Trick or Trini

He grinned and got us moving again.

"Anyway, obviously I hit the bullseye, based on your costume, right?"

"Sort of," he said. "We're from different universes, you know."

For a second my heart tripped over itself. Then I realized his expression was way too casual to mean it how I'd taken it. "Oh, our costumes — right, I knew that."

He laughed.

"No, really, I did!"

"I believe you. It's just really cute that you were worried about it. I expected me to be the worried one tonight, not you."

"Well, I mostly just did it to be cute. Worried isn't my usual gig, but cute is in my repertoire." I watched him drive some more, my pulse still not quite calmed down. I decided that meant I ought to risk a second or two being serious. "Actually ... if you want the truth, mixing up my sci-fi movies doesn't worry me. I thought you meant you and me. Being from different universes."

"Dang," he said, "I wish I was on my toes enough to bust out the metaphors like that. Of course we're from different universes. But you don't think that's a bad thing, do you? I mean, wearing that costume, you're supposed to be all about exploring universes, right?"

My gooey-candy insides came back. "Yeah, don't you know it. And what about you?"

"Oh, I've been working a lot on my exploring the last few months, for sure." He glanced over just long enough to make eye contact, hooked his thumb toward the stuff in the back seat, and smirked. "But tonight, I'm a scoundrel."

"Ooh, that's how I like them! So scoundrelize me. What's the bad-boy spaceman version of Wyn got planned for tonight, once the candy's all passed out?"

"Uh ... well, I'm kinda making this up as I go along. So whatever mood hits me, I guess." We floated through traffic at the silent pull of his Tesla's electric motor. The other cars vanished for me, but I saw Wyn checking his rearview mirror and keeping an eye on our surroundings. He shook his head a nudge. "Maybe I shouldn't have gotten your hopes up saying 'scoundrel.' The parts I'm sure about aren't all that scoundrel-ish, really."

That made me smile and squeeze his shoulder. "Take your time finding your naughty side. What things are you sure about?"

"Shit, I didn't think you'd put me on the spot. Okay, well, I'm sure I'm going to thank you, for one thing. I guess that's a good one to lead off with: thank you. Really."

"You're welcome," I said, turning a finger in my hair and smiling at him. "For what?"

"Tons of stuff." Traffic hit a crawl and let him look over at me again, a little longer this time. "Making me realize somebody awesome could want me to be happy, even if it was just for one night. Showing me a complete stranger had it in them to be kinder than my so-called friends that I'd known for years. Letting me pretend I was some kind of stud when I had no idea what I was doing."

"Oh, doll-boy, I am going to stop you right there. I may have been screwing you on Jack and Pete's dime, but that doesn't mean I faked even a second of how much I enjoyed the things you did to me."

Seeing his Adam's apply bob with a swallow, I glanced down and sure enough spotted an appealing bulge get started in his pants. Wyn, though, ignored the action going on in his crotch and kept talking.

"And that's exactly the kind of thing I mean," he said. "It's like you won't let me be the loser I spent most of my life thinking I was. You made me feel like I was better than I ever thought, and then to top it off, you gave me your card with your number on the back and made me realize I didn't have to stop feeling that way. And I haven't. Not in the whole seven months since then."

The certainty and sureness in his voice wowed me. I felt pretty damn good about myself right then. But I did also wonder, in a fascinated kind of way, So why on Earth didn't you call until now?

"Anyway," he went on, "that's some of the stuff I have to thank you for. Not to mention, you know, the mind-blowing sex part. I kind of assumed it was mostly so good because it was my first time. But I've, uh, had a fair amount of sex since then —"

"Oh! You are a scoundrel, then, aren't you!" A mysterious, sweet little scoundrel with something up his sleeve. I better bite my tongue and let him take his time getting to whatever it is.

His face colored. "Not like, use-'em-and-lose-'em sex or anything. Mostly second- and third-date sex. Some of it was good, but nothing compared even a tiny bit to you."

All glow-y, I just had to reach over and pinch his cheek. "Careful, mister scoundrel," I said as I did it and then sat back. "That kind of talk will go straight to my head."

"It should," he said, rubbing the cheek. "But I'm pretty sure it doesn't really — I'm pretty sure you already know you're fucking awesome in bed."

"Okay," I smirked. "Guilty as charged. Anything else you're thanking me for?"

"That's more or less it," he said. "And it's honestly all one thing: you flipped some kind of switch in me. It's not like I'm a different person or anything, but I'm on now. I get it. Things make sense."

"I'm betting that's a lot more you and whatever you've been doing since April than me taking it up the ass one time on your birthday." Two can play at this let-me-tell-you-how-great-you-are game. "And you do realize this puts a shitload of pressure on me next time we go to bed. Because I damn sure must have out-done myself last time."

"Well, I mean, you did, but does it help any that I think you'd have flipped that switch even if the sex part had just been okay? All you have to do if we, uh, go to bed again —"

"When we go to bed again."

"Okay, so, just to keep from having an argument at the very start of our first date ... when we go to bed again, all you've got to do is just be you. Smile the way you smile. Look at me the way you looked at me that night. Say the kind of things you say, like you're saying right now."

I tried to think of some new smart-ass reply. But all I came up with was, "Sure, honey. I can do that."

* * *

We didn't get to his aunt's house in time for me to blow him. Dammit.

After a stop-and-go drive spent chatting on which of those movies we each liked most and who our favorite characters were and then probably too much of me drooling on about the virtues of Karl Urban, the sun had sunk almost all the way to the horizon. We pulled into a subdivision where the neighborhood streets had that washed-out look of dusk to them, in time to see a couple of early-starter kids already dotting the sidewalks in their costumes, loot-bags hanging empty from their tight little fists.

I sighed. "Guess we're gonna have to get right to the candy handing-out."

Wyn laughed. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you're hornier to get it on than I was that night at Pete's. Here, hang for a second while I get the garage door."

We wheeled into the driveway of a swank-looking, upper-middle-class-ish place — very domestic but also professionally landscaped like its neighbors to either side. Wyn hopped out to work a keypad to one side of the door, then got back in right as it finished rolling up.

"Sorry," I told him. "I thought you were cute enough to eat right up before, and now you're turning out twice as scrumptious as I remember. Not that I want you thinking I'm a total slut, but ... if you remember, I am actually a total slut."

The Tesla came to a stop next to a silver Mercedes in the garage, and he shut the motor off and turned to look at me.

"What?" I asked, not sure how to read his expression — mostly a smile, but ... kind of searching for something.

He shook his head. "I'm just thinking how lucky I am that my aunt stocks up on candy bars and not lollipops. I'd be in real trouble if I had to spend the next couple of hours with you in arm's reach of a bunch of lollipops."

I gave him a wide-eyed moue of enthusiasm. "Child, it's like you've known me my whole life!"

"Come on. My aunt said the candy's in the pantry."

We got out and went through the interior door, which opened straight into a combo utility room and pantry, washer and dryer at one end, shelves of food and household supplies lining both walls. Sure enough, below one of the bottom shelves sat a couple of bushel-basket-sized plastic witch's cauldrons, so full of chocolate bars the lids wouldn't close all the way.

"Damn, she expecting a whole army of kids to come through?"

"That's the impression I got."

It took some heaving and hauling for us to get those giant pots out to the top of the driveway. Then Wyn fetched us some folding chairs from a corner of the garage. A ghost and a princess dashed up and thrust their pumpkin-shaped candy pails at us before we'd even settled in, shrieking, "Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!"

"You're in luck," I told them. "I am equally good at both of those!"

Wyn laughed from behind me where he was setting the chairs up, so I aimed my bottom at him and bent full at the waist to grab a couple of Snickers and drop them in the kids' buckets. They squealed out their thank-you's and ran off to meet their parents at the base of the driveway. I waved to the adults, who waved back — the dad with more enthusiasm than the mom.

Arranging myself casually and alluringly into my chair, I watched my date head back into the garage.

"I have to finish getting dressed," he explained in response to my curious look, then opened the back door of the Tesla to grab the rest of his costume.

I raised my voice so he could hear me with his head tucked down into the car's interior. "If I only had a dime for every time a guy has said that to me!"

He came back smiling but a little red-cheeked, shrugging his way into the vest and then buckling on his laser-pistol gun-belt.

Blaster, I reminded myself.

"So," I said as he sat down. I had my legs all the way out, crossed at the ankles, and his gaze climbed up along them on its way to meeting mine. "Here we are."

"Yeah." He scratched the back of his head, then wiggled in his camp-chair and adjusted his holster, trying to get comfortable.

"What should we talk about?"

His eyes looked into mine like splashes of a tropical, aquamarine sea, wavering forward and back as if a breeze kept pushing them away from a shore they wanted to reach.

"Well, considering that I'm probably way more curious about you than you are about me —"

"Why would you say that?"

He looked genuinely surprised. "Come on, seriously? You have to admit, you're just intrinsically more interesting than I am."

"What, because I'm a t-girl? Or because I'm in the escort business?" I glanced up and down the street to make sure no candy-hunting brigades had gotten within earshot, then lowered my voice anyway just in case. "I'm not gonna complain if you say it's because I'm hot as hell ..."

He laughed, a little deeper in his throat than normal. "You're definitely hot as hell. Jesus. I don't know, I guess it's just because you know who you are, and you own it. And I'm just kind of a wishy-washy, still-trying-to-figure-it-out ... I don't know what."

I reached over and teased at his sharp-cut bangs. His eyes followed my fingertips as I did it. "See, from where I'm sitting, you're on a journey. You're making a move. And the fact that you're not sure where it'll take you? That's interesting."

He didn't say anything, just looked like he was processing the idea as I relaxed back into my chair.

"Look, can I ask you something?" My eyes flicked up along the sidewalk. "And you can answer after this next gaggle of kids gets their swag."

He followed my glance to the knot of super-heroes halfway down the block. "Um, sure. Fire away."

"Why'd you call my personal line, not the one on the front of the card?"

"Hmm. Uh ..."

The sound of kiddie footsteps turned from a patter to a stampede.

"Trick or treat!"

"Oh, goodness, the super-criminals better watch out! Look at you muscle-y things!"

A little Iron Man posed and flexed, but the rest just held out their bags.

"Here you go," said Wyn, reaching out with a fistful of candy. "Nice costumes, guys."

They thanked us and trucked on into the deepening shadows of sunset. I giggled a little at the kid with the giant hammer and red cape skipping away as he went.

"To be honest," Wyn said once they'd cleared off, "I really didn't think about it. Calling you to pay for sex ... I mean, I'm not judging or anything, I just didn't have any interest in that."

"Okay," I said. "But why you didn't call the front number only half answers my question."

"Right ..." He took a minute, looking down the driveway at nothing, before going on. "So right then, that night, driving home and lying in my bed and high on not being a virgin anymore, I totally bought that you wanted me to call you, for real, as a person."

"I did," I insisted, furrowing my eyebrows. "I wouldn't have —"

"No, I'm sure you did — I mean, I think there was probably an element of pity in it, but —"

"Stop that. You're not being fair to yourself."

He laughed. "That's kind of my thing. But my point is, the next morning, I wasn't so positive it was real. Maybe the number you wrote was just made up, or maybe a different work line. Maybe it's just good business to make the guy think you're for real interested in him. Maybe you wanted to be nice and boost my confidence but figured I wouldn't be brave enough to call either way."

I crossed my arms and waited, itching to interrupt him even though he sounded like he was going somewhere with this.

"Oop. More trick-or-treaters," he said, eyes going past me along the street.

I scowled, but it was hard to keep a grumpy expression when the kids ran up.

"Trick or treat! Trick or treat!"

As Wyn doled out the Snickers, this little pink-tu-tu ballerina looked me up and down and said, in a shy voice, "I like your costume."

"Thank you, sweetie!" I reached out and patted her head. "I like yours too."

"My mom picked it," she said. "But next year I'm going to ask for one like yours." Then she curtseyed and ran off with the rest of them.

"Oh, god, that's so adorable ..." I watched her and her pack scurry off, trailed by a couple of housewifey types, one pushing a stroller. "All right, so coast clear. Go on. You spent the whole next day convincing yourself I didn't mean it."

"No, that's not how it was. It was more like I didn't want to be fooling myself. This voice kept telling me I should just throw the card away, because even if it was real, what could possibly come of it? And what I finally decided was, who cares what might come of it. The fact was, I didn't want to throw it away. I wanted it to be real, even if real just meant I'd encountered this cool, unusual person who thought it might be nice to talk to me again."

"Or fuck you again," I said, "but not for money."

"Sure." He laughed. "Of course I wanted that to be real. And after what I wanted wrestled around with my not wanting to fool myself, I thought, 'What if the real piece of fooling myself is the idea that I should throw the card away? What if that's the thing I'd be an idiot to convince myself to do?'"

I waved both hands downward along my torso. "Honey, have you seen this? I sure hope you know you'd be an idiot to give it a pass."

"If you'll stop being sexy a minute, there's a lot more I'd be an idiot to pass on. If there was even just a small chance of you being as nice as you seemed, only a total dipshit would have thrown your card away."

I got the flutters and put my hand over my heart to calm them down. "Well that's sweet, but if you mean it ... why'd you wait so long?"

"Research."

I laughed at him. "What?"

Another gaggle of kids came up before he could answer. Two of them had on the boy version of my space uniform, and I felt obligated to get in a shootout with them before we handed over the candy.

"Pshew! Pshew!" I called out after the spacemen as they rushed off. Then I put my gun in my lap. "Where were we? Oh, research. What, you mean like, how HRT works and what the stats are for STDs in sex workers?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I mean like, how does it feel to have sex with a vagina instead of doing it anal, and can I hold my own in a dating situation and make relationship decisions with my brain and not my dick. What happens when I push myself to lose some weight and get in shape? How does the world look when I decide to figure out what I want and go for it, not just keep dog-paddling along whichever way the current takes me? I could have called you that very next day, and it would have been what I wanted to do. But I wouldn't have known if I wanted it because it was what I really wanted, or just because something exciting dropped in my lap and I let it overwhelm me. Pretty much every girl I dated in college went that way — Pete or Jack would send somebody at me they weren't interested in themselves, I'd flip out over her, she'd use me to hang around near Pete and Jack until it became clear they weren't having what was on her menu, and then she'd move on. I wanted to be sure that if I flipped out over you, I was flipping out over you, not just over the fact that somebody was paying attention to me."

"Wyn," I told him, "you are my new hero." He rolled his eyes at that, so I went on. "No, seriously. That's probably the most rational reason for not calling a girl I've ever heard in my life."

"Thanks, I guess?"

"And you're telling me the vaginas didn't stack up?"

He laughed and turned red, which even though it was full dark now I could see because his aunt's house had these motion sensor lights that came on at the drop of a pin. "If it won't make you insecure, vaginas are pretty damn awesome."

"Child, I've been there, done that, so no, vaginas don't make me insecure."

"Really? You've ..."

"Sure," I said. "I'm into guys personally, but I'm professionally bi. They're maybe not the worst thing to poke your equipment into ..."

"Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!"

"Eep!" My head jerked around. Thankfully, it didn't look like the oncoming swarm of zombies, firemen, and axe murderers had been close enough to hear me. We banished them with fistfuls of candy, then had to deal with another round of super-heroes.

"Now what was I saying?" I asked once quiet returned to our driveway. "Oh, yeah. I can sort of see the attraction. So you tried on enough to figure out what kind of fit you were looking for?"

"Basically. I tried on enough to figure out I'm more interested in who's attached to a hole than what its original purpose was."

"Ha!"

"Plus ..."

"What?"

"Well, most of the girls I went out with this summer ... it took some doing to get them to come, and when they did, maybe I could really tell sometimes and maybe I couldn't. But when I had you in my hand, and felt you swelling up and then exploding ... damn, it blew my mind."

"Ooh, la," I said, licking my teeth and squirming in my chair. "You're giving me such a bulge in my skirt ..."

"Kids," he warned, nodding in the direction of an approaching herd of footsteps. We doled out more candy, and then some more, and then some more, before he could go on.

"So," he said at last, "that's why I called your personal number — because I wanted you to be real. And that's why I waited — to make sure that whatever I ended up feeling would be real too."

Wow. I didn't even know what to say.

Wyn took the silence as an opportunity and gave me a look. "Now, can I turn it around and ask you something?"

"Only fair, I guess."

"Why does somebody as smoking-hot and polar-ice-cap cool as you give a guy like me her personal number and then even remember doing it, seven months later?"