Adrian Lessons by L.A Rose

Nah,” I splutter convincingly.
    Marie giggles. Must change subject quickly. “Mostly I can’t believe it was you who came up with it. You, who normally makes apples jealous of your color when anyone mentions sex.”
    Her jaw juts out determinedly, sort of like He-Man’s. “If I’m going to make this my career, I have to overcome my…religious upbringing. I’ve accepted that. You can’t write my sex scenes forever.”
    I pat her shoulder. “As long as you promise to never compare vaginas to flowers.”
    “I never got why people do that,” she shrugs. “It looks more like a cuttlefish than a flower.”
    I reach for the keyboard and type He reaches out and strokes my slimy cuttlefish, and both of us dissolve into laughter.
    “Anyway, I’m heading out to meet with my study group and I wanted to say goodbye.” She rests her elbows on my shoulders and kisses the top of my head. “I’m glad you’ve got your writing mojo back, Cleo.” She winks. “We’ll have another session with Adrian soon.”
    I try to make an unenthusiastic noise, but all that comes out is a gurgle. Marie waves, grabs her bag, and leaves the apartment.
    And I rip off my pants.
    No, literally. I yank off my pants so fast that I trip over them and end up on a heap on the floor.
    I touch myself, imagining the heat of Adrian’s breath, picturing his sizzling eyes, his chest, his stomach…I rub myself and imagine it’s his hand down there. It doesn’t take long for the orgasm to come, racing up and down my body, but when it leaves me, I just feel empty. Like I was craving a cheeseburger and all I got was two buns with a slice of cardboard in the middle.
    “I hope that cop’s car breaks down in front of a baked beans factory today,” I mutter to the poster of The Notebook .
    Three more minutes and I would have been fine. I wouldn’t have been left with this crazy energy trapped inside me, turning me into Horny Cleo Extraordinaire—
    The door opens.
    I scream and roll under my desk, my traitor pants across the room where I stupidly threw them.
    “Cleo?” Marie calls out. “Where’d you go?”
    “Canada,” I squeak.
    “Why are your pants on the kitchen table?”
    “God works in mysterious ways.”
    “… Anyway, I just wanted to wish you luck on your date with Adrian tonight. Seeya!”
    The door closes again, and I crawl out, pantsless, from under my desk. I’d totally forgotten about my date with Adrian.
    That’s a lie. All I’ve been thinking about is my date with Adrian. And every time I do, my stomach twists with a weird Betty Crocker mixture of anxiety, desire, and embarrassment. Mix it with milk, ten minutes in the oven and you’ll have…
    What will I have after this date with this green-eyed boy who blew into my life out of nowhere, pissed me off, turned me on, and left me totally confused?
    To distract myself, I collect all of Marie’s romance paperbacks and organize them alphabetically. I clean the fridge. I sweep the floor. I do ten jumping jacks. I reread the sex scene I wrote this afternoon and then Lower Cleo demands another rendezvous with Mr. and Mrs. Fingers.
    Eventually, I stand in front of my closet, trying to remember if there’s a Harry Potter spell that summons a perfect outfit. “I don’t know how to speak Latin,” I say.
    The closet ignores me.
    “Give me an outfit that says ‘Last night I had three different sex dreams about you and my clitoris is writing you love letters, but I don’t want to date you because you’re obviously a playboy and you intimidate the heck out of me and I don’t want things to turn out like how they did with Eric.”
    If closets could roll their eyes, this one would.
    I take a deep breath, slick my hair back into a ponytail, and dive in. The end result is an outfit that, even if it does not say everything on my list, at least does not say ‘I am a nun.’
    I probably don’t want my outfit to be talking that much anyway.
    There’s a knock on the door.
    “Goddammit,