At 15:08, I was supposed to be packing my kit for rugby practice.
Instead, I was staring at a photograph of Mia in the graduate library.
She stood between two shelves wearing a white blouse knotted beneath her breasts and a skirt that could have passed for a wide belt. One hand rested against a row of journals. The other held her phone low enough to make the picture interesting.
Mia was twenty-seven, a graduate assistant, and entirely too pleased with the trouble she caused.
We had met three weeks earlier in the back room of a bar off campus, where she had leaned across two of my teammates to inform me that our lineout calls were embarrassingly easy to read. She had been right. She had also been right about the beer I should have ordered, and about the fact that I would ask for her number before she finished her drink. We had been texting ever since: late at night at first, then over lunch, then at moments like this one, when I was supposed to be doing something else.
Where the hell have you been hiding? I typed.
Her answer arrived before I could put down my phone.
Campus. Library. Waiting for somebody interesting to notice me.
Jesus, Mia. You look like you were built for sin.
Three dots danced across my screen.
That’s one hell of a way to say I look good.
I’ve never been known for understatement.
Do you like the skirt?
I haven’t noticed the skirt.
Liar.
Another photograph appeared. Same aisle, different angle. She had turned her back to the camera and lifted the hem just enough to prove there was nothing beneath it.
Coach Odell’s reminder flashed across the top of the screen.
TRAINING. 1600. DON’T BE LATE.
I swiped it away.
What I’m thinking would get me locked up in a hundred and twenty-five countries.
Only 125?
I may have underestimated the international community.
Tell me.
I’d rather show you.
You think you’re a bad man, Kilo?
No. Bad men lie. I’m telling you exactly what I want.
Her typing stopped. The library photograph filled my screen, Mia’s eyes fixed on the camera as if she could already see everything I intended to do to her.
My phone chimed.
What do you want?
I told her.
Her reply took long enough for me to wonder whether I had finally found her limit.
Both?
Eventually.
You think you can make me walk funny?
I think walking will be tomorrow’s problem.
Do you have condoms?
I’m shooting blanks, remember? Disconnected the plumbing at twenty-five.
That solves one problem. I asked about condoms.
I smiled. Smart, filthy, and unwilling to let lust make her stupid.
Yes. Unopened box in the nightstand.
Good answer.
Someone knocked on my apartment door.