Free The Envelope Incident by Emelia Elmwood Page A

“You guys?”
    “I love you to bits, Emma, but you’re just not my type,” Jake said. “But we know a lot of guys—and a few girls, too—who would totally dig you.”
    I looked back and forth from Jake to Derek. “You’re serious.”
    “Totally,” Derek said.
    “No fucking way,” I said.
    Jake pressed the back of his hand to his head in mock horror. “The inner tigress surfaced to utter a foul word, Derek.”
    “No,” I said.
    “You don’t even know what we were going to say,” Jake said.
    “I don’t have to. I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said. “Besides, I don’t need your opinion of me to sink. I feel low enough all on my own right now.”
    Derek leaned forward on his arms and gave me the most serious look I’ve ever seen from him. “Sweetheart, there is nothing that we’d like more than to see you be comfortable with yourself. How could we think less of you for that? Especially a couple of guys like us?”
    Both Derek and Jake were estranged from their families because they were openly gay. Derek’s father, a man who preached “love everyone” from the pulpit, had given Derek the boot when he’d turned eighteen. Jake’s family had tried at first to be understanding, but when his nieces and nephews were born, Jake had grown tired of the way his sisters shielded their children from him. So he’d faded away.
    I’d never really thought about how hard that must have been, leaving family and friends like that. Yet I couldn’t imagine Derek and Jake happy had they not been true to themselves.
    “You think it will take a whole week, huh?”
    “Look,” Jake said, “here’s what I think you should do.” He reached behind him to the kitchen counter, where I kept a pad of paper and pens near my cell-phone charger. “Ask your inner tigress to name the three most daring things she would like to try. Three things that she’s almost too embarrassed to even tell you about. Write them down, one to each piece of paper. Put them in an envelope and slip them under our door. We’ll make it happen for you.”
    I could only sit there and blink. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
    “Think about it,” Derek said. He and Jake kissed my cheeks and headed out the door.
     
    I refused to think about it. I cleaned my apartment. No, I scoured my apartment. I went for a walk. Then I tried jogging. Then I rented a half-dozen movies. Two weeks passed, and I was restless, frustrated, embarrassed.

    Then the dreams started. Very, very sexy dreams. I was tied up and naked and hands roamed my body. I was bent over a chair while being pounded by a giant cock. Mouths sucked on my nipples. Streams of cum shot across my chest.
    For three nights in a row, I woke up hot, wet, sweating, needing. Pushing myself over the edge wasn’t enough. I wanted more.
    At three-thirty on a Wednesday morning, I sat at my kitchen table and picked up the pen and pad of paper with shaking hands.
    Images of my dreams flashed through my mind. Even though I sat alone in my kitchen, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. A good girl didn’t have thoughts like this. A good girl didn’t sit at her kitchen table, thinking about what kinds of crazy sex she secretly dreamed of having with people she didn’t even know.
    What the hell is the matter with me? I thought. I’m just writing down thoughts. I don’t even have to show them to anyone. I can have fantasies. I can write them down.
    I held my pen over the paper, poised to write.
    It was four-fifteen, and I still hadn’t written a single word.
    When did I become such a coward?
    Or is the problem that I couldn’t narrow my list down to three? I giggled. Gee, Jake , I could picture myself saying, I hope you don’t mind that I gave you thirty-five different pieces of paper. I hope you have that many friends .
    Just write something , I said to myself. Anything. The first thing that comes to your mind .
    I took a deep breath and wrote in the most honest tone I could