He was a work of art. Or his arm was. It was all semantics. The tattoos that adorned his muscular arm were intricate and all expertly woven together. There was a roaring lion on the inside of his bicep and roses on his elbow. A Celtic knot-style symbol was on the side of his forearm, and there was a thick line of black around his wrist with trees that stretched up the lowest part of his arm and wound into the other designs.
I didn’t want to think about how long it’d taken to get inked. I couldn’t even describe most of it, just that his arm was an explosion of perfect black lines and shading and bright pops of color.
It was the kind of arm you could lie in bed next to and trail your finger over, tracing the designs and never, ever complete it.
ME: I think I just came a little.
Was that too forward?
Nah. I was never going to meet the guy, was I? It didn’t matter if he knew that his arm was basically one step away from actual porn.
DICK GUY: Funny. That’s what I was aiming for when I started.
ME: Nailed it.
ME: Between the penis and the tattoos, how are you single?
DICK GUY: I’m waiting for a princess in shining armor to come sweep me off my feet.
ME: With those muscles, the only thing sweeping you off your feet is a hurricane.
My phone buzzed with another message from an unknown number, and a glance said it was my other number neighbor.
Yay!
I tapped on the notification and opened it.
NN #2: Hey… I’m Dante and I’m from Seattle. What about you?
Yeah, no, I think Dick Guy’s girl played him, and I switched conversations to tell him that.
ME: Unless your girl is named Dante from Seattle, you should probably block her.
It was a few minutes before he replied.
DICK GUY: Sorry, had to take my dog out.
DICK GUY: No. She’s named Rebecca from somewhere in South Carolina.
South Carolina? Did that mean he was close to me? Shit the bed.
I wasn’t going to ask. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to tuck him back into his little box of random stranger.
Then again, people met people from other states all the time online, didn’t they? It wasn’t that unusual to strike up a relationship online and meet in the middle or somewhere. At least, that’s what I read online. Mostly when I needed reading material for the toilet, to be honest.
I shook it off. I wasn’t going to think about it.
ME: Yeah. Block her. She’s played you.
DICK GUY: Damn it. I bet her picture was from Google.
ME: Probably. You can’t trust the internet. Abraham Lincoln said that.
DICK GUY: He wasn’t around when the internet was invented.
DICK GUY: Wait.
DICK GUY: I got it.
ME: I was about to question your intelligence.
DICK GUY: It’s late and I worked all day. Thanks for your help, stranger.
Was this goodbye? I was kinda sad about that. He was a better way to pass my time than watching yet another series of How I Met Your Mother for the fiftieth time before giving up after Lily and Marshall had their baby and it got boring.
ME: You’re welcome, stranger. Maybe make sure you have the right person before you send your genitals to them next time.
DICK GUY: Or avoid getting drunk and going on a dating website.
ME: Even better.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
REAGAN
If You Name It, It’s Yours
“So, I have a problem.”
Ava eyed me. “When don’t you have a problem?”
“This is a serious one.”
Halley rolled her eyes and gripped the library cart.
Yes, I’d accosted her at work and dragged Ava with me and no, I did not regret it. It was our lunch hour and it wasn’t my fault my best friend was constantly taking my brother to lunch instead of me.
When else was I supposed to offload my eggplant-texting stranger issues if not over lunch?
At work.
It was her own fault.
“Okay, so, you remember on Monday when y’all came into work after your run?” I looked between them.
“You mean when Ava was a huge baby and groped your fridge to cool down?” Halley questioned.
“I was hot.” Ava huffed out a breath and folded her arms over her chest.
“Exactly.”
“Yes, then,” I said quickly before anymore bickering could start. “Well, I had a wrong number text that morning.”
Ava tucked her black hair behind her ear and adjusted her bright-yellow glasses.
I didn’t know why those two had to have such bright glasses. Probably the same reason I had bright purple hair.
“Is that what you were going to talk about until your phone rang?” Ava asked, handing Halley the book she’d motioned to.
“Yep.” I nodded to punctuate it.
“What about it?” Halley asked, jumping off the step stool and looking at me. “People get wrong number texts all the time.”
“Not these wrong number texts.”
“Was it a confession from a serial killer?”
“I’m not sure they do those over text.”
“A grandma looking for her grandchild?”
“No, but I do have an old lady as my number neighbor who cannot text and has a friend named Cheryl who loses her keys.”
Ava frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I texted my neighbors,” I replied. “Back to the point of this conversation: it was a penis.”
They both froze.
“A penis?” Halley asked, one eyebrow raising and disappearing under her blonde bangs.
“Yep. He accidentally sent me a dick pic. At two a.m., meaning it was the first thing I saw when I woke up on Monday morning.” I took my phone out of the ass pocket of my jeans and, after quickly unlocking it, shoved the phone in Halley’s direction. “Look at it! Look!”
“I don’t want to!” She did her best to duck and dive from my enthusiastic picture-pushing, including covering her eyes.
“I’ll look.” Ava grabbed my wrist and pulled the phone in her direction, tilting the screen so she could see it. “Not bad. Good size. Length and girth. Probably a good handful,” she said appreciatively.
“You’re in a library!” Halley jerked around with a hiss. “You can’t go flaunting unwanted dick pics everywhere!”
“This wasn’t unwanted,” I corrected her. “It was accidental. A wrong number dick pic.”
“I don’t care how it came to be in your possession. I don’t want to see it.” She grabbed some books from the cart. “Did you tell him he’d sent it to the wrong person?”
“Yes. I told him he got the wrong number, but he had a pretty nice dick, so it was okay.” I wrenched my phone from Ava’s grip, locked it, and tucked it back into my pocket.
“There’s no such thing as a nice dick.” Halley pushed the cart along. “They’re all ugly. Even your brother’s.”
Ew. Gross.
“La la la la la!” I put my fingers in my ears.
Ava snorted. “She had that coming.”
Halley nodded. “I don’t get it. You don’t know the guy. He apologized, right?”