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After meeting her, I decided poets should write more about the aftermath of sex, and I re-decided it every chilly morning we spent under her old duvet. These were the times we learned the most about each other.
The last time I visited her, she told me about her new album, where each song was a person in her life.
“Try to guess which one you are,” she said, and I knew I was the song titled “The Accountant”, and she knew that I knew.
“You know I think your geekiness is endearing.”
“Likewise,” I said, and we competed to see who could laugh louder.
Today, she’s telling me about her… preferences.
“I like it when you smell like sweat,” she says, one hand lazily in my hair. “It’s kind of hot.”
“So you have a kink for that, then?”
“Not sure.” She’s half-smiling. “Why, does it weird you out?”
“No. Most people just aren’t into that.”
“They’re missing out.” She laughs through her nose, mostly breath.
We lay in silence, her twisting two fingers through my eternally-cowlicked strand of hair. She wraps bony thighs around mine, not grinding but still making contact where hers meet. Crawling upwards with hands that grip me steadily, she puts her face against my collarbone and breathes in, loud and with that dip in her eyes.
“Body odor smells human, and human is fucking hot, ok?”
“I’m not judging,” I laugh.
She drums her unoccupied fingers up and down my chest in staccato— a disorganized marching band— until she gets to the flap of fat on my stomach and squeezes.
“See? Human. Our bodies bleed, they grow fat and hair, they smell ways people would rather they not. Do you have any idea how weird people can be about the smell of a vagina?”
“Very,” I say, because I’ve heard conversations about it, though I don’t have one myself.
She’s stopped drumming her fingers or combing them through my hair. Now, she holds me in stillness.
“I’m thinking about picking up my guitar again when you leave.”
“You’ll be telling the world you’re turned on by sweat.”
“So what?”
She laughs again, a huge laugh coming from the depth of her throat. It’s a sound that fills her bedroom, avant-garde art parties, and the houses of more reserved friends alike.
“I already told the world I’m sleeping with this nerdy-ass accountant I befriended while on a ghost tour.”
“I still can’t believe I let Lucas drag me along to that.”
“I get it, you’re a man of science and logic. Spare me the details. I don’t believe in that shit either.”
It was a conversation we had a few times already, about how we agreed to that ghost tour for the same reason at the end of the day: to ground a mutual friend who we were determined to prove wrong.
“You say that like you don’t have a math degree.”
“Math is bullshit anyways. It looks like magic the more of it you do.”
She’s back to twisting my hair now, smiling and half-focused. Her hips wiggle to press closer against my leg, and I feel a smear of slickness against me.
“You do have a point.”
“‘Course I do. You know, you look good today. Have you gotten a haircut since I last saw you?”
“Only to trim the split ends.”
“Got to impress Lucas somehow.”
I scoff, and she punches me playfully. It’s never bothered her, the eternal iconoclast who kisses me as a friend and bedmate, but never a girlfriend.
“Sorry.” Her grin is wide. “I’m too aromantic to help you hold his hand and shit.”
Now, decisively, she starts grinding. Warmth spikes where she’d grabbed me in appreciation, just below the belly button.
“But if you want him in bed, I can help you figure out how to ask. Figure out his preferences, negotiate kinks…” She’s grinding faster now, breaths deepening. “…Maybe even join in if he’s down.”
“I—”
Her hand slips between my legs, grabbing for whatever she can best reach.
“I’d like that.”