Some Kind of Loneliness

As relaxing as it had been, her time was up.

She rose up from the water, the droplets trickling and trailing down the curves of her body, and reached over for the towel that she had laid next to her ivory tub. She patted herself down slowly, meticulously even, drying herself off but not completely so. Her right foot out of the tub, resting on the edge as she dabbed from sole to shin to knee to upper and inner thigh; and when she was done, she lowered her right foot onto the carpet and went through the same motion with her left. The light coming from the candles bounced off her toenail polish. She paused for a moment, stood there in the darkness as steam wafted up from her chest and shoulders. Aside from her soft exhales, the only other sounds in the room were the faucet dripping and the VanJess song she had playing through her portable speaker. She preferred it that way, because she would often spend her days running around all day. This forced her to be still.

This was her thing. Not exactly a ritual. More like a meditation. Twice a week after dinner, she would run herself a bath, dropping one of those bath bombs she’d gotten from the Black-business market into the hot water and letting it do its job. She couldn’t tell you if it really was “aromatherapy,” but the shit smelled good as hell, and it made her smell good as hell.

She would put on some R&B music and light a few candles around the bathroom: one on the sink, one on the windowsill, and one tucked in the back corner on the edge of the tub. The last one was the result of a lesson learned. The second night she’d tried the ritual, as she’d become ambitious enough to turn the lights off and light more than one candle, she’d placed a candle on the outside edge of the tub, near the faucet. She’d sunk herself into the water, kicked her left foot up and caused a mess, singing her rug and spilling candle wax over it, a small fire prevented only by the fact that some bathwater had followed after the candle during its spill. From that point forward, it was the back corner only.

Once she was out of the tub, she reached for the jar of coconut oil on the sink, dipped her fingers in it and rubbed her hands together. She liked to apply it in the darkness after her baths because, although she had grown confident in her figure and form, it all seemed much more perfect with the lights down low. Even as her fingers passed over them, she didn’t need the sight of mosquito bites on her skin ruining her mood, and those bastards were especially ruthless in the fall. Plus, she could appreciate how her brown skin glistened in the darkness.

She left her music on as she walked out of the bathroom, and as she stepped into the bedroom, she heard another sound: dripping water, coming from outside. It had started raining. She had thought to turn her lamp on and read a bit before going to sleep, but something about the sound of the rain made her stick with that instead.

I should call him.

The thought popped up in her head before she could even do anything about it. No, no, she shouldn’t call him. Because the phone worked both ways, and they hadn’t seen each other, much less talked, in three days. That was how their arrangement worked, after all. There were no expectations, no obligations — just a mutual understanding that whenever needs had to be met, they could fulfill those needs together. Those were the terms she had set. But as she sat down on her bed, she realized that she was a little lonely.

She could, actually, call someone. He wasn’t her only player. Which was part of why she’d made the arrangement that way — so she always had an option. Every player was different. But he was perhaps the most skilled of all of them. Something about the way he tapped into her. How his skin felt against her skin. When he was with her, she would inhale out of pleasure, but also to breathe in his scent, always some mix of half-cologne, half-working man.

What are you waiting for? You should call him.

She shook back the thought again and leaned back on the bed, the warmth of her skin at first bristling from and then accepting the light chill of her sheets. She’d gotten them recently, a higher thread count than her usual, at his suggestion, actually. She ran a finger through her hair and reached over for her bonnet. But her hand landed instead on the blindfold.

She’d used that with him, three days ago. It was her idea, actually.

You trust me enough with one of those? She recalled him asking. And she’d replied, almost daringly, Should I not trust you? She recalled how he’d hesitated before laughing. It happened so fast and he was so subtle with it, that she wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t been looking at him. Wouldn’t have caught his lips part for just a second before he’d broke the silence with his laugh.

So she’d handed the blindfold over to him, figuratively and literally placed her life in his hands. She recalled what that felt like, the anxiousness as she waited for him. Not being able to see him but knowing he was there, looking at her, sizing her up like she was something to be savored and expecting him to do exactly that. And he did. He’d started at her ankle, a subtle bite at one as his fingers traced up her other leg. He’d traced two fingers and drew a line across that small space between the top of her panties and the bottom of her belly button.

She exhaled, felt goosebumps rising on her skin. She thought it was the memory of the other night, but no. It was happening in real time. She hadn’t realized it was her own hand, her own fingers reaching down. But because she slept naked when she didn’t have company, there were no panties this time. She couldn’t, she told herself. It wasn’t his night. But she looked over at her phone, the screen shining out in the darkness of her room. She reached for it anyway, as the thunder crashed in the background.

Quite a few people she’d not yet replied to. Only one person in that moment she’d even want to hear from. She unlocked her phone.

“Hey you. I was just thinking about the other night” she started to type.

And she did that for a moment again. She recalled him squeezing her breasts, breathing over her, kissing her and then drawing back. His hands around her neck as he reached up while his mouth was preoccupied with other things, sweeter things, and a moan slipped out of her lips. She didn’t like letting him know he had gotten to her so quickly, but she succumbed to it that time because she was spellbound by all of it. She reached up and put a finger to her lips, to her tongue, remembering how he’d had her taste hers-

Her phone buzzed suddenly, stirring her out of her memory. She couldn’t help but to be annoyed. Who dared disturb her moment? She looked down at her phone and her breath caught. She hadn’t realized she sent that text out. But it didn’t matter because he’d replied.

So was I? Can I cum over?