I was already clenching my jaw. I was damned near growling, actually.
I would control myself -- for now -- but she really shouldn't have made me wait this long.
I focused on what still needed to happen first.
I had invited her to this lunch. I was therefore hosting, technically, so I arrived at the restaurant early. I chose a table outside, under an umbrella, to showcase our Miami winter for my tourist friend. It was probably a bit silly. I knew Morocco didn't lack for sunshine, breezes, and beaches. Still, I wanted to set the stage correctly, and this was right.
I sat down as the waiter set menus on the table, poured water, and started rambling. I smiled and nodded... but I wasn't listening. Keeping my composure was going to be more difficult than I had expected. My guest certainly wouldn't notice; I was as experienced at these types of meetings as she was inexperienced. But still... the wait. I wanted her, and it was affecting me.
Twenty minutes later -- and ten minutes late -- Maryam arrived. She got out of her Uber, thanked the driver. She spotted me from the sidewalk, smiled her girlish smile, and walked toward me in the uniform I had seen her in so many times on Snapchat: a loose cotton v-neck t-shirt, coral this time, and tight little jeans. Her shoes, sunglasses, and modest earrings added the slightest touch of elegance to the casual outfit, and all of the colors she wore accentuated her copper skin, long black hair, and almond eyes. She was a smart girl, sophisticated for a girly 23-year-old, and she knew what looked good on her. As simple as they were, her clothes fit her personality just as well as her jeans fit her skinny thighs.
She paid attention to detail... which is why I knew that her slender frame would be accentuated by perfect lingerie underneath those simple clothes.
I couldn't stop thinking about that lingerie all morning, and not just for the obvious reasons. In my mind, I was sure she had agonized over whether to put on the lingerie when she got dressed in her hotel room that morning. After two years of talking, her in Morocco, me in Miami, I knew her well. She would be honest enough to realize that putting on that lingerie signaled her willingness. That she probably shouldn't do it; that the very fact that she was considering wearing lingerie at all meant she should rethink whether to meet me on this trip.
But she would dismiss those thoughts... and put on that lingerie. "It won't hurt," she'd think. "Just in case." She would know that these were lies, and foolish ones at that... but she would allow her desire to get the best of her.
Maryam was Muslim, but not particularly religious even by Moroccan standards. She was a thoroughly-modern, combatively intellectual girl earning her Master's degree back home. But she was traditional; conservative in ways. She kept the holidays, respected her parents, fasted on Ramadan. Her virginity still mattered. It should have gone to a Muslim boyfriend back home. Under ideal circumstances, even to a husband on their wedding night. It definitely, definitely wasn't supposed to go to me.
I was a 35-year-old white American businessman with my own carefully considered, thoroughly irreligious set of ethics... ethics that, while sophisticated and rigid in their own way, permitted me to cheat on my wife, whom I loved deeply. Very rarely, and very selectively... but still. I was a married man, and by her own personal philosophy, Maryam should not have been going near me.
We had met on an anonymous chat app. She used it to vent and flirt, I used it to discreetly meet and screen potential affair partners. I didn't usually talk to women on other continents, but she posted something funny about bad pick-up lines, and I was bored. I struck up a conversation with her... and we soon struck up a flirty friendship. We discussed our totally different lives. I was candid with her about my cheating and reasoning behind it; she was candid about her distaste for it. But we shared a sick sense of humor and a love of honest debate about important topics. She also loved hearing about my sexual adventures despite her objections to them. My deeply dominant side, the women I seduced, the submissives I put over my knee and tied up. She was unrepressed and loved learning about and discussing sex, despite being a virgin who had never been able to bring herself to orgasm... though certainly not for lack of trying. I flirted with her shamelessly, and she teased back just as shamelessly. She often admitted to touching herself while talking to me, and I silently hoped to bring her to her first orgasm with my words alone. It wasn't to be.
I regularly invited her to visit me in the U.S. as we spoke. She always laughingly refused, despite constantly bemoaning the sorry state of her love life. Eventually, she found a boyfriend, an older student in another city in Morocco whom she liked and trusted. After months with him, she told me that she expected him to take her virginity. I was happy for her, and I had always known that my ideas of having her weren't much more than a fantasy... but I was still deeply disappointed.
Three months into her relationship with her boyfriend, she found out that he was a player. He was flirting with other girls, and probably cheating, though the distinction didn't matter to Maryam. He was something other than the boy he was supposed to be, and that dishonesty was enough for her to break things off. She cried a little, but she was frustrated, mostly.
In a few weeks she had righted herself emotionally, but she still needed a break. And she was more frustrated than ever before. By her relationship, by men. By her standards, her virginity, her inexperience, her pent-up needs. It was at that time that she planned her trip to the U.S., a welcome relief brought on by her career: she wanted to hunt for internships in her field here.
She mentioned the trip to me as she planned it, but she was unusually vague about details. I knew she was grappling with whether to meet me. I didn't bring it up; pressure from me would not have brought her closer. Finally, reluctantly, she admitted that she planned to spend two days in Miami during the trip.
Knowing me... knowing what I wanted... it was clear. She never would have told me this unless she wanted it too. I immediately invited her to meet me for lunch, and she accepted... leading to now. To her standing just feet in front of me.
Still... the wait. It wasn't wise to keep a man like me waiting that long.
I smiled, rose to greet her. We both took off our sunglasses, and I gave her a casual hug and a kiss on the cheek that lingered. I inhaled her... she smelled fresh, just the faintest bit floral. I pulled her chair out and she moved like the nervous girl she was as she sat in it.
When meeting someone in real life for the first time after developing a relationship online, there is always some cobweb of awkwardness to swat away before proceeding... but something sick inside me -- the sadist, likely -- enjoys this. So I sat back in my chair, smirked, and silently looked into her eyes for a minute. She smiled back, likely aware of what I was doing... but that didn't stop it from working. She shifted in her seat, her self-consciousness blooming under the heat of my gaze. "Stop it," she said. Her mousy, French-accented English was even more disarming in person than it had been over the internet for all these months. I grinned... and waiting long enough to make it clear that her commands were never commands to me. And then I began our conversation.
