Since my job requires I touch him, a lot, it would feel a little odd for me to withdraw my hand. So instead, I give a little squeeze with my fingers. It’s like palpating an enormous rock with absolutely no give to it. At all.
“Hmm,” I say with my best poker face, trying to mask the emotions inside. I’m undone. Completely undone. Every sexual organ in me is awake and aching. My genetically induced mating instincts are at full attention, roaring inside me.
He laughs and runs his hand up the length of my bare arm again. He dips his fingertips under the sleeve of my button shirt and slides them right over my triceps muscle at the back of my arm. His eyes glint devilishly because he knows he’s totally got me. This is one of the worst parts for a woman, a place where body fat can be measured with a mere pinch.
There’s not a single place on his body I could get even a pinch of fat from. He probably consumes twelve thousand calories a day to maintain his lean muscle mass, which is around what famous Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps consumes when actively training. His caloric intake is easily over five times what I eat to maintain my weight, but I can’t really do the math right now. His fingers are still there, under my sleeve, touching my skin. He’s got this playful smile on his face, his eyes dancing in mischief, and yet the atmosphere has shifted until I feel like not only we are incredibly aware of our bodies, but the other people on the plane are, as well.“Hmm,” he says, softly, and finally gives a little pinch. We both laugh.
I clear my throat and straighten, unable to stand anymore touching. I feel dangerously giddy and am definitely not happy about it. So I extract my iPod and headphones from a small travel bag I’m carrying and set them on my lap. He stares down at them, then he snatches my iPod and connects his headphones and starts going through my music, handing me over his. I search through his selection, and absolutely loathe all his songs. He’s into PURE rock, and I drop my headphones and grab my iPod back.
“Who can relax to that?”“Who wants to relax?”
“I do.”
“Here.” He hands me his iPod back. “I’ve got to have some easy listening for you. Listen to one of mine and I will listen to one of yours.”
He’s selecting a song for me from his own apparatus, so I look for one I like in mine, and I settle on a girl power song called “Love Song,” by Sara Bareilles, which is basically this girl telling the guy that he’s not getting one. I play it for him.My love for girl power songs is almost legendary. Old and new. It’s all my friends and I hear. Even Kyle sings them.
So then I put on my headphones to see which one he selected for me, and something happens to my body when I hear the first words of the song, And I’d give up forever to touch you … from the Goo Goo Dolls “Iris” song.
And I’d give up forever to touch you …Cause I know that you feel me somehow…
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been and I don’t want to go home right now…
I duck my head to keep him from noticing that I’m blushing and almost have to force myself not to pause it because it feels unbearably intimate.
To listen to this song.
That he strangely selected for me to listen to.
But I don’t dare pause it. Even when he leans forward to catch my expression. His knee brushes mine, and the point of contact blazes through me as the song keeps spilling into my ear. And I don’t want the world to see me, it says, but I want you to know who I am…
I think I’m not even breathing, I don’t even know if I can.He’s also listening to my song, and his eyes are so close to mine when I peer up at him, I can count each one of his spiky dark lashes. I swear his irises are bluer than the Caribbean Sea.
His lips twitch with humor, and he shakes his head with what I think is a chuckle. A chuckle I obviously can’t hear because I’m listening to the end of “Iris,” which I first heard in the movie City of Angels and which also made me cry, like, for days. A guy gives up, literally, forever to be with the girl he falls in love with, and then something tragic happens—like in a Nicolas Sparks’ movie.
When silence follows the end, I slowly take my headphones off and return his iPod. “I didn’t even know you had slow songs in there,” I murmur, fully engaged in a new conversation with my own iPod, as he returns it.His voice is low and intimate. “I have twenty thousand songs, everything is here.”
“No!” I say in automatic disbelief as I turn and verify, and it’s true. Mel thinks she’s the shit because she has ten thousand, and I’m going to have to tell her she is certainly not.And now, what I just can’t get over is that, from twenty thousand songs, he played that one to me?