Page 34 of Our Sadie
Not sure what else to say, I thumb through the stack of books I left here last night. I can’t concentrate enough to do more than scan some of the pages, though. Sadie seems unmoved by my confession, so I’m trying to come up with another route out of this.
Since I haven’t exactly been batting a thousand with her, the last thing I anticipate is her joining me by the sofas. Nor do I expect her to sit next to me. Yet that’s what she does.
Once seated, she gazes around the library as if it’s foreign to her. Her focus travels from the pair of freestanding stacks beside us and over to the wall where a rolling ladder is attached to the shelving.
The nerdy kid inside me who used to spend all his weekends getting lost in historical fiction that described that very thing adores the minute detail.
Natural light filters in from the windows on one side, and a sizable fireplace has been stationed on the wall opposite, making the entire space feel safe and homey. The books probably number in the thousands. I could easily live within these walls and never once get bored.
“Haven’t been in here in forever,” she mutters with an audible exhale, one that makes the hair above her forehead flutter around her face. “Years.”
“Why?” I venture, bracing myself for another storm. It doesn’t materialize, though.
“Time. My coursework required all my attention until last May, and there were...” She glances at the motionless left hand hanging at her side. “Other considerations. So, all my reading was spoken for. There weren’t enough minutes in the day to do it. Certainly not for pleasure.”
“Too bad. Reading for pleasure is how I relax,” I confess, nearly whispering it. “What’s your degree in?”
“Degrees. I hold both a bachelor’s and master’s in data science.” Although she just corrected me, she executes a half-shrug with her right shoulder as if those degrees mean nothing. Then she turns to give me a onceover. “You seem pretty relaxed most of the time.”
What she doesn’t know is that I cultivate that part of my personality, express that part of me more often intentionally. I learned a long time ago that losing my shit doesn’t help when everyone else around me is doing it, too. So, I make a point of maintaining whatever outward composure I can.
Still, I answer her truthfully. “I try.”
I leave my answer hanging there in the void wondering if she’ll push. If she’ll demand to know more.
“What do you like to read?” she asks me instead.
“I’ve dabbled with everything but prefer fiction.”
She turns her back on me, her index finger toying with the cover of the hardback book I laid between us. A military thriller. “Anything... smutty?”
I toss her a smirk. The sci-fi magnificence of Octavia Butler made for some enlightening reading during my teen years, but I no longer consume stories for titillation purposes. That’s due to one simple reason.
“Smut used to be my day job.” And it kinda still is.
“Does that mean no?”
“I’ve read a few stories with explicit scenes in them.” Before she passed, I once picked up one of my grandmom’s paperbacks with a couple from the bygone days on the cover. To say that a certain spicy passage had been a shock to my developing twelve-year-old system would be an understatement.
And to acknowledge that my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother was actively reading that sort of thing rather than cookie recipes? It’s a wonder it didn’t scar me for life.
Leaving the thriller to Sadie, I turn to the end table beside me and procure the next in the pile, a fantasy novel with neon colors and a dragon on the cover.
“What else do you have over there?” she asks me, and I hand the other three to her. Yet those don’t suit Sadie either, apparently, so she gets up and peruses the shelves. She returns with a paperback that has a huge gemstone taking up half the cover.
I don’t want to pry, but I’m dying to know what she chose. So, I pretend to read while clandestinely watching her through my periphery.
Sadie raises her knees and props the book in her lap, a position I realize is necessary since she can’t grip the spine and flip the pages at the same time with only one workable hand. My eyes might be centered on the words in front of me, but in reality, this woman has captured all my bandwidth.
She consumes maybe half a dozen pages before altering the seating arrangement by leaning her back up against my torso. My instinct is to relocate the arm I’ve draped over the back of the sofa to her shoulders, but she hasn’t invited me to. So, I maintain my pretense, breathing in her sweet citrus scent. Eventually, I escape into my own story.
We’re there together, content and occupied. By the time I glance at the time again, two hours have passed. Sadie shifts, and this change in how she’s crouched against my torso allows me for the first time to read over her shoulder.
When I glimpse at the page, it’s like being reintroduced to my grandmother’s old paperbacks.
“‘He had her up on all fours panting like a bitch in heat as his clenched fist plumbed the depths of her back channel?’” I quote out loud. “Damn, woman.”
She snatches her novel out of sight and casts me an aggravated scowl. Yet there’s something about the sheer ferocity of that look that strikes me as funny. Or maybe it’s this entire situation. This woman has hired three sex workers to come here and show her a good time, yet she’s pissed that I’m calling her out on reading some seriously hardcore smut.