Choose Me

by Donya Lynne

  It wasn’t their fault, of course. The men had been nice enough. Polite, well-spoken, upper-echelon men. They just weren’t packing in the meat department. And after having two nine-pound babies that were both plump as watermelons, things aren’t as tight down there as they used to be, so I need substantial meat to please me. To make matters worse, my vagina has always been a little on the bigger side. Even Phil, who is almost nine inches erect and a handful in girth, struggled to satisfy me.

  Before I had Christian, Andrea, my gynecologist and friend, joked that I wouldn’t have any trouble with childbirth. I’ve known Andrea for ten years, so joking comes naturally between us, whether she’s giving me an exam or we’re out to lunch together. But Andrea was wrong about me and childbirth. It seems God either has a sick sense of humor, likes balance, or simply gives larger babies to women with large vaginas. Both Christian and Rose stretched me beyond repair. My poor baby maker has never been the same, and I’ve never let Andrea forget it.

  Which reminds me, I have to get in for my annual before Andrea gets married next month. My annual exam is the one opportunity I have each year to give her a hard time for how wrong she was.

  Now that my vagina is a yawning cave stretched by childbirth, anything less than enormous isn’t going to do it for me in the peen department. Which means the four average joes with their average wangs were woefully inadequate. Their penises—or penitos, which seems a more appropriate term—felt more like small cocktail wieners flopping around inside me. I’ve never had to fake more orgasms than I have the past four summers.

  I don’t want to have to fake it this year, but that’s going to require a thick cylinder of hard salami, not a cocktail weiner.

  When most women think of food that sparks fantasies of a large penis, cucumbers come to mind. For me, it’s Genoa salami. The kind I can’t fit my hand around. Granted, the circumference of Genoa salami may be a bit too much even for me to truly enjoy, but seeing a thick rod of Genoa salami tucked among the deli department’s lesser meats works better at turning me on than a skinny ol’ cucumber.

  Maybe you’re admonishing me right now, saying I shouldn’t be so superficial. That it’s not fair to judge a man by the size of his penis, which is like a man judging a woman by the size of her breasts. That there’s more to relationships than sex. I agree with you. There is more to a relationship than sex. But the whole purpose of my summer flings isn’t about finding a relationship. It’s about feeding my starved libido. It’s about having sex and as much sex as I can get, because I know that the day before my kids come home, I’ll be one hundred percent single again, with another ten-month hiatus ahead of me until my vajayjay gets another shot at some action.

  The question is, do I or don’t I? Do I count my losses of the last four years and resign myself to celibacy? Or do I take one more chance and see if this summer is the one when I find a man worthy of my honey pot?

  This is what I’m thinking about when I should be enjoying a massage at the talented hands of my sexy masseur, Philippe. He has a succulent French accent and an even more scrumptious mouth, and if I were truly the slut Phil thinks I am, I’d be working on making him my fifth summer fling. If he can work the same kind of magic with his man flesh as he can with his hands, he’d make a fine two-month romance.

  But Philippe is much too young for me, so I’ll resign myself to the fantasy. And what a fine fantasy to have while his hands are all over my body.

  Thirty minutes later, I’m wrapped in a plush white robe, reclining in a large, tan spa chair that could pass for a cloud. My feet are soaking in a fragrant warm-water bath with tiny pink and white flowers floating on the surface. My face has been smeared with a French clay mask, and I have thick slices of cucumber over my eyes as I rest my head on a small pillow. The scent of lavender envelops me.

  “Too bad Charity couldn’t join us,” Jess says lazily from the chair to my left.

  Charity is three years younger than I am, and we’re extremely close, unlike I am with my youngest sister, Phoebe, who has always been resentful of me, I think because I’m actually able to remember our mother. Phoebe was so young when Mom died—only five years old—that she doesn’t have much recollection of her, and I became the mother figure in her life. It’s easy to resent an older sister who takes on the role of mother figure when you can’t remember much about your real mom.

  “I’m sure she could have used it, too,” I say.

  “Is she still suffering from morning sickness?”

  I nod, even though I know Jess can’t see me, because her eyes are covered by cucumbers, too. “I guess it’s been pretty bad.”

  Charity married her longtime boyfriend Ray Singer last October—and how about that for a name? Charity Singer. The irony is that she can’t hold a tune to save her life and she’s as tone deaf as they come, but her name makes for some great jokes when the family gets together.

  She and Ray couldn’t wait to start a family, but poor Charity had no idea morning sickness would be this bad. It’s become not just morning sickness, but noon sickness, afternoon sickness, bedtime sickness, middle-of-the-night sickness. Walking-the-dog sickness. She gets sick any time, day or night. Poor thing.

  Today, morning sickness turned into missing-spa-day sickness, which means it’s just Jess and me getting pampered.

  Jess and Charity are my cheerleaders when it comes to my summer flings. They’re as much a part of the summer ritual as the fling itself. Every year, the day after the kids leave with Phil, we go shopping for the perfect manhunt outfit, spend the afternoon at the spa getting primped, styled, manicured, pedicured, scrubbed, and waxed, and cap off the day having dinner at the finest restaurant in Denver. Except this year, we’re sans Charity.

  “You are going through with this, aren’t you?” Jess says.

  This morning, while we were perusing cocktail dresses at Neiman Marcus, I mentioned I wasn’t sure I was up for yet another disappointing summer romance. Jess latched on and has spent the last three hours intermittently badgering me and espousing all the reasons why I should give the manhunt one more shot. I can tell she’s not going to let this go until I surrender.

  I lift a slice of cucumber and peer at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s doing the same to me.

  I drop the cucumber back over my eyelid and recline my head on the pillow once more. “I still haven’t decided.”

  “Kate, come on, don’t back out on me now.”

  I smooth my palms over the soft, generous folds of my robe. “I never said I’d do it in the first place. How can I back out of something I never even agreed to?”

  She makes a tsking noise. “You’ve done the manhunt every year for four years. It’s understood that you’ve agreed to it.”

  I sigh and settle more fully into my chair. As usual, Jess is filling her role as Queen Ballbuster masterfully, and I don’t even have balls to bust.

  Thankfully, our estheticians join us and begin rinsing off our masks, which shuts Jess up. Fragrant lotion is smoothed over my face, and another technician lifts my feet from the water, towels them off, and begins my pedicure.

  By the time Jess and I leave the spa, we’re glowing and as loose as cooked noodles.

  Jess hasn’t said another word about the manhunt, but once we’re seated at a candlelit table at Solstice, one of the poshest restaurants in downtown Denver, she starts in again.

  “So, are you going to or not?” She sips ice water from a crystal goblet, giving me the evil eye over the rim.

  “Are we back on this again?”

  “Yes, and we will be until you wise up and agree to hit the town with me tomorrow night.”

  “I don’t know, Jess, these summer flings are just beginning to feel so much like work. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  “Believe me, it’s worth it. Take it from someone who hasn’t had sex in over two years.” She lifts her water glass and tilts it my way as if making a toast.

  She and her husband divorced right before Valentine’s Da
y two years ago. It was mutual and amicable, but she hasn’t gone on a date since.

  “Have you even gone out with anyone?” I ask.

  She shrugs and forces a smile. “I haven’t found anyone interesting enough to go out with.”

  “Have you even looked?”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “I’m too busy with work to mess with all that.” She makes a scornfully proud face then flashes me a smile. “And this isn’t about me, it’s about you.” She rolls her eyes and shrugs one shoulder. “I’ll concede that I might get a little excited hearing about your escapades, because then I can live my sex life vicariously through yours, but trust me, this is all about you.”

  Grinning, I shake my head. “My sex life is like an annual charity ball for you, isn’t it?”

  For a moment, she eyes me as if she’s not sure I mean it as a joke or a chastisement. I laugh at her expression, because I did, in fact, mean it as a joke.

  She breaks into laughter, too, then squeezes my hand. “You just deserve to have a little fun.” Her Southern drawl comes through like a shot of watered-down whiskey.

  Jess moved to Denver from Mississippi when she was in high school, and while she’s lost much of her Southern twang, enough remains that when she speaks from the heart, it comes out. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it, but my ears pick it right up. That’s how I know she’s being sincere. Not that I doubted her, but to hear her syllables stretch in the way of a Southern debutante is like receiving confirmation from an antique book dealer that the set of pristine Thomas Hardy novels you inherited from your grandmother’s estate are, in fact, first editions and not reprints.

  “I know, Jess, but these summer flings have grown so tedious.”

  I don’t want to suffer through another summer with another man who can’t fulfill the one simple reason for these flings in the first place. I’m not interested in commitment. I just want to feel like a woman again. Like a sexy goddess of a woman, with a penis worthy of Zeus filling me to the brim.

  Not that I don’t feel like a woman every other day of the year, but feeling like a woman and feeling like a woman are two very different things. It’s all in how you emphasize the word. One way sounds more like a prison sentence while the other sounds more like a prison break.

  I want to feel the latter.

  I want a summer fling that makes me feel young again. Carefree and libidinous. Salacious and desirable. Like the treasure inside a treasure chest, not the chest itself.

  “You have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince, honey,” Jess says, leaning back as our server arrives with our salads.

  I stab a yellow grape tomato as my mind shoots to Phil’s ugly accusation in my office. “You know, when Phil picked up the kids yesterday, he accused me of using my summer break from the kids to ‘whore’ myself around the city.”

  Jess gasps and drops her fork. If we weren’t sitting in the middle of a fine dining establishment surrounded by Denver’s upper class, I’m sure a litany of profanities would be pouring from her mouth.

  “That prick,” she whispers hotly. “He’s one to talk, the man whore that he is.” She eyes me suspiciously. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

  “No, but it added to my doubts about picking up a guy this summer.”

  “Oh, Kate . . .” She sighs. “Don’t let him do that to you. You are not whoring yourself.”

  I spear a slice of beet. “I know that, but I don’t want Phil—or even Mia, for that matter—telling that to my kids.”

  “Phil’s an asshole, honey, but one thing I don’t think he’ll ever do is badmouth you to your kids and turn them against you. If he does, they might want to live with him all year, and you know he doesn’t want that.”

  True. Phil loves the kids, but after two months with them, he’s ready to bring them back. He wouldn’t want them year round, and neither would Mia. It would put too much of a burden on her entitled lifestyle.

  We quietly munch on our salads for a couple of minutes.

  “So, what do you say?” Jess says, setting her fork on her plate.

  “About what?”

  “About giving the manhunt one more summer?”

  The waiter returns and clears our salad plates with the speed and efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

  “I don’t know, Jess.”

  “Oh, come on, you’ve already bought the dress to show off your fabulous legs, and a pair of sexy Manolo Blahniks to show off that fabulous pedicure.”

  “I know, but I’m so over the disappointing sex.”

  “Honey, disappointing sex is better than no sex. Trust me.”

  I cock my head in consternation. “Spoken like a true celibate.”

  “Hey, I’m celibate by choice.” She tries to sound convincing but fails.

  “Right.”

  The waiter returns with our entrees and sets a dainty, artistic concoction of stuffed chicken piled with lightly crisped onion rings, mushrooms, and spring greens in front of me. A light sauce has been drizzled all around the gleaming white china plate.

  Jess cuts off a bite of her halibut. “Just give it one more summer.” Her eyes beseech me. “Just one more, Kate. You’re too gorgeous to give up now.”

  I choke on a mushroom and grab my wine to clear my throat. “Gorgeous?”

  Jess huffs and tilts her head. “Are you kidding me?” She points her knife at me and draws it up and down in the air like a pointer. “Have you even looked at yourself. You’re thirty-four, but you look twenty-four. I’d kill to have that body after having two kids.” She takes another small bite of fish.

  I glance down at my flat stomach and full breasts. I’ve never thought about my body as being all that before. Certainly not something to kill over. I just enjoy spinning and working up a sweat. And since the family business is bicycles and cycling gear, it’s always been natural to ride for exercise, although my dad teases me that spinning is for sissies. He thinks if you’re not actually out on the roads and trails, you’re not really biking.

  I’d never even taken a spin class until I divorced Phil. After he tore my heart out, I didn’t feel like riding my bike but needed something to extinguish the ache in my heart, so I started spinning. It turned out to be the release I needed, and I quickly became addicted, to the point that the thirty-minute spin classes at the gym weren’t enough. I ended up buying my own spin bike and still spend over six hours a week on it.

  I don’t ride my road bike nearly as much as I used to and really need to become more active in cycling again, especially since cycling is the family business.

  Andrea has been nagging me to join her cycling club, where she met her fiancé. I’m supposed to join them one day next week for a ride. We’ll see how it goes.

  Jess cuts off a piece of her roasted asparagus. “Whatever it is you’re doing to keep that body rocking, you look fabulous and shouldn’t let that man magnet go to waste. It won’t last forever.”

  As I eat another bite of chicken, I consider my options. I really don’t want to spend the summer alone. While I have my job and the option of a new cycling club, and both could keep me plenty busy, part of me isn’t ready to give up on my quest to find a man who’s packing more down below than the equivalent of an Oscar Meyer wiener.

  Surely there is at least one man in Denver with a big enough penis to satiate my sexual needs.

  In a moment of resolute daring, I set my fork down and dab my white cloth napkin on my lips. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  Jess’s eyes flash wide as she sucks in her breath. “Really?”

  “On one condition.”

  She stiffens and angles her head to the side. “What?”

  “You have to find a man, too.”

  The thrill seeps out of her expression. “Why did you have to go and do that? I’m perfectly content to let you have all the fun.”

  I stab my chicken, and gooey cheese flows out of the center. “Well, I’m not. We do this as a team or not at all.”

  Jess rolls her
eyes and sighs. “Fine. Good thing I bought a dress today, too.”

  Part of me can’t believe I’ve agreed to this, but another part of me bubbles with anticipation. I’m daring to hope. Maybe this is the year I’ll actually find a man capable of more than lip service. I mean, I do enjoy a good licking, but I’m not a lollipop.

  I’m like this chicken on my plate. I want to feel good and stuffed.

  If I can find a man who can do that, the effort will be worth it.

  Chapter 5

  Saturday

  Greyson

  Club Alesca is crowded. And loud. So loud it’s hard to think.

  But maybe that’s a good thing, because if it’s loud, it will be harder for women to talk to me. And if women can’t talk to me, I won’t be tempted. And resisting temptation is critical to protecting my ego.

  Reminding myself that I’m here tonight for Ed, not myself, helps.

  After I helped Ed move into the downstairs bedroom this afternoon, he got this wild hair up his ass while we played a game of pool that he, Mike, and I should go out and celebrate.

  “Celebrate what?” I asked him, tapping the four ball into the corner pocket.

  I wasn’t really in the mood to celebrate, especially if it meant going out. Brent had scheduled a dinner meeting with Robert Clayton for Monday evening, and I wanted to prepare. I also wanted to paint. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done before the flooring guys show up next week. I didn’t want to take valuable time away from getting shit done by spending an evening at some nightclub.

  “What do you mean, celebrate what?” Ed sounds incredulous. “Us. You, me, Mike. Our friendship. Your new man cave.” He sweeps his arm in a grand arc, encompassing my basement. “We can celebrate the fact that Rugged is about to become even bigger once you ink the deal with Freedom.” He rests the wide tip of his cue stick on the floor and grips it with both hands. “We can celebrate my divorce.”

  “Getting divorced isn’t a reason to celebrate, Ed.”

  “Says you. I happen to think it’s a perfect reason to celebrate.”