“Like sunshine? How many girls have you called that?” I scoffed.
“None.” His expression turned serious.
“Oh.”
“There’s an art to nicknames,” Bo began.
“And you’re going to teach it to me?”
“Can’t really be taught. It’s just an innate skill. Although yours is so obvious I can’t believe no one else has called you that.”
I shrugged. “AM is my nickname. Short for AnnMarie.”
“I know, but the logical extension is sunshine because AM is a good time—” Bo stopped and then corrected himself. “AM is a time designation for the morning.”
“Were you going to say ‘good time in the morning?’” I shook my head at the brazenness of his explanation.
Bo gave me a wry smile and replied, “I think you’d hit me if I told you what I was about to say, and you’d probably be justified in doing so.”
It was a clear warning, yet I thoughtlessly charged ahead anyway. “I thought you were a fighter?”
My poke was met with a slight widening of Bo’s eyes. His face took on an expression I couldn’t decipher, but I thought might be excitement.
“Since you put it that way, I’m just making an assumption here because I don’t know you well enough. Are you a good time in the morning? Because that’s one of my favorite times of the day.”
“By the speed at which you left the other day, it seemed like you weren’t interested in seeing how I looked in the morning.” It was a reckless reference to our sleepover.
“If I’d stayed, I’d’ve wanted to do something to you that you might not have been ready for.”
Bo’s response made me squirm on the bench. This was a dangerous game, and I knew I should stop, but the idea of Bo imagining the two of us in bed together doing something more than just sleeping was too much for me. A dozen images flitted through my mind. Bo above me, our sweat-slicked bodies moving in unison. His mouth licking my neck and down the valley of my br**sts. I squeezed my thighs in response to the pressure that was building.
My previous fantasies had been so tame. I might have played out a few scenarios of Bo and me in my head during last semester’s class, but none of them ever included him asking me what times of the day was I best in bed. I’d envisioned Bo would wash a car with his shirt off. Or maybe he’d help me move a sofa and I’d stare at his ass or see a sliver of skin between his jeans and his T-shirt. He’d stand with his arm over my head as he leaned down to press his lips against mine. Realizing I wasn’t equipped to trade sexually-charged banter with Bo, I tried to steer the conversation back into safer territory. “What’s the art of the nickname?”
Bo gave a deep sigh and shifted restlessly beside me, but he gamely accepted my change in topic.
“Nicknames need to be descriptive enough to identify a unique trait of the person, but different enough that they’re meaningful to the individuals using them.”
“Like baby or honey?” I asked, fascinated by this obviously thought-out position on nicknames.
“Babe, sweetheart, darling aren’t nicknames. Those are throwaways. So my buddy Noah is Jep, short for Jeopardy. He liked to read trivia books while deployed and would likely kick our collective asses in Jeopardy. Another guy we were deployed with had a hard-on for Skittles. He’d take every bag he could get his hands on and make these disgusting sex noises when he ate them so we called him Skittle-tits.”
“That’s a terrible nickname,” I informed him.
“So is honey buns.”
“I was on the spot,” I protested. “What’s your roommates’ nickname for you?”
“You’ll have to get to know me better before I reveal that.” Bo looked slyly out of the corner of his eyes at me, as if he were was throwing out another lure. I wanted to pick it up, but I was afraid. Flirting with Bo would only make my nighttime dreams a little more feverish and my daytime fantasies intolerable. I couldn’t go around living with an unrelieved ache in my lower body. Assuaging that particular ache would likely lead to a more serious one in my heart. Again, I moved the topic away to something more benign.
“Tell me your story then, Thor,” I suggested.
“Thor, by the way, is a far better nickname than honey buns. Let’s go with that from now on.” His grin was knowing and wicked. “What do you want to know?”
Everything, because you fascinate me. And nothing, because I think you’d burn me up and leave me empty.
“How about your most embarrassing story?” I blurted out instead.
“I usually require at least one bottle of tequila before these types of confessionals.” He shook his head in mock sadness.
“Forget I asked.” I waved my hand. “Let’s just get our project done.”
“No, no.” Bo grabbed my hand and pulled it to rest between us. The stone bench felt cool, but his hand covering mine was warm and dry, like a shelter. I realized I could get addicted to holding hands with Bo Randolph. Somehow, just that simple touch made me feel better, as if his hand were an IV of personal strength. “I’m in, but you have to agree to share too.”
“I’ve already told you one.”
Bo opened his mouth and then closed it. He turned away to look into the display that portrayed long wavy grasses, a fake pond, and a few trees in the background. A stuffed fox peeked through foliage, almost hidden by the leaves and ground cover.
“Not so eager once you’re the guy being asked to spill secrets,” I mocked.
Bo shook his head and replied. “All my embarrassing stories are kind of raunchy, and I’m not sure you’d want to hear those.”
“Likely excuse.” I shrugged and pulled out my phone. His hesitation gave rise to my fear that he thought I was easy and my refusal to capitulate was confounding him. Perhaps he thought I’d just drop my jeans and ask him to take me here in the museum, a natural, just because he smiled and complimented me. This was good, I told myself. Placing him with all the rest made his attractiveness fade, his shine dulling with exposure to the air like old silver.
Standing up, I bent over the display and took a photo of the information sign that described the scene in front of me and took another of the display itself. I went around the room, snapping photos of what I could. Later I’d magnify these on my computer and take more notes. At the far end was a tiny dark room with a video screen playing something on a loop. I stepped in and was about to press the button to start the sound when the light from the room that had spilled into the entryway was blocked out completely.
“I met this one chick at a concert,” Bo said, his nearness startling me. “We both ended up near the fence line making eyes at each other. After the concert was over, we were just standing there, like the whole event was prelude, right?”
“Right,” I said shortly, surprised he’d followed me into the dark room. His size swallowed up the space, and I felt like we were in junior high, about to make out in the closet. Only instead of kissing me, he was regaling me with a past conquest in graphic, profane detail. I hated this girl already. But then I had asked for this.
“I can’t even remember her name now,” Bo admitted. “Or quite what she looked like. We went back to her hotel room. She was sharing it with four other girls. I do remember the room. It looked like some mall had thrown up in there. There were clothes everywhere and only two beds. I guess it was two girls to a bed.
“We fell on that bed and started making out. She stopped me to tell me she’d never had an orgasm. So in my mind this was a challenge. I was going to give her the best damn orgasm ever, but I failed. She’s lying there, bored out of her mind. Maybe she was thinking of the last book she’d read, maybe she was counting sheep. I don’t know.
“She leaned over and asked me if I wanted anything, but I was dead from the waist down. Not only could I not get her off, but I couldn’t get it up. I pulled on my clothes and ran out of there like her dad was standing over us with a shotgun. Hell, I would have welcomed that.”
As Bo recounted this experience, he leaned against the far wall of the dark alcove, but there was very little space between us. I could almost feel the rise and fall of his chest as he spoke and breathed. The darkness and the small space lent an intimacy to the setting. But even in the dimness, with light from the other room outlining the doorway, I could sense his self-deprecation. He wasn’t at all concerned with how it may have made him appear or how humorous it sounded. He just did not care. I wanted to borrow his attitude and wear it like the fox in the weeds wore his coat, blending in with his surroundings and belonging.
“I haven’t told you the worst part,” Bo went on. “For a month afterward, my equipment didn’t work. Every time I felt like I was getting wood, I’d think of that room and that girl, and my dick would climb into my sack in shame.”
I choked back a giggle.
“No, it’s funny,” Bo encouraged. “No need to try to hold back your laughter.”
I started laughing, then, and couldn’t stop. “How old were you?”
“Seventeen. I thought I was doomed. I tried looking up p*rn and everything, but nothing worked. I thought I’d be the only under-eighteen patient to have to take Viagra.”
“What cured you?”
“The cure was even worse.”
“Oh no, you didn’t.” I placed my hand against my lips to hold in my laughter.
“I sure did. My father had a bottle of those beauties. I took one and chased it down with about a fifth of his Scotch. Had a beauty of a beating from that—the Scotch, not the blue pill,” Bo clarified. “He didn’t realize he was missing one of those.”
“What happened?” I managed to gasp out between the fits of laughter.
“So if you aren’t actually having problems downstairs, you end up getting a nonstop hard-on that you can’t get rid of. I rubbed as many out as I could, but then my dick became so sensitive I couldn’t touch it anymore. So I had a nonstop hard-on that was too painful to relieve. Eventually it wore off, but I thought I would never have sex again.”
“So the next day, then?”
“Ah, you’re getting to know me so well. Yes, the next day and then the next and the next. I was on a tear. Both jubilant that my dick actually worked and that I didn’t need pills, but also a mental reproof to the girl I couldn’t get off. How about you.”
“I’ve already shared,” I protested.
“What happened to you wasn’t an embarrassment to anyone but the dickheads who assaulted you and then tried to boost their egos with lies,” Bo said fiercely. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
His words choked me up a little and for a moment I couldn’t speak. Maybe when he told me we were on the same team that first day in biology class he meant it. His verbal support felt so good.
“There’s a whole block of restaurants and stores that I can’t shop at anymore,” I confessed. When he made a protesting sound, I barreled on. “I met Mark at a bar with my roommate. He was really good-looking, but kind of dumb. But he seemed like he knew what he was about.”
“Like how?” Bo sounded disgruntled. Kind of like how I felt hearing about how hot he was for some other girl even though I’d told myself I wasn’t going down that path with him.
“I don’t know. He just looked the part. Tall, attractive. I guess I thought because he was strong and handsome that he’d know what he was doing in bed, and I’d just come off a really crappy experience.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, but my first time wasn’t so good, obviously, so pretty much anyone who knew where my girl parts were was going to be better than the first time.”
“I’m not sure where the embarrassment comes in. Did you break his dick or what?”
“No!” I exclaimed and then stopped for a moment. “Can that really happen?”
“Yup. There, there was an MMA fighter whose girlfriend broke his dick while doing reverse cowgirl or something.”
I wondered how that worked. She must have gone up too high and then slammed down. When I felt Bo’s hand cover mine and heard him trying to suppress a laugh, I realized I was trying to act out the scene with my hands. I pulled my hands out of his and stuck them under either side of my legs.
“So you were saying.” Bo motioned me to go on.
“So I, ah, felt good with him, and I kind of began to have feelings for him.”
“How is this embarrassing? That’s normal.” Bo sounded a little peeved, although at whom or what, I wasn’t sure.
“I’m getting there, impatient Patty.” Taking a deep breath, I rushed through the rest. “After a few weeks, he stopped calling me. I texted him and called repeatedly, but he never responded. I started stalking him, driving by his apartment, going to where I knew he liked to order out. I ate a ton of fattening and bad lasagna for like a month. The waitstaff started recognizing me and would shake their heads as if saying, ‘Here comes that fool girl again, she can’t take no for an answer.’”