I swallow back the anxiety rising in my chest. “I’ll be as careful as I can,” I answer, because I can’t make any promises.
“Good. And as for Arlo, keep holding your ground. He’s going to respect that more in the long run.”
“Figured he would.” I rub my hand over my cheek. “Also, he has a pretty good right hook.”
She chuckles. “How about we don’t find out about that again, okay? Keep all punching to ourselves.”
“Can you keep punching to yourself?”
“Uh, if you have a punching bag.”
“True.” I give her a quick wave. “I’ll see you later, Greer.”
“Bye, Pike.”
When she exits, some students start to filter in, but before class starts, I shoot a quick text off to Cora.
Pike: Thinking of you and those sweet tits. I’m fucking them later.
She texts back immediately, and there’s a picture attached. I bite down on my bottom lip, glance to the side to make sure there are no students near me, and then open the text message. It’s a picture of her cleavage.
Fuck me.
Cora: I’m ready for you.
“Hey, Keiko,” I say as I join her and Kelvin in her lab for lunch. She sent a very proper email to me, asking for my presence during our meal respite. Not sure I’ll ever get over her way of speaking. It’s confusing, funny, and entertaining.
“Pike Greyson, how wonderful of you to join us during this respite.”
See, who talks like that? I’m not sure some of the most obnoxious prats I know have such a voracious vernacular.
“Hey, Kelvin.” I nod at him and then hold out a hand for a shake. He glances at me, perplexed for a second, and then realizes what I’m doing and limply takes my hand for a shake. “Good to see you two back together. All seems right with the world.”
“Why would you say that? Was the world thrown off its axis and I wasn’t informed?”
“Just a phrase people say. The world is still on its axis,” I answer.
“Well, we’d plummet to our deaths if it wasn’t.” She unfolds the napkin that’s wrapped precisely around her cheese-and-ketchup sandwich. It’s probably the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen someone eat, but she craves it every day. Two pieces of rye-swirl bread, three slices of cheese, and two tablespoons of ketchup. I know, because she went into great detail about it a few days ago. She accompanies the sandwich with pickle-flavored crisps from Trader Joe’s, and then, to round out the meal, she eats three rectangular squares of a Hersey bar, that’s it. No fruit. No vegetables. Blanche/Seymour can’t currently be bothered with them is what she’s told me. She believes they will be more welcoming to the nutrients later in her pregnancy.
I mean, who am I to tell her what she should eat? I’m not the one carrying a baby.
“So . . . how are you two?” I ask, feeling slightly awkward because Kelvin keeps staring at me. I’ve spent a lot of time with Keiko, but not so much with Kelvin. He’s always been a bit standoffish, and from what Keiko has said, he’s intimidated by me. According to Keiko, Kelvin is threatened by people with tattoos. I didn’t dive too deeply into that fear because I didn’t have it in me to sit through the intricacies of Kelvin’s feelings.
“We are quite well. Thank you. We shared our fair share of make-up coitus and were quite pleased with the new development of going bareback—I believe that’s the slang for it. Kelvin has struggled tremendously with condoms in the past. He does not possess dexterous fingers and is rather fumbly with contraceptives. I was once hanging upside down while he was attaching a condom to his erect penis and it snapped off and struck me in the ocular organ.”
Poor fucking Kelvin.
Wanting him to not feel like a bloody numpty in bed, I lean toward him and say, “Hey, mate, condoms are a fucking bitch. Especially if they’re lubed. They can be little fuckers to get on.”
Kelvin stares at his untouched ketchup-and-cheese sandwich. “It’s the roll that makes things difficult.”
“I feel you,” I say, even though I have no problem putting a condom on. Maybe my guy needs a little more practice. Then again, from the rate he and Keiko go at, you’d think he’d be a professional at this point.
“Do you utilize contraceptives with Cora while performing coitus?” Keiko asks.
I nearly choke on my leftover shrimp scampi from this weekend and press my napkin to my face. At this point, I shouldn’t be shocked by Keiko’s unfiltered questions and conversations, but she always catches me off guard.