Just My Type(56)

Can we skip this date and make out?

No. We can’t do that. It’s our first date.

No it’s not. You’ve been dating for weeks. You should have had sex multiple times by now, you prude loser.

Go fuck yourself.

We’ve been doing that for a year and a half already. It’s getting old.

“All right, here we are,” Baker says, driving into a small parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence, and ending the catfight between the angel and devil on my shoulders.

Looking out the front window as he turns off the engine, I see a small sign on the building in front of us, stating it’s the employee parking lot for the Shedd Aquarium, and I smile. I brought Lincoln here once when he won free passes at school for a reading contest. It was the week the divorce was final, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, and missing home so much I cried every time Lincoln wasn’t in the room. That day at the aquarium, being around so many animals, I smiled and I laughed and I forgot about feeling sorry for myself.

As we get out of the Jeep, it’s not until I close the door that I realize what time it is.

“Wait, the aquarium closes at six,” I say, as Baker grabs my hand and laces his fingers through mine, tugging me toward an old, rusted, aluminum door in the middle of the building.

“I know,” is all he replies, squeezing my hand as we walk side by side up to the door, and Baker pounds his fist three times against it.

While we stand here under the glow of a bright, florescent security light hanging off the building above us, I glance over at Baker and smile again when I see he grabbed the small, pink, drawstring bag holding my bathing suit and towel that I’d tossed down by my feet as soon as I’d gotten in the Jeep. My bag is hanging over his shoulder, along with a black Nike backpack that I’m assuming holds his things.

He grabbed my bag before he grabbed my hand. I officially have hearts in my eyes.

And now he’s pounding on a creepy metal door, where I’m waiting for a tiny window to open, and a man with a cigar will ask for a password, and Baker will reply, “Unicorning,” and then I’ll have a good laugh, because I know unicorning means when you strap a dildo to your head and charge full speed ahead into a pleasure cave of your choosing.

You have no idea the horrors I’ve heard in the things I transcribe.

Baker has chosen an underground sex dungeon as the location of our first official date. My nerves should be shot right now, because this is how every horror movie starts. Sadly, as I hear the door creek open, the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach are because I can’t stop thinking about Baker tying me up in a dark, dusty room, stripping me naked, and putting his mouth on—

“Ready to have your kidneys harvested?” Baker asks me with a joking wag of his eyebrows as the door slowly creeks open by itself.

“Jesus, you’re a tool,” I hear muttered from the other side of the door, which reassures me it didn’t just open on its own.

“Ember, this is Dax Trevino,” Baker introduces.

When the door opens wider for us to enter, I get a good look at Dax as Baker and I walk through the door he holds open. I’m guessing he’s in his late thirties, but he hides it well with one of those short, lumberjack beards, the sides of his head shaved, and his thick, dark brown hair on top long enough to push back away from his face. Once we’re in the door, Dax starts walking in front of us, leading the way down a long, brightly-lit hallway.

“Haven’t seen your pretty face at the gym the last two weeks,” Baker says to Dax’s back as we walk, his hand still clutching mine, when we take a right at the fork in the hallway.

“Been busy,” Dax grunts, as he pushes open a door in the middle of the second hallway, leading us back outside.

We stop a few feet away from the door, and I look around at where we are. A brick wall that easily stands around twenty-feet in the air encloses the small outdoor area off the building, housing a small, rectangular, crystal blue pool built into the ground. Cement takes up the perimeter of the pool and goes all the way from the edges of it to the brick wall.

There are a few small solar lights built into the bricks every so often to give off a soft glow of light around the area, and all along the interior wall of the pool are a small handful of spotlights under the water, lighting up the water.

“Dax started studying for his degree in zoology after he was discharged from the Army, and got a job here at the aquarium at the same time,” Baker explains to me as I continue looking around, seeing a bunch of rubber water toys like balls and little rubber animals littering the cement area around the pool. “For the last few years, he’s been working with the animals you’re about to experience. He was also a police detective back in the day, before all of that, if I remember correctly.”

“Oooh, fancy,” I tell Dax.

“Yeah, I’m pretty amazing, and I’ve done a lot of amazing things in my short life,” Dax says in a gruff, bored voice. “If you guys want to go ahead and get your suits on, the bathrooms are the two white doors over there.” He points to two white doors next to a black one.

“I’ll just go get them ready.”

With that, Dax turns and walks away, disappearing through the black door.

“You’re not going to tell me what he’s getting ready for us, are you?” I ask Baker as we walk toward the bathrooms.