Just like me, she thought.
Curiosity burned through her anxiety as she watched him and, in spite of herself, she wanted to know more. So she rose from the table and collected her things and met him at the door as he took his cup filled with ice and red liquid.
‘You can relax,’ he said as soon as they were out in the daylight together. ‘I know you’ll take it with a grain of salt, but I just want to talk. No expectations.’
‘Good. I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of prostitute.’
‘I was thinking the complete opposite, actually.’
He led the way along a sidewalk busy with students hobbling like hunchbacks between campuses for coffee and lunch. A step behind him, Carrie let her gaze move over him and wondered if the back was as nice as the front when he was stripped down.
‘It’s funny how all these months I’ve been visiting your blog, getting myself off two or three times a day, and you were just a few steps away all this time.’
‘I don’t find it funny.’
‘No, I don’t expect you would, hiding in plain sight like that.’ He peered at her as they trotted along. ‘You’re very skittish, aren’t you?’
‘I’m cautious.’
‘Are you a virgin?’
Carrie stopped dead. ‘Because I didn’t immediately invite you for a fuck, you assume I’m a virgin?’
‘That got a rise out of you.’ He turned, his mouth in a mischievous twist. ‘I know you’re not a virgin, at least not in the clinical sense. I’ve seen all of your pictures. Maybe not skittish. More …’
‘Cautious.’
‘I want to say repressed.’
‘I’m not repressed.’ She was so annoyed she could have thrown her tea in his face. Instead, she tilted her nose in the air and glared at him. ‘Let’s talk about you now. You’re so well put together, so chatty, but you’re still a man who sits in front of a computer and jerks off to a woman with her panties twisted around her knees.’
His smile unwavering, Brendan leaned forward. ‘And you’re the type of woman who would shove her panties down to her knees and take a picture of her wet pussy so a man like me can jerk off to it.’
As he drew back, Carrie caught a whiff of his aftershave, a subtle mixture of menthol and something earthy and green. He never broke eye contact as he stood away from her, triumph on his handsome face.
After a moment, he shook his head. ‘I’m really not going to get into a pissing match with you. If you want to part ways right here, I’ll let you go … but I really don’t want to, and I don’t think you do either. You’re just as curious about me as I am about you.’
‘I don’t want to be analysed like a thing in an aquarium.’
‘Then tell me something about you, Maggie. Tell me how you came to start your blog.’
She walked alongside him, her thoughts muddled as she not only processed the fact that she hadn’t walked away but delved into her memories for the moment when this all began.
After Frank? Yes, the blog started after Frank. But it was more than Frank, and somewhere along the way it had separated from him completely.
‘I had a boyfriend who worked as a teacher up north,’ she said. ‘Three months collecting the big money up there, three months back here. He didn’t have a good Internet connection, so instead of video chatting I sent him pictures. I didn’t want to, at first, but I loved him and it was horrible having him so far away.’
‘And then you came to like it.’
Carrie took a deep breath. ‘I did. I’d take pictures of the things I’d bought when he was away and model them for him. Back then I just used the camera on my computer. I worried that he’d show the pictures to someone else, but as far as I know he never did. He sent back his own, and there we were for about a year.’
‘Did you ever take pictures when he was in town?’
She hesitated, then sighed and relented. ‘Once. He filmed me. After it fell apart …’
She stopped, hating herself as she recalled sitting at her computer, tears streaming down her face as she deleted every single photo, video and email.
She didn’t want to talk about it.
Still, she felt a little less anxious. Scores less anxious, in fact. She tossed her tea into a trash bin and tucked her hands into her pockets.
‘I dated someone for a few months after it ended, mostly because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? But after a while I decided I wanted time to get to know myself again. Turns out I like taking pictures of myself. It’s got nothing to do with a failed relationship or anything like that. I just like it. It just feels good. Other people do it, so I do it too.’
‘You like looking, too?’
‘I have a few blogs I like to go to. People like me. Sometimes they just take pictures of themselves. Sometimes they’re with other people.’ Her voice shook as she made her admission. Releasing it into the atmosphere was as thrilling as it was terrifying. ‘There’s one I like the most: a woman in Scotland – some small village on the coast. She posts black and white pictures. She shows her face, but she never looks right at the camera. Her pictures say something about her. Every single one tells a story about the type of day she had. You can tell by what she’s wearing or what she’s doing to herself who she chose to be that day, or what she was forced to be by her real life. I don’t know if mine does that, but I like hers.’
‘You’ll have to share it with me. Any others that turn you on?’
Carrie shook her head. ‘You next. I want to know how you found my blog.’
‘By accident. I fired one of my employees for being a fuckwit and, when I sat down to have a look at his computer, he had the link in his bookmarks. The first one I opened up was you lying in bed with the sun creating this glow around you.’
His voice changed in the way people did when they were relishing a memory, and when Carrie looked at him his expression was almost blissful, a half-smile on his face as he stared down the street.
‘You weren’t completely naked. Your bra was pushed down to your ribs and your panties were twisted around your knees. You had your hand between your legs. It was like you were waiting for someone. I got so hard thinking about what came next I unzipped right there in my office and jerked off.’ He shook himself and looked at her. His smile turned mischievous. ‘You’re blushing.’
‘Of course.’
They arrived at an intersection and Carrie discovered that having to wait for the light brought back her anxiety. She kept looking straight ahead.
‘Who is the woman in the video you sent me?’
‘My wife.’ Carrie bristled, but she still didn’t look at him. Brendan chuckled. ‘My ex-wife, though your reaction was interesting.’
‘How else would I have reacted? For about five seconds there you were some creep trying to start an affair.’
‘It didn’t occur to you before you met me?’
‘I imagined much, much worse. The video could have been a fake. Besides, I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. For all I knew, you’d show up at my office with an envelope full of my pictures.’
‘I still could.’
The red hand turned into a little green man and they crossed, heading for the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the large garden showcased in the middle of downtown.
‘But you won’t,’ she said once