Twerk It, Grady

Grady’s lower lip dropped ever so slightly when he saw me. But like a true professional, he kept dancing. Everyone was cheering him on (everyone being all the girls. The guys had gone into the kitchen to bitch and drink beer like manly men.)

“You guys!” Kate covered her face with her hands, half horrified, half loving it as Grady ripped his pants off and stuck his big package in her face. And Oh My God, he was wearing a thong. What’s that line from Legally Blonde? A Delta Nu would never sleep with a man in a thong? As much as I wanted to legally bone Grady, this may be a dealbreaker.

I politely excused myself from the mayhem and found Richard in the kitchen.

“Enough front row action?” he asked.

“I’ve gotten the live show,” I said.

Richard cocked his head at me and I explained.

“Josie!” Richard covered his mouth with his hand and laughed so hard some of his friends asked what was going on. I shushed him furiously. He was grossly over reacting, and I wasn’t sure why.

“I can’t believe you’d hook up with a stripper and not me,” Richard said. Ah, so that was it. He smiled, his way of letting me know he was kidding, but he wasn’t fooling me. Richard was not used to girls saying no to him, and maybe things weren’t as okay between us as I thought they were.

“He’s an actor, not a stripper,” I said, defensively.

Richard gestured to the living room. Grady was now standing on the couch, straddling some girl and dangling his family jewels over her face. Damnit, Grady! You had to move into the teabagging portion of your performance at that exact moment, didn’t you? “What do you call that?”

“He wears a few hats, okay?” This conversation was annoying me. Richard hooks up with a different girl every night we’re here, and he’s judging moi? I was also detecting some snobbery. I wanted to point out that we work for an imprint that publishes celebrity and celebwannabe fluff, and we weren’t so highbrow ourselves. But I noticed that Grady’s performance was ending, and I wanted to speak to him before he left.

Grady was pulling his clothes on when I approached him.

“Um, hi,” I said.

“Hi, yourself,” he said, smiling. He started closing the buttons on his uniform. With each snap, more of his perfect abdomen disappeared. “Busted, I guess.”

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“Only a year.” He smoothed his hair away from his face. “These, um, services, I guess you could say, had a resurgence after Magic Mike came out. Some of my actor friends were picking up odd jobs here and there.” He shrugged. “Pays well.” He looked around the room, at all the girls talking amongst each other, trying to pretend like they weren’t staring at him when they were. “And it’s fun.” Grady dropped to his knees and began lacing up his shoes.

“It doesn’t make you feel like man meat?” I asked.

Grady stood. He cupped his hands around my face and leaned in close. “Maybe I like feeling like man meat.” He gave me a peck on the tip of my nose before plopping his hat on his head. “I’ll call you.” Then, waving to the room, he said, “Always obey the law, ladies.” He exited the house to the sound of whoops and cheers.

I texted Peter on my way back to the city on Sunday. By 7pm, he was ringing my buzzer (do with that what you will). I thank Jesus my Lord and Savior for cute boys every day of the week, but I’m especially grateful for them on Sundays. There’s just something about having a guy come over on the last lazy day of the weekend, having a slowie (the quickie’s more lethargic cousin), ordering pizza, and lounging about in your sweats that makes me so very, very happy.

I was on the phone with my mom when I let Peter in. She was in a tizzy because my aunt wanted to do Thanksgiving at her house this year, even though it wasn’t her turn because she hosted last year and, "Her turkey was dry!” I mouthed hi and put my finger to my lips. Peter kissed me on the cheek, closed the door behind him, and wrapped his arms around my waist. He slipped one hand underneath the waistband of my boxer shorts and I shook my head at him. “It’s my mom,” I whispered.

“Your aunt is just being so unreasonable,” My mom was saying.

“I know, mom,” I said. “I’m so”—my voice caught in my throat as Peter pushed me up against the wall and dropped to his knees in front of me.

“Sweetie?” my mom asked.

Peter pushed my shorts aside and pressed his tongue between my legs.

“I’m here.” It came out strangled. “Mom,” I swallowed. Focus, Josie! “Mom, I have to call you back!”

I didn’t even say goodbye. Just hit end and leaned against the wall, trying to steady myself as Peter circled his tongue again and again.

Forty-five rejuvenating minutes later, Peter and I were on the couch, watching TV and refueling with pepperoni pizza.

“So now will you tell me about William?” I asked.

“You just can’t let this go, can you?”

“Of course I can’t.”

Peter sighed. “Some if this is just speculation on my part, okay?”

“Just get to the good stuff!” I practically shouted.

This was Peter’s theory: Elizabeth wanted a baby. He did too, but then he realized, just not with her (I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY). They split, the next he hears she’s with William Bradford, and she’s pregnant. The scandal is that William had been with another woman for eight years, had decided to have a baby with her, then left her six months pregnant to be with Elizabeth. This was some Tom Brady/Bridget Moynahan/Gisele shit. Look it up.

“So William is going to have two children by two different women who are roughly the same age?” I gasped.

“Well,” Peter said. “Not exactly.” Peter went on to explain that he never bought that William was the father, and he thinks William realized that too, especially after that item in the Post came out and it was clear that William wasn’t the only sperm donor in the pool.

“I think Elizabeth wanted you to work for William, knowing there was a good chance he would hit on you and something would happen between the two of you. She would then have a reason to leave him, and I’m sure she would have loved to share this information with me, so that I would think poorly of you.” Peter cleared his throat. “Which I wouldn’t have, obviously.”

William has a tire around his middle and hasn't had hair since '97. Thanks for thinking so highly of me, Elizabetch. “But why would Elizabeth go to the trouble of starting something with William if she didn’t ever want to be with him?" I asked.

“Because she’s a mess,” Peter said. “She wanted to be pregnant, she made that happen, somehow. Then she picked the guy who could offer her the most stability to be the ‘father’ and I guess that guy was William. But as I’ve learned with Elizabeth, as soon as she gets what she wants,” he held up his hands, “She doesn’t want it anymore.”

I swallowed. “Peter, have you ever stopped to think that”—

“I could be the father?” Peter said, filling in my sentence. I restrained myself from making a Maury joke. He shook his head. “It’s not possible. Elizabeth is due in September, meaning she got pregnant some time in January. The last time we,” he paused. Cleared his throat. “Saw each other was November last year.”

“You mean the last time you slept together,” I said. I know I had no reason to be bitter. Peter and I broke up in October. But I was. Peter still maintained that he hadn’t been seeing Elizabeth when we were together, and I still wasn’t sure if I believed him. I didn't feel like bringing it up right then, but it was something I was going to have to do eventually if we kept this up.

“Yes, Josie. The last time we slept together.” He shook his head. “You love to twist that knife.”

I ignored that. “Peter, when I saw Elizabeth at the end of March she looked more than three months pregnant to me.”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. She’s skinny, she showed early I guess. She’s cunning, but she's not above the law of nature. She can't hold the baby in for an extra month just to prove it’s not mine.”

“How do you know she hasn’t had the baby?”

Peter threw up his hands. “Because I know. Facebook, mutual friends. I just know.” He put his arm around me. “Can we talk about something else now?”

“Like what?”

“Like you spending Labor Day weekend with me in Nantucket?”

Whoa. That was kind of a big deal. Sure, I didn’t have any plans, and Nantucket is amazing and Peter’s house is the stuff Town & Country readers wet dream of, but spending an entire weekend with Peter, when we’d just started seeing each other again….was it too much? And what about Grady, my piece of man meat who said he would call me? Old Josie would have accepted Peter’s invitation without hesitating a beat. But New Josie was wiser(ish), and she was going to have to think about this one.

Stride of Pride

I woke up to Peter typing away on his laptop, sitting at his little desk catty corner to the foot of the bed. Some time in the middle of the night I must have kicked off the covers, because I was lying there stark naked, legs spread, providing Peter with a very unladylike view of my body. At least I’d recently gotten a wax?

My fingers found the duvet and I pulled it up to my chest, concealing my secret garden. “What time is it?” I croaked. And sadly, not in a throaty sexpot kind of way.

“8,” Peter said.

I had to be at work by 9, and I needed at least twenty minutes to get there from Peter’s apartment. There was no way I had enough time to get to my apartment, shower and change, and make it to my desk by 9. “Shit!” I said. “I thought you got up at like 6.”

“I normally do.” Peter shut his laptop and looked at me. “But you wore me out. Decided to work from home this morning.”

“Peter, I have to be at work in an hour!”

“That’s plenty of time.”

“Yeah, if I had work clothes here. I have a cocktail dress and strappy sandals. Like, ‘Good morning, I’m doing the walk of shame!’”  I sat up, holding the duvet to my chin. “My boss is watching me like a hawk right now so that’s just great.”

That got Peter's attention. “Why?” he asked.

I said that forgetting that Peter knew my boss, or at least knew of him. I told him about how I’d been a slacker in the assistant department lately. When I finished, he snorted. “William Bradford is such a joke, Josie. Don’t even worry about him.”

“Um, he’s my boss. So even though you may not like him because of his whole deal with Elizabeth, I do have to worry about him.”

“The things I could tell you about that guy,” Peter said, shaking his head.

“Like what?”

“I don’t even have enough time to get into them right now.” Peter pushed his chair away from his desk. He walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’ll tell you another time.”

“You can’t do that to me,” I groaned. “Tell me now!”

Peter traced the tip of his finger over my collarbone and my breath caught in my throat. “I will,” he said, quietly. He pushed the duvet cover down and slipped underneath it, covering his body with mine. He was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and I felt how hard he was against my thigh. “But only if you’re good.” He kissed me, his hands sliding lower onto my hips. 

“Peter, I have to get ready,” I whispered, even though I did not want him to stop.

Peter slipped his hands underneath me, grabbing my ass and scooping me up so that he was standing and my legs wrapped around his waist. He carried me into the bathroom and put me down in front of the sink. He gestured to a tooth brush, still in its packaging, on the counter. “Multitask.”

He turned me around so that my elbows were on the counter and he was standing behind me. It was the weirdest, kinkiest thing I’ve ever done, but Peter refused to enter me until I started brushing my teeth. He reached around and stroked me using just the pads of his fingers, soft and slow at first, then faster but still just as soft. I thought my knees would give out but he held my hips high, pressing his palm into the small of my back and telling me to arch. I almost choked on the toothbrush when I came. 

After that, I really had to hustle. I threw my hair in a high bun, showered off, and fixed my make up using what little essentials I had in my tiny clutch. At the last minute, I got the idea to borrow one of Peter’s white button downs. I rolled up the sleeves and tied it in a knot at my waist. On Kate Moss, the men’s shirt/cocktail dress combo would have looked effortlessly cool. I repeat: On Kate Moss.

I made it to work on time, and Richard spit out his coffee when I walked by his cube.

"Josie, time to stop reading that Man Repeller fashion blog immediately."

Whatever. Better he think this was just a botched attempt to make a fashion statement. Kate was not so easily fooled.

"Stride of pride?" she mouthed to me. Off my nod, she gave me a thumbs up.

I didn’t have much contact with Megan and William in the morning, so at lunch, I ran out and bought a shirtdress on sale at Banana Republic. The last thing I needed was another sensible work garment—I have quite the collection because I'd rather buy something new than have to deal with picking my stuff up from the dry cleaners. Yes, my apathy is that great. 

I spent the rest of the week literally chained to my desk until 9 or 10 every night. Peter wanted me to bag the Hamptons house this weekend and stay with him in the city (he had an engagement party to attend on Saturday night, so he was stuck for the weekend). But not only was it our last weekend in the share house, we were throwing a huge party, this time to celebrate Kate’s 24th birthday. Taylor even emailed me to tell me she had hired a stripper for the big event.

“He’ll be dressed as a cop but don't be fooled,” Taylor wrote. “He’ll say he’s following up on a noise complaint, ask for Kate, and give her the ‘frisking’ of her life. HA. I call second lap dance!” 

The fact that Taylor had volunteered for a lap dance was proof that she's never actually been to a male strip club and has instead watched Magic Mike too many times. I have been to The Cave in Philly, people! None of those guys look like the Magic Mike cast. Well, except for Tarzan, and I would cry for my mommy if a guy who looked like Tarzan tried to frisk me.

I think Peter was actually kind of surprised I didn’t cancel my plans for him. I was obviously tempted because the sex was getting good and freaky, but I needed to take this slow. I couldn’t go rearranging my life after just one two orgasms! He tried to bribe me to stay by telling me he'd give up the dirt he had on William, but I'm pretty sure I already know what it is—he's a scumbag, hits on his assistants, yada yada yada. I could wait until next week to hear it.

On Saturday night, our ramshackle little Hamptons house was packed for the last time that summer. I was looking around at all the new friends I’d made, feeling all beer-teary and sentimental, when 'Officer O-Face' charged through the door. He was wearing dark glasses and a hat, and he was enormous. His shoulders looked like two muscle-y ham hocks. 

“Kate Nelson, identify yourself!” he demanded. Someone turned the music off and the room went silent with fear. It was like everyone was having flashbacks to that obligatory high school party that had gotten busted and gotten them grounded. 

“Ummm,” Kate said in a timid voice from the center of the room. “Present?” 

I looked at Taylor and we covered our mouths with our hands, trying to silence our laughter. "Present?" 

'Officer O-Face' told Kate to take a seat. A circle formed around Kate in a chair. I stood on my tippy toes, but Richard was in front of me, and all I could see was Officer O-Face’s back, standing over Kate in her chair. He called for someone to turn the music up, and then he ripped open his shirt. The crowd cheered, and Richard and his friends groaned.

I put my hand on Richard’s shoulder and pushed him aside. “Move!” 

“Easy, tiger.” Richard stepped aside. When he did, I saw the stripper’s bare back, the blonde hair that tumbled almost to his shoulders when he tossed his hat aside. I knew who it was even before he turned around to stick his sexy ass in Kate’s face. But I didn’t have enough time to get out of his eye line before that happened, and suddenly, I was face to face with Grady.     

Ghosts of Dating Past, Part II

       It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. But Peter explained that he was my highest bidder, not Justin. That “I miss you, J?” The “J” was for Josie, not Justin’s way of signing off. Peter had assumed I could see the audience from the stage, and that I’d known he was the one who had forked over $5,500 for a good meal and the pleasure of my company.

“Well, thanks for the bid,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d get any.”

Peter laughed. “You should have seen the other guy trying to bid on you. I couldn’t let that happen to you.”

I suddenly remembered Ashley and asked Peter if I could use his phone to text her. She texted back that she had headed backstage to try and find me, and that she was making her way out to the front now.

“So,” Peter said, a glimmer in his eye. Man, I missed that. “‘Star’ of a show? What’s that about?”

“It’s nowhere near as impressive as it sounds,” I said. I told him about my new job, which he kind of already knew about since Elizabeth had been the one to hook me up, and how I ended up on Social Media. When I finished, there was an expression on Peter’s face I’d never seen before, and I don’t even know if I can pin down exactly what it was. It was sad almost, nostalgic.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Peter looked down at his feet, examined a scuff on his shiny shoes. Peter’s shoes had always intimidated me—they were pointy and severe, the kind important, accomplished men wore. They reminded me of the divide that would always exist between us—growing up, I “summered” in the next door neighbor’s pool, while Peter had summered at his family’s Nantucket estate. I know that kind of stuff shouldn’t matter, but it did when we were together. I always felt like his friends and family, his ex-wife and former in-laws, looked at me like I was just his twenty-something slam piece. A fling he had to get out of his system before he settled down with a woman who played squash and knew to pass the salt and pepper shakers together. 

“Hey!” Ashley was walking towards us. She handed me my clutch and gave Peter a hug. “This guy,” she said, pointing to him. “Saved your ass.”

“So I hear,” I said.

“Jos, you don’t understand. The guy who wanted a date with you? I could see his nose hairs from across the room.” 

“Gross,” I laughed, looking at Peter. He still had that same sad expression, and I had to look away. 

Ashley picked up on the look. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I think I’m going to take off.”

“I’ll get you a cab,” Peter volunteered. 

After we’d put Ashley in a cab (and after she’d mouthed to me behind his back, “Get it! Get it!”), Peter asked if I wanted to get a drink somewhere.

“That depends,” I said. 

“On?”

“On your girlfriend. If you have one.”

“I broke up with her a week ago,” he said. “I would have called you, but in your email you made it sound like you didn’t want me to.”

I was floored. I couldn’t believe Peter had stayed away because of my email. Even though I’d said I didn’t want him to break up with his girlfriend for me, I’d also added that I’d never stopped thinking about him, and that I hoped there was a time for us in the future. Peter is the type of guy who goes for what he wants, and I wouldn’t think that would have been enough to keep him away.

We decided to walk west towards a wine bar Peter liked. 

“Promise it’s not far,” I said, pointing to my monster heels.

“Just a few blocks,” he said.

But as we were crossing the street, my heel got stuck in a grate on the sidewalk. I flew forward, skidded on the ground, and took off a chunk of skin on my knee. And obviously I started howling like a five year old. 

“Shit,” Peter said when he saw my knee. It was pretty grisly looking. “You need to  wash this now before you get an infection.” 

Peter helped me to my feet, and I leaned against him while he hailed us a cab. I didn’t stop him when he gave the driver his address. It’s not like I didn’t have band-aids and neosporin at my place. 

It had been a long time since I’d been in Peter’s building, but even so, his doorman remembered me. I was walking like an invalid, Peter supporting most of my weight, but I forced a smile onto my face and waved at him.

“Everything okay?” he asked. 

“Just a little spill, Louis,” Peter said.

Peter helped me onto a stool in his kitchen and disappeared into the bathroom to get his supplies. He came out with a soapy wash cloth. 

“This may sting a little,” he said. He knelt in front of me and pressed it against my knee, and I sucked my breath in sharply.

Peter pulled the wash cloth away and examined my knee. “There’s gravel in there,” he said.

I felt like I was going to throw up. My parents always tease me about being a wimp, and I always get all defensive about it, but the truth is, I am a big fat baby when it comes to stuff like this. I don’t even understand how women have babies. The stretching, the tearing. I can’t. “Do you think I need to go to the hospital?” 

“I think if we can get it out you don’t need to.” He looked up at me. “Do you want to do it or do you want me?”

I covered my eyes with my hands. “You. I can’t even look at it.”

Peter used the wash cloth to brush away the gravel while I went to my happy place (pizza, pizza, dark chocolate almond butter with vanilla ice cream, pizza). When he was finished, he squirted some neosporin on my knee and covered the whole mess with a few band aids. 

“You’re good as new.” I removed my hands from my eyes and looked down at Peter on his knees on the floor. His hand was warm on my calf.

“You always had the softest skin,” he said. 

It was too much, I couldn’t take how intimate the whole scene was. So I cracked a joke as per usual. “Are you going to make a coat out of me now?” 

Peter didn’t laugh. Instead, he moved his hand further up my leg, to my inner thigh. I took a shaky breath.

Peter paused at the hemline of my Tibi dress. “If you want me to stop, say it now,” he said, quietly.

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. It wasn’t a yes, it wasn’t a no, and Peter stood, rising over me and slipping his hand behind my neck. I felt his heart beating fast as he came closer still and kissed me.

He pushed my legs apart so he could step in between them, and then he was picking me up, his hands in my hair and around my waist, carrying me to the bedroom. He pulled down the zipper on the back of my dress before he put me down on the bed. I shimmied out of it while he unbuttoned his shirt and stepped out of his tuxedo pants. I felt how hard he was when he got on top of me. When he slipped inside of me, he groaned. I felt his hand between my legs and as he touched me, the way he knew I liked, the way no one else really had before him, he said, “No one knows you like this. Tell me.” 

He pulled the back of my hair so that my chin came up, and he buried his face in my neck, kissing my ear and my collarbone. “Say it,” he whispered into my ear.

“No one knows me like this,” I repeated back. The words seem to invigorate him, and he thrust inside me hard, his fingers moving in a way that made me feel like there was heat in every limb of my body.

“I miss you,” he said, softly, in my ear again. He pressed his thumb into me and I gasped. 

“I miss you,” I said, and I meant it. “I miss you so much.” 

Peter pulled back so that he was sitting up right, looking down at the place where we connected. He held my hips and pulled me into him closer, but I wanted his hand on me again and he knew it. He wet his fingertips on his lips and pressed them into me again. 

“I want to watch you come,” he said. He knew when it happened, by the way my body shuddered. He knelt over me again and kissed me, and I felt his body release too. 

We were so physically spent, we didn’t even talk after that. I rolled onto my side, and Peter pushed the covers down. He made sure we were both under the sheets before he came behind me and held me to him. 

“Just wake me up when you do,” I murmured, before I drifted off. Peter gets up crazy early for work, and if I got up then, I’d have more than enough time to get home and shower and get to work on the early side, which I needed to do after my conversation with William.

I went into an orgasm coma in no time at all. As I drifted off, I thought, I could get used to this...

Author Note: Thank you for joining me in my new digital digs! I will continue to post every Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm. Follow me on my personal twitter @JessMKnoll where I will tweet out the links to new posts. I hope you continue to comment and tell me when Josie is acting a fool. XX

Welcome to Josie's New Home!

While Josie's story will no longer be told on Cosmopolitan.com's Bedroom Blog, you can follow her new adventures right here. I will be updating as much as possible. I'll even try to keep to the same Tuesday/Thursday 2 p.m. schedule.

xoxo