Angelina rested one arm against the plastic airplane wall, propping her chin on her closed fist. Her other hand idly drew circles on Victor's knees. It was their first vacation together, and she was more nervous than she let on.
Like most of Angelina's post-college friends, they met through a hook-up app. Neither had had much luck with it, but when they found each other, they knew they could stop looking. Victor still occasionally thought back to those first few messages from Angelina.
"I guess I should just say this now," Victor remembered reading. "If you aren't down for a little exhibitionism, we shouldn't waste our time."
That night, he was scrolling through his phone, half-drunk in the dim, yellowish haze of the street lamps outside his bedroom. Despite the four beers he'd drank earlier, he felt a familiar strain against the zipper of his jeans.
"Does that line ever work for you?" he had teased. After five minutes, she still hadn't responded, and he wondered if his tone didn't carry well online. "Or am I the only one who gets off on that?"
It was days before she messaged him again. In her absence, he fantasized about what kind of exhibitionist play she might be interested in. He studied her pale, softly freckled face, framed by that auburn hair. When he woke up hard, he imagined this anonymous girl spreading her legs for his camera, or letting him touch her on the subway, or fucking someone else while he watched, or... He imagined all manner of situations while jerking off, but never let himself come while thinking of her. He felt like that was crossing an inappropriate boundary when it came to a girl he had never met.
Finally, she wrote back with a vague apology about her absence. They met, after weeks of periodic messages, in a dive bar around the corner from Angelina's South Boston studio. At the end of the night, she leaned back in the cracked fake-leather booth, hitched her dress up, and guided his hand between her legs. Her clit was swollen and sensitive. As Victor brushed circles across it with his thumb, both his and Angelina's eyes widened in equal measure. It had been so long since he had been with a woman whose body opened up so readily, so hungrily, so completely. He begged her to let him come up to her place, but she shrugged him off with a smile. It was another month before they slept together.
Now, almost half a year later, they were sitting on a plane, heading to Puerto Rico for two weeks. Like much else in their relationship, Angelina was nervous about this. She hadn't looked at Victor since the plane left the tarmac.
"You okay, babe?"
She kept her green eyes trained on the clouds. "It's just your grandmother. Just nervous."
Victor's parents moved to the Northeast before he was born, but his grandmother remained in Puerto Rico. He had warned Angelina while they were planning the trip, "my grandmother is a bit traditional, and honestly, she kind of resents the US... she knows English but refuses to speak it, and she might kill me when she finds out I'm dating a white girl."
"See, I don't really care what she thinks about me," Angelina said now, unsure if she believed herself. "I just don't want to make things uncomfortable for you and your family."
Victor squeezed her hand, and she finally turned to face him. He was surprised to see the degree of worry in her face, eyebrows pushed together and mouth drawn, as if by closing her face up, she could close out the coming days.
"That's my problem, not yours. Besides, we're seeing her for one or two days, tops. The rest of the time will be fun, I promise. My old friends will love you, and we'll get plenty of alone time."
Angelina felt a twinge of arousal at the last two words and rolled her eyes. "Don't make me horny when I'm upset!" she hissed.
Her desire betrayed her, though, and Victor could tell he had distracted Angelina from her worries. He leaned over and whispered, "want to do exactly what I tell you? Want to be a good girl for me?"
As far as Victor could tell, those words could turn Angelina on at a funeral. It didn't matter where she was or what she was doing; she always wanted to be a good girl for Victor.