Page 24 of Not Dating Material

Come on, you can do better than that.

Me:

It’s an easy go-to! And normally I don’t make it past the first date, so I don’t get a chance to stretch my date muscles.

Seven:

Fine. Just this once, the date’s on me. Pay attention, grasshopper, and you just might learn something.

Me:

Now I’m grasshopper?

Seven:

Hey, those are tiny too.

It’s my turn to heart his comment and close the chat. If we keep it up, I’m only going to push him to spill the date details, and I think I want to go into this surprised. It’s not a real date, so who the fuck cares what he’s actually got planned? As long as he does it because date planning isn’t my thing, and if Seven wants to step up and get this lesson underway, I’m not going to fight him on it.

I chance a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure he’s engrossed in … whatever … and then I open a blank page. I’m not entirely sure what I’m planning to draw when I get started, but the image morphs into an octopus with dicks instead of tentacles. Only seven of them. I draw a Jacob’s ladder piercing on each appendage and then have one of the dicks holding up a sign that says, “thank you for the squid pro quo.”

I’m just debating whether or not to send it or delete the damn thing off my computer when that huff of a laugh hits my ear, and I almost jump out of my chair. I didn’t even hear him cross the room.

Seven leans in for a closer look, one elbow propped on the back of my chair and his other hand resting on my desk.

“You made an octo-seven.”

“I was thinking of calling it a sevipus.”

“It’s me.”

“Just need to give it a million and one tattoos.”

He’s grinning, staring at the screen for a full minute before his gaze drops to mine. “You’re really good.”

“It’s a sevipus with dicks. Calm down. It’s nothing special.”

His kind eyes fill with amusement. “Why?”

“Because I was fucking around.”

“That’s what I do best.” He holds out his arm at the display of random images. “Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it’s not art.”

“That’s true, but …” I wrinkle my nose and try to look at Sevipus as anything but a blob with multiple phalluses. “I don’t think art is usually so pornographic.”

“Tell that to the ancient Greeks.”

He stands, finally giving me distance from him, but when he stretches his arms over his head, his whole torso pulls tight and long and … fuck. There’s far too much body heat in this itty-bitty room.

“Can you send it to me when you’re done?”

“Yeah, I was planning to.”

He clasps me on the shoulder. “Look at our friendship flying ahead. We’re already at the exchanging porn level.”

“Oh, dear god.”

“Wait until I tell everyone that you made porn specifically for me.”

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