Office Hours

by Katrina Jackson

“I’ve gone much longer without sex,” she said. “That was before you, though.”

  He could tell by the angle of her eyes that she wanted to see him, so he adjusted his laptop screen so she could see him stroke himself.

  A soft whimper fell from her lips and she squeezed her right breast.

  “How do you want to do this?” Alejandro asked.

  Deja smiled shyly. “I don’t know. I’ve actually never done this before.”

  “Neither have I,” he rushed to reassure her. “Let’s just… keep it simple, yeah?”

  “Meaning?”

  “I just want to watch you come.”

  “Ditto,” she whispered in the husky voice he recognized so well.

  “Okay then,” he breathed and grabbed the lubrication he’d picked up specifically for this date. He squirted some lube into the palm of his hand and started stroking his dick more seriously this time, in slow, rhythmic flicks of his wrist. His hand felt amazing, and he was very used to getting himself off, but he didn’t groan at his own touch. He groaned at the sight of Deja’s legs splayed open around her computer, putting her pussy front and center for the webcam and for him.

  “Jesus,” he breathed, squeezing the head of his aching dick.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling a long purple vibrator into view and rubbing her own lube along the shaft.

  Alejandro slowed his hand to match the pace of hers coating over the toy. It was the best he could do with the thousands of miles between them.

  “Ready?” it was her turn to ask him and for him to nod in return.

  She scooted back on the bed, putting her pussy even closer, not close enough to touch and taste but close enough that Alejandro knew he wasn’t going to have any problem getting off.

  “You have no fucking idea,” he breathed.

  The soft hum of her vibrator made Deja moan which made Alejandro’s balls ache. He watched as she rubbed the vibrator up and down her lips, teasing herself.

  “Your clit,” he panted as precome started leaking from the tip of his dick like a river.

  She groaned loudly and squirmed as she followed his direction.

  He moved his hand to the base of his dick and squeezed himself tight while she teased herself, trying to stave off the aching in his dick and balls and entire body, actually. Deja was like a shot of premium liquor; it didn’t take much of her to get him up and ready and off in no time. It was embarrassing, but he could deal with that emotion later, right now he didn’t want to wallow in his quick orgasm when flashes of Deja’s pink pussy were on his screen.

  “Fuck, Deja,” he groaned, looking up her body for the first time.

  Her nipples were hard peaks, and she was pinching and turning her left nipple between her fingers.

  “Ready?” she asked again.

  He could only grunt in response as he stroked his dick faster. His eyes moved back to her pussy just as she started pressing her vibrator inside Her stomach clenched, and her thighs began to shake. “Go slow,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  She didn’t answer, but she did as he asked. Once again, he matched the movement of her hands and began to pump his dick at the same pace as she pushed her toy inside and out. Those flashes of her pussy’s deep pink became a constant, and Alejandro’s entire world shrank to the small rectangle of his laptop screen.

  They were breathing heavy and moaning. Alejandro’s muscles tensed slowly, winding tighter and tighter as he watched Deja’ fuck herself with her vibrator.

  Alejandro had been looking forward to this all day. They’d first started talking about some kind of phone sex just after Christmas but finding a time when his parents’ house was empty or at least when he thought no one might hear him beating his meat with his girlfriend on skype was near impossible. They'd spent two weeks trying to find the perfect time until finally, Alejandro just gave up; he didn’t want to wait any longer.

  Alejandro could almost laugh that they’d spent two weeks planning for barely fifteen minutes of sex, but he was preoccupied. “I’m close,” he moaned.

  “Oh, thank god,” she moaned. “Me, too.”

  Alejandro huffed a laugh and began to pump his palm up and down his shaft faster and faster with one hand as the other gripped his tip.

  Deja was fucking herself faster with one hand and circling the sensitive nub of her clit with the other. And even though she was thousands of miles away, he could tell that she was trying to keep her groans to a minimum, but he knew she’d lose that battle eventually and thankfully had the wherewithal to turn the volume down on his laptop. For safety, he should have silenced it all together, but he couldn’t bear to. He wanted to hear her come. If he couldn’t touch her or taste her, at the very least, he needed to hear her.

  And when she finally did press the vibrator deep inside herself and scream out her release, Alejandro was surprised that he’d hung on that long. He licked his lips as her wet release leaked out of around her vibrator and it sent him completely over the edge. His toes curled and his back tensed and finally he came with a sharp gasp and a long, deep grunt as his semen splattered along his thighs and stomach in hot spurts. It was dramatic, but he was out of breath and thought he saw stars. He’d had penetrative sex with women that hadn't made him come so hard.

  “Fuck, I miss you,” he breathed in a satisfied shudder.

  “Three weeks,” Deja groaned back as she sat up in bed. “Just three more weeks.”

  Alejandro’s laughter was weak from exhaustion and satisfaction.

  “I can go again,” Deja said, shocking Alejandro’s eyes back to the screen to see her circling her clit with the vibrator.

  He wheezed. “I’m old. I need more than a minute.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” she said happily. “I’m just happy to be here.”

  He shook his head with a smile. “Don’t wait for me. I don’t mind watching.”

  Deja’s eyes widened behind her eyeglasses. She licked her lips, “Yes, sir, Doctor Mendoza.”

  Alejandro grabbed his pants from the floor beside the bed and started cleaning himself up while Deja started fucking herself with her toy again.

  “Three weeks,” he mumbled to himself in a bone deep hunger to be back in Centreville; to be with Deja. They could survive that. So long as the internet connection held.

  19.

  Week Five

  Deja always said she was too old for all-nighters, and then went ahead to have at least one all-nighter a semester. When she was a college student, it was easy. She’d work all night, write a half-decent essay, catch a power nap, wake up, run a spellcheck on her essay, shower and run to class. Now that she was a college professor, every night with less than six hours of sleep made her feel as if she’d aged a decade overnight. When she slept poorly or for not enough time, she felt it in her sore back and neck and could see it in the dark circles under her eyes that she didn’t have enough energy to hide with concealer. And as reliant as she’d become on coffee to get her through the day, if she slept poorly, there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make up for a lack of sleep.

  Each time she was forced to pull an all-nighter, she always promised herself that she’d never do it again, and then she did because without it, she wouldn’t have been able to find the time or motivation to revise an entire article and submit it to the Journal of Comparative Sociology less than a week into the new year. She was awake for twenty straight hours, but it was worth it. It was a small thing, and she couldn’t stop herself from catastrophizing as she as she pressed submit, but she’d submitted an article at the top tier journal in her field.

  She knew deep in her bones that it would probably be rejected, because she couldn’t believe that it was good enough; she never could. But when she started preparing her third-year review files in the summer, she’d have one more article to list as under review in her anemic publications section. Toni would have told Deja to “focus on the good shit, cause the bad shit never stops coming,” and she was right, so she showered, put on a fresh pair
of pajamas and crawled into bed.

  She slept for nearly eighteen hours.

  When she woke up with bleary eyes and a full bladder, she had to rush to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, tired and confused at her entire existence. She also felt so grimy that she flushed the toilet and climbed directly into the shower. If this was how the rest of the year was going to go, she was nervous to say the least.

  Deja felt like an entirely new person after her shower. She wrapped the thick terrycloth robe her parents had given her as a Christmas present her first year in graduate school and walked into her bedroom to peer at her phone. She pushed her glasses up her face as she read through the list of her text messages and missed calls.

  She was just typing a text to her older sister when Toni’s face popped up on her phone screen.

  “Hello?” Deja croaked, her voice dry and hoarse from disuse.

  “You sound terrible,” Toni said.

  “I just woke up.”

  “Oh, look at you resting! I’m proud of you.”

  “Shut up,” Deja said and rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, bitch, I’m back in town!”

  Deja’s face lit up. “Yay! Welcome back to nowhere.”

  Toni sighed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. When was the last time you left your apartment?”

  Deja’s brain was still moving at the speed of molasses, but that wasn’t why she took a handful of uncomfortable seconds before she answered Toni’s question. She stalled because she knew Toni was about to light into her when she did. “I’m not…” Deja started and then turned to the kitchen with a suddenly dry mouth. “I can’t remember, actually.”

  “Jesus, Deja,” Toni breathed.

  “I’ve been writing and resting and cleaning. You should have seen how messy my apartment was after finals.”

  “Girl, you need fresh air and some time away from work. You shouldn’t be holed up in your apartment all day every day, it’s not healthy. That’s how you get burned out.”

  “I’ve been burnt out; it can’t get any worse.”

  “Yes,” Toni said, “it can. You have no idea how many of my friends have bounced from job to job because they can’t produce, or they just leave academia itself. This is no joke, and your department does not care if they burn you out. We’ve been over this.”

  They had and Deja knew Toni was right, but it was one thing to hear her say the words and nod along with them, it was an entirely different thing for her to figure out new strategies. She was convinced that the only way to accomplish that was to become a new person altogether and she was too embarrassed to admit to Toni that she thought of herself as a lost cause.

  “I know,” she whispered into her phone. She pulled open her fridge and grabbed the water pitcher from the stop shelf. She poured a large glass of water and gulped half of it down in a few swallows.

  Toni sighed again, and Deja forced herself to drink the rest of her glass of water while she waited.

  “Okay, look,” Toni said after a few seconds. Her voice sounded softer; a forced chipper that made Deja feel worse somehow. “I just got back and I’m jetlagged. But I’m about to put a load of laundry in the washing machine, power nap the fuck out of my afternoon, and then you and I are going to happy hour at Burger Barn.”

  Deja groaned, “I hate Burger Barn.”

  “No, you don’t. You hate running into your students at Burger Barn, but you love their onion rings. That’s why we have to go now before the kids get back. So, get your life together and I’ll meet you at the barn house at 7 on the dot. Deal?”

  Deja sighed this time, “Fine.”

  “Sound happier, please,” Toni directed.

  Deja laughed unexpectedly. “Fine,” she said in a happier tone.

  “Great. See ya,” Toni said and then hung up before Deja could respond.

  ***

  Deja dressed up.

  It was kind of pathetic because she literally just walked fifteen minutes to the roadhouse-style burger joint that was usually full of students and loud enough that some nights she could hear the commotion from her apartment, especially during homecoming weekend and right before spring graduation. But she hadn’t left her apartment in an indeterminate amount of time she wanted to celebrate the occasion.

  She pulled her favorite black skinny jeans on and put on a pair of leather riding boots and a slouchy sweater that draped to show a little shoulder. Granted, she then covered that naked shoulder with her winter coat, wrapped her thickest knit scarf around her throat and grabbed a hat and gloves on the way out, the door, but it was the attempt at style that mattered.

  The walk to the restaurant was brisk, in her pace and in the air, but it was nice to be out in the fresh air. Deja hated to admit it, but Toni was right; she really needed to leave her house more, and not just to run errands. Deja wasn’t going to tell her that she was right, of course, because no one loved being able to say “I told you so” more than Toni. Still, Deja spent the short walk realizing that she needed to stop treating herself so poorly.

  By the time Deja arrived at Burger Barn, Toni was sitting at a table with a margarita in front of her and a bright smile on her face. Her face lit up when Deja walked in the front door and she waved her over.

  Deja began unwrapping her scarf from her throat as she walked through the dining room and the closer she got the more she noted just how rested Toni looked. Her vacation braids were piled messily atop her head in a cute style, eyes were bright, no concealer needed, and her skin had a sun-kissed glow because she, unlike Deja, had taken a break instead of working over the holidays.

  “Hey,” Toni said when Deja was within earshot.

  “Hey. You look amazing,”

  “I feel wrecked. Ten hours traveling to get here, and I only slept for like four hours.”

  “Oh my god, why didn’t you cancel?”

  Toni squinted at her. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “So, you could rest,” Deja replied with a frown.

  Toni rolled her eyes. “Girl, please. If I hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have done anything besides wash some more clothes and eat that last microwave dinner at the back of my freezer. But this way, I get to have a good old gross and greasy American hamburger to welcome me home, I get your hermit ass out of the house, and this margarita is about to put me straight to sleep.”

  Deja lowered into her chair with a smile. “You always have a plan.”

  “It’s my superpower,” Toni said with a cheeky smile and a long sip of her drink. “Now, let’s get down to business.”

  Deja’s hands froze over the menu in front of her. She felt the icy dread that often overtook her when the chair of her department just happened to “drop by” her office to “see how she was doing,” which Deja always understood to mean that he was making sure Deja was being productive. The thought that Toni was about to ask her about the exact word count of her writing over break terrified her, even though she’d submitted the article to the Journal of Comparative Sociology barely forty-eight hours ago. That one article submission wasn’t enough. She knew it, but she didn’t want Toni to tell her that for real. She also didn’t want Toni to ask her how many books and articles she’d read or if she’d even started working on her syllabi for the upcoming semester, because Deja knew that no matter her answer, it would never be enough.

  She stopped breathing as Toni pinned her with a laser stare.

  Toni’s mouth curved into a Cheshire cat smile as the words spilled from her mouth. “You talked to Alejandro during the break?”

  Deja hadn’t expected that question, and she hadn’t expected that just hearing his name would affect her. She felt as if she was still wrapped up in her coat and scarf and dabbed at her forehead, certain she was sweating. She tucked her chin against her chest to hide her smile, and the instinctive move was the only answer Toni needed.

  “Aw yes, bitch! Somebody’s got a man!” Toni leaned toward her over the table. “Please tell me his ass is as good naked as it looks in his suits.” />
  “Toni!” Deja shrieked.

  “What? Oh, you must have it bad. You spent all last spring semester staring at that man’s booty but now, it’s too scandalous?” she teased. “That means it’s even better naked. Ugh, I knew it.” She took a long sip of her margarita.

  “Shut up,” Deja giggled.

  “Mmmmhmm. Thought so.”

  20.

  Week Six

  Classes started in four days.

  Deja was trying not to think about the vast distance between what she’d planned to do over winter break, what she’d needed to accomplish, and what she actually had completed, but with the start of the new semester looming, it was all that was on her mind. She’d been counting down the days and panicking. She was teaching three classes in the spring semester and only her Sociology of the Black Family was a new course prep, but she was doing what she normally did and tinkering with all her syllabi, not just the one that needed help. Syllabi trumped everything, which meant that the idea of writing had completely left her brain - not that she’d written much since she submitted that article - because she didn’t have time. She couldn’t walk into the first day of class without a syllabus, but she could pretend that she’d get another article submitted by spring break.

  Her phone rang, and she was almost relieved to have a legitimate reason to take a break from looking at the ecampus course shell or the weekly schedule of readings, trying to divine the exact moment when her students would stop doing the coursework and make her life harder. She rushed from her office to her bedroom where her cell phone was charging. When she bounced onto her bed, she squealed the moment she saw Alejandro’s name on her phone screen. Her finger stilled above the green button to answer the call, when she processed the sound she’d just made. “Jesus, get yourself together, girl,” she mumbled to herself. “Hey,” she answered.

  “Hey.”

  That one word made Deja’s stomach clench. She wasn’t certain if his voice was always that deep and rumbly or if her brain had morphed it into the voice of her wet dreams because it had been so long since they’d seen each other.