cupping my naked breast, my nipple hard between my ring and middle fingers. I included one word: Dessert.

Then I quickly added, See you soon. At happy hour w the girls , and I turned my phone off—just to torture the both of us for a bit. Holy shit. How was I going to wait until 7:30?

I practically floated back to the table, where I told Brooke and Noor exactly why I took fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom. We all did a sake shot in honor of my successful sexting.

When our meal was over and we headed out into the beautiful early spring evening, my whole body was buzzing. Noor lit a joint and we decided to walk for a bit, strolling through Washington Square Park on a perfect Saturday in New York.

We walked home together in lockstep, three across the city pavement, which was something you could do only if you were either (A) a fresh-faced NYC tourist who didn’t know any better or (B) a longtime NYC resident who had made the sidewalks feel like home, irrespective of any fast walkers who might blow past you.

We lost it when Brooke started making up a song about sexting from the DOMODOMO bathroom, probably annoying everyone trying to pass us, but we were reveling in the pure, particular joy of being so stupid with your best friends.

We parted ways, and I floated back to my apartment, more excited than ever for the night ahead.

And then, there he was, standing under the shade of my apartment’s awning. Khaki pants, striped Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, head down in concentration at whatever was happening on his phone.

Ted.

I swear I’d gone my whole life, up until these last few weeks, without men just popping up everywhere. With the clock now ticking until Dennis arrived (especially after that text convo)—spare time I’d planned on using to clean and get ready and just relax—I felt my chest tighten.

I still couldn’t help but feel a little cold toward him. But damn. He was so handsome.

“Oh, hello,” I said coyly. “What are you doing here?”

He looked up.

“Hello, beautiful.” His eyes were lit up, shining.

He shoved his phone in his pocket, grabbed my hand, and spun me around.

This was not the Ted of the last few weeks, after the Zack convo.

This was Knicks-game Ted. I didn’t know how to feel about it.

Things had felt a little easier, if I’m being honest, with the two of us keeping it more about the sex than the emotions.

He reached down beside him and picked up a bottle of champagne that must have been there the whole time.

He tilted it back and forth slowly, grinning. “I have good news.”

My stomach leaped. “What?”

“Stonebridge’s wants to carry SONNY.”

I just stared at him, processing that sentence.

Stonebridge’s. Stonebridge’s? !!! The department store was legendary, right there with Nordstrom or Bloomingdale’s.

We’d already secured three key large-volume online accounts: exclusives for Shopbop, NET-A-PORTER, and Moda Operandi, plus two limited buys in New York boutiques: No.

6 on the Bowery was carrying one style; Clark in Cobble Hill was carrying two.

We would also sell SONNY on our own website, direct to consumers.