“I never get to do anything exciting anymore,” I grumbled. “Between college and work, I never even go out. And my job is so incredibly boring. Sometimes when I’m sitting there waiting for the phone to ring, I just want to do something depraved – tear off the stupid, prissy clothes I have to wear and go running into the senior partner’s office screaming or something.”
Tommy had already been listening to me rant for half an hour but he waited patiently for me to run out of steam. He grinned when I mentioned running around naked but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m sick being the nice girl they think I am at work. Ugh. I just want to do something. Something different or shocking or… something,” I concluded lamely.
Suddenly I wished I hadn’t gone on like that. My time with Tommy usually involved an unexpected phone call from him after ten p.m. and a couple of hours of vigorous sex. I always enjoyed the sex, but I longed for more, and he knew it too. Which was why he knew he could keep calling and why I usually agreed to anything he suggested, no matter how dirty it seemed or how nervous it made me feel. And for once he was actually in my apartment at a reasonable hour and having a conversation with me. I’d had the chance to show him I was more than just a willing pussy, and I’d ruined it by sounding like a whining baby.
I desperately cast about for a more interesting subject for conversation but before I could grasp at something, Tommy spoke. “We’re going out,” he said. He took a final drag of his cigarette, tossed the butt out the window and stood up. “But you’re not wearing that.”
I opened my mouth, not sure if I was about to scold him about the cigarette – I hated it when he did that – or ask him where we were going, but his last comment distracted me. I glanced down at my jeans and crop-top with the flower appliqué on the chest. “What’s wrong with this?”
“You look like an eight-year-old.”
Tommy opened the door of my walk-in closet and began flipping through the clothes. I peered around him, chewing my lip as he rejected blouses, sweaters, and skirts.
“Those are for work,” I explained, not wanting him to think I actually liked the dowdy clothes he was rejecting.
“I figured.” He tossed me a denim mini-skirt. “This skirt is okay. Do you have any sexier tops?”
“Second drawer,” I said. Tommy stirred through the neatly stacked contents of my second dresser drawer. He held up and tossed back a few tops without refolding them, and I had to bite back the urge to complain about the mess he was making. Finally he came up with something tight and black with spaghetti straps.
“Here,” he said. He handed me the top and left the drawer open. “Put this on. And the boots.” I knew immediately what boots he meant – the high heeled, knee-high black leather boots.
“I usually wear this top with jeans,” I said. “And this skirt with a sweater or something. And the boots I only wear with long skirts.” I admit I kind of liked the thought of dressing sexy, but I was also a bit insecure about it. What if I didn’t look good?
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Just put it on and let me see how it looks.”
“But—,”
“Nikki, will you come on already? Just let me see.”
“Fine.” I closed myself into the closet, wiggled out of my clothes, and put on Tommy’s selections. I smiled to myself as I dressed – just as he knew I was secretly in love with him, I knew he secretly enjoyed talking me into doing things that made me nervous. I don’t think some of the sexual things we did would have been half as exciting to him if they’d been my idea.
When he heard me stumbling around trying to put on the boots standing up, he opened the door.
“Let me do it,” he said, kneeling in front of me. He zipped up my left boot and then helped me into my right boot and zipped that up too, while I put my hands on his shoulders to balance myself. “Now come out and turn around for me.”
I complied reluctantly, keeping my head down so my long dark hair hid my face while Tommy squinted at me critically.
“Nice,” he said, nodding thoughtfully, and smiled. “You look hot.”
I looked at myself in the mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door. I’d always liked the way that tank top showcased my modest breasts. But I thought the pairing of the skimpy top and the miniskirt showed too much of my cappuccino skin and combined with the high boots made me look more than a little slutty. “I don’t know….” I said.
“Come on, I’m telling you, you look hot. Look at that ass.” Tommy ran his hands down my back and cupped my round ass in his hands for a moment. “You can wear this stuff. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“But still, to go out like this?”
“Weren’t you just complaining about the clothes you have to wear to work? How boring they are? How you’re sick of being a prissy secretary?”
“Receptionist,” I corrected. “I mean, yes, but….”
“Well here’s your chance to do something different, so stop complaining. Put on some makeup or something and let’s go.”
I looked at Tommy and my insides contracted in that familiar exciting way. He wasn’t traditionally handsome, but I couldn’t help but admire him. He had a long face and a crooked nose that he’d once made disparaging remarks about, but I thought his nose made him look strong somehow. I’d say it gave him character, but people hate to hear that.
He was tall and powerfully broad-shouldered and whenever he picked me up or pulled me on top of him, or held me against a wall or a tree or a light pole, he made me feel small and delicate. He had light hair, but I’d always thought he had a dark-haired personality – independent, mysterious, and brooding – and it was his personality that made him so irresistibly sexy in my eyes. I was absolutely enthralled by him. Of course I was a lot younger and more impressionable then.
I wanted desperately to please Tommy, and irrationally I hoped that if I did what he wanted enough times, he would want me to be his girlfriend. So I listened to him yet again. I put on a little eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick and looked at myself in the full-length mirror again.
“I guess I don’t look so bad,” I conceded. I flipped my hair around and ran my hands over my hips, beginning to become more excited about wearing such a slutty outfit.
“Listen to me,” said Tommy, gripping my shoulders, shaking me a little. “You look great. Now come on, let’s go.”
Thirty minutes later, Tommy drove his motorcycle up onto the sidewalk in a run-down part of town. The nearest streetlight was either burned out or broken, and the shadows seemed menacing. Men, leaning in the doorways of shuttered stops in groups of two and three, flicked their eyes in our direction as I awkwardly tried to swing my leg over the seat to dismount without flashing my black thong at them.
Pulling the helmet off my head and shaking my hair out was usually one of my favorite parts of a motorcycle ride, but that night I felt self-conscious in front of so many hooded eyes. It was warm out, so I wasn’t wearing a jacket over my uncharacteristically skimpy outfit and I felt virtually naked. One of the men muttered, “Damn, girl,” just loud enough for me to hear as I followed Tommy past him. Wavering between pride and embarrassment, I pretended I didn’t hear him.
Tommy led the way up a flight of dark, steep, narrow steps. We ended up in a cavernous room lined with red vinyl booths on two sides, a bar along one wall, and a couple of battered game machines against the back wall where the bathrooms were. Six shabby pool tables seemed stranded in the middle of the vast floor. The room was lit only by the pool table lights, each advertising a different brand of cheap beer, and the neon beer signs lining the walls. There were two games of pool in progress and a couple of the booths were occupied, but the place was mostly empty. Some sort of pounding, bass-driven rock music partially drowned out the sound of pool balls knocking against each other.
“What do you think?” Tommy asked.
“It’s cool,” I said, trying for noncommittal, but my smile betrayed me and I knew he could tell I loved the place. The unapologetic seediness was exactly the opposite of the fancy law office I worked in, with its mahogany desks and pristine cream-colored carpet.
“You want a drink?”
I thought about it. Tommy didn’t drink. Out of courtesy I usually didn’t drink either when I was around him, but that night I decided that if I was going to live up to my outfit I might need a drink or two.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
I trailed awkwardly after Tommy, clutching my helmet to my stomach with both arms. Tommy ordered a Long Island iced tea from the greasy-haired bartender who was sitting behind the bar. Like a lump on a log, my mother would have said. The bartender lumbered around and mixed my drink without expression. When he thumped the glass on the bar he looked me over in a way that made me feel like his pudgy hands had actually traveled up and down my body. I grabbed the drink and turned away while Tommy paid for it and changed a five-dollar bill for some quarters.
“Relax, it’s just a bar,” said Tommy, taking my arm and leading me toward the back of the room. “You’re the most uptight girl I know. Come on, let’s play some pinball.”
I loosened my hold on the helmet and sucked at the straw in my drink as Tommy propelled me across the room. “I’m not uptight,” I said, automatically, knowing full well that I was indeed uptight and that he liked it that way.
