matching the panties I had on beneath. Hot pink against my tanned
skin—a delicious contrast.
Behind my shut lids, I’d imagined Roger undoing the zipper
with his teeth, slowly revealing my skin inch by inch, his scruffy five o’clock shadow scraping dangerously against my soft flesh.
Then he spread open the suit and kissed my breasts, licked my
nipples until they stood up hard as gumdrops.
I didn’t stop to worry why the Roger in my fantasy looked so
much like Jeremiah Cooper, the handsome actor-slash-bartender
who worked at 5th Avenue, my favorite Santa Monica bar. At
least, I didn’t worry at first. I simply accepted the fact that tall, green-eyed Jeremiah was serving me a round of pleasure the
same careful way he served me and my best friend drinks every
Friday night. His long wheat-blond hair felt silk-soft against
my thighs. His strong fingers danced over my clit in a way that brought an instant moan to my lips.
I t’s N ot the W eather
95
God, he was good.
Jeremiah had on snow gear of his own, a pair of those sexy
oatmeal-colored long johns that look delicious on trim, hard
bodies, and mirrored wraparound shades to show me my own
reflection. Watching my lips part, my eyes widen, turned me on in my daydream almost as much as the imaginary feel of Jeremiah’s body against mine. But as the tempo speeded up, my
own fingers working through my satiny bikini panties, I tried to push his face away, replacing Jeremiah’s long blond mane with
Roger’s short brown curls, transforming Jeremiah’s light green
eyes into Roger’s dark blue ones, exchanging Jeremiah’s strong
body with . . .
No, it wouldn’t hurt to keep Jeremiah’s body for the little
jill-off session, would it? That didn’t make me too superficial, did it?
In my dreamworld, I imagined Roger fucking me hard, driv-
ing into me, the way he had when we’d first gotten together.
Our first night had been the fabric of dreams, with Roger driv-
ing me in his rented convertible up to the Hills. We had made
love outdoors, staring down at the flickering lights of Hol-
lywood. I hadn’t been introduced his distaste for the weather
then, had admired his writing, devoured his uncanny comedic
beats. He’d looked East Coast intellectual, which has always
been exotic to me, since I’d grown up surrounded by surfer boy
sloths. But now, he’d taken that look to the extreme—becom-
ing pale-skinned and hollow-eyed, boycotting the sunlight as
if he might melt.
“Sitcom writers don’t have to be pretty,” he liked to say, ap-
parently striving to prove his point.
96
A lison T yler
“Neither do weather girls,” I always shot back, then laughed
because we both knew that wasn’t true.
My cell phone rang—“Cold as Ice.” I’d programmed the song to
make Roger happy, to show him we were in the season together.
Wistfully, I slowed to a gentle roll, then pulled the tiny device from the strap on my skate and looked at the number, hoping
Roger had shaken off his storm clouds, that he was wooing me
back for an afternoon romp in the middle of the living room.
But it was my best friend, Carolyn.
“Roger still in a funk?” she asked.
I zigzagged to avoid some tourists—clearly out-of-towners
because of the unattractive zinc oxide each one sported. “It’s
sweet that he’s so emotional, right?”
“If I hear those carols again when I come over—‘Let It Snow.’
‘White Christmas.’ ‘Winter Wonderland,’ someone’s going to
get a jingle bell shoved up his—”
“I’ve dated worse,” I reminded her, thinking about my re-
cent string of losers: the high-rolling gambler who’d made a bet with himself that he could fuck my last roommate. He’d won
the bet and lost me. Or the yoga instructor who could bend
himself into all sorts of erotic difficult-to-master shapes, but didn’t want to screw me because it would mess with his chi . “He’s simply one of those people who’s affected by the
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