Chapter 33 - Nadia

Dorian and I were up early to hustle for more temp work money. “Well aren’t you looking cute in a skirt?” he said as we left the townhouse. “Hoping that spring comes early?”
“It’s supposed to be a sunny day,” I said cheerfully. “I’m sick of wearing long pants, so I’m going to take advantage of the slightest hint of warmth.”
By the time we got to the office in Brooklyn, the line of people waiting was around the block.
“Damn, what’s this all about?”
“Must be the extra pay,” Dorian said. “That festival on the north end of the park ends today, and they need it taken down fast, so they’re paying extra.”
I playfully smacked him on the arm. “There’s extra pay involved and you let me sleep in?”
Dorian scoffed. “Darling, I’m not your mother. You’re an adult who can wake herself up.”
“Except now you’re stuck in line with me too.”
Despite the number of people, the line moved quickly. But when we got to the front the agency worker handed us two boxes of fliers.
“Times Square,” he said gruffly. “Make sure you hand ‘em all out or you won’t get paid.”
“What about the festival?” Dorian asked.
“Already filled all the worker slots. It’s this or nothing.” He stared passively at us until we signed the sheet and accepted the boxes. It’s not like we had a choice.
We rode the train back down to Manhattan and then entered the tourist-crazy square. We found a secluded area on the walkway to drop our boxes and then opened them up.
“Oh, a new Broadway show!” Dorian said excitedly when he saw the flier. His enthusiasm quickly diminished. “Waitress. That sounds boring.”
“Isn’t that the one with music from Sara Bareilles?”
He grabbed a big stack of fliers. “It still sounds boring.”
I carried my own stack out into the stream of pedestrian and began handing them out. “I was hoping for the Central Park gig,” I grumbled.
Dorian shrugged. “Aside from losing out on the extra cash, I’d much rather do fliers. The only physical labor is carrying the boxes. And fliers allow for more creative fun.”
To emphasize the point, he tossed a handful of fliers into the air. He snatched one out of the air like a viper, handed it to a pedestrian, then snatched another one. He was able to do that with six fliers before the rest finished floating to the ground. It reminded me of a carnival clown grabbing handkerchiefs out of the air.
“I have a lunch date with Andy in the park,” I explained. “It would have been super convenient to already be there.”
“Ahh, the Central Park picnic date,” Dorian mused. “Staple of any good New York relationship.”
“Speaking from experience?” I asked.
“Nah. I haven’t lived in the city long enough to date much. Got out of a long relationship in Portland right before moving here.”
“How long did you two date?” I asked.
“Eight years.”
“Holy shit!” I blurted out. My definition of a long relationship was a year. Maybe two.
“Yeah, we were high school sweethearts. Middle school, even. Then dated three years after graduating.” Dorian crouched down to hand a flier to a little girl holding her mother’s hand. She accepted it like it was a priceless gift. “She liked picnics, though. A blanket, sandwiches, and a bottle of wine to share. She would have loved Central Park.”
“Why didn’t it work out?” I asked carefully.
“A whole bunch of reasons,” he sighed. “She had her own issues. She wasn’t very motivated about anything in life, and it got worse the older she got. She lost her job and went on unemployment, and didn’t make much of an effort to pull herself back up. Meanwhile I was trying to stay motivated about my own acting career, traveling with shows and working my way up. I would get home after two weeks on the road and she… She would just be sitting on the couch, right where I’d left her. I would ask her what she did while I was gone, and she’d say that she did nothing. And she meant it too: she literally did nothing.”
“I’ve had friends like that,” I said. “But thankfully no partners.”
“Eventually it started sapping my own motivation. It’s tough to be excited about your career when your girlfriend doesn’t have any goals or motivations of her own. We were already drifting apart, and I knew staying with her was holding me back, so I ended it. She lives with her parents now.”
“Is she still unemployed?”
“God only knows. I unfollowed her on Facebook and haven’t looked back. Best decision I’ve ever made.”
Despite that final comment, I could tell he was saddened by it. A wound that hadn’t fully healed. I couldn’t blame him; eight years was a hell of a long time to be with someone. I wondered if that’s why he just wanted a platonic female friend, as opposed to what the other guys wanted. He was still getting over his last relationship.
“Our date won’t involve wine since we have rehearsal tonight,” I said to lighten the mood. “At least, I don’t think Andy would bring some.”
“He’s definitely too straight-laced,” Dorian agreed. “Rehearsals have been going well.”
“They have!” I replied while grabbing another stack of fliers to hold. “It feels like everyone knows their parts.”
“Everyone except you-know-who,” he said with a healthy helping of side-eye.
I laughed, then lowered my voice even though nobody else was paying attention to our conversation. “It’s too bad the saboteur has been scared off by Ryan monitoring from the catwalks.”
“Right? He’s good for that. Intimidation.” He lowered his eyes at me. “So. Nadia. Is he good in bed, too?”
I gawked at him, feeling embarrassed with all the pedestrians walking by. “Kind of blunt, dude!”
“It’s just us girlfriends. You can give me some juicy gossip.”
I laughed and then threw modesty to the wind. “Yeah, he’s good in bed. Very good.”
“Very good? I didn’t know he had it in him!”
“Part of it is the nature of the relationship,” I explained. “We can be blunt and demanding about what we want. No relationship mind reading or awkwardly hoping the other person will do something.” I leaned in close and lowered my voice. “If I want him to eat me out to completion, I say so. And if he wants to shove his cock down my throat and fuck my face, he does it. We both get what we want. No guilt. No mess.”
“Well, some mess,” Dorian said with an elbow nudge.
“Ha ha.”
“I must admit,” he said, “that does sound delightfully straightforward. I should get me one of those.”
“It beats taking home randos from the bar.”
Dorian mused on this while handing out fliers. “What about Andy? Have you calibrated the equipment of our dear lighting technician?”
“That joke was a stretch, even for your cheesy ass.”
“I’ll do better next time,” he promised. “But you’re evading my question. Which I suppose is an answer in itself…”
I was surprised by how comfortable I was with Dorian. It wasn’t awkward discussing these intimate things with him at all. I was more embarrassed by what the complete strangers around us would think than Dorian. He really had become like a girlfriend to me over the past few weeks.
“We have not,” I declared.
“Is it not going well?”
“It’s going fine, but he’s wanted to take it slow,” I explained. “I was planning on kicking things up on our next date, but I guess it will have to wait for the one after that.”
“Why?”
“Uh, because we’ll be in Central Park. Can’t get down to business in the middle of the day surrounded by dudes playing lunchtime softball.”
Dorian poked me in the breastbone. “Not with that attitude you can’t!”
An old man in a Giants jacket glared at Dorian in passing. That made me laugh just as hard as the attitude comment.
“And I suppose you’re an aficionado on public sex?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said modestly. “But I’ve been known to dabble in the dark arts.” He waggled his fingers like a sorcerer.
“Well that’s a story I have to hear.”
He passed out a few more fliers while glancing over at me. Finally he decided that I could be trusted with his story.
“It was a dark and stormy night,” he said ominously.
“Oh come on, be serious!”
“I am!” he insisted. “It was pouring out. Worse than normal for the Pacific northwest. My girlfriend Heather was going shopping, and she wanted me to go with her. Someone to give opinions on everything she tried on.”
“Every boyfriend’s dream task.”
“Right. I was about as enthusiastic as you would expect. This was back when Heather still had a job, so she liked to go out and do things. Especially when the weather was bad. So I said yes, and we went to Target. She spent an hour trying on summer dresses while I played on my phone. But I was a good boyfriend and gave her my opinion on which dresses looked best.”
“I thought this was supposed to be an erotic story,” I said.
He stepped closer and grinned. “The changing room attendant left to return the basket of tried-on clothes. When she did, I slipped into Heather’s changing room, locked the door, and hiked up her dress. While she stood against the wall I went down on her. Before the attendant returned her toes were curling and she clutched my head against her while she came.”
I blinked and cleared my throat. “That’s really hot.”
He got a distant look in his eyes. “It was.”
The crowd of pedestrians was beginning to thin, so Dorian and I spread out a little more. I walked forward until I was in front of the Apple store and began handing out fliers, but my heart wasn’t in it.
All I could think about was Dorian’s handsome face pressed between someone’s legs. Which of course turned into my legs in my imagination, his tongue swirling and his lips sucking on my clit. Holy shit it was hot. In my imagination I grabbed hold of the back of his head, using his man-bun like a handle, and grinding against his face so he could shove his tongue deep inside my pussy…
“Hey!” some street performer yelled. He was over in a corner with a hat on the ground for tips, yelling at something beyond me.
I turned away from him and handed out more fliers to the people leaving the Apple store. Dorian was attractive, but I hadn’t pictured myself with him until that moment. He’d told me he just wanted a platonic female friend, and so I hadn’t even considered him for anything else. But now every time I glanced over at him I saw him in a new light. The way his designer t-shirt hugged his slender frame, especially when he extended his arm to hand someone a flier, showing off the corded muscle. The man-bun which I normally hated, but which he made look natural and sexy. And the silly, fun, dramatic personality that made the mundane task of handing out fliers feel a lot more enjoyable.
But he just wants to be friends…
“Bitch, I’m talking to you.”
I turned, and the street performer shoved me in the side, causing me to stumble into two pedestrians and drop my handful of fliers. They scattered to the wind.
The performer’s angry eyes locked onto mine with rage.