“What is this, the get-to-know-each-other portion of the night? I never thought you would be so cliché, Detective Jones.” She laughs for a second before answering, “Orange.”
“Oh, come on. No one likes orange.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s different and bold. It stands out amongst a blank world of black, white, and gray. Orange is the early morning sun stretching across the sky and the color of a burning ember standing tall in the middle of a beach bonfire. It’s leaves in the fall, carrots in Nana’s vegetable soup on a cold winter day, tulips in the spring, and the ladybugs in the middle of the grassy park on a hot summer afternoon. Orange is life. It’s unexpected but beautiful.” She stops talking, and her depth silences me too.
I consider myself a very artistic person. I draw, paint, and build. Creation is my escape. And to listen to this woman wax poetic about a single simple color steals my breath. It embeds itself somewhere deep inside. A place where no woman, especially an Erickson, has any business being.
“Oh, and it’s my favorite flavor of candy too.”
And with those simple words, I know I’m in trouble. So fucking much trouble. I begin to laugh, and I mean really laugh. The kind that sticks with you even after the joke is long since forgotten, and I do it for the first time in almost five years. Fuck.
“What about you, Caleb? What’s your favorite color?” The curious tone in her voice piques my interest. Is she as attracted to me as I am to her? If she feels anywhere close to what I feel, that could be seriously dangerous.
“Brown,” I answer simply.
“You gave me shit about orange when your favorite color is brown?” she yells, making me laugh harder.
God, I miss this. For the last few years, I’ve met nothing but she-bots. You know the kind—robots who always say what they think you want to hear. They say all the right things, are always aware of their surroundings, and read the people they interact with but never show you their true colors. I fucking loathe she-bots.
“What did you do tonight?” I ask when my curiosity gets the best of me. I may know she wasn’t having a threesome, but that doesn’t mean I’m not dying to know what she was doing.
“We went dancing at the gay club. It was so much fun. Hunter and Alex had this ridiculous bet going.”
“Shit. Your roommates are gay, aren’t they?” I ask, and she starts laughing so loud I have to pull the phone away from my ear.
“Oh my God, no, they aren’t. But I can’t wait to tell them you assumed that. It was actually ladies’ night at the gay club.”
“Are you gay?” I shout, which only causes her to laugh even louder.
At this point, I have no doubt that she is rolling around on her bed in a fit of laughter. I can even picture it. She’s probably half naked, wearing only a tight little see-through tank top and thong. Her nipples are peaked from a chill in the air. No, wait. Strike that. Her nipples are peaked from how turned on she is from being on the phone with me. She’s probably even stoking her clit through her panties…
She interrupts my daydreaming with an equally stimulating answer. “No, I prefer my lovers with a dick.”
We are both in luck, because I just so happen have one of those growing in my pants as we speak. I’ll keep that large tidbit to myself though. Honestly I’m not even sure why we are having this conversation right now. But I know I don’t want to get off the phone yet.
“So what were you doing at a ladies’ night at the gay club?” I try to change back to a subject that won’t have me picturing her naked.
“The guys had a very interesting drunken conversation last night. It basically consisted of them debating if lesbians really only like women because they can’t get guys. So they decided to make a bet about who could get one into bed first.”
“Wow. They sound like idiots,” I say little too roughly, but douchebags like that make my skin crawl.
“Yeah, they are. They are also really are good guys, but total meatheads sometimes.”
“They don’t sound like meatheads. They sound like assholes,” I say very matter-of-factly. I have zero tolerance for ignorant tools like them.
“Hey, stop judging people you don’t even know. That makes you an asshole. They were just joking!” she yells, and I can tell that her hackles have risen. She must be pretty tight with these guys to get all mama bear over this. If she only knew what I really wanted to call them.
“My sister, Lindsey, has been happily married for over three years to a woman she has been with for over twelve years. Sorry, but I don’t find trolling for homosexual woman in an attempt to change them even the slightest bit humorous.”