The next morning, I was greeted by a cheeky text from Maria. No pictures from her, but I was not disappointed as I was not expecting it. Her text read that she did some Yoga exercises 'my way', which felt nice, with new sensations on her skin. Apart from calling it 'interesting' and sending a winking emoji, I toed the line of not pressing her. In addition, my attempt at diffusing last night's excitement by saying "I hope the naughty pictures didn't offend you" was appreciated by her. 'No pressure at all' was the tone I needed to convey. That was truly my approach here, and I didn't want to accidentally portray otherwise. As she had mainly known me through my workplace where I have a somewhat respectable status, this new side of me was unknown territory for her.
With a promise that I would not shock her too much with my pictures, and a few straightforward assurances that neither of us intended to start a romantic relationship with the other, we ended our chat that morning. I fully intended to continue being as naughty as I could with her, despite or perhaps aided by, our conversation.
As it is with life however, I went through a particularly stressful conversation that day with someone else. And that put me in a strange mood which I was trying to claw out of. It was in this fluctuating mood that I took nearly-nude selfies of me eating the food I had ordered in, sent them to her, but deleted from my chat feed with her before it was marked 'read'. She asked about the deleted messages later, received my solemn and honest answer that I was going through stress temporarily, and further accepted my decision not to divulge the problem at that time. It was only much later that she revealed that the pictures automatically saved in her photo reel, and she had seen them anyway but didn't feel it was right to reveal that fact to me when I was feeling down.
It took 2 days for me to get back to my normal playful self, helped in part by the fact that I had to help a couple of other friends in need, but mostly due to the short daily cheery messages from Maria. She was a good friend indeed.
And so when Maria next teased me, saying that I was avoiding going out to new restaurants only to avoid getting dressed, I happily played along. Lamenting on how 'hard' it was getting dressed got a giggle out of her. Next, after a few tries, I managed to take a picture that was both naughty and funny. I wore a thoughtful expression, and nothing else, writing on my notebook while the phone clicked a snapshot on a timer.