Laurel King - The Matchmaker's Medium

“Eww,” I said, scrunching my nose in disgust, “thanks for the terrifying visual.”

“Trust me, seeing it is much worse.”

“Okay, so where, then?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

He looked at me in mock disappointment, shaking his head. “All right. You asked for it. I learned it from my cousin, Raul.”

I pushed back from him in shock, pulling the sheet over my naked breasts on the way.

“What the hell?” I said, trying to swim backwards on the mattress.

Laughing, he said, “I told you—and it’s not what you think.”

“Well, thank God for that !” I said, still a little freaked out by the thought of Esteban and his cousin doing… oh, never mind, for God’s sake .

“He told me his trick for getting a condom on without the chick having a chance to stop it. He learned it from his dad, my uncle. We’re pretty damn fertile, the men in our family. So, it’s a good trick to know to protect against any women with, let’s say, ‘other motives’ in mind.”

“Hmm. Good to know. So, note to self: remember to take my birth control pill and don’t be offended by male cousins teaching my lover superfast, sneaky ways to put on condoms.”

Chuckling again, he slid his feet off the bed, completely naked and unconcerned about it. Well, look at him for Christ’s sake, no wonder—he’s gorgeous with clothes and without. Hell, he makes clothes seem like a ridiculous luxury for fat losers.

“I guess that means you’re ready to take off running out of the house, as soon as I got to the bathroom?”

It was my turn to chuckle. “Not if that means I have to run out of here naked. Unlike some people—no names mentioned—I feel a little self-conscious when I’m in the buff.”

“Why do they call it that?”

“What?”

“Why do they say ‘in the buff’? I mean, that doesn’t even make sense, does it?”

I started searching the floor for my clothes. What is it with sex and throwing clothes all over the place? Ah! There we go…

Pulling my pants and underwear off the floor—I hated even thinking the word ‘panties’, it always seemed so weird, like ‘5-year-old girl dressed like a princess’ kind of weird—I was already regretting taking the top half of my clothes off in the living room. Great, now I just get to parade around here like some cocky lifeguard dude?

“In the buff? Uh, I really don’t know why the hell they call it that. For some reason, I think it’s a color or something.”

“Well, that makes sense. Maybe we should Google it.”

“Ha-ha, very funny. Google it. Five years ago if someone said that to me, I’d be accusing them of sexual harassment.”

“It does sound kind of nasty, doesn’t it?” he shook his head, chuckling. And, thank goodness, he was finally pulling clothes on, a pair of basketball shorts and a tank top. Yum , I thought, he even makes the nickname ‘wife beater’ seem like it’s almost okay, with his golden skin and soft, curly chest hair against that white cotton.

Trying to distract myself, I crouched on the floor, like I was looking for a sock, hoping he would just go in the other room, already. When I heard the toilet flush, I breathed easier, clutching my clothes and scurrying back out to the living room.

“So, are you gonna tell me about this Marcus guy, or what?” he called to me from the bathroom.

Scrambling to refasten my bra before he came back out, I yelled, “Yeah, sure!” Finally managing to hook it, I turned the bra around on my chest, slid my arms in and repositioned my ‘girls’ back in the cups, moving my arms to make sure it felt right. Satisfied, I reached for my shirt, and heard, “Need some help?”

Shit. How’d he get out here so fast?

He slowly pulled the shirt from my hand, helping me ease my arms back into it, one at a time. Then he pulled the panels together, sliding each button into its respective hole, with his strong hands working just under my chin.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling my pulse quicken again.

“You’re very welcome,” he murmured, kissing me again. I felt my body go from barely-warm embers to raging inferno in just a few seconds. My skin was tingling, mind racing, as I remembered the feel of his muscled back under my hands, as he moved on top of me, in me. Finally, a few agonizingly sensual minutes later, he pulled back again, smoothing my shirt until it was flat.

I cleared my throat, raked my fingers through my hair, and tucked my blouse into my pants as he picked up the tea glasses.

“Whoops,” he said, looking at the little puddle on the floor. “I’ll get a towel. You still thirsty?”

“Yeah,” I said, snatching one shoe off the floor, while visually searching for the other one. There! Under the recliner, where it all started…

It was a punishingly cold December in northern Virginia, almost a year since I met Jamal in that club on K Street, and six months since my divorce from Don was final. At first, he had acted like he was ready for some big, messy showdown—the new lawyer trying out his litigation skills, maybe—but in the end, he just signed the papers and gave me what I asked for.

Not that I had asked for much, anyway. All I really wanted was the furniture, the paid-off car, and my name back. The rest he took with him: the overpriced electronics I didn’t want or even know how to work, the artwork I hated, the real china dish set he had inherited from his grandmother, and his life-size John Wayne dummy.

That thing always creeped me out, standing in the living room with its fake hands planted on its fake hips, a fake smile under a big cowboy hat. I always hated westerns, and he thought they were the greatest thing to hit the silver screen. No wonder our marriage never worked. Some opposites just shouldn’t attract, I thought, slamming the door to my car as I rushed through the frigid air and hard-packed snow.

It hadn’t dropped fresh powder in a week, so the snow I was crunching through in my huge mukluk boots was that gross kind of snow: dirty, ugly, and concrete-like, with all the moisture sucked out of it. Nothing uglier than dirty, old snow in the middle of the city.

I unlocked my door, fumbling the keys a little and almost dropping them, when Jamal said, “Somebody’s here, foxy lady.” He had appeared out of nowhere, with no warning, yet again , nearly scaring me to death.

“I told you to knock that off!” I whisper-yelled, looking around to see who was there. The parking lot of my crappy apartment complex was empty, as always. Some days I swore I was the only one who lived there, and all the other cars and porch junk of the 100-plus apartments around me was just part of some elaborate movie set, tended by hundreds of invisible people, who changed things just a little now and then so it would be more realistic.

“He ain’t right here , but he’s here.”

“Ugh. Like that’s not cryptic, Jamal.” I growled a little, as I pushed against the door and forced it open. It tended to stick in the winter, with the difference between the warmth inside her apartment and the almost-zero temperature outside. Yet one more annoying thing to call the maintenance line about, leaving a message on some ancient machine that—based upon the arrival of exactly no one to fix any of my stuff—was checked all of never .

“Whatever. Just gimme a break, would ya? I need to get out of these clothes, I feel like I’m suffocating in all this wool—“

“Excuse me?”

I snapped around, startled by the sound of the not-Jamal voice. It came from a very young-looking black guy, his ebony skin shining with moisture, under a ridiculous-looking ski hat with multi-colored points all over it, like a jester’s hat. Completing the ensemble was a poufy navy down-feather winter coat, a Georgetown bull dog emblazoned on it, which made him look like he was about 6 foot 70 and weighed at least 1,100 pounds.