The Last Night Before Forty

I turned thirty-nine with a party and didn't think much of it. Turning forty was different. I'd spent the whole week telling people I didn't care, and the whole week lying about it.

It was Friday night, the last night of my thirties. I was thirty-nine and thirty-nine would be gone by midnight. I sat in my apartment with the one lamp on, surrounded by camera gear I hadn't touched in two weeks and climbing gear I used three times a week, and I decided I didn't want my last night of my thirties to be me alone on the couch.

I knew exactly who I wanted to text.

Remi. Forty-one, met her three months ago through Naomi from the gym. We'd talked a handful of times at the wall, mostly about routes. She'd moved to town two years ago and dated around with no attachments, which she said plainly like it was a fact about her, like her shoe size. I liked that. I liked her hands too, the way she chalked up and shook it out before a hard problem.

I typed before I could talk myself out of it.

"Tomorrow I turn forty. Come over tonight. One night, no strings, gone by dawn. Yes or no?"

I stared at my phone for a full minute. Then three dots.

"which gym problem are you working, i need context"

"That's a yes or no question!"

"it's a yes. Address?"

She showed up at nine with a six-pack of good beer and a bag of chips, like it was a regular hangout. Her hair was still damp from the gym showers. She looked around the apartment at the tripods and the rope pile and nodded like it all made sense.

"Nice place. Smaller than I figured."

"Rent's a joke and the light's bad. Perfect for a photographer." I handed her a beer. "Glasses are clean, I think."

We sat on the couch and talked about climbing for a while, which was easy, because it was the one thing we always talked about. The gym competition was in seven and a half weeks and Naomi was trying to get a team together.

"You doing the comp?" she asked.

"Probably. Isolation is brutal though. You just sit there for an hour with your heart rate up."

"I know. Last year I flashed the first route and then fell off the second like I'd never touched a hold in my life."

"Seven and a half weeks to train," I said.

"Seven and a half." She took a drink. "So. Your text."

"Yeah."

"That was direct."

"I'm thirty-nine for about three more hours. I've earned direct."

She laughed and set her beer down. "Okay. So tell me how this works, because I've never done the one-night thing with a friend of a friend, and I don't want to step on anything."

"Rules are simple. One night. It ends at dawn, you leave, and at the gym on Tuesday we're just two people who climb. No follow-up, no expectations, nobody owes anybody anything."

"And Naomi?"

"Nobody tells Naomi anything."

"Deal." She paused. "One more thing. I'm clean and I'm not seeing anybody right now, if that matters."

"It matters. I'm clean too, tested in March." I reached for my camera bag, the old beat-up one I still carried everywhere. "Which brings me to this."

I pulled out the vibrator. Sleek, silver, modest size, bought two years ago during a period I did not plan to explain to anyone.

Remi looked at it and then at me. "That was in your camera bag."

"Lenses need company."

"You're full of it."

"So. Here's the shape of the night, if you're in. We use this. We take turns with it. We watch each other. And we don't touch each other, at least not much, unless we decide otherwise later. That's it."

She was quiet for a second. I could see her actually thinking it over, which I appreciated. I'd been with people who just said yes to everything because it was easier.

"Turns," she said. "Like a joint at a party."

"Exactly like that."

"And we watch. Huh. Okay. Yeah, I'm in." She shrugged off her jacket. "Where do you want me?"

"Bedroom. It's the only room without gear in it."

We undressed without any rush to it. She folded her clothes over a chair, which told me something about her, and I left mine in a pile on the floor, which told her something about me. The lamp was on low. I'd lit one candle earlier for my own stupid sentimental reasons and she didn't comment on it, which I also appreciated.

She got on the bed propped against the headboard and I handed her the vibrator and settled at the foot of the bed where I could see her.

"No ceremony," she said, turning it over in her hand. "That's kind of great actually."

"Just don't drop it, it's the only one."

She clicked it on low and started at her inner thighs, just tracing, not committing. Her pubic hair was trimmed short and her skin was pale in the lamplight. I watched her work it up slowly, circle by circle, her breathing changing before anything else did. Her hips lifted off the mattress a little.

"You can touch yourself too," she said. "I didn't say you couldn't."

"Rules say not much."

"Rules say we decide otherwise later. It's later."

So I put my hand between my own legs while she ran the vibrator over her clit, and we just looked at each other doing it. It was somehow less awkward than any first time I'd ever had. She wasn't performing. She closed her eyes for a while and then opened them to check on me, and when she saw my fingers moving she made a small sound and turned the toy up a notch.

Her orgasm came quiet, a long exhale and a shudder through her thighs. She clicked the toy off and lay there a second, then held it out to me handle first.

"Your turn. Happy almost birthday."

I took it. It was warm from her. I rolled a condom over the shaft, since it had been inside her hand and against her skin and who knew, and she raised an eyebrow at that.

"Cautious."

"Almost forty years of caution," I said. "It's a habit."

I lay back against the pillows and she sat up cross-legged to watch. I started it on low and pressed it just inside, then up to my clit, and I'll admit I was aware of being watched and it helped instead of hurting. Her hand was already between her legs again, two fingers