There was a yellow sticky note on the bathroom mirror, right at eye level, in Brett’s blocky handwriting.
put it on so you taste good tonight.
Next to the sink sat a tube of cherry chapstick, the cheap red kind from the drugstore, cap already off. He’d left it uncapped on purpose. I’m sure of it. I stood there in my towel with water dripping off my hair, face burning, reading the note again like it might change.
I took it slow. The waxy sweetness dragged across my lower lip, then the top one, and I pressed them together and looked at myself. Pink cheeks. Wet lashes. A boy in a bathroom who’d been told what his mouth was for.
I didn’t text him. I didn’t have to. I did my hair, put on the lace thing he likes, and waited on the couch with my knees together, tasting cherry every time I licked my lips, which was constantly.
He got home at seven. He didn’t say hello. He just walked over, put a thumb under my chin, and kissed me, long and deep, slow, tasting.
“Mm,” he said against my mouth. “Good.”
Then he unzipped, and I smeared cherry all down his shaft, and he groaned like that was the point.
It was the point.
