After what happened I was afraid I would see less of Nikki but if anything the reverse was true. We had been the kind of friends who usually hung out a couple of times a month and exchanged texts a couple times a week. Now it seemed we were hanging out once a week or more and texting a few times every day.
I did notice that we only hung out with other people around. I figured she probably still felt bad about what happened and didn't want to be alone with me which I couldn't really blame her for. We were both pretending very hard that nothing had happened and that was easier in a crowd.
Almost a month to the day after what happened we were chatting by text on a Saturday night when suddenly she sent "I'm a li'l drunk. Typing too hard. Call me?" So I called her. She picked up right away. "That's better" she said brightly.
"So you have your usual half a beer and get wasted?" I said. This was definitely a joke because, for all that she was a lot shorter than me, I was pretty sure she could drink me under the table if she wanted to.
"Ha ha," she said. "No I had two beers but I haven't eaten any dinner yet so I'm a bit buzzed. I didn't want to start filling my texts with typos."
"No dinner?" I said. "You should make Greg hurry up and feed you already."
"He's not here," she said, "he's gone to his parents again."
"Seriously? Does he go every weekend?"
She laughed. "No, but his hours got cut back at work and he wanted to borrow money from them. He says they're more generous when he does it in person."
"I guess that makes sense. Poor you, having to cook your own dinner."
"I'll manage," she said, "at least I'm still allowed to do that for myself." She sounded bitter.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Oh nothing," she said, "I shouldn't have said anything."
"Oh come on now you've got me curious. You might as well just tell me."
"Fine," she said. "It's just that I found out why he doesn't like my vibrator."
I was surprised. This was as close as we had gotten to any taboo subjects in weeks. But I figured I would play along. "Why's that?"
"He considers it cheating."
"What?" I said, in disbelief.
"Yeah he says if I really loved him I would be satisfied with just him. Satisfying myself is being unfaithful."
I let that one roll around in my head for a moment. Then something occurred to me. "Wait does that mean you can't masturbate either?"
"He asked me not to while he was away," she said. "He said it would be more special if I waited for him."
"Oh my god that is bullshit for so many reasons," I said. "First of all who the hell is he to tell you what you can and can't so with your own body?"
"I know right?" she said.
"Second and more important, is his plan just to make you wait until he gets back so that you'll be horny enough to let him do whatever he wants to you without having to warm you up too much?"
There was a long pause. "Do you think that's what he's doing?" she said. She sounded shocked, and a little pissed off.
"Probably," I said bluntly.
"Son of a bitch," she said. There followed several minutes of her generally cursing and swearing. When she got mad enough she had a vocabulary like an angry pirate.
I basically waited it out, throwing in a lot of "mm-hmms" and "yeah, you're rights."
Finally she ran down. "Sorry," she said after a moment's silence. "I got a little carried away there."
"Hey, I'm on your side, remember. If you need a friendly ear to vent to, I'm all yours."
"Thank you," she said softly, sounding happier than she had the whole conversation so far. Then after another moment she asked, "what do you think I should do?"
"About the whole situation?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said.
"I think you should probably just do what you want while he's gone and have a little chat when he gets back."
"You do huh?" she said.
"Frankly I think you owe it to yourself."