Naked Read online

  “Sarah.”

  “If I were craving chocolate, would you buy me some?”

  “Umm…yes?”

  “If I broke up with my boyfriend, you’d take me out dancing, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I love fabric. I have a fabric addiction. I crave buying yards and yards and bolts and bolts of material.” Sarah pointed at the pile on my table, then gestured around the room. “All of this? Is from two boxes in my storage unit. Do you want to know how many boxes I have?”

  “Okay. I get it!” I laughed, but she wouldn’t let me go.

  “Guess, Liv!” she demanded.

  “Ten.”

  “Thirty,” Sarah confessed in a whisper, as if she was ashamed, though her grin gave her away as anything but. “Thirty boxes of fabric, Olivia. Take this off my hands. Please. So, help a sistah out here.”

  The faux “urban” accent had grated my ears coming from Patrick’s neighbor, Nadia, but from Sarah it made me laugh. “Fine. But I owe you.”

  “Of course you do,” she said matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, I’ll make you pay.”

  Together we sorted the fabric into piles. She’d picked all complementary fabrics, even colors I’d never have thought would go together, but did. Purples with reds and rusts, browns and blacks together. She lined up the fabrics and pulled out a single box of nails.

  “Huh,” she said, looking at the box. “These won’t do much good without a hammer.”

  “Or the furring strips.”

  She looked around the room. “And a ladder. And hey, don’t you have any big, strong men to help with this? Especially ones who’d be happy to work shirtless?”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Right. Believe me, if I had a big, strong, shirtless man in my life who liked to use tools, don’t you think I’m bringing him around you. I’m keeping him for myself.”

  “Selfish bitch.” Sarah chuckled and hopped up on the table to swing her legs back and forth.

  “I’ll see what I have in the back room as far as tools go. I have a ladder there, too.”

  “Make sure you don’t have a hunky handyman back there,” she called after me as I headed to the rear space I used as a storage place, dressing room and small kitchen.

  I flipped the switch on the wall, which turned on an old standing lamp I’d put in the corner. I needed to replace the overhead fixture. The small circle of light from the lamp wasn’t enough to really see what was in all the boxes, some of which I hadn’t even opened since moving in. I knew what was in most of them. A few contained untold mysteries, probably not of the Orient, but you never knew. I was pretty sure I’d stashed a toolbox someplace on one of the shelves.

  After a couple moments scrambling, I found a box of tools, but not of the hammer and screwdriver variety. I unsnapped the locks and lifted the hinged, plastic lid. From the other room I heard the sound of Sarah’s phone and low-pitched laughter.

  Inside the box lay a huge, flesh-colored cock, complete with balls and a handy-dandy suction cup to keep it secured to a table or wall. Beneath it in other compartments were all sorts of sex gadgets—a butt plug still in its original package, boxes of novelty condoms in flavors and shapes, sample packets of lube with names like Slippery Nipplez and Cherry Popper.

  This box had been a bridal shower gift to me from a group of college friends. It had gone with me from my dad’s house to my first apartment, the one I’d meant to share with Patrick but had ended up living in alone. And now, somehow, it had found its way with a bunch of my other crap to the storage room in my studio.

  I looked at it for a while. It had been a joke when I got it, and had become more of a joke later, though I’ll admit it had taken me a long time to see it as funny. I’d put it away when I couldn’t bear to see it, not because of the contents but because of what the gift had been meant to celebrate.

  I ran a finger along the monstrous dong and shook my head, laughing. Something like this was too funny to be kept locked away. And after all this time, if I couldn’t break out the huge rubber penis my friends had bought me in anticipation of an unexpectedly canceled wedding to my gay boyfriend, I really needed a better sense of humor.

  “Sarah!” I cried, clasping the dong to my crotch and striking a pose in the doorway. “I have something for you! Woo-hoo!”

  Yeah. I twirled it like a lasso. Then I jerked my hips back and forth, fucking the air like a porn star on ecstasy. “Come and get it!”

  Of course I hadn’t looked before leaping through the doorway. Of course I’d assumed the pizza man had come and gone, and that Sarah was alone in the office. Of course I was wrong.

  Of course it was Alex standing next to Sarah, their mouths agape and eyes wide. Sarah looked back and forth from him to me and shot me a look I knew meant she thought I’d been holding out on her. She recovered first.

  “Thanks, Liv, but I’ve already got one like that.”

  “Me, too,” Alex said after half a moment. “Mine’s not as big, though.”

  Sarah guffawed and jerked a thumb at him. “I like this guy.”

  I stood in front of him with a gigantic rubber penis in my fist, and I couldn’t find anything witty or smart to say. “Hi, Alex.”

  Sarah gave him a long up and down perusal. “Hello, Alex, owner of a huge cock.”

  I clapped the hand not full of pseudocock to my forehead. “Thank you, subtle Sarah.”

  Alex didn’t seem perturbed by the implication we’d been discussing him. He gave Sarah his hand. “Alex Kennedy.”

  “Sarah Roth.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, and he laughed.

  “Nice to meet you, Sarah.” He looked at me. “I brought you a rent check.”

  Sarah’s brows disappeared into her hairline. “Rent?”

  “Remember I told you, I got a tenant?”

  She snorted laughter. “Uh-huh. You sort of left out a few details on that one.”

  I realized I had the dildo in a death grip, as if I were strangling an anaconda. I had no place to put it so I set it on the table, where it nestled among the piles of fabric. The three of us stared at it.

  “That’s a shame,” Sarah said after a minute. She plucked up the dong and swept the fabric out of the way, then suction-cupped it to the table surface. “There you go. Much better.”

  We all stared at it again.

  Alex cleared his throat. “That’s, um, impressive?”

  Sarah gave the dildo a flick with her finger that set it bobbing like a metronome. “Well, listen, I’m out of here. Have fun, kids. Liv, I’ll make a run to the hardware store.”

  “You don’t have to go,” Alex said. “Not because of me.”

  She snapped her fingers at him. “Hell, no. I need a trip to the hardware store. I have a serious jones for a new nail gun. Besides, I have plans.”

  “What plans?” I asked suspiciously. “You didn’t mention any plans before.”

  Sarah held up her phone. “I didn’t have them before, but I do now. And you’ve got company now, anyway. Alex.” Smirking, she gave him another obvious assessment. “Maybe he can help you pound something. Ta, kids. Liv, I’ll call you later. Alex, nice meeting you. Hope to see you again.”

  “You, too,” he said, and watched her go before turning back to me with a slightly incredulous look. “I feel a little like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.”

  I laughed. “That’s Sarah for you.”

  “Here.” He handed me an envelope, which I put into my pocket. He looked around the room. “Great space.”

  I’d forgotten he’d never been up to the studio. “Thanks. It’s the reason I bought the place to begin with.”

  “I don’t blame you.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You see the potential in things a lot, Olivia.”

  The compliment moved me, set me back a little. “Thanks.”

  He smiled. “So, I got a call from Patrick.”

  “Yeah?”

  Alex’s smile twisted a little. “Yeah. Apparently I’m supposed to avoid you?”