I probably didn't tell you that the last

Line of your poem left me on a plane of

Movement somewhere between the best of pop

Culture and the longest break in your favorite pop song

On Saturday, Micah and I are nineteen hours into our forty-eight hours together cooped up in my apartment. Our solitude is interrupted, though, on this nineteenth hour while Micah has decided to take a shower and there is a knock on my front door.

Before waiting for an answer, the door swings open and I'm greeted by Ashe walking into the apartment. I'm practically naked under the covers of my bed, but when she comes in I sit up and keep the blankets covering my chest. "What's going on?" I ask her curiously.

"I could ask you the same thing. It's practically noon and you're still in bed? Are you plummeting?" She asks me, walking over to the bed.

"No, I'm resting," I correct her. "Micah is in the shower."

"Oh, so you're back together. I didn't get the memo," She gives me a hard look but it's fleeting and she is already moving on. "Anyway, I have some news. Maybe not the greatest news for you though, now that I have this new information."

"What is it?"

The bathroom door opens before Ashe can say anything, and then Micah is entering the living room wearing his plaid sweat pants and nothing else. His chest is still a bit glisten-y from his shower and his hair is still wet.

"Ashe, this is Micah," I introduce them. "And Micah, this is my friend, Ashe."

"Hello," She waves at Micah and then turns to me and gives me a subtle thumbs up. "May I speak freely?"

"Please do," I nod and then I get up from the bed to put some clothes on. I'm only wearing a pair of panties right now, so when I get up from the bed and let my boobs out in the open, Micah seems shocked. They've both seen me naked before though, and I'm not bothered by it. I grab Micah's shirt from the floor and slide it on before he has a conniption.

Ashe doesn't notice any of this going on as she begins to speak. "There's a big gathering in New York and I'm talking the Warren Buffets, the Elon Musks of the world. It's going to be huge. And everybody knows that D.C. has the best entertainment, so they're outsourcing. They told Jill to choose her five best girls and we made the cut."

"I got fired," I remind her. Micah sits down beside me on the bed.

"Yeah, I know. Jill said that since it's out of state, she'll let you in on just this one job. That's just how good you are. I told you that she'd be begging to have you back, she's going to miss out on some serious bucks without you around. These guys are billionaires, Eleanor. Who knows what kind of cash they're willing to spend when they start getting their jollys off. It's when a man is at his most vulnerable," She explains to me, obviously very excited about this party. She then glances over at Micah and then back to me and says, "This news was a lot more exciting before I knew that Romeo reclaimed his thrown."

"Romeo never had a thrown," I mumble.

"Not the point. I feel like I already know the answer before I've even gotten to the question," She looks very disappointed. "But, are you in?"

"No," I say with a short laugh and then I rest my head on Micah's shoulder. He hasn't said anything this entire time- I hope that she hasn't ruined his mood too much by bringing up my very recent escorting past. "But you have fun. Thanks for the offer."

"Maybe one of them will fall in love with me," She sighs dreamily. "I could live in New York City. They've got nice stores there, I could shop until I literally drop dead. Anyway, I will go now. You two are clearly having some sort of weird two-person sex party or whatever."

"It's called a relationship," I inform her with a small laugh. "Let me know how the party goes."

"Will do," Ashe promises. "It was nice meeting you, Micah. You better take care of her, she's worth a lot of money."

"Ashe," I hiss at her.

"Sorry," She quickly mutters and then hurries out the door.

When she's gone, I fall back onto the bed.

"She wants you to go to a party?" Micah slowly asks me.

"She wanted me to work a party," I correct him. "I haven't had time to tell her that we got back together and the last time that we talked, she thought that I needed a rebound, so she was only trying to help."

"Would you have gone? If we weren't back together?" He wonders, absently playing with my hair.

"If I knew that we were for sure over, then yeah, I probably would have," I answer him honestly. Maybe it's not the answer that he wanted, but it's the truth. "I could pay for this apartment for an entire year with the money that I'd make in just one night at that party."

"Wow," He exhales. "That's a lot of money."

"I know it is," I wrap my fingers around the nape of his neck and pull him down toward me so that we can kiss. "But I'm out, so it doesn't matter."

"Are you going to miss it?" Micah asks me and then he gets back up off of the bed and goes into the kitchen, maybe to make coffee and avoid eye contact when asking about my escorting.

"I'm going to miss the money," I choose my words carefully. This is obviously a touchy subject, so I don't want to say the wrong thing and freak him out. "And the glamour of it all. Getting dressed up all of the time and everything. And the attention."

"So yes, you are going to miss it," He summarizes and then I hear him laugh a little bit. "It's okay, El, you can be honest."

"Well, it's a tricky question," I insist and then decide to join him in the kitchen. I lean against the counter and watch him start another pot of coffee. "Because I really enjoyed my job until I met you, and then after we started seeing each other, it was different. So, if you're asking if I miss the old way, without you, then sure I do. But after you started coming around, then no, I don't miss that."

"What was so different?" Micah asks me.

"Seriously?" I raise my eyebrows at him.

"I'm fishing for compliments, humor me," He jokes. The coffee is brewing, so he turns toward me and actually looks at me now.

"Alright. Well, I used to love the attention but then I only wanted your attention. I loved the sex, but then I only wanted to have sex with you. I loved the dates, but then I only wanted to date you," I explain to him. "Ashe doesn't understand that, she hasn't met anybody who makes her hate the work."

"Are you two close?" He wonders.

He makes me laugh again because I can tell that when he asks me if we're close, he's actually trying to ask me if I've ever done anything sexual with Ashe. "You can be honest too, Micah. I don't mind answering whatever questions that you have about what I've done, but you've got to ask the questions that you really want to ask."

"It's just that you said that you've been with girls," He reminds me slowly. "And you seemed comfortable with her. So, is she one of those girls?"

"Now, was that so hard?" I say slowly. "And yes, she is one of those girls. We're friends, so we worked together a lot. I know that it's weird for you to think about what I used to do."

"Nope," He says a bit too quickly. "It's not weird."

I offer him a small smile because it's so easy to tell that he's lying. "But you really can ask me anything about what I did before I met you. Questions like how much you would owe me if you were a client, that's off limits. Just ask questions if you want to, but don't be a dick about it."

"I was drunk," He reminds me when I bring up that question that he'd asked me.

"I know, just making it clear," I add. "I love you."

He kisses my lips and then says, "Yeah, I love you too. There was one thing that I said when I was drunk that I actually meant."

He kisses me again and starts gently pushing me into the counter behind me so that our bodies are pressed against each other. "And what would that be?" I ask, even though I'm already pretty sure what he's talking about.

"Two days," Micah's soft lips start brushing against my neck, which is starting to sprout goosebumps. "More than ten orgasms. Starting last night, we've already got three down."

"Three and a half," I correct him in a shaky, high-pitched voice. My body is going weak, so I use the counter to hold me up as Micah starts to pepper more kisses against my neck.

I completely forgot about the coffee that Micah started brewing until the coffee maker beeps to let us know that it's finished brewing. It makes us both jump a bit and it ruins the mood that we were starting to create.

"I don't care about what you used to do," Micah tells me as he pours two cups of coffee. "I mean, I care, but you know what I'm trying to say. It doesn't bother me, I'm just curious. It's a completely different world than what I've lived in. I've always put more time into school than relationships, so I've just grown accustomed to being kind of a prude."

"How can you be a prude? You seem to know exactly what you're doing."

That makes Micah laugh. When both of us have a mug of coffee blended with cream and sugar, we go back to the couch to watch TV while we drink our coffee. "I learned all of my tricks before law school," He explains to me. "Anyway, my point is that I'm curious. Not judgmental."

"Noted."

"In all honesty, Jay did tell me some things," He admits to me slowly as he sips his hot coffee. "About the night that we met."

"Okay. What did he tell you?" I'm not sure what Jay could have told him that I haven't already.

"Well, it was clearly really awkward for him to tell me that he'd hired an escort and I had to promise him ten times that I won't tell anybody. Then, he explained that when he called the agency, he had asked for the best girl they had. He asked what made you their best, and the lady told him that you didn't say no to many things."

"But if he told you the whole story, you'd know that incest is one of the things that I always said no to, which is how we even met," I remind him.

"Yeah, that's true."

"And it's not like I didn't say no to things because I wanted to do all of it," I add and then sip my coffee. It's still pretty hot, so I sit it on the coffee table to cool down. "I charged extra for the stuff that I wasn't into. It was just a way to get more money. But that's not the real reason that I was her best girl, that's just what she tells clients to make it sound more appealing. I was the best because I'm so good at listening, and making people feel like they were being heard."

"You are good at that," He agrees with a nod.

"There's a difference though, between how I listen to you and how I listened to everybody else. I actually really care about you, and you're the only person that I've ever really cared about," I promise him, putting my hand on his arm.

"I know," Micah confirms and then he kisses me softly and briefly. "After reading what you wrote about me, I'm thinking that you're totally obsessed with me."

That makes me laugh. "I definitely am."

He starts to kiss me again but, just as the coffee pot had before, we're interrupted by the ringing of my phone. We decided to take this weekend to hide out in my apartment so that we could just be together and make up for all of the time lost over the week and a half that we've been apart. All of these interruptions are definitely not what I had in mind.

But when I see that it's Casey calling me, I have to answer it. He's been so busy lately that it's a miracle that he's even calling me.

"Hello?" I answer the phone.

"Hey, Ellie, I have some pretty great news," He responds very quickly and he's talking so fast that I can barely understand what he's saying. "I've been working on this project lately to enter into a science fair on campus."

"That's really cool, Case."

"Yeah, I didn't want to tell you until I was officially accepted into the fair because it's kind of selective, but I just got the call," He continues to explain to me. "The exciting part is that if I win this science fair with the best project, I get a full ride scholarship for an entire year."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, I'm being serious," He confirms with a short laugh. "That means that you can save your money and go to school yourself or something."

"Casey, that's really awesome," I say again. Not because of the fact that I could go to school but that he's doing something so great and smart. I'm so glad that he's found something to get excited about. I just know that when I was his age, I never found anything to get me excited. I'm glad that I really did make his life different than what mine was like. "So, when is the fair? I get to come, right?"

"You do get to come. It's in a few months, I've just barely started on my project. I'm working with a team and I think that it's going to be really awesome. I don't want to tell you what it is yet though, I want it to be a surprise," He explains to me. "And the fair is really big, so I probably won't even win. It's just really cool that I even got in."

"Does the winner get to meet the president or something?" I wonder jokingly.

"Actually, yes," Casey confirms. "Meet the president, the scholarship, recognition. The past eight winners of this thing have gone on to Ivy League schools, so it's a big deal. I didn't think that Ivy League was even possible for me because they have to cost a fortune, but I've been talking to some students and teachers here, and they all say that it could be doable. Especially if I win something like this science fair."

"Casey, you're talking really fast," I tell him with an amused laugh. "Slow down and breathe. They have advisors there to help you with college stuff, don't they?"

"Yeah, I've been talking to them lately about this. College is so far away though, I'm just a freshman. I got way off topic here. I just wanted to let you know that I got accepted into the science fair. When I know the exact date, I'll let you know."

"Okay, that sounds good."

Micah can tell that our conversation is wrapping up, so he tugs on the sleeve of my shirt and then whispers, "My parents want to meet him."

"Oh, right," I say out loud. "Hey, Case, what are you doing next weekend? Micah's parents want to meet you."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I really talked you up, I guess. Can you make it home?"

"Yeah, just for the day on Saturday. My team and I are working all Sunday."

"Okay, sounds like a plan. Congratulations. I'm really so proud of you," I tell my brother.

"Thanks, Ellie. I have to go, I'm meeting some guys for lunch. I'll see you later."

I say goodbye to him and then put the phone back down on the coffee table. Now that my coffee has had time to cool off, I pick it back up and start drinking it.

"What's going on with your brother?" Micah wonders.

"He got accepted into this science fair and he's really excited about it," I answer him. "He's such an adorable little nerd."

"That's really cool," The hand that was tugging on the shirt drops down to my bare thigh. I'm still not wearing any pants, and he's starting to take full advantage of that. "Now, I've got eight more to go, so I've got to get back to work."

"Of course," I laugh lightly and lean back on the couch as he follows me, so that he's lying on top of me. I'm immediately reminded that this is the exact position we were in when we had our first real kiss.

Things have definitely changed since then.