Page 11 of Text Me A Kiss

I took off my cardigan and took a picture of me still fully clothed, but holding the cardigan up.

K_Kitten: Next?

L’Art_of_Illusion: Hm…. a picture.

I won that one, chuckling to myself. Too easy! I loved family photos and I had them everywhere

Eagerly, I snatched up my phone the second a message came through.

Shock consumed me, then surprise, then disbelief, then, slowly but bubbling up faster in my chest with every second: laughter. I collapsed onto my sofa bed, laughing so hard that I banged my head into the wall behind it and only laughed harder because of it. My arms tried to grasp at my phone, but every muscle flopped like Jello as my tear-filled hilarity sapped the strength from my limbs and left me gasping.

After about three minutes or so of hysterical laughter that probably had my neighbors calling the police, my phone dinged.

L’Art_of_Illusion: You said to take off an article of clothing…. I was wearing a bathrobe.

Sniffling like I had a cold and coughing over whatever phlegm my throat had managed to find in my airways during my fit of laughter, I wiped my eyes and managed to control my fingers enough to type.

K_Kitten: I’ve never laughed so much at a penis before.

Now that I could finally breathe and see, I ogled the picture through slightly watery eyes.

This man hadabs.The kind of abs that made you feel safe and fluttered your heart when the specimen of a man they belonged to pushed you down into the pillows. And even though I hadn’t asked for it, now I could stare at the real face of the man I’d come to know as Pridamant. Hungrily, my eyes devoured his defined jawline, swept over his serious brows, short beard, and groomed sideburns, and searched his masculine features for imperfections and found none. His dark brown hair was combed back, and it and the chest hair on his defined pecs… I could twist a couple fingers into that.

Oh, and there was his penis, of course. It was pretty much a normal penis, honestly. It was just the fact that he’d actually taken a picture of himself fully naked that had made me laugh like a hyena in heat.

K_Kitten: Sorry, didn’t mean yours is funny. Just meant I didn’t expect it.

I’d made up the rules of the game: take off an article of clothing every time the other person found the item first. A bathrobe was only one article of clothing.

K_Kitten: By the way, if I were you I’d put real pictures of yourself on the app.

L’Art_of_Illusion: Why?

K_Kitten: Cause your body’s delicious enough to eat, that’s why.

* * *

After our little “game”, Pridamant and I typed much more honestly about what we thought of each other… and what we wanted from each other. Once or twice, my own imagination and the things he said he’d do to certain needy parts of me had me wriggling in whatever clothes suddenly seemed too constricting about my waist.

And I responded in kind. After all, I’d started this, and for every little tease he sent me, I had a response—either with my dirty mind or with my tantalizing body.

But, I did put my foot down about one thing: no nudes. I’d heard of dancers who were ruined when jealous exes decided to float their nudes around on the web.

So, every picture I sent after our little game was designed to tease Pridamant, but leave everything to the imagination. I refused to show anything more than I would being paid to model some sort of dance-wear.

Anyway, checking my phone had a sort of risk now in public, because of all the pictures—especially around my father, who came to visit a few weeks after we started acting like two people on a dating app.

“So, have you decided where you want to go after you graduate?” my father asked over his plate of pasta, carefully twirling it around his fork so as to avoid splattering sauce on his suit or brown beard streaked with gray.

“Iwantto go back to Chicago. That’ll depend on the hiring companies, though,” I said, partially to avoid getting my hopes up and partially to avoid disappointing my mother if I couldn’t come back to Chicago and this conversation invariably made its way to her ears.

“Hm.”

I may be the baby of the family, but that didn’t mean my father and I could always find a topic of conversation. “So, how’s Midwest?” My father was the President of the Board of Directors of Midwest, a stock brokerage in Chicago, and he always found something or another to tell me about his business.

“Business is going well. Still wish I could find a suitable replacement for the CEO, though.”

“So why can’t you?” I asked through a mouthful of pizza.

“He’s too good at what he does, even if he is a cocky son of a b—sorry, Honey. He’s too good at what he does. The Board would never agree to replace him.”

“Is he the guy that you said got on the news that time? Grant or something?” Any continuation of this topic and avoidance of awkward silence worked for me.

“Graham Emerson. Yeah, he was on the news. Wouldn’t stop talking about the sexy newscaster the next day, either.”

My father and I both laughed, and conversation went a bit easier after that.

Later, after my dad returned to his hotel and I went home, I finally had a chance to check my phone. I had one single message from the dating app.

L’Art_of_Illusion: Business trip to NYC this weekend. Want to meet up?