Love on Hold Read online

  “Yes, please …” I heard myself asking for more.

  “I’d work your skin with my lips and my tongue and my hands until I’d know all your sensitive spots. Touch yourself, Sweetness. Touch your pussy. Tell me how it feels.”

  “Wet …

  “Warm …

  “Soft …” I finished on a breathy whisper.

  “Can you put your fingers inside your mouth for me, Sweetness? Can you suck on them like they were mine? Can you slide your hands on your body and graze your pussy hard with your fingers? Can you rub your clit slowly?”

  I was no longer responding verbally to his commands, and he was no longer in need of answers. He knew by my sounds that I was past horny and into wanton land, and each of his words was followed by my sighs and hisses of pleasure. I bucked against my own hand and rubbed my fingers fast, arching my back off the bed and watching my phone near my head through a fog of pleasure.

  “Are you coming for me, Sweetness?”

  “Yes. Oh-my-gosh-yyes!” I managed to get out before I came with a small scream, and I tried to regain control of my breath before putting the phone back to my ear. All I heard was silence.

  “Did I lose you?” I asked him quietly.

  “After hearing the most erotic sounds I’ve ever heard from a real live woman? Not a chance.”

  “Do you want me to tell you where to touch yourself now?”

  He laughed. Full-on, boisterous laugh that gave me pause. My question wasn’t that funny.

  “Nah. I’m good. This was about me giving you an orgasm.”

  “Technically, I still gave it to myself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It was still me. My fingers. My technique.”

  He sighed.

  “I really do like challenges, Sweetness.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that when we meet—and we will—I promise to make you come fast and hard.”

  Thirteen

  “Come Home.”

  JOEL

  I was working late on campus at the Stanford News. I had a project due that Friday, and I still had research to do, but my head wasn’t in it. I’d received encouraging feedback from our editor about a piece I’d outlined for him. It was bittersweet, though, since I’d just gotten another rejection phone call from another newspaper. I needed to talk to Levi to see if he could find out how my dad kept track of all my applications.

  Then, as if my thoughts had freaking conjured him, my phone rang.

  With a sigh, I decided to take it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Son.”

  “Yes, Dick?” I waited for him to say his line.

  “Come home.”

  “No.”

  “We need to talk,” he said, sounding serious. Maybe he wanted to make amends. I scoffed.

  “I am serious.” No, he didn’t want to just talk. He wanted his control back. I scoffed again.

  “Clue me in about the topic of conversation,” I said slowly, and then I shook my head hearing that, at my request, he simply hung up. I felt like putting my fist through something.

  I kept typing and, fifteen minutes later, I had rambled on for a few paragraphs which made no sense when I re-read them. Junk. This is all junk.

  I wanted to clear my head so I jogged through the campus in search of a food truck. Anything that would remind me of the street food from my home city. What can I say, I missed New York. I felt my blood boiling and barely saw the happy people passing by me. I grabbed my phone and started scrolling through it. I knew who I wanted, I knew whose voice I needed to hear. My faceless, nameless, Sweetness. The way things were going, I might as well call her Addiction. It was weird and new and a bit scary that she calmed me the way she did, that her energy was the balm I craved as I dialed her number.

  Fourteen

  “Fire Alarm.”

  LEONIE

  Wednesdays were free of classes, and I’d taken my usual double shift at Stanford Hair, after which I had gone and played with the kids for two hours.

  Exhausted, I wanted nothing more than to grab a quick dinner, take a scorching hot shower, and crawl into bed. I may even throw on some baggy clothes, slap a night mask on my face, and stare at the pictures TDL had sent me so far while taking full advantage of my bullet vibrator.

  I had just gotten through most steps of my plan, minus the vibrator, when the phone rang. I picked up, careful not to smear my white coconut-oil mask all over the screen.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  “Sweetness.”

  Weird. His voice sounded strained. Even weirder was that I felt the impulse to coddle him.

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, most of the world is fucked up, but I thought I might change my perspective by giving you a ring.”

  “I’m here. How was your day?”

  “Shit.”

  “Oh … well, mine wasn’t that much better, but I think I made some people happy.”

  “Considering everything I know about you, it wouldn’t surprise me if you made more than a few people happy.”

  I stood.

  “What do you know of me?” I asked, heart beating fast.

  “That you’re generous and patient … and weird.”

  “All the best qualities in a girl, I’m sure,” I teased.

  “Baby … you can be sure. Wanna do a good deed for me as well?”

  His voice was breaking up as if he was moving or walking as he spoke.

  “Hmmm? What do you have in mind?”

  “Teleport over here and let me feed you a burger.”

  My stomach, which seemed to have a mind of its own, rumbled. Turned out our fridge only contained some mayo and olives, which Amaya generously pointed out before she left for her date.

  “If only!” I piped up.

  He tried to tell me something else, but his words were drowned out by the screeching of the fire alarm out in the hallway.

  “What’s going on?” I heard him yell but it wasn’t directly down the line so he must have been talking to someone else. “Which way’s the fire?”

  I jumped up and almost stepped on a terrified Glue, who was jumping around me and yapping. I grabbed him and my wallet before running to the door. I had my slippers on and a phone with an open conversation with my mystery crush in hand.

  “Sweetie! Babe! Are you okay?” I heard him scream, and it took me a minute to realize he was back to talking to me.

  The worry in his voice was thick, but it was the blare of the fire alarm coming through from his side of the conversation that made my whole world spin and tilt and threaten to throw me into panic.

  Fifteen

  “What Were the Odds?”

  JOEL

  She was here.

  I had moved across the country not to see my dad anymore. I had fled the mandatory course of a career pre-chosen for me by someone else. I’d arrived at Stanford and started a relationship over the phone with someone, deeming it safe. And this person was across the campus from where I lived. What were the odds?

  “Are you in Escondido South?”

  “Y-y-yes?” Came from the other side.

  “Jesus! I’m coming to you! Stay where you are!”

  In that hallway, bodies swarmed around me. I had to write a piece on fire hazards on campus.

  “I … I can’t—” she babbled, cutting in and out, her voice almost swallowed by the chaos around us.

  “What?” I asked right before my phone dropped the call.

  “Just a hot plate unattended, people! Everything’s been taken care of!” I heard a woman, probably the RA, yell.

  To my left, toward the exit street, I heard the yap of a dog that drew my attention.

  In all the commotion, I saw the tiny frame of a woman who was carrying a dog that looked exactly like the one I’d gotten a picture of. I couldn’t see her face, but her hair was very long and wavy and the color of honey.

  Me: Chicken.

  Sweetness: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I
’m sorry. I know!

  Sweetness: I am a coward. I was in shock.

  Me: Where are you off to?

  Sweetness: Search for my roommate. Die of shame. I had a mask on and didn’t want you to see me like this.

  Me: Was it an edible mask?

  Sweetness: What?

  Me: I am SO hungry. I would have probably just eaten it off your face. Problem solved!

  Sweetness: You always say the weirdest stuff to make me feel better about myself. But it works. I’m still sorry.

  Me: I’m not sorry.

  Sweetness: How come?

  Me: Are you kidding me? Now I am SURE we will meet. It’s fate!

  Sixteen

  “I Will Give You Five More Days?”

  JOEL

  Sweetness: Hi, stranger.

  Me: Hi …

  Sweetness: Do you think you would be okay with us sticking to our virtual relationship for a little while longer?

  Fuck no, I wasn’t okay with that. I didn’t want to push her into meeting me if she wasn’t ready, though.

  Me: Can I hear your voice?

  She called me.

  “Sweetness,” I answered right away. “Why are you scared of meeting me?”

  “I can’t explain it,” she breathed, and unless I was imagining it, she sounded sad.

  I wanted clarity, and she wasn’t giving it to me.

  I wanted her to come to me, and I seemed to drive her away.

  I had to play it smart. I had to play it cool.

  “I will give you five more days of resisting me.”

  I heard a soft knock on my door and saw Carrie enter, her body as scantily clad as ever.

  “I need to go,” I said into the phone, sounding harsher than I wanted to.

  I ended the conversation just in time to brace for Carries full weight on me, seeing as she’d jumped onto my chair and into my lap, wrapping me tight in her arms.

  “Lover,” she said, and that opening alone made me want to pick her up and set her as far from me as possible.

  “Why are you here, Carr?”

  I kept my face as steady as possible. I’d been lucky so far. I’d managed to whore around without forming attachments, but it seemed as if my luck had run out. I couldn’t seem to phase out Carrie with my silence, and she didn’t seem discouraged by gentle rejections.

  “I wanted to see what you’re wearing to the Halloween party. I wanna match.”

  She pressed her chest against mine when she said that, and I felt my traitorous dick swell. She seemed encouraged by that and moved her hips into mine.

  “We aren’t going together to the Halloween party.”

  She pouted and worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Unfortunately for her, she was a poor actress and couldn’t quite hide the anger swelling behind her eyes.

  I’d had enough. I lifted her off my lap and stood.

  “Levi, are you ready to go?” I hollered before looking at her. “My roommate and I are going to go and get shit-faced,” I explained to Carrie. “Go home or go out with whoever you want. Go to the party with whomever you want, just not with me. There is no reason to prolong something without a future, eh?”

  Levi appeared behind me with a shit-eating grin on his face. We didn’t really have plans, but he’d made a blunder letting her in the other night, and he understood guy code. In this instance, code meant help a brother get rid of the stage-five clinger.

  Carrie, to her credit, did not huff and puff or throw some kind of stereotypical bitch fit. She just gave me a long, calculated look, shrugged, and shut the door behind her when she left. As soon as the latch clicked, my shoulders relaxed and I turned to Levi, who was grinning like an idiot.

  “So cold, man. So cold.”

  I laughed, because what else did he want me to say? That I felt bad? I didn’t.

  “I gather when you said shit-faced, you really meant we were going to go work out?” Levi asked, and I nodded before grabbing my bag. He followed me out, and I hit the button on the elevator that would take us to the basement.

  There was a private gym down there, and Levi had taught me a few good moves boxing. I needed to blow some steam.

  “I don’t feel like actually drinking. Someone I’ve come to care about thinks it’s a disgusting habit. You got your gear here?”

  He looked at me as if I might be a bit addled before nodding toward the lockers.

  “So let me get this straight,” Levi said while gearing up. “You accidentally called a girl, who actually turned out to be hot, and now, for the first time in your life, you experience rejection?”

  “That about sums it up.”

  I went toward the punching bag, and in an unspoken agreement, Levi held it for me. I started hitting it hard, punctuating every word with a punch.

  “I … like … this chick. And … I’d like … to win … at something … for once.”

  Seventeen

  “Batman or Superman?”

  LEONIE

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  I was finishing Amaya’s reverse heart nose while she finished painting black stitches over the prolonged line of her mouth. Sugar skull makeup on Halloween was her way of honoring her country’s traditions, and she never skipped a year.

  “No, I really want to finish this assignment,” I said, reaching for my phone so I could read the text that just came in.

  TDL: Shopping last minute for a Halloween party. Who is sexier, Batman or Superman?

  Me: Superheroes are overdone. Go as a skeleton. Now those are hot.

  TDL: Weirdo!

  Me: But if I have to pick, I’ve always liked the brooding man better.

  TDL: Batman it is …

  “Chula, if you smiled more, you’ll have no face left. Is it Hot Mystery Guy?” Amaya winked at me in the mirror.

  “It’s the guy, yes. We haven’t established if he is hot.”

  “Well, if the man matches the dick, I’d say WOWZA! Is he going to the party?”

  The Halloween parties in Oak Creek were where everyone who was anyone on campus went. Both underclassmen and upperclassmen frequented them, and you could count on debauchery by the end of the night.

  TDL: So will you be my Catwoman or my Lois Lane?

  Me: Neither, I’m not going. But if I were; I’d be Nocturna.

  “Yeah, apparently, he is. And I think he will be Batman.”

  Amaya scoffed. “Lame! Want me to spy on him?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t want the mystery part of TDL to disappear. He was my safety net. I didn’t want him to stop being that.

  “Let’s just say … if in one of your multiple trips to get drinks you see a Batman, text me his pic. But don’t be too obvious about it, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, chica. Take care of Glue!” Amaya winked.

  In her red dress and burgundy flowers over her eyes, her energy made air sizzle around us. Amaya was two inches taller than I was and had a body shaped like an hourglass. If a guy didn’t fall for her appearance, her infectious laughter was known to do the trick.

  “Don’t break too many hearts!” I air-kissed her white cheek and checked my texts again as I plopped down onto our couch and pulled Glue onto my lap.

  TDL: She’s hot.

  Me: Huh?

  TDL: Nocturna. I had to look her up. Why her though?

  Me: Because she is different. Her skin secretes some sort of poison. She made Batsy an addict for her.

  TDL: So kinda like you made me one, huh?

  Wooosh. He thought I was addictive? Why did my heart somersault at that? Another ding from my phone.

  TDL: So, you still aren’t coming?

  TDL: Yes, pun intended.

  Me: I’m letting that one slide!

  Me: I went the first three years. Too many drunk people in one place for my taste.

  TDL: One of these days, Sweetness. One of these days, I will draw you out of your room.

  Not that he hadn’t tried. We’d had daily conversations where
he’d attempted to persuade me, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. There was no harm in us taking things into the real world and give us a shot. And it was the fifth night of the reprieve he’d said he was offering me as a timeline to resist him.

  TDL: This party blows. Save me!

  I read his last text again, three hot cocoas later and four blurry pictures of various Batmans taken by my paparazzi-wannabe Amaya, and I was riled up to go and find him.

  I put on a brown corset that left my shoulders completely bare. Then I pulled on some leather pants and high heels. I needed a black wig to make my costume look closer to the comic book character I wanted to bring to life. I rummaged through Amaya’s naughty collection and couldn’t find anything that looked right.

  Amaya: How ’bout this piece of booty?

  I cracked a laugh at the picture of a guy on the fluffy side, wearing a Dark Knight costume that made him look even more so. Judging by his spot in a dark corner, I could tell he regretted his choice.

  Me: Where are you?

  TDL: I am by the pool …

  I relayed that to Amaya and counted my heartbeats. If I were to judge by my body’s reaction to waiting, maybe I really did want to meet him. Amaya was probably right. I was making stupid decisions when it came to my own emotions.

  Amaya: One, he’s HOT. Two, I’m sorry, chica.

  IMAGE DOWNLOAD

  I bit my lip and my hands got suddenly clammy when I saw the incoming pic loading on my screen.

  Sure enough, there was a Batman lounging by the pool, drink in hand. I couldn’t tell how tall he was, because he was in a chaise longue, but he wore a dark suit, and he wore it well. His white button-up shirt was intentionally split open, revealing a black tee with the yellow bat sign on it. So, instead of choosing between the bat and the alien he’d gone for a weird combo of the two. Interesting.

  His hair was dark, crew cut on the sides and long enough on top to spike. He was smiling at his phone, his eyes crinkling. He was beautiful, but that wasn’t the offensive part. By his side, partially draped on him, was a redhead who hadn’t gotten the memo that hot nurse outfits went out fifteen years ago and were too slutty. And her mouth? Right on Batman’s neck.