Rival's Edge

The rain is coming down hard on Brody's windows and I'm standing in his doorway wondering, not for the first time, what the hell I'm doing here.

"You're late," he says.

"Traffic. And don't act like you've been ready long, your hair's still wet."

"I've been ready for a while." He steps back to let me in. "Take your shoes off, I just got this carpet."

"Since when do you care about carpet. You ate ramen off a paper towel for the three years I knew you at Hollis."

"That was a different life." He shuts the door behind me. "Different wife too."

"Charming." I shrug out of my coat and hand it to him like he's a valet, which he hates, and I know it, and that's why I do it.

Here's how we got here, in case you're wondering. Tuesday standup at the new job, which neither of us asked to be on, because our old company split the team down the middle when it imploded and somehow both of us landed at Vantage within the same month. Brody made some crack in the sprint review about how my API design was all polish and no substance. I said at least I have polish. It escalated. By four o'clock we were arguing in the break room about something completely different, which was who was better in bed, because his divorce papers came through in March and mine came through in June and neither of us has anything left to be humble about.

"If you're half as good with your hands as you are with a codebase," he'd said, "your ex-husband filed for a reason."

"And if you're half as good as you claim, your ex-wife left a hell of a bargain on the table."

So he said prove it. I said fine. And now it's Tuesday, a week later, and I'm in his living room with a boxed vibrator in my bag like some kind of deranged professional athlete.

He's thirty-six, I'm thirty-four, and I want it on no record that my hands are not exactly steady when I set my bag down on his couch.

"Rules," he says, standing by the kitchen counter with his arms crossed. "Say them back to me so we're clear."

"No touching each other. That's the big one. First one to come loses, and the winner gets to gloat. That's the whole prize. No stakes, nobody owes anybody anything, and either of us says stop and we stop, no questions." I kick my shoes off by the couch. "Are you in?"

"I'm in. Are you?"

"I'm in. Anything else, referee?"

"No faking. I'll know!"

"Bold of you to think you could tell."

"I've been watching you since that standup a week ago, Kristina. I know your tells."

I flip him off and he almost smiles, which is the most warmth he's shown since the divorce, his, not mine, though honestly mine wasn't much better. Daniel and I stopped touching sometime around year four and neither of us said it out loud for two more years. That's a story for a different drunk night.

"Where's yours?" I ask. "Your toy. Or is the great Brody Sharpe planning to win on raw talent?"

"Raw talent has never won anything worth winning. I invested." He disappears down the hall and comes back with a flat black case, sets it on the coffee table, and opens it like he's presenting a watch. It's a wand. Matte black, thick head, the kind of thing that costs real money.

"That's a wand," I say. "That's cheating."

"How is that cheating?"

"Because a wand is a cheat code, Sharpe. That's not technique, that's an industrial accident."

"Rules didn't specify. Should have read the fine print." He snaps the case shut and I hate him a little. Then I kneel down and open my own bag and pull out the box I ordered last Thursday and had shipped to my office like a coward.

"What is that," he says.

"State of the art."

"It looks like a coffee maker box."

"It's a luxury vibrator, it came in protective packaging, don't be a Philistine." I cut the tape with my car key and lift it out. Rose gold, curved, with an app and nine patterns and a charging dock, because if I'm going to lose to Brody Sharpe in his living room I'm at least going to lose with good hardware. He looks at it, then at me, and his eyebrows do the thing they do in code reviews.

"Nice," he says. "Genuinely. You went fancy."

"Didn't want to hear excuses when you lose."

We set up. That's the stupid part, the setup, both of us arranging ourselves on opposite ends of his gray couch like it's a doctor's waiting room, him plugging his wand in by the wall outlet, me unclicking the end of mine to check the charge, ninety-eight percent, of course. The rain is louder now. The city hums under it. I put a cushion behind my back and he adjusts his lamp so it doesn't shine in my eyes, which is almost considerate until he says, "Can't have you claiming unfair conditions."

"God forbid!"

"Ready?"

"Not even a little," I say, and smirk, because if he thinks I'm scared then he doesn't know me, and if he does know me then I've already lost twice. "Count us down, referee."

"Three. Two. One."

He goes slow. That's the first thing I notice, and I hate that I notice it, because it means I'm studying him instead of focusing. He just holds the wand against his thigh at first, over his jeans, which he's unbuttoned but not pulled down, and he watches me. Not my hands. My face.

I unzip my jeans and push them down to my thighs and slide the vibrator inside my panties and turn it on to the second setting, because starting on the first is for people who don't mean it. It finds me easy. I'm wet already, which I'm not going to think about, I'm wet because I'm competitive and this is a competition, that is the story and I'm sticking to it.

He turns his wand on low and rests it against the base of his cock and leans his head back and watches me through his lashes, the bastard, so I keep my eyes on his