Midnight Lunch: An Erotic Story about Microwave Omelets (4 page)

I say I want sex, but when I’m nose-to-nose
with a beautiful girl and I think I can see her needs through her
skin, I want whatever she wants. She touches my lips and I tell her
how beautiful she is. I tell her she’s an apparition in this city.
I steal lines from my own fantasies and whisper them into the skin
behind her ear.

We slow and slow. Moving slower than I
thought two people could touch. Slower than sleep. So slow it takes
concentration. So slow it’s not erotic. It’s something else.

It’s erotic to kiss a girl on the sidewalk.
But to stand with her—even with the warmth of her pussy radiating
through my shirt to my stomach—wrapped up in my arms, with her legs
around my waist, my fingers in her hair, it’s not. The black-eyed
hunger of lust is gone; this is too tender for selfishness. Now I’m
just taking care of a girl. That’s kind of a hook up, I reason; I
don’t know her at all and I’m still giving her everything. At least
it’s got the emotional recklessness of a hook up.

The slower we move, the more she melts. She
rolls her hips, pushing her crotch against me, and I kiss the flush
on her face. One cheek, then the other. She stays for half an hour
past when she said she had to go. When I finally help her off the
counter, neither one of us says much. She tells me she’ll come
again and I kiss the back of her neck. She walks backward to the
door and says she wants another omelet. I nod at her, ruffled and
wet, grinning shaky like we just fucked for ninety minutes instead
of snuggled.

I tame my hair in the glass doors’ reflection
and put enough money in the register to cover the food I made for
her.

The old butch comes in. I accidentally beam
at her, teeth showing and everything.

She laughs, “You having a good night?”

“Yeah,” I try to wipe my grin off on my
sleeve.

“Your girlfriend come around again?”

“Yeah.” I blush at the counter. The title
doesn’t faze me. It barely registers. It’s the warmth in my face
and my stomach that’s overwhelming. Or better said, unexpected.
Just from hearing her say, “your girlfriend.”
My
girlfriend.

She carries her coffee to the counter and
hands me a twenty. I hand her the change and she hands it right
back. The same exchange every night. She says, “Buy something nice
for your girl.”

I nod, still smiling, “I will.” I’ve been
thinking about it since I got home yesterday, right after our first
kiss. I want to buy Maria something nice, or give her the cash if
that’s what she needs. I add the money to the growing stack in my
back pocket. I’m just the guardian of this; it’s not mine. My
protective instincts are lit up and I feel, irrationally, like I’m
working to support her and she just doesn’t know it yet. It feels
like a cheesy romcom set-up where I blow her mind with my romantic
dedication.

Maria comes back the next night. I make her
put my work schedule in her phone so she knows when I’ll be around
and when I won’t. We make out in the back room again. She puts my
hands under her shirt and I spread my fingers over her ribs. I
stroke the underside of her breasts with the backs of my fingers
and we both moan. I palm her breast with her nipple between my
index and middle fingers and feel myself shaking. I’m so wet, I’m
losing my shit. I push up her shirt with my free hand and pull her
other nipple into my mouth, surging against her. It’s dark and soft
and warm. She gasps and I suck, flicking the tip with my tongue.
Fuck, she smells so good.

Suddenly, she pushes on my head. I lift up
and she tugs her shirt down. I jump and pull my hands off of her,
“Sorry, sorry. I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Maria puts her hand on her face,
“It’s fine. I just don’t—” she shakes her head, “Sorry. I don’t
know.”

“No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t cool. I don’t
want to—” I swallow, trying to pull my thoughts together, “I want
to be good to you. Just do what you want. So, let me know, okay? If
I do something you don’t want.”

She nods. I make her food and tell her jokes
on the curb until she has to leave.

The next night, I buy a sleeping bag on
clearance at the sporting goods store at the mall and hide it in
the trash until Parteek leaves. I bring it inside and unzip it to a
flat sheet on the backroom floor, so we have “some space, some
options,” I tell her. She smiles at me with one eyebrow cocked.

I say, “Spoon with me.”

I hold her the whole hour, her body curled
inside the curve of mine, my arm under her breasts, around her
ribs, her hips in my lap. She tells me about a dog that lives in
her neighborhood who has “at least fifty sweaters. I swear, every
day it’s a different sweater.”

I laugh into her hair, “It’s fall, too. What
kind of insane dog-coat game is he going to have in the
winter?”

She laughs, I hold her tighter. She asks if
I’m in school and I tell her about my classes. She asks how long
I’ll be working here and I can’t tell if she’s just asking
questions, or she’s worried I’m going to disappear.

Maria comes around every night to spend one
of the quiet hours with me. Sometimes, customers come in and I
leave her to stand at the counter, looking as bored and buttoned-up
as I can. Sometimes, Parteek calls and I take a deep breath to
depress the sound of my voice before answering. Every time I come
back to her, it’s like falling back asleep to return to a good
dream.

Every hour I spend with her leaves a week’s
worth of strong emotions in my chest. I realize, after she leaves
our ninth “lunch” date, that I’ve been lonely for a long time. I
stop thinking about sleeping with sleepy customers. I fall asleep
each morning as the sun is rising after making myself come to
thoughts of her, warm and whispery, tucked up against me.

I don’t try to take her clothes off again. I
touch her breasts through her shirt, palm her thighs through her
skirt or pants or tights. I kiss her chest along the scoop of her
neckline. I caress every inch of her arms with my nose and lips. I
suck on her fingers when she’s horny and grinding against me.

When you fall in love, it happens slowly.
First, you realize you don’t know what love is. Then you fall.

If she’s wearing a jacket, I like to tip it
off her shoulders. Sex isn’t about orgasms. Sometimes it’s a
hoodie, sometimes it’s a coat. I ease the collar up and back. I can
feel her body heat in the gap. I tip it back off her shoulders and
smell her skin. I can get a quarter of what I want from staring at
a girl, maybe I can get the rest just like this.

The second thing you realize, when you fall
in love, is you don’t know what you want. I want to ask her if I
can come see her on my day off, but I’m afraid to break the
spell.

—————

I skip breakfast—what I’d call dinner—on
Friday, my first day off all week, and go straight to bed. When I
wake up it’s ramen and instant coffee in my dusky kitchen because I
blew my food budget on Mini Mart food for Maria.

I put on men’s pants, a t-shirt, a jacket
made for a very small guy, and a snapback. Georgia says I try to
look more gay on my days off to make up for the work-day uniform. I
head for the big book store downtown to window shop until it closes
at midnight.

I turn down the long block across from the
post office distribution center and there she is. White hair, black
clothes, drifting along next to the chain link fence like a ghost.
My first instinct isn’t to call out or greet her, but to tackle
her. My chest thumps, telling me to catch her like a lightning bug.
I want to protect her. I want to wrap her up and hold her, like I’m
supposed to.

“Maria!” I shout, but there’s no need because
she’s already looking at me. She changes course, crossing the
street to reach me. In the last three steps before she’s in front
of me, I fight myself to stand still. I want to sweep her up. To
kiss her, lovesick and crazy, out here in the dark, where half the
streetlights are broken. I want to catch her face in my hands and
say over and over, ‘Are you okay? Are you okay out here?’ Because
she lies like a professional, but she let a Mini Mart clerk kiss
her so softly in the back room. I want to cradle her. I want to
claim her. But she’s not mine.

Maria says, “You stay up all night on your
days off?”

She pauses when she’s right in front of me,
so briefly I can barely tell, then looks down as she takes the last
step into me. She just steps forward and into my chest, like I’ll
catch her. Like an embrace is expected, the only way we would ever
greet each other. My arms pull her in without my prompting. I hold
her close and silent for a second, trying to catch my breath.

I whisper, “Yeah.”

She asks my shoulder, “So what are you up
to?”

“I’m taking you to breakfast.”

Maria laughs. I catch her with a kiss. It
feels so real out here. She feels like a real person, really in my
arms, really tipping my hat back on my head and smoothing my hair
to the side.

I take her to a cool cafe where they serve
breakfast all night. We sit in a booth and our feet touch under the
table. I pay for her food and she doesn’t protest. When we leave, I
put my arm around her and she leans into my side.

There’s no good way to ask, ‘so are we
dating?’ It feels like something I should already know. But when
I’m just as close to saying, ‘I love you,’ I can’t find the courage
to ask something so simple. I’m in too deep.

I’m walking her around the best parts of my
neighborhood when she says, “So, I want to invite you back to my
place.”

“Okay,” I try to sound neutral.

“But I can’t. So can I invite myself over to
your place?”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” I scramble,
embarrassed I didn’t already invite her, “Do you want to— I mean,
yeah, please do. Let’s go. To my place. Like, now or whenever you
wanted to go. Any time.”

She nods. Then smiles. “Okay. Let’s go.”

We hold hands on the way to my apartment. My
chest is tight and disbelieving. What are we outside of our nook in
the back of the store? Who are we? What do we do?

I listen through the door before I open it,
hoping my roommates are in their rooms. It’s past eleven and
they’re usually in bed by now, watching Netflix on their laptops
until they fall asleep. I lead Maria into the kitchen; it’s empty.
I ask if she’s hungry or thirsty, if she wants to go to the
bathroom. She shakes her head.

I lead her by the hand into my room. I close
the door behind us and lock it. I stand, for just a second, with my
hand on the doorknob. My heart is pounding, my hands are sweating.
I’m trying to ask myself, honestly, what I think we’re going to do
in here. I’m wide awake and I’m locked in with her and a bed and my
body only has one gear that it’s revving as loud as it can.

I turn around to see Maria sitting on my bed.
She crawls backward on her hands and brings her feet up onto the
mattress. She kicks off her shoes. Her skirt rumples around her
hips. I can see green underwear through her black tights. She
giggles and unzips her hoodie. I take a step forward as she
shoulders her coat off and throws it at me. I catch it and drop it.
She sits back on her elbows and lets one knee fall open.

I start shaking my head. I crawl onto the
bed, straddling her with my knees on either side of her hips. I set
my hands on either side of her shoulders and lose it. I fall to my
forearms. Framing her head, cradling her, I press my forehead to
hers, breathing hard like I might cry. I whisper, “Oh my god,
Maria.” I barely breathe the sounds, telling her lips, trying to
tell her closer, tell her better, “Oh my god, oh my god.” I’m
braced over her like a roll cage, barely touching her. My hands are
shaking in her hair and I’m kissing her, mumbling, “You are so
beautiful. You have no idea.”

She whimpers back like she’s trying to keep
quiet. She puts her hands on my shoulders to keep me close. She
takes my hat off and puts it back on. I tell her I love it when she
touches my hair. She bites her lip when I look into her eyes.

I ask her, “What can I do for you?”

We’re already one puddle on top of the
comforter. Her knees are bent and I’m laying between her legs.
We’ve laid like this before, but now the air is crackling with
intention and I feel like I’m breathing lust up and out of my lungs
like sparks.

She says, “Take my tights off.”

So I sit back on my heels. I raise her skirt
with both hands and slip my fingers under the tights’ elastic
waistband. I pull them down and she lifts her hips. I stare at her
milky thighs and pull the nylon down and off her feet.

I kiss the dimples in her knees with my lips,
then kiss the underside of the joint with my whole mouth. I lick
the sensitive crease and she moans, then cuts the sound off. I kiss
up her inner thigh and she spreads her legs. I groan when I reach
the edge of her underwear. I press my cheek flat against her pussy.
I can smell her through the fabric, warm and floral. I raise my
eyebrows to look up at her as I nose against her labia, pressing
softly all over, feeling her out.

I breathe in through my nose and out through
my mouth. Something about the smell of it, feeling the damp heat of
a girl’s underwear on my face, sets my instincts rolling. I lay
flat on my stomach and let my legs hang off the side of the bed. I
reach around the thickest swell of Maria’s hips and pull her ass
and thighs toward me so she’s right under me, spread like a feast.
I love her curves. I lift her, not off the bed, just a little
upward tug, to feel the weight of her legs on my arms.

I kiss the crease of her thigh and start
edging under the seam of her underwear, kissing the edge of her
outer labia. Her pubic hair is trimmed short. It pricks my lips and
nose.

She asks, “You gonna take my shirt off
first?”

I nod, grinning loosely. I detangle myself
from her legs and crawl up her body again. I lift the hem of her
shirt and she arches her back. When I pull it over her shoulders,
she rounds them up off the bed to help me. Her breasts look softer
in the light of my room. They look tender and sensitive, less like
the irresistibly erotic things that drove me out of my mind in the
back room.