if you’re too shy (let me know) {h.s.}
warnings: nsfw mentions, swearing, pretty damn sexual i’m not sorry
synopsis: inspired by the lyrics of the 1975 song of the same name. you’re a cam girl and harry can’t get enough.
word count: 3k+
Insanity; doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I’d heard this definition so many times, throughout so many years of my life in so many different forms, and not once did I think twice about it. It was just a word and a definition and it didn’t apply to my life at all.
Not once did I think twice about it.
But tonight, yeah, maybe I will.
---
I met you just like most people meet their lovers nowadays – the internet. But in the way Jason met his wife of three years Heather on Tinder, I met you through a cam site. Yeah, I know, it’s not the most romantic thing in the world, and I probably should’ve saw the red flags right then and there, but God knows that’s never how stories like this go.
My friend, Cody – well, more like just a coworker that I have drinks with now and again – sent me a link to the site months back. On Valentine’s Day. As a joke. And I simply rolled my eyes and dragged it into the trash, reassuring myself I “never needed to stoop that low to get off.”
I guess you can tell where my feelings are on that now because three months later, in an effort to distract myself from the overflowing regret of a miserable three week relationship, I took a dive into my trash folder.
You were the fourth one I clicked on. Pretty eyes, suggestive smile, your name seemed attractive enough. But it was your voice that did it for me. It was hollow, pretentious, but smooth. Every word had me on the edge of my seat and my pulse racing for more. And I swear you knew – knew that I was sweating every time you curled her lips into a smile or moistened them between words. I can’t lie – I’d never spent so much money on anything in my life. I was hooked.
You’d go live every Thursday night at 7 pm. I never missed a show. I was never left unsatisfied. It went on like this for weeks, maybe even a few months, before things really started to take a turn.
---
Cody and I took a business trip down South one week – the first week I missed a show. It was a seven hour trip there and back, and we just happened to leave on a Thursday morning. We arrived at our shitty hotel for the next few days MINUTES after your show would have ended and by God was I frustrated. Every missed turn, every piss stop, every inconvenience kept circling my mind in rage. I blamed Cody and all I wanted was to try and forget about you for the night. Cody suggested what any 25 year old business major would – the cheapest, filthiest bar on the strip and asap.
“Shit’s packed. How are we going to find a seat?” Cody had asked out loud to a sea of empty tables. Three times.
Three times before we entered an even rustier kind of bar. I mean, hey, it was our last resort, and looking back, there was no way in hell I’d expected what was coming for me in there.
After a couple hours huddled at a booth in the back corner, seven beers down, the front door bell chimed for the hundredth time. I glanced up to see a very familiar set of eyes flouncing inside, an even more familiar, sweat-inducing smile set on your mouth.
There was no fucking way. And yet there was, because you were there in front of me. Cam girl, approaching with a sway in your step, clueless to the lanky, curly-headed man boring a hole through you.
“Bro, you good?” Cody waved a hand in front of my face, the other knocking his bottle of beer onto the table loudly. You turned at the noise, pretty eyes softening at the sight of me.
I didn’t even answer him. I stood up, closing the large gap between us for a much smaller one. Cody said something but you’d be crazy to think I heard him with you staring at me like that.
“You need this booth?” I muttered, suddenly realizing just how pathetic and meek my voice sounded. But you didn’t skip a beat, coy smile on your mouth as it opened.
“Oh, god, could I? Didn’t think this place would be so busy. It never is.”
So you frequent this bar. Yet I could never see you here on a casual occasion, or any for that matter. But the more I eyed you, the more it suited you. Anything could’ve suited you.
“All yours,” I breathed, finally finding my deep, raspy voice. Your eyes perked up at the words, but you didn’t move for a few beats.
You went to say something, but caught sight of Cody. Fucking Cody.
“I would invite you to join me, but I wouldn’t want to be rude to your friend,” you murmured breathily, lips centimeters from my face as you passed me to approach the booth. Just like I had, Cody stumbled from it, extending his hand to you.
You wave his hand off as if you’re shy and murmur a, “No need,” before you turn back to me, and the cute, fragile front you’d just put on for Cody vanishes underneath the limelight of you and me. “I’ll see you around.”
---
I honestly cannot stress how fucking quickly I ditched Cody that night. I told him I was feeling under the weather and that I was going to head back to the hotel room, and as soon as he tucked in for the night also, I went straight back to you. Who the hell knows when I’ll get back around this area, and I need more than what you’d given me.
You were surprised that I’d returned. Your eyes didn’t hold the same flirtation, they were cold and only cold when they were on me. I tried playing the game – assuming it was a game – but after an hour of eyeing you from the bar, I realized what you were all about.
I didn’t need to beg you. In fact, I didn’t want to, for your sake. God only knows how many of guys like me have done this to you, desperately waited for your long-awaited, never to be heard call. As much as I wanted that same tension as before, I’d rather have the memory than be labeled as a creep.
I turned to leave, disappointed. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and step out into the cool air. I watch my breath as I trudge back to the car, and God does this feel like shit.
“Must be later, I guess,” your voice calls, and it’s finally it’s not long-awaited or nonexistent. You’re here and jogging in your little heels to catch up with me.
“Must be,” I plainly remark. I don’t understand you, and I’m expecting another short-lived memory I can use as an exaggerated fantasy tonight. “You need a ride or something?”
“Something,” you smile, teeth and all. “Definitely something.”
I go to send yet another signal that I’m annoyed when I catch the way you’re looking at me. Those same flirtatious eyes. And you’re almost giddy, hands in your pockets, cheeks red. You know I’m down for you and you’re just waiting for the green light.
In my confusion and realization, I stutter out a breathy laugh and touch my fingers to my stubble. That’s really all it takes for you to click forward on your little heels, closing the gap until we’re uncomfortably close. “I have to tell you something.”
“Took you long enough,” I repeat my nervous laugh.
You dip into me until your chin molds into the space between my ear and my shoulder. No hands, all lips as they graze the skin under my ear. Even in those heels I’ve got so much height on you. “I’d like you so much more if you took off your clothes right now.”
I tip back just enough to see your expression, and to my surprise your coy smile is gone. The coldness is back yet I’m burning up staring at you. I’m reminded of the way you touch yourself on the live cams and my heart starts racing and racing until I swear you can hear it against the wind and your inner thoughts.
You catch my Adam’s apple bob before I sputter out something pathetic. You snake your sweaty hands onto my face and attach our mouths together.
It’s a blur between the groping and angry kissing from outside to the back of my car, but we find our way. I imagine all of the weeks I spent pining after you and your body as my hands feel every square inch of it. I soak you in like the sand absorbs the tide, every kiss and bite and grasp burned into me. And I don’t know if its habit to moan so loud, so pornographically from your live shows, but you do and it among many other things sends me over the edge.
Even after its over and I’m pining over these moments in my hotel room in the early hours, I see flashes of your fingernails digging into the leather seats of Cody’s SUV and the pressure of hot skin against me. Your half-lidded eyes, your open mouth. I thrive off of it for days after and then it’s almost like it was a fantasy, a sick fantasy I’d created in absence of that goddamn missed week. Because every passing day you’re not here to remind me of the leather seats and the heat and your cold expression, it’s a missed week.
---
After the night, after the business trip, after you slide me your phone number on the second night I see you, I still watch you every Thursday night. I can’t help myself, you’re addicting and I doubt you’d mind – the amount of money you make from just me is quite ridiculous. I doubt I’ll see you for a long time, if ever again, and things start to fall back into the sad, Thursday night and office work week routine and I miss you.
And I thought – since I have a lot of time to think these days – about it; I don’t just miss you because of that night. I miss you for all of the other reasons I can think of. Most of it sexual, but in the midst of it is beauty and arrogance and a livewire strapped to a pole. You bring all of those things into my life, and now I’m desperate for more.
So I call you one night, digressing from wanting you in every way possible to wanting to hear you moan in my ear again. I know it’s strange and pathetic, but you make me nervous and no woman has that effect on me.
You answer your phone with that same breathy voice. I notice the lilt, the sensuality of the way you respond and I know you know something you couldn’t possibly – I’m naked and at your every whim. It’s nearing 9pm and your Thursday night isn’t up.
It’s not much more but it’s also everything, what you give me over the phone. And I guess cams would be more skin, more visuals, but with you I don’t need that. Your tongue speaking words meant for just me is enough to send me over the edge a thousand times, and the way you make me feel I swear I do. Topple, again and again and again.
“I miss you,” you say when it’s over. A phrase I couldn’t fathom leaving your mouth. You’re a one type girl and I’m trying to figure out why this night is so three dimensional.
I want to reciprocate and make sure you know what you’re doing to me, but I say nothing. Because as much as I want to, you’re a one type girl. And a one type girl seeks a many type guy only to destroy him later. And boy am I aware of later.
---
I can feel your grasp on me one particular afternoon. The office is suffocating and you’re the only thing I’ve been able to think about all day. Over the course of five months I’ve figured out the inevitable – I think I love you. And it’s a tough call and an even tougher call five minutes later in the office bathroom when you beg me to come see you.
And I’d do anything for you now, and my tongue won’t hold back for long. I’m so close to spilling how I feel for you and the second I roll into your city I know the floodgates are going to open.
The drive is excruciating and the thought of losing all of those hours of work is even less so the closer I get to you. It’s so depressing, the thought of falling for a cam girl after one physical night and countless virtual ones, most of which you don’t even know about.
“I think I love you,” is on my mind as I fill up my tank halfway through and again when I see the city limits sign. I know you’re giddy when my phone blings and the sun is going down and I can feel my pulse beginning to quicken already.
And then you’re in my car and not Cody’s but it feels all the same. You don’t hesitate to get the ball rolling. I grab your feverish hands and gently nudge you back into the front seat. Your rosy cheeks burn more, cold stare freezing over. “What’s this about?”
“It’s fucking freezing in here.”
“I can warm us up. Just give it a second-“
“Wouldn’t you rather be more comfortable in a bed?”
You stare, same ivy flashes across your face. You’re impatient and stubborn, but I don’t care. My leather seats don’t recline like Cody’s do and the windows aren’t tinted.
The only place you’ll consider going to is a grimey motel on the west side of your city. It sticks out like a sore thumb in consideration of the other tall, modern buildings around it. Why would you take me there? I hardly have time to ask because your timer is running out.
The motel worker stares at us, a match you’d all but expect, especially at a place like this. God, we look like a CEO and his mistress and I can’t help but inch away from you. “Sorry, we’re closed today.”
“But you’re here,” you blanch, rosy cheeks reddening. You’re not shitty to her but you sure are impatient.
“Yeah, I know,” the worker spits. “But there’s an active crime scene in one of the rooms and I was told not to rent out any other rooms for the day.”
“That’s fucking stu-“
“Fine. Fucking fine,” I interrupt you, inching back towards you to wrap my arms around your waist. “Let’s just settle for the car,” I murmur into your ear. And I’m sad because I wanted a bed regardless of the dodgy stains and the noisy springs. I wanted to eye you from the foot of the bed as I mouth the words I’ve been waiting to say for months.
---
“I love you,” echoes into the frosted foyer of your apartment building after another escapade in my tight fit Honda. My hands fidget, eyes shift around your face.
And then you laugh. “You don’t know me.”
---
I don’t know you and yet I think I love you. I take the laughter in stride and watch you go with the coldness I always knew you were capable of. My heart hurts, but I still can’t scratch my itch for you.
So I call you days later. Tell you I lied, that I got carried away and I wanted to see your reaction and genuinely every excuse I could muster. You laugh again, but warmly this time, and assure that you already knew all of these things. And just like that, things go back to normal.
I wish I could tell you that’s how it went. That I simply took the quick release every Thursday night and casual random phone sex, but God did I hate that I lied and I hate that you won’t let me feel the things I feel for you. I let you fuck me over again, once every few months. A trip I never regret until it’s Thursday night and you’re naked and acting like you want every other man but me.
And I say it again. Every trip I say it and you laugh and mention that I’m insane. And I stare at you and and lie again and then shake my head and tell you what I feel is right. And you laugh.
Because it doesn’t matter. It’ll all end up the same anyway.
---
A year in and I hate myself and I think I hate you. Things can’t go back to normal, as if there ever was one. The phone sex is weird now, and I don’t call. I skip Thursday nights every other week and even on the phones I sit in on, I hate every second of my release. It’s not real anymore. It never was.
A year on the dot and I feel my phone vibrate for the thousandth time as I cruise down the highway. My pulse is racing and I’ve still got an hour to go. I’m almost to you, and I swear this time it’ll be different.
“I love you,” I think to myself. I know it’s true, and I know this time she’ll say it back. No woman in their right mind wouldn’t after so many months of what we have.
A year since I clicked on your cam and now seeing you online makes my stomach flip. A year since I felt your cold stare across the bar and your hands first grabbing my face for a first kiss.
A year since I first told myself I wanted you more and more. A blossoming thought of love that I thought over and over as I drove into you.
A year of the same build up and break down. But I swear this time will be different. It has to be.
I never thought much about the definition of insanity.
But, yeah, maybe tonight I will.
