An uncommitted client

“Is this Andrew the cunnilinguist?” the voice on the line asks.

“Yes, ma’am,” I reply. “What can I do for you?”

“Not for me, for my cousin,” the girl says. “She’s a sophomore, and she’s still a virgin—she’s afraid of sex, I think. I’ve been trying to hook her up with guys, but she won’t let them go anywhere. Connie Wright mentioned you, and I think you’d be perfect to break the ice for her. I got her to agree, though I’ll probably have to hold her to it. It’ll probably take you a while to get her to warm up to you, so I’ll pay double for a two-hour block. Do you have the time free this week?”

“Excuse me a moment.” I pull up the calendar Alyssa keeps for me and quickly look it over. I don’t have much going on this Saturday, and I won’t need to spend a huge amount of time on classwork over the weekend.

I tell her I can do Saturday, and she says, “Excellent. Makayla—that’s her name, Makayla Randolph—lives with her parents in town, and they’re leaving Thursday night for a trip; they’ll be gone about a week. I think they like that she’s still a virgin, and they’d interfere. With them gone, we can meet at the house. Perfect. Can you be there at 9 am?”

I’m not usually up and moving early enough on Saturdays to be anywhere but the dining hall at 9 am, but I’ll live. “Sure. Just tell me where.” She gives me the address; I write it down and add it to Alyssa’s calendar.

*******

The address is a big house in an upper-class neighborhood. As I walk up the steps to the front door, I hear what sounds like a panicked female voice coming from inside the house. I raise my hand to ring the doorbell, and the door is flung open by a young woman facing half away from me. She spins to go through the doorway and nearly runs into me. She stops and freezes, her eyes wide. I give her the gentlest smile I can manage and say, “Hi, I’m Andrew Lane. Are you Makayla?” She nods mutely.

Makayla is average in height and pretty average in build, too; she’s on the slender side through the bust and hips. She’s wearing jogging shorts which show a runner’s legs. She’s a strikingly pale woman, from her freckled complexion to the short, frothy ringlets of her ice-blonde hair to her clear blue eyes. Those eyes are as big as saucers at the moment, but I’m pretty sure they always look large in her sweet round face. Her lips are startlingly red; given that her nails are unpainted, I suspect she isn’t wearing lipstick. “May I come in?” I ask quietly and gently, still carefully unmoving.

Makayla breaks from her stasis, flustered. Eventually, she steps back and lets me in. I close the door softly behind us. “May I sit down with you?” I ask. After an obvious internal struggle, she leads me to a small room at the back of the house with a pair of loveseats. Perfect. She sits on one, doubtless expecting me to take the other, but instead, I sit down next to her. She looks anxious, but I tell her, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want to do. I’d like to get to know you.”

That eases her anxiety a little—enough so that she stays seated, anyway. “What would you like to know?” Makayla asks hesitantly.

As we talk, I find out that she’s an art major with a concentration in painting. I tell her I’d like to see a few of her paintings sometime; she manages to look both gratified and frightened in response. I tell her a bit about myself and my interests. We compare notes on a couple profs, and she tells me a little about a few that I might have later.

Gradually, Makayla relaxes as she discovers I’m not the Big Bad Wolf. When I shift and lay my arm along the back of the loveseat, she freezes up again, somewhat; when I leave it there and make no attempt to move it to her shoulders, she relaxes. I shift my position a few times, always slightly closer to her. I want to get her more accustomed to my nearness without moving enough that she notices.